Chapter 33: Evil Men Have Evil Men to Grind Them

Wu Chang tied his horse outside and stepped into the fog alone.

Visibility inside the fog was very low; a damp smell rushed toward him, laced with a faint scorched scent and a slight smell of blood.

All around was dead silence; he could only hear his own breathing, as if the fog had become a land of the dead.

He gripped the silver Dawnlight in one hand and the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner in the other, on guard against the surrounding fog.

By common sense, once the temperature drops low enough, the moisture in the air condenses, causing the ambient humidity to fall.

The temperature near Chen Family Village was bitterly cold, well below minus twenty degrees; for such heavy fog to still condense at this temperature, there had to be something strange about it.

As he pressed deeper into the fog, faint sounds began to appear at his ears.

A muffled creak, like the sound of a foot sinking into snow, came right beside him, yet when he followed the sound, he found nothing there.

Only a scattered trail of footprints appeared out of nowhere, then vanished into thin air.

How shy.

Wu Chang did not tangle with the follower behind him and continued deeper into the fog; before long, the shadow of Chen Family Village came into view.

Chen Family Village was built against the mountain, its overall layout arranged in tiers; to facilitate trade with traveling merchants, the villagers had built a small town at the foot of the mountain.

At its liveliest, the bustle here was no less than that of an ordinary town beyond the mountains; only, as the mountain bandits ran rampant, Chen Family Village had quieted down too, recovering its former glory only at the end of spring and autumn each year.

The situation inside the small town was tragic, as if it had been through a war.

The town gate had been forced open violently; the four-meter-tall solid-wood door had been broken into three pieces, and from the fracture it had been smashed apart by the brute force of a blunt weapon.

Nearly half the houses had been burned to charcoal, and every time the mountain wind blew, it would kick up a cloud of black ash.

Chen Family Village valued martial prowess, and when suddenly attacked, they resisted fiercely.

On the streets and the walls of houses, spray-pattern bloodstains and wounds from blades and swords could be seen everywhere.

But oddly, compared to the chaotic battle scene in the town, the town itself was far too clean—no corpses could be seen at all.

Who has such civic virtue, sticking around to clean up after a fight?

He followed the street forward, checking house by house; by the seventh household, he saw a patch of pale-red resentment in the back courtyard.

Beneath the resentment was a hidden vegetable cellar, its door completely frozen shut from the outside.

He smashed open the ice crust, and the moment he opened the door, he found a corpse dressed as a traveling merchant lying behind it.

The merchant had not starved to death, nor frozen to death; he lay on the ground with a face full of blood, as if he had killed himself by bashing himself against something.

Let me see what's going on here.

The scene within the resentment unfolded, letting him see a glimpse of what had befallen Chen Family Village.

The battle took place at midnight; that night, the merchant had just lain down on his bed when he heard shouts of killing outside.

He dressed hastily and flung open the door; outside, flames were already soaring skyward, and from a distance he saw a dozen-odd young and able men of Chen Family Village surrounding a four-meter-tall ghost-faced ape in the center.

The ghost-faced ape resembled the mountain goblin Liu Shan had mentioned; the goblin's body flickered with yellow light, impervious to blade or spear, and in just a few rounds it slaughtered clean every young and able man of Chen Family Village surrounding it.

Seeing the monster's terrifying power, how could he dare go outside? He hurried into the vegetable cellar, praying to survive the ordeal.

Before long, the shouts of killing outside faded, and it seemed everything was over.

But suddenly fog rose in the village, and the fog poured into the cellar through the cracks.

Within the fog, the merchant's mind grew extraordinarily sensitive; he began to fear everything around him and only dared to sit before the cellar door holding a fire-striker.

He did not dare look back, as if in the darkness behind him hid the most terrifying thing in the world.

As time went on, his body began to tremble; his expression shifted from tension to unease, unease to dread, and dread finally to collapse and madness.

He had to get out no matter what, even if it meant being spotted and killed by the monster outside.

He tried to open the door to escape, but found it frozen shut; he pounded on the door with all his might, yet it did not budge.

When his fists were battered raw, he switched to ramming the door; when he was too exhausted to ram any longer, he lay behind the door, smashing his head against it, biting it, grinding his face against it…

The merchant only stopped when his very last breath was spent, dying in terror—whether from exhaustion or fright, he did not know. The scene went black, and Wu Chang withdrew from the vision within the resentment.

The fog shrouding Chen Family Village was indeed abnormal; the merchant had merely been exposed to it for too long, and his mind collapsed, leading to his death.

It was only because Wu Chang's willpower was more than ten times that of an ordinary person, and because of the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner in his hand, that he had not noticed the strangeness of the fog.

In his subsequent house-to-house search, he found another seven or eight corpses; their manner of death was similar to the merchant's—all had been driven to self-harm by the fog's influence.

Unfortunately, these people had not generated any resentment, so no further intelligence could be obtained.

Estimating that night was about to fall, he gave up the carpet search, spread his perception, entered a near-meditative state, and tried to use inspiration stronger than willpower to seek clues.

In a daze, he felt the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner flutter slightly, as if drawn by something.

Following the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner's guidance, he came to the side of the town closest to the mountainside.

This had originally been Chen Family Village's warehouse and trading ground; the mountain villages would transport their stockpiled mountain goods here to sell to merchants entering the mountains.

But now the trading ground had become a slaughterhouse.

The place originally used to store mountain goods was now piled with the dead villagers of Chen Family Village; over a thousand young and able men were laid out in neat rows, the biting icy fog filling the surroundings, turning the place into a giant cold storage.

Oh-ho, even monsters come to stock up on mountain goods now.

While marveling at the monster's grand gesture, Wu Chang quickly noticed a problem.

When he had watched the merchant's resentment earlier, he had not noticed anything off about Chen Family Village; but now, with over a thousand Chen Family Village villagers lined up together, the more he looked, the less they seemed like good people—the dead in the village were all young and able men, which could be explained by Chen Family Village having already sent off the women and children.

Every one of the young and able men was burly, with strong sinew and bone, which could be explained by frequently traveling the mountain paths and getting plenty of exercise.

Seventy percent of them bore knife scars or other wounds, which could be explained by the ferocity of the mountain beasts.

But the blades, spears, swords, and halberds piled all over the ground—how is that to be explained?

Even in a dungeon plane, privately hoarding over a thousand weapons is treason.

Moreover, combined with the physical fitness of the Chen Family Village villagers, this level of armed force far exceeds what self-defense could explain; calling them a private army raised by some faction would not be an exaggeration.

Putting these points together, a bold idea surfaced in Wu Chang's mind.

Could the so-called Chen Family Village actually be the Heishan bandits who had fled into Baili Huaishan?

If Chen Family Village really was the Heishan bandits on the wanted notice, then for bandits to have their village slaughtered by a monster truly fits the saying: evil men have evil men to grind them.

The villagers of Chen Family Village were all strong and robust, with vigorous qi and blood, so the chance of them harboring grudges after death was extremely high.

Through the villagers' grudges, Wu Chang fully understood the upheaval that Chen Family Village had suffered.

Five days ago — the day the palace lanterns were to be returned to Huaigu Village.

The townsfolk and traveling merchants were arm in arm, eating big chunks of meat and drinking heartily, discussing how the authorities had recently relaxed things regarding Baili Huaishan, and wondering whether to increase the biannual trade fair to four times a year.

While everyone was drinking merrily, the village's array for repelling monsters suddenly shattered, and the lamps on the surrounding towers went out at the same time.

Amid the chaos, a Mountain Guai that had stealthily crept near the village at some unknown time broke through the door, and together with five or six monsters, it slaughtered the entire Chen Family Village.

Among them, Wu Chang had actually seen two of the monsters before — they were precisely the Mountain-Blocking Ghost couple he had run into at the black shop when first entering the instance.

No wonder this place looks like a cold storage for meat — looks like the two Mountain-Blocking Ghosts' occupational habit has flared up.

Recalling the five or six monsters that appeared in the grudges, Wu Chang felt a headache coming on.

From taking down a single evil spirit to having to take down an entire squad of monsters — is this also the difficulty fluctuation caused by the instance being polluted?

Still, from the moment he stepped into Chen Family Village until now, he hadn't been attacked, which meant these monsters should have all already left.

While they hadn't returned yet, he'd better act quickly.

Having gathered enough intelligence through the grudges, he left the trading ground. The moment he stepped outside, he saw the fog shrouding the village turn into a vortex, condensing into a body on the open ground at the center of the town.

A biting chill and killing intent rushed toward him.

Wu Chang shrugged — looks like the monsters had left one behind to guard the house.

(End of chapter)