Chapter Ninety-Four: A White Horse

A sword-shadow, bright as a rainbow, swept across the sky and headed south.

Below, the earth rolled away in endless folds of green and blue, vanishing beyond the horizon. Vast stretches of it were empty wilderness, with only a few scattered places where mortal villages, towns, and cities had been carved out and built.

Only from high among the clouds could one behold such a boundless sight, and it stirred Fang Junmei profoundly.

Immortal.

What was an immortal?

Only one who could stand high in the clouds and look down upon the earth could truly be called immortal.

Yet after a moment, Fang Junmei gave a self-mocking shake of his head. Even now, he was still nothing more than a speck of dust in the mortal world. When he thought of Fan Lanzhou, of Gu Xijin, when he thought of the Daoist of Missteps, of the Daoist of the Heavenly River, and of that mysterious power at the Mortal Transcendence stage, what did this little achievement amount to?

By now, evening had fallen.

Fang Junmei did not stop. He continued flying south.

Before he left, the Daoist of Missteps had reminded him once more that, because of the Blood-Draining Pill, someone might try to corner him and demand an explanation. To keep from inviting trouble, the Daoist had advised him to travel by night and rest during the day.

Most cultivators still followed the habits they had as mortals: active by day, dormant by night. Going against the grain was a common lesson for those who walked the mortal world.

...

He traveled this way, stopping and starting as he went, and the weather gradually grew hotter.

It took nearly a month before he reached the northern edge of the Savage Jungle. Along the way, he encountered no trouble.

Seen from high in the air, the boundless Savage Jungle was thick with vegetation. Towering trees rose to the heavens, vines twisted and coiled everywhere, and great swathes of mist drifted among them.

The mist was not entirely white. There were yellow wisps, red wisps, even black ones. This was one of the Savage Jungle's peculiar features: miasmic poison fog. Most of it was highly toxic, and for cultivators it was a significant nuisance. As for mortals, unless they understood the poison in these mists and knew how to neutralize it, they would never dare make a home here.

Fang Junmei glanced over it a few times and kept on going.

Mountain ranges of varying heights began to appear in clusters.

The mountains of this savage jungle were mostly not very tall, but they wound on endlessly, like immense dragons coiling upon the earth.

There were many ravines and fissures, and from time to time one could see pitch-black cracks that were enough to make the heart tremble. If one listened closely, from deep within came the faint rustling of insects, so large they seemed unnatural.

To cultivators, this savage jungle meant danger, but also special opportunities.

There were many demon beasts here, and it produced vast quantities of materials for artifact refinement. It was also home to countless poisonous plants and trees, which drew many cultivators of the demonic path seeking ingredients for elixirs and techniques for cultivating vile arts. Over time, one of the Five Great Demon Sects came into being here: the one most loathed by righteous sects, and least willing to deal with them at all, Ten Thousand Savage Mountains.

Ten Thousand Savage Mountains was both a mountain range and the name of a sect.

It lay in the southwest of the Savage Jungle, the tallest, steepest, deepest, most winding mountain range here, and the one richest in spiritual energy.

The place Fang Junmei needed to reach was to the southeast, and whether he would encounter disciples of Ten Thousand Savage Mountains along the way was hard to say.

Roar!

Roar!

From far off came the deafening bellow of beasts.

Fang Junmei turned his gaze and faintly made out flickering beams of radiance in the distance, more than ten li away. If nothing unexpected had happened, cultivators must be there.

He paid it no mind. With a subtle lift of the sword-shadow beneath his feet, he flew higher still.

Seven or eight days later, he finally arrived at the place recorded in Long Jinyi's jade slip.

...

With a soft thud, he landed on a boulder covered in red lichen and swept his eyes over the surrounding scene.

This was a stretch of wild land, a hundred li wide, filled with bizarre stone pillars of blood-red hue.

Each pillar was at least two or three hundred zhang tall and dozens of zhang around, standing like gigantic spears thrust toward the heavens. Combined with their crimson color, they gave off a savage, blood-soaked feeling. In fact, the local people had long called this place the Blood-Red Stone Forest.

No one knew whether it was born naturally or made by some living thing.

The spiritual energy in the air was exceedingly thin. There was also a faint presence of miasmic poison fog, with strands of all colors drifting about.

Between the stone pillars stretched a wilderness of luxuriant growth. Thorny vines tangled over the ground in a chaotic mass, all of it a deep blood-red, with not a trace of any road to be seen.

A glance was enough to show many insects and worms, far larger than those found in ordinary places, their forms fierce and hideous.

Beyond that, he could not sense the aura of any powerful beings, not even weak demon beasts. There were only those insects and worms.

Having finally arrived, Fang Junmei did not linger to rest. Clouds rose beneath his feet as he cast the Cloud-Riding Art, carrying himself slowly and steadily through the stone forest in search of something.

At the same time, his spiritual sense spread out like water soaking into the ground.

...

According to the account in Long Jinyi's jade slip, the strange being he had once seen was a white horse-like creature, and at the time it seemed not yet fully grown, standing only half a man tall.

When Long Jinyi chased after it, he was shocked by its bizarre speed. The horse seemed to cross space itself, flashing from one place to another. Unless one had seen it with one's own eyes, the sight would be all but impossible to imagine.

Fortunately, the creature's attacks were not strong at the time, or Long Jinyi would surely have lost his life.

In no time at all, the white horse vanished without a trace, no longer even detectable by spiritual sense.

As he searched, Fang Junmei kept recalling the horse's appearance in his mind.

He searched for more than half a month, combing through the entire Blood-Red Stone Forest, yet found no sign of the white horse at all.

...

One day, Fang Junmei stood at the edge of a cliff above a vast fissure, staring down into the pitch-black depths below with a furrowed brow and deep thought.

Clearly, if that white horse had not left, it must be hiding somewhere.

Since there was nothing to find on the surface, the best course was to try his luck underground.

Clang!

As he pondered, Fang Junmei suddenly drew his sword and, turning in a single motion, hacked down. He severed a blood-red vine as thick as a child's arm, which had been creeping up on him like a venomous serpent.

Splurt!

Red pulp, like blood, sprayed from the cut end. But around Fang Junmei, a layer of golden protective light had already risen, blocking every drop outside.

Over the past half month, what had annoyed him most were these blood-red vines. They seemed to have a will of their own, like demonic spirits, and would always recklessly launch themselves at him. Even when he was airborne, they would spring up at him, straightening like spears.

He returned his sword to its scabbard and let his spiritual sense spread silently outward. The cliff below was shaped like a hemisphere, some dozens of zhang deep. The light was dim and impossible to see through with the naked eye.

Dozens of zhang down lay the bottom of the ravine, but that was not the end. On the ground at the bottom, more enormous fissures opened up, and his spiritual sense continued probing. Yet after only a short while, it reached its limit and could go no farther.

Along the way, he had noticed that the wild grasses and vines grew fewer and fewer, and even the sounds of insects had disappeared. The farther down he went, the more silent it became, as though a vast, soundless world were hidden below.

There were several other ravines like this beneath the cliffs in the Blood-Red Stone Forest.

After staring for a while longer, Fang Junmei drew a slow breath and drove the Cloud-Riding Art downward, gliding into the depths at an unhurried pace.

...

Soon, he reached the bottom of the ravine.

Fang Junmei twitched his nose. A bloody scent drifted from the cracks into his nostrils. It was not the blood-red sap of the strange vegetation here, but rather the smell of animal blood, sharp and pungent beyond measure.

He swept it with spiritual awareness, yet saw no beast carcasses or anything of the sort, not even a trace left behind.

"...If there is truly something strange about this place, then Big Brother would certainly have explored it long ago, and he would have warned me if it was dangerous. Since he said nothing, that means either there is nothing abnormal here, or the abnormality arose after he left... Could it be some demon beast newly moved in?"

His thoughts raced. He had originally intended to use fire arts to probe downward, but his mind changed at once. After several flickers of his gaze, he instead sent his spiritual sense into the darkness below, sword already in hand.

The deeper he went, the darker it became, and not a sound could be heard.

The gaps in the fissure widened and narrowed unpredictably.

Fang Junmei had no sense of direction here and could only search at random.