by Tony Tran
Sima Yi who was stationed in the Red Mist Province along with the those in the Aurora Province and the Heavenly Sword Province kept the Green Clover Province in check. While the Green Clover Province and the Aurora Province kept the Red Mist Province in check. Then the Green Clover Province and the Aurora Province kept the Heavenly Sword Province in check. Thanks to their positioning all of the provinces in the Aurora Kingdom kept each other in line. If the New Moon Province were to be subdued and added into the Aurora Kingdom, then the Heavenly Sword Province and the Aurora Province which border its southern and part of it eastern region to keep watch over it.
Besides the Aurora Province no other province in the Aurora Kingdom housed an army larger than the other provinces in the kingdom.
While the investigation occurred, and Ran Kaitou went to help with the evacuation, the ice and water that Zhang had ordered to be brought to the newly erected fort had arrived. Now an abundant supply of water was available if Ling were to use her magic.
“Darling you know that after all of this is over, we are going to have to extend our honeymoon time.” Lingqi said as she stood beside Zhang atop a guard tower that Ran Kaitou had erected.
“Of course, our honeymoon can last as long as you guys want. Also, once we have the time we can do what we talked about earlier.” Zhang said with a devious smile on his face. As his words reached Lingqi’s ears they turned a crimson red as her face blushed.
“What was it that you two were talking about earlier?” Yuying asked as she chimed into the conversation.
Lingqi proceeded to walk up to her and whisper into her ears the same words that Zhang had told her in the morning. Afterward Yuying’s checks also began blushing and she did not have any more questions. Later Ling and Ai would learn of what their husband had said and would end up with flushed faces also.
“My lord we have found traces of blood in a large room in the western section of the mansion.” A man yelled up at the guard tower Zhang and the four beauties were in.
“You four stay up here and enjoy the view I’ll be right back.” Zhang said as he leapt off the guard tower and landed on the ground.
“Lead the way.” He said to the man who had reported about the traces of blood.
Zhang was then lead through the twisting and winding paths of the provincial lord’s mansion. Soon they arrived at a small courtyard where a few men were waiting.
"My lord we have found traces of blood in that room over there. So far no other traces of people have been found elsewhere.” A man said respectfully to Zhang as he led him into a small room where a bloody handprint could be seen imprinted on the side of the door. The inside the room a single trail of blood could be seen trailing toward the door. The trail had seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and only led to the door.
“Hmmmm” Zhang said as he looked down at the trail of blood. Then an invisible pulse of essence began emitting from his body and scanned the room.
“Go and get more men over here.” Zhang said as a glint appeared in his eyes. The pulse of essence had discovered an opening under the floor. But before he opened up a hole in the floor, just to be safe he wanted more people with mirrors around to reflect sunlight into the room.
Soon roughly a hundred men had gathered in the small courtyard with mirrors in hand, awaiting Zhang’s orders. He had not asked for his wives to come over because if something was lurking were to happen he did not want for them to get hurt.
With a vast amount of light shining into the room, Zhang waved his hand and withdrew his halberd from his interspatial ring. A purplish glow enveloped the halberd causing it to levitate into the air. With a flick of his fingers the halberd plunged itself into the floor and began drilling through it.
Dozens of cracks ran through the floor as the halberd shattered the rock underneath it. Not much time passed before the halberd left a large hole through the wall, revealing flight of stairs and a hidden room.
Without a single word said, a team of men entered the room and shone mirrors down into the flight of stairs. Light reflected down into the hidden room, but the flight of stairs seemed to extend into the dark indefinitely as only a small portion of it was revealed.
“Bring more mirrors and some torches…” Zhang said with a sigh as he looked down into the dark room beneath the floors.
“Maybe this is where everyone’s been hiding.” He thought to himself.
Moments later with more men and more mirrors, the exploration of the hidden room began.
Torches were lit and enveloped with a purple glow as they were sent levitating down the flight of stairs to make sure nothing jumps out and catches unsuspecting people.
A team of thirty men armed with mirrors followed behind Zhang as he walked down the flight of stairs and descended into the depths. After a certain distance a man would stop descending and use his mirror to extend the reach of a ray of light that was sent down from the surface because only a sliver of light was needed to wipe out a whole army of lesser Jiangshi and the same went for a full fledge Jiangshi if it was kept exposed to sunlight for a slightly longer duration of time.
By the time, they reached at the last step of the staircase all thirty men who had accompanied Zhang were busy reflecting light down from the surface.
“Send word up for more men to come down here.” Zhang said and soon after dozens of voices echoed to the surface for more men to come down.
While more men were descending the stairs the sound of rattling chains drifted into Zhang’s ears. With a thought the torches that he had kept levitating around him flew around the darkness, helping to illuminate the room and lift the veil of darkness that had shrouded the room.
As the light illuminated from the torches brought light into the room, a wall with hundreds of chains attached to it came into view. Bound by these chains were close to a hundred Jiangshi, not lesser Jiangshi but full-fledged Jiangshi capable of individually raising armies of undead. From the aura, they were emitting Zhang was one hundred percent sure these were not lesser Jiangshi.
“Well fuck me…” Zhang cursed as he saw the hundred or so Jiangshi chained to the walls. Upon closer inspection, each chain had dozens of strengthening inscriptions etched into them. Had it not been for the strengthening inscriptions the chains would have only been there for decoration because there was no way that average chains could keep Jiangshi bound.
“At least they are bound and I can take my time extinguishing them with sunlight…” He sighed as he thought about what else might show up down here.
“If something stronger than these show up I’m out of here…” He mumbled as a scowl crept into his face. Just imagining something stronger than a hundred Jiangshi appearing ruined Zhang’s mood. For instance, if an undead dragon appeared then Zhang would be long gone and maybe even have the borders of the Aurora Kingdom be moved back a few hundred miles away from the New Moon Province.
Seeing the one hundred Jiangshi also proved that they could be mass produced and maybe one day Yuying would have an army of them under her control along with her army of Titanic Spiders.
Chapter 15: Into the Dark
With creases on his brow and an unamused expression on his face, Zhang eyed the one hundred Jiangshi chained to the walls of in the far end of the room. He was waiting for more of his men to descend the stairs and use their mirrors to lay these Jiangshi to rest.
“I should prepare just in case something stupid happens…” He thought as he activated the Cape of the Abyss that was draped over his shoulders. From the shadows and dark depth dozens of abyssal beasts spawned ready to obey Zhang’s commands.
The Jiangshi as if sensing something was about to happen began rattling their chains, trying to break free and charge at Zhang. If even half of them managed to break free, then they would have more than enough power to rip him limb from limb.
Then with a wave of his hand, thousands of Lightning Eater scaled tipped arrows appeared on the ground. With a thought a purple glow enveloped them and sent them levitat
ing into the air. Moments later the thousands of arrows pierced and danced through the air towards the Jiangshi.
It was dark and not a lot of light was present so Zhang could no target their joints like he had done to the three Jiangshi that they had caught earlier, so instead he opted to just use a large number of arrows instead. Although he could not truly extinguish them with the arrows, Zhang would be able to damage and incapacitate them. The thousands of arrows whizzed through the air and punctured into their targets with deadly force.
That was when something peculiar occurred, whereas Zhang had planned to have the arrows embed themselves into the Jiangshi to lower their mobility in the case that they were able to break free of their bounds, instead a few of them turned to ashes.
“That shouldn’t have happened.” Zhang mumbled as he was confused at how the arrows were able to extinguish a Jiangshi.
“My lord, I thought you said those things could only be killed by expose to direct sunlight.” The man who had followed Zhang all the way to the bottom of the staircase asked. He had been scared speechless moments before when the Jiangshi tried to break free of their chains and only just now managed to calm himself enough to speak.
“I don’t know…” Zhang replied as he felt a hint of fatigue. Controlling thousands of arrows with essence was not something that one could do often because of the high consumption of essence, even in Zhang’s case. The replenishment rate of the Underworld Heart, although fast was not able to keep up to the consumption rate of manipulating the arrows
.
With a thought, a few torches that Zhang kept floating in the air flew over to where some of the Jiangshi had perished. That was when he noticed something glittering underneath the torch light.
“Fetch.” Zhang said as he looked at an Abyssal Hellhound that he had summoned. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Abyssal Hellhound sped through the room with a part of its body transforming into a trial of black smoke and arrived at the object in question and retrieved it, all the while avoiding the Jiangshi who were only embedded with arrows and were not extinguished. With the object in its mouth the Abyssal Hellhound returned to Zhang’s side in a flash. Soon two halves of a black pearl were left in Zhang’s hand.
“These things again, actually this one isn’t identical like the other three that I found. This one as some white dots on its surface.” Zhang said as he examined the pearl fragments. Then with a wave of his hand three pitch black pearls appeared in his other palm.
“I guess these Jiangshi are either defective or have yet to reach perfection like those three.” He thought as he came to a conclusion based on the pearls.
“If my guess is right these pearls were used to create these Jiangshi, so realistically speaking we might be able to use them to raise an army of Jiangshi.” Zhang murmured as a glint appeared in his eyes. If he and Yuying could raise an army of Jiangshi then the conquest of the entire warring states region and perhaps the entire continent would be smooth sailing.
“Let alone those bastards from the Siwang Empire, even if those guys in the eastern empire decided to go against me with an army of Jiangshi, nothing will be able to hinder my plans.”
Zhang thought as he imagined himself leading a vast army of undead and demonic beasts and laying waste to all who stand in his way.
Unlike conventional armies, his army would consist of high level demonic beasts and hundreds of Jiangshi along with hordes of lesser Jiangshi. They would become an unstable force that could wipe out kingdoms overnight. Of course, if he did lead an army like that, most likely the populous of the continent would pain him in a dark light. But none of that would matter if he could unify the continent and become its sole ruler, as ambitious as it might sound.
While Zhang was lost in his fantasy a group of a hundred men had descended the stairs and were awaiting his orders. They caught glimpses of the Jiangshi chained to the walls, causing fear to show on their faces but no one dared to leave. The threat in front of them was too large even think about running away.
However, this did not prevent a few of them from wailing out of fear when they flickering torches revealed dozens of Jiangshi that were hidden away in the dark.
“Alright everyone gets in line, shoulder to shoulder.” Zhang ordered as he withdrew a scepter with diamond the size of someone’s fist embedded at its handle from his interspatial ring.
With the diamond in hand he walked up to where a sliver of light had managed to be reflected all the way down to the bottom of the staircase. Cloaking the scepter in essence and plunging it into the stone steps, the diamond embedded in the scepter into the ground. Once the sliver of light struck the diamond, it scattered into dozens of beams of light.
“Use these to extinguish them.” Zhang commanded to his men. Since there were only a few scatter beams of light a small group of Zhang’s man stepped forward and began redirecting the light toward the Jiangshi.
Perhaps it was because the Jiangshi were imperfect, but once the slivers of light shone onto their bodies for a few minutes they bursted into ashes. Zhang had expected it to take at least half an hour due to how little light sunlight was being reflected, but he was not one to complain if the process ended sooner.
Once the Jiangshi were gone and only a hundred piles of dust were left, Zhang’s abyssal beasts swooped in and gathered all of the black pearls that were dropped and presented them to him.
“I’ll store these away for later.” Zhang thought as he waved his hand and stored away all of the black pearls into his interspatial ring.
“Oh yea, I almost forgot…” Zhang mumble as he waved his hand once more and collected the arrows that he had shot at the Jiangshi earlier and stored them away into his interspatial ring.
“Everyone stay behind me and be careful. We are going to see if there is anything else down here.” Zhang said to his men. The staircase had spiraled down along the wall on one’s right hand, while the wall of Jiangshi was to the left a bit away from the staircase. That being said Zhang did not know how far back the room stretched out in front of him.
“You all can leave the mirrors here; we are too far down here to reflect it much further.” He added as he had his men take up torches instead. Although the new arrivals were going to come along with Zhang, the thirty men who had accompanied him in the beginning would stay where they are just in case something were to happen. Of course, they no longer needed to hold up mirrors and were given torches instead. Zhang even left the scepter lodged into the ground just in case they needed to use it, and he was more than confident that no one would dare to steal the scepter despite the large diamond embedded on it.
Once everyone we equipped with a torch and had their weapons drawn, the group began their advance into the unknown. Although Zhang was fearless the men who were not so they huddled up and walked closely beside each other so if anything popped up they could face it together as a group.
The light illuminating from the torches only gave off so much light so everyone was shrouded by a veil of darkness. Thankfully they were walking down a corridor and not wandering through a wide-open space or else who knows we might be watching them from the darkness.
Zhang had kept two torches constantly levitating a short distance in front of the group as they continued further but no end was in sight. By now they could no longer see the staircase and have yet to see anything but the stone walls on either side of them.
As they continued on creases appeared on Zhang’s brow. “Blood…” He thought as he saw trails of blood on the ground a bit ahead of where he and his men were. It looked as if someone had been forcefully dragged away as they tried to claw the ground to prevent themselves from being taken.
“What’s a kid doing here?” One of Zhang’s men yelled as the flicker torch light illuminating their path revealed a hundred over figure of a child dressed in rags. With long disorderly hair, sickly pale skin while being draped in dirty rags, this child gave off an eerie aura which struck fear into the hearts of those present.
&nb
sp; “There’s nothing to be afraid of it’s just a child.” Another man said trying to assure his comrades that everything was fine. He even worked up the courage to walk toward the child hunched over by the wall. But before he could get far Zhang’s hand reached out and rested down on the man’s shoulder.
“Step back…” Zhang said. It was clear to him something was out of the ordinary because what would a child be doing down here in the darkness.
“We mean you no harm, we are only here to help so walk over slowly.” Zhang said while projecting his voice.
However, the child did not respond to his words and appeared to be preoccupied with something.
“Hey you! Our young master is talking to you!” A largely built man yelled. This man was the type who did not care if it was man, woman, or child, but if it was human then he would treat it the same. No one received special treatment and no one was treated differently.
