[T/n: note on chapter title]¹

At midnight on the previous day.

Wafeng² Mountain sits at the junction of Chunhui Prefecture and Duming Prefecture in Ji Province. In the mountain is a deep ravine named Dark Wind³ Ravine, which received its name due to how difficult it was so see the sunlight from the ravine, and how the mountain winds blew through it all year round.

Even if the locals entered the mountain, they would never set foot there, because if they accidentally slipped into Dark Wind Ravine, it would be difficult to climb back out; many mountaineers had thus lost their lives.

That night, a faint yellow glow flowed from inside Dark Wind Ravine. Madam Hong staggered out of the soil, and a yellow talisman in her left hand turned to ashes.

“Haaah…haah…”

She raised her hand and looked at her right arm with, hands trembling. The nails had been completely scorched and curled up, and the entire right arm below the nails had also been completely charred. The skeleton was clearly exposed in many spots, and several other places on her body were charred black. Her emotions were even more heart-wrenching.

“Madam Hong? What’s wrong?”

As if sensing the chaotic demonic energy, a figure appeared, staring at the embarrassed Madam Hong in astonishment.

“Ha…ha…I’m was not careful enough, I got caught…Hurry and help me in…”

The newcomer did not dare to delay, and hurriedly helped Madam Hong into a cave below Dark Wind Ravine. Inside the cave was another mystery.

There was an open space in the mountainside filled with a blood red air. Although there were no pavilions or terraces, there were stone tables, stone chairs, and carpets scattered throughout. There were also various rooms in the wall along the winding cave paths.

“Huh?”

“Madam Hong?”

“How did this happen?”

“The City God of Chunhui Prefecture actually has such a technique?”

“Could it be that the old flood dragon took action?”

“Impossible, if that old flood dragon took action… Haha, Madam Hong might not have been able to make it back!”

Feeling Madam Hong’s aura, several surprised voices sounded in the cave. All of them were astonished at her serious injury.

“Ah… stop guessing. This injury was partly caused by the City God of Chunhui Prefecture, but the main reason was that I was caught off guard by a mortal scholar!”

“Mortal?”

“That’s right, that scholar’s righteous spirit had become quite impressive. I think he must have learned some self-defense skills from a Taoist master. I was greedy and didn’t check, and got burned by some kind of fire…”

As she recalled that kind of firepower, Madam Hong was also a little scared. However, although the fire was terrifying, it was not impossible for her to resist. Even if she was caught off guard and hit by its full power, she was only slightly injured. It was just that the painful burning sensation was unbearable, and it still lingered.

However, for a moment, Madam Hong had sensed a vague illusion, as if what she had been struck by was nothing more than a ray of flame on the periphery of a raging sea of ​​​​fire.

Noticing a couple demons around her looking at her from the entrances of their respective rooms, some reserved and others more arrogant, Madam Hong was embarrassed and a little upset. Their inquiries were not friendly at all. She asked the man who was helping support her:

“I’ll take my leave and go to the inner chamber at the back to heal my wounds. Is there any blood in the cave?”

At this moment, because of the faint bloody light in the cave, which was only slightly brighter than the Dark Wind Ravine outside, the man actually only displayed half of his face. The lower half of his face was covered in fur, like some kind of fanged beast.

“There are four more, all bought from gangs in the martial arts world in Dingyuan Prefecture. Two of them are mortal warriors with relatively strong vitality and Qi.”

Taking advantage of the greed and ignorance of mortals was also a method to avoid inspections by the earthly gods and spirits. Obviously, these monsters were no longer ignorant spirits who practiced hard in the mountains and cultivated to seek enlightenment; this was not the first time they had done this kind of thing.

“Yes, send them all to my alcove. When I recover from my wounds, I will personally find new blood food.”

When Madam Hong heard that there were still four, she felt relieved.

“Haha, as Madam Hong wishes, of course it’s fine!”

The man supported Madam Hong, who used to appear so graceful but was now in a miserable state, to the depths of the cave. He watched her enter a cave room that smelled of rouge powder before leaving.

Deep down another fork in the demon cave was a stone chamber. Behind the heavy stone door, several young men and women with desperate expressions huddled dejectedly in the corner.

Originally, there had been twenty people imprisoned here together, but after just half a month, only a few of them were left.

There was no food and only two buckets of water every day, but hunger was already only secondary. Fear was the root of their daily torment. They had long realized that they had been captured by a demon, the kind of demon that was only thought to exist in the stories that the older generation would tell, that would eat people without batting an eye.

The people who had already been taken away never came back, and no sounds could be heard, but there was no need to wonder what their fate might be.

However, not all of them died at the hands of demons. Three of them had taken their own lives because they could not bear the constant fear.

“Tick…tick…tick…”

The sound water dripping from the stalactites made the dim stone chamber feel even more deadly and emphasized the silence.

The sound of footsteps approached in the distance. The four people in the stone room suddenly grew nervous, and their breathing trembled slightly.

“Demon… The demon is coming… the demon is coming!”

“Wuuu… Wuuu… Wuuu…”

“Oh, I don’t want to die…”

The demon with a half-human face walked into the stone chamber and peered inside. He could smell a strong odor of urine; it wasn’t necessarily that someone was incontinent, but rather because the stone room was closed, and there was no place for daily excretion.

“Haha…”

The demon laughed, stretched out a hand, and pushed. The stone door slowly swung open, making a grating sound of friction against the stones on the ground, accompanied by a popping burst of sparks.

“Don’t be afraid anymore, you will be free today…”

Glancing at the two warrior men, the half-human-faced demon grinned again.

“The two of you might even be able to enjoy some bliss before you die… Well, that seems unlikely today…”

The half-human-faced demon thought of Madam Hong’s condition; he was afraid she would not be in a good mood today.

Not too long after, the four young men and women who had already fainted arrived at Madam Hong’s alcove. Looking at the four young faces, Madam Hong could hardly wait for the half-human-faced man to leave, before she moved in close.

“Hiss…”

Madam Hong opened her mouth and inhaled, the sound gradually growing louder and louder. A blood-colored mist floated out of the seven orifices⁴ of each of the four individuals. The limbs of the four unconscious victims were twitching on the ground. Their skin gradually shriveled up, and their struggling movements weakened.

After about the time it took to drink a cup of tea, she had completely turned them into four mummified corpses, and a thick blood-colored mist filled the interior of Madam Hong’s room.

Lying on a stone bed covered with animal skins, Madam Hong began to breathe in and out slowly. Wisps of spiritual energy from Dark Wind Ravine slowly gathered in the cave and floated into Madam Hong’s room.

The spiritual energy mixed with the blood-colored mist and flowed into Madam Hong’s body through her small, crimson-colored mouth as she inhaled once more. Blood began to visibly spread through the charred half of her body.

Dawn rose on Wafeng Mountain, and the angle of the sun rose higher and higher as time passed, but the depths of the ravine were still dark.

It was not until late in the afternoon that Madam Hong finally stopped her regeneration. The blood-colored mist in the cave had been completely consumed, and she had barely suppressed the burning pain; rather, she had barely been able to endure the pain.

It’s just that for some reason, a great uneasiness arose in her heart, as if some disaster were imminent!

“Could it be related to this fire injury?”

After all, she was a skeleton blood demon who had been practicing for a long time. Although her evil spirit had been blinded to the way of heaven, she still had a vague premonition.

The City God of Chunhui Prefecture could not see though the Hidden Earth Escape Talisman,⁵ so he must not have been the one to prompt this feeling. And the old flood dragon never cared about things outside of his river; plus, even though he was a deity, he was still a type of monster. What was more, the old flood dragon might not even know anything about the current happenings.

. . .

In the center of a high-altitude gale, the Green Vine Immortal Sword flew over a distance nearly the size of an entire province. On its scabbard were the eight characters, “Spirit nurtures the green vine, the sharp edge deeply concealed,”⁶ one of which had already disappeared in the flowing stream of light. A surging sword intent permeated the entire body like a solid substance, tearing apart all the surrounding winds within ten feet.

. . .

In the demon cave, the premonition that arose in her heart was unprecedented in intensity, making Madam Hong restless, to the point where she no longer cared about her reputation. She left her alcove and sat down at a stone table in the central cave hall.

“Come out, I have something to ask you!”

Madam Hong shouted. After a while, voices came from all directions of the cave.

“Haha, Madam Hong has recovered?”

“I don’t think so!”

“What’s the matter?”

Three demonic auras filled the air, and three figures entered the cave hall, glancing at Madam Hong, who seemed to have recovered.

“Hmph, I will be responsible for getting the blood food for the next season. Now I want to ask you something.”

As she spoke, Mrs. Red recalled the events of the previous night and wondered:

“Have you ever heard of a certain kind of flame that does not burn tables, chairs, wooden beds, curtains, cloth, stone, or mud, and has a grayish-white tint to its color?”

The three demons had seen Madam Hong’s injuries before, but they didn’t get a good look at her before she hid in her own room. Now, they were a little curious.

“There exists such a flame?”

“Some kind of True Fire?”

“But it doesn’t hurt like the real thing?”

The three demons spoke one sentence each. When she heard their final statement, Madam Hong raised her arm with a sneer. Her silk sleeve slipped down to reveal her right arm, which was still charred black.

“Would you call this not hurting like the real thing?”

For a moment, none of the demons could figure out what was going on.

Another female demon covered her mouth and smiled.

“Could it be that Sister Hong is afraid? Do you think you have offended some immortal master who shouldn’t be provoked? After hiding in this Dazhen for all these years, only Yuhuai Mountain could be regarded as an immortal residence. How…”

Shiiiing…

At this moment, as if a silver string were ringing in the heavens, the sound of a sword being unsheathed suddenly rang out, penetrating through the mountain wall and passing straight through the cave.

When the four demons heard this sound, they seemed to remember the horror of trembling in fear at the sound of thunder on a stormy day when they were just little evil spirits.

Chills ran down their scalp, and almost by instinct, the four demons dodged in all four directions of the cave hall as a monstrous aura filled the air.

Swish…

In that next moment, silver light filled the hall under the very eyes of the three demons.

“Execute!”

A voice as majestic as heaven and as calm as a murmur followed the light…

In just a few breaths, the demon cave was no longer dark. A large hole more than ten feet in diameter had been punctured into the stone mountain cliff above, and the afternoon sun shone in.

Madam Hong’s demonic aura had already melted away like snow.

The three transformed monsters raised their heads with trembling faces. Tens of hundreds of feet above in the sky, an unsheathed immortal sword pointed its blade toward the bottom of the Dark Wind Ravine. The sword’s edge was so sharp, and its sword intent was so powerful, that even the scorching sun seemed inferior!

T/n: RIP Madam Hong, here so quickly, destroyed so thoroughly, gone so soon

1. 黑 (hēi): black/dark/sinister/illegal, 风 (fēng): wind/news/custom. This chapter is a play on words: 1) the name of the current location (Heifeng Ravine), 2) the power of the sword causing a wind to blow, 3) “evil wind” is another way to refer to evil spirits, and it’s making them tremble.
2. 瓦 (wǎ): roof tile, 风 (fēng): wind. Something like “Windy Peak Mountain”
3. See footnote 1. The ravine is pretty much called “Evil Windy Place,” is anyone here surprised that it turned into a hang-out spot for evil spirits? I hesitated for a while over whether to leave it as “Heifeng Ravine,” but a lot of the sentences and the chapter title played on the meaning of the name so I decided to break my custom of leaving names in Chinese and translate this one
4. Eyes (2), nose (2), mouth (1), ears (2).
5. 掩 (yǎn): to conceal/to hide, 息 (xī): breath (used like “presence”)/to stop, 土 (tǔ): earth/dust, 遁 (dùn): to flee/escape, 符 (fú): talisman/mark/sign/symbol/seal
6. See ch. 104, footnote 2

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read