Chapter 354 - Waiting for a Person
Translated by: Pipipingu
Edited by: Michyrr
“Senior, if you wanted me to leave, you can completely say so directly. Why must you do so many things, purposefully provoking and tricking me?”
“When I, Su Li, do things, I have my reasons. Perhaps I still have to explain it to you?”
“Okay then… Senior, who is the old man Yin you spoke about before?”
“The Pope.”
“Ah… is His Reverence the Pope surnamed Yin?”
“Don’t you feel that it’s very…?”
“Senior… that’s not how I thought.”
“Then you mean to blame me.”
“Senior, before on the snowy plains, I thought you really would continue battling.”
“The Demon Lord, more than ten Demon Generals, Black Robe… and the Demon Commander, that mutant, was hiding somewhere in wait… Continue battling? You think I’m stupid huh?”
“But… before you struck, you really were very heroic. I really didn’t think you would run.”
“Methods of attack should have countless changes and should be unexpected. Then what is the spirit of the path of the sword?”
“I don’t know.”
“The spirit of the path of the sword is in the word ‘sword’.”
Chen Changsheng carried Su Li on his back, traversing mountains in the wind and snow. The conversation lasted until it was finally impossible to continue. At that moment, he felt very tired, and also very gloomy. Because of the gloominess, he felt even more tired. He thought that even though it was the same thing, carrying someone and running, just why did it have such a big difference to when he was carrying Lady Chujian in the grassland of the Garden of Zhou?
Tens of thousands of demon soldiers formed countless streams of flowing metal, advancing towards the wasteland south of Xuelao City. With enough time, the demon army definitely could search the entire snowy mountain range that had a circumference of several hundred li. However, as Black Robe looked at the great demon army that was disappearing into the wind and snow, he did not relax at all.
Just at that moment, the ground and the snowy plains began to tremble. The layer of snow that had been crushed extremely densely by the pressure and terrifying sword intent of the experts for several nights immediately became much softer. With a deep sound, a huge monster slowly walked out of the snow and wind. With a long jaw and curled horns, it seemed extremely devilish. It was the Mountain-toppling Fiend that placed third in the Ranking of Earthly Beasts.
The body of this Mountain-toppling Fiend was extremely huge, and seemed much more majestic than the one in the Garden of Zhou. It was over forty zhang in height.
Between the curled horns of the Mountain-toppling Fiend sat a demon. The demon was very small, even smaller than ordinary, human children. Compared to the huge Mountain-toppling Fiend, he seemed even more insignificant, but for some reason, the Mountain-toppling Fiend below him was extremely obedient.
The demon wore armor which covered his entire body, including his face. On the armor were complicated images formed from golden lines, like sunflowers, but also like the most popular shape paintings in Xuelao City. On the sides of the golden images, there were many dark green objects, indistinguishable between gems or rusted bronze.
A terrifyingly overbearing Qi exuded from the cracks of the demon’s armor. A pair of eyes that were like ice picks passed through the helmet, which landed on the snowy plains several dozen zhang below. The gaze landed on Black Robe’s body, and what also fell was his voice. His voice was like a perfectly straight metal wire. There were no undulations in the voice, but it seemed as though there were countless broken gongs that were threaded onto the wire. Every word he spat out was like the sound of a broken gong being hit, which was extremely ear-piercing. “According to your calculations, the assassination was flawless, which was why His Majesty agreed to your plans. Now, my race has paid such great prices. My little Hai Di has lost an arm, but that person has fled. I really want to know, just where exactly is the ‘flawless’ you are speaking about? Just how do you plan to explain it to His Majesty and me?”
In the eyes of that demon, the terrifyingly powerful second Demon General, Hai Di, was ‘his little Hai Di’.
He was naturally the commander of the demon army, the strongest under the Demon Lord in the land of demons, the Demon Commander.
Black Robe had an extremely sublime and special position in the Demon race. Although he was not a demon, he received the deep trust of the Demon Lord, and once helped the demons achieve meritorious deeds that were eternal in nature. It was even more because the entire continent knew exactly how terrifying his means for success were. Whether he was faced with humans or demons, he seemed to be able to clearly understand all secrets and grasp all emotions.
As a result, the great personages of the Demon race that had once tried to irritate his relationship with the Demon Lord all died by his hand, when he seemed to casually deal with them. At this point, it had been a long time since there had been anybody who dared to question Black Robe’s existence. Even more importantly, for some reason, Black Robe seemed to be very patient with the Demon Commander. However, today, Black Robe did not have that much patience and ignored him. He looked at the snow and wind in the south silently.
The cold wind lifted up a corner of his black robe, which revealed a slightly blue lower jaw. For hundreds of years, it was the first time that Black Robe had designed an assassination specially for a single human expert. He simulated a whole thirty-seven times that Su Li definitely would die. However, as it turned out, Su Li actually escaped successfully. He had never failed in a scheme, so it seemed to be the first time his scheme had collapsed.
The person who collapsed the killing scheme was not the Pope, not the Divine Empress, nor was it the White Emperor couple. It was a teenager called Chen Changsheng—Black Robe or the Demon Generals would only need the movement of a finger to crush him to death. However, it was exactly because of this unremarkable child that the course of history was changed.
Black Robe understood the origin of Chen Changsheng very well, so in the scheme of the Garden of Zhou, he had never planned to kill Chen Changsheng. It was just that Su Li appeared too early, and Chen Changsheng carried that umbrella with him, which was why he was unable to send his will to the demons that infiltrated the Garden of Zhou. What was most important was that he had not anticipated that Chen Changsheng matured even faster than everyone had imagined.
The scheme of the Garden of Zhou just ended with Black Robe’s failure? No, Black Robe did not think like that. As long as Su Li did not return to the human world, or speaking more accurately with his current condition of heavy injury, as long as he did not return to Mount Li, then the scheme was still in progress.
Just like he had once said to Su Li, in the continent, there were just too many people that wanted Su Li to die. For various different reasons, countless people wished that he could die slightly earlier. The demons felt like that, and so did many humans in the human world. It was just that Su Li was just too strong, and no one dared to attempt to kill him. However, now, Su Li was already heavily injured by the demons. The powers in the human world had now gained their opportunity—the reasoned conclusion seemed rather unbelievable, as if the demons were working with the humans, but Black Robe knew very well that this was a matter that was extremely likely to occur.
It was because many years ago, something similar had already happened once.
Black Robe gazed quietly at the southwest of the snowy plains. He slightly squinted his eyes, which were slender and delicate. However, they carried cold and complicated emotions.
He thought about the disciple of Mount Li, and could not help but feel some regret. Revenge was the most interesting thing in the world. It could change a well-raised young lady with a pair of pampered hands into a demon with a pair of blood-soaked hands, and it could also turn the descendant of a famous family into a genius schemer. He did not know what other pleasant surprises the Mount Li disciple would bring.
Thinking like that, even if Su Li could return to Mount Li successfully, the story of the Garden of Zhou would not end yet.
He extended a hand towards a glacier that was over ten li away, and grasped at the distance. With only a crack, the glacier immediately broke open. Countless pieces of sharp ice flew around in the sky that was dark blue. At the same time, a small person flew out. It was Nanke who had her eyes tightly shut and was on her last breath. Her faint green feathered wings wrapped tightly around her body. Black Robe grabbed her and ignored the mountainous Mountain-toppling Fiend and the Demon Commander behind him. Carrying her, he walked towards the depths of the wind and snow.
It was still spring in Hanqiu City, so it naturally did not snow. However, the morning that day was extremely cold, and there was frost in the forest outside the city. The dew that formed on the green leaves froze into ice beads without much time, and rolled down from the leaves. They produced sounds, one after another.
The reason for such an abnormality with the weather was that the Qi of the world behind the forest was extremely chaotic. In the mist could be seen the main entrance of the Garden of Zhou, which remained tightly shut. The rainbow that originated from Mount Li, tens of thousands of li away, constantly attempted to open the gate with the help of the formation put down by the Orthodoxy. A response actually occurred.
Inside and outside the forest, there were cultivators everywhere. Some were priests that came from the Li Palace, while others were the teachers of various sects and academies. Naturally, there were also the city guards of Hanqiu City, and the aristocratic families of the Tianliang County that were represented by Zhu Luo. They formed a dense mass, but no one made a sound. The expression on all of their faces was extremely serious.
Time passed slowly, and as the sunlight broke through the clouds near the horizon, Hanqiu City was illuminated. The rainbow also seemed to become several times brighter.
“It opened!” From the deepest parts of the forest, before the thick mist, a priest of the Li Palace exclaimed in surprise.
With the exclamation, the crowd immediately became bustling. Many people surged towards the slowly opening gate. Between all of them, most of them were unable to enter the Garden of Zhou, but getting slightly closer would help them provide support when they needed to a short while later. Now, all the people already knew that the closing of the Garden of Zhou was a scheme of the demons, so were the disciples that entered the garden to undergo trials still okay?
Not long after, a cultivator ran out from the Garden of Zhou hurriedly. He seemed extremely panicked, and only upon seeing his master did he relax, and actually almost cried. Closely afterwards, more and more people walked out of the Garden of Zhou. They all seemed to be in rather miserable and sorry shapes, but in the end, they had survived.
The priests of the Li Palace and the officials of the imperial court stood to one side, carefully recording the number of people that exited the Garden of Zhou. There were even more personnel that disregarded that the young cultivators had not calmed down yet, and directly went up to ask for their school and names, before calculating how many people had not left the Garden of Zhou.
There were sounds of alarm and confusion everywhere in the forest.
Zhu Luo and Mei Lisha stood outside the forest and listened to the reports of the priests and officials. Their expressions became more and more serious. From the descriptions of the cultivators that had left the Garden of Zhou, it confirmed their previous conjecture, which was one of the most horrible conjectures—the Garden of Zhou was about to be destroyed.
Time continued to pass by, and more and more people escaped from the Garden of Zhou.
However, according to the records of the priests from the Li Palace and the officials, there were still some people that had not come out.
Mei Lisha looked at the gate that grew dimmer and dimmer in the mist, and could feel the Qi that became more and more chaotic. His gaze became colder and colder.
Chen Changsheng still had not come out.
Zhu Luo looked at the carriage that was on the road outside the forest, and his gaze became slightly relaxed.
The carriage belonged to the Thirteen Divisions of Radiant Green. The window of the carriage was covered up with azure blinds, and the interior could not be seen.
Xu Yourong sat by the window silently.
She was waiting for someone to come out.