Chapter 57 - Locust Locust
Chapter 57 – Locust Locust
“Brother Zhao!”
A cultivator walked out of the stream and landed with a few items that he had just fished out of the water. He said, “These are all things that belonged to Senior Brother Ma and Junior Brother Cheng. It seems like those two burnt corpses are most likely the items of the two Junior Brothers!”
The fire had already been extinguished, leaving only the two charred corpses behind. When Senior Brother Zhao arrived at the stream, he had been standing beside the two corpses, until the seven or eight cultivators who were searching all over confirmed the identities of the dead.
“According to the news Senior Brother Yao sent before, Junior Brother Ma Yin will bring Ning Ji’s son here. Now that Junior Brother Ma and Junior Brother Cheng have fallen, I presume that the child must have been saved by someone.”
Senior Martial Brother Zhao’s voice was like a cold wind that blew through the forest, causing those who heard it to feel a chill in their hearts. Several of his juniors stood around him, not even daring to breathe.
“Did you look around and find anything?”
One of the cultivators stepped forward and said, “Senior, in the southeast direction, we found some hidden tracks. It seems like the enemy tried to hide their tracks while they were retreating. However, these tracks disappeared after walking for half a mile.”
Another cultivator said, “Senior Brother, we also found traces of people walking in the northwest direction, but…”
Senior Martial Brother Zhao’s gloomy gaze instantly swept over. The cultivator couldn’t help but shiver and hurriedly said, “However, from the traces left behind, it seems that someone passed through the miasma and arrived at that place.”
He said, “No matter what tricks that person who saved Ning Ji’s son has up his sleeve, in the end, he must return to the Wangshan Town to notify Ning Ji. Everyone must be chased, and before that brat can return to the Wasteland Town, we must stop him. At the same time, we must inform Senior Brother Yao about everything that has happened here as fast as possible and prepare to react in time.”
Previously, the cultivator who walked out of the stream used his courage to advise: “Senior Brother, if we go and chase that little bastard, what should we do about the giant locust that we are responsible for monitoring?”
Senior brother Zhao snorted and said: “No worries, hundreds of miles away from the Tuo Wu Shan, there are at least ten groups of giant locust that have been discovered. We were only monitoring one of them.”
Yang Junshan stood on top of a cliff and looked down at the central road where he was fighting with Junior Brother Niu. The three food carts had already stopped in the middle of the road and the other two drivers were lying under the carts, each of them with their chests pierced by runes and arrows.
That was truly worthy of being the future three prodigies of the Heaven-Shaken Sect. That Junior Brother Niu was older than him, and had been immersed in the Immortal Foundation Realm for a long time. His methods in fighting were also much more shrewd and sophisticated.
He hoped that his plan of luring the tiger out of the mountain would succeed. Yang Junshan took out an arrow from the quiver at his back, and the seven stone arrowheads were immediately pulled apart, the light circulating on the fingers of each of the seven fingers, causing the runes on the arrow to immediately move. The bowstring shook, and the arrow drew an ear-piercing sound in the air, as it shot towards Junior Brother Niu’s leg.
Right at the moment when the first arrow was shot, Yang Junshan quickly nocked his bow and followed closely behind with the second arrow. However, this arrow was clearly off its target and flew towards Junior Brother Niu’s body.
Junior Brother Niu had long discovered that his opponent still had a godly archer lying in ambush. The reason he was able to fight evenly with this teenage boy for such a long time was because he had a large portion of his energy to guard against this godly archer’s cold arrows.
The moment Yang Junshan released his first arrow, Junior Brother Niu had already noticed the direction in which the arrow was coming from. He took two steps forward consecutively as the rune arrow landed on the ground where he was standing earlier, and immediately created a small hole half a foot deep.
However, just as Junior Brother Niu dodged, Ning Bin noticed that Yang Junshan’s support grew even stronger, and he grabbed onto the Scarlet Flame Rune tightly, unleashing two streams of Scarlet Flame Technique to attack Junior Brother Niu from both sides.
Junior Brother Niu panicked and quickly took another step back to let these two spells pass. Unexpectedly, a black shadow flashed in midair, and Yang Junshan’s second talisman feather arrow pierced through his neck from left to right at this moment.
He opened his mouth to try and breathe, but the wound on his neck started to bubble with blood. Soon after, a red light appeared in front of him, and Ning Bin’s Scarlet Flame Technique had already completely swallowed him within the fiery red light.
Standing beside the burnt Junior Brother Niu, Yang Junshan shook his head and sighed: “Whaity, such a pity, I still don’t have any experience, a good Immortal Foundation Cultivator burnt to ashes like this can’t even get his spoils of war!”
Ning Bin’s face turned red, there was no need to use the technique anymore, even if he used it directly on his face, it would not only concentrate the power of the technique and increase its power, but also prevent him from burning his entire body, at the very least he would be able to preserve his spoils of war.
Fortunately, the three grain carts and the three silly cow-beasts were still in good condition. Yang Junshan pointed to the last silly cow-beast to pull the grain carts and said, “That cow looks the strongest, you should hurry up and ride it!”
Ning Bin cupped his hands towards Yang Junshan, and then took off the carriage’s shaft from the simple cow’s body, turned his head and rode on it, wanting to return back the way he came from.
Yang Junshan shouted from far behind him, “Let me give yoiece of advice, don’t directly go into the prison to find your father, be careful or else he might set up a trap for you and you’ll end up falling into his trap!”
The figure of Ning Bin could no longer be seen on the dark tunnel, Yang Junshan then searched the corpses of the other two masters, other than the two Jade Coins s which had a few tens of stone coins, there were no other eye-catching results.
Yang Junshan turned the cart, placed the shaft of the third cart onto the second cart, and started to walk back the way they came from. After walking for about two to three Li, seeing that the Mute Ox Beast pulling the two grain carts was completely exhausted, Yang Junshan looked at the soil cliffs on both sides of the pathway, and said: “This should be it!”
According to his memory, the dirt cliffs on both sides of this generation’s secret passageway were extremely loose soil, and during the rainy season, they would often collapse, and sometimes, even the secret passages would be blocked. At this moment, although the secret passage hadn’t been opened for long, but at the bottom of the cliff on both sides of the road, there were already soil bundles formed from the collapse of the cliff.
Yang Junshan rushed all three grain carts to the bottom of a cliff, then unloaded the shafts of the two silly cow-like beasts and led them to the other side of the road. He climbed up the cliff and inspected them carefully, until he found a few cracks in the cliff, and then shot his Rune Arrows at them one after another.
Looking at the dozens of soil bundles on both sides of the road, Yang Junshan predicted that no one would notice them, so he tied a branch to each of the two oxen’s tails. Then, he let them walk towards the secret passage on their own, at the same time sweeping up the tracks on the ground as much as possible.
After finishing all of this, Yang Junshan immediately returned to the forest, where the black pillar of smoke he created when burning the corpses had completely dissipated. In order to prevent himself from luring the tiger out of the mountain, Yang Junshan still made a detour in the middle of the forest and returned to the little stream.
Yang Junshan searched the surroundings. Other than the traces of people rushing over from the southwest, there were also traces of people being searched in other directions. It was the traces left behind by the people from the north when they left.
It seemed like they were heading towards the north, hoping that Ning Bin would not bump into them, but that group of people definitely would not have thought that Ning Bin would return to the Wangshan Town through the secret passage, nor would they have expected that he would have a mount to ride on. On the other hand, that group of people were still rushing towards the north from the Tuo Wu Shan, which meant that Ning Bin should be able to return to the Wangshan Town ahead of them.
Following the tracks of that group of people, they headed southwest. After Yang Junshan walked for around five kilometers on the mountain road, the buzzing sound of the trembling became even louder, as if something’s wings were trembling aapid pace.
Yang Junshan’s heart was thumping wildly. He knew that he was already close to the target he was looking for, and his movements were even more cautious, afraid that he would alert the things hidden deep within the mountains and forests.
Suddenly, a buzzing sound came from above his head. Yang Junshan hurriedly stopped his footsteps and looked towards the direction the sound came from, only to see a black locust that was over four inches long landing on a branch of a small tree. The giant locust shook its wings and landed on the branch of a small tree, its upper and lower jaws rapidly trembling.
The giant locust was indeed a giant locust, exactly the same as the giant locust that appeared in his memories from the giant locust disaster in his previous life!
Yang Junshan held back his fear or excitement as he carefully pushed aside the thorns and branches that were in his way. Then, a valley appeared in front of his eyes.
This should have been a valley that was covered with grass, but at this moment, this entire valley was only a bustling black and grey. Countless giant locust s filled this entire valley, and only the gaps that occasionally revealed themselves were visible;
However, Yang Junshan saw many ungrown larvae in the valley. These larvae were as big as the adult locusts, but the wings on their back were not fully grown, probably because there were still a large number of them, so the giant locust s in the valley did not become like the locusts.
However, Yang Junshan could still see a lot of giant locust flying into the forest around the valley. After a while, they all flew back, and some of them even had whole leaves in their mouths. If they fell into the valley, they would immediately attract the attention of the larvae.
Yang Junshan was dumbstruck. These giant locust bugs actually knew how to raise larvae!
Demon! Could it be another demon?