CHAPTER 421: CHAPTER 177: ANOTHER ENEMY, IMPERIAL SEAL (5K)

Fuyu Mountain—a big table covered with all kinds of ancient texts.

A few of the elders, along with several of the younger generation, were all poring over the texts.

But the more possibly relevant records they found, the uglier the elders’ faces became.

The Seventh Great-Uncle Master was the youngest among his peers; he couldn’t hold it in and said what everyone was thinking.

"Say, could the legends actually be true? Did some of our Fuyu Mountain seniors really go around stirring up trouble everywhere?"

The Grand Uncle Master’s face went black; he said nothing.

Although those words sounded disrespectful to the ancestors, flipping through these ancient texts, piecing together these few surviving notes, that was honestly the rough conclusion they came to.

To put it nicely, generations ago the Fuyu Mountain seniors believed in practical combat, always taking Great Zombies everywhere to challenge people.

Less nicely, going down the mountain to make trouble was simply a mandatory part of graduation.

But those two, the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Ancestors, gave Fuyu Mountain two centuries of glory, and most disciples under their rule turned out to be practitioners of real combat.

Of course, this also had a lot to do with the times—as the world was chaos, all sorts of unbelievable things went on, and if Fuyu Mountain wanted to protect itself, this was the only path to take.

But the side effects remain, like what’s happening now.

They found a volume called "Night Miscellaneous Talk," written by a senior of the fourteenth generation in his youth mostly to record stories and rumors; some of those were things he heard from the Thirteenth Ancestor himself. When recording, he inevitably idolized his hero—classic Fuyu Mountain style braggadocio historiography.

This is exactly why even Fuyu Mountain’s own people feel these texts are full of hot air.

Because with several centuries of silence before the Spiritual Energy Resurgence, nobody had firsthand knowledge of what higher realms were really like. There’s simply no way to tell which parts were exaggerated fiction and which were factual reports.

Plus, just like this "Night Miscellaneous Talk," it was written by a junior looking up in adoration at Fuyu Mountain’s strongest Thirteenth Ancestor, so of course he added layers of heroic filter.

"Kaihuang, twentieth year. Lie emerges at Beiyi. Meets a Taoist; contests Dao. Taoist loses, fights out of shame and anger. Also loses. Calls on thirteen friends and eight hundred followers. Still loses. Lie cannot stand the harassment, calls down a falling star. Demon ghosts flee with the mountain, escape into Beiyi..."

The upshot is that just a few years after the world was reunited, trouble still abounded in the North. At that time, Beiyi Mountain was still a key border post, but demons and ghosts rampaged through the mountains. As the Thirteenth Ancestor passed by, he went there to "reason things out."

The demon ghost, unable to win the argument, gathered others for a group brawl. The Thirteenth Ancestor, sick to death of it, simply summoned a meteor and wiped them all out.

The demon ghost didn’t die, and actually fled with the mountain into the Beiyi Mountain Range, which is now known as the Helan Mountain Range.

Who knows what happened in between—anyway, the final result was the Thirteenth Ancestor managed to talk sense into them. He didn’t kill the demon ghost, but made him stay put as the boundary mountain, guarding that crucial pass.

That’s one of the records they found related to this. There were similar mentions elsewhere over the next few centuries.

Adding it all up, Grand Uncle Master and the others felt this "Night Miscellaneous Talk" was just too much literary embellishment.

Their guess was, the Thirteenth Ancestor ran into a Great Demon Ghost. The other guy couldn’t beat him, sure, but the Thirteenth Ancestor couldn’t kill him either, so they negotiated and settled things peacefully.

But cross-referencing other accounts about Helan Mountain, maybe after the Thirteenth Ancestor fell, the Great Demon Ghost thought he could act up again, started making trouble until territorial changes pushed Helan Mountain from borderland to mainland—and after that, no more news of him.

The Fourth Great-uncle Master combined various records, added in intelligence from the Scorching Sun Department, and sent Wen Yan a message.

The gist: this demon ghost is a real handful. He can move with a whole mountain, and he’s crazy hard to kill—even tanked a meteor strike and survived, not even the Thirteenth Ancestor could finish him off; he could only suppress him. Plus, this demon ghost can possess bodies. Seriously tough. Be careful.

...

Wen Yan hefted the Incense Candle Ballista and set off. He’d gone just over ten kilometers, and could still clearly sense the beacon tower behind him when, ahead, he could already see the mountain range sprawling across the earth.

It was as if a line of mountains suddenly thrust up from the flat plain, stretching far left and right, shrouded in mist so you couldn’t even see the end. He estimated it was at least thirty or forty kilometers across.

Countless nether souls gathered in the mountains, constantly trying to rush at him, but every wisp of Yang Energy coming off his body kept them at bay—none could get within thirty meters.

Standing at the mountain’s edge, he took in a deep breath, inhaling thick yin evil energy, and exhaled it right back out.

Looking into the mountains, he secretly griped—who knows how many people the Thirteenth Ancestor pissed off back in the day; if you’re going to kill, at least be thorough, dammit. Now the Netherworld’s broken out, all those troublemakers have come roaring back.

First a Sacred Fire Sect Demon Kingdom, now a Great Demon Ghost—it wasn’t like he could just ignore these things.

If that mountain really started heading south and flattened the manor beneath a million tons, he’d have nowhere to eat and would basically starve to death sooner or later.

As soon as he left the plain and stepped into the mountains, Wen Yan instantly felt the environmental damage take hold—he could faintly sense the baleful energy here, pricking at him like wheat awns.

And this was after the yin energy erosion had been immunized, leaving only the part that wasn’t just ambient environmental damage.