White Bone Demon Trail

Chapter 5 Travel in the Mountains

As early summer approaches, the mountains are lush and green, shrouded in mist, and rarely visited by humans.

The village of Xiaoqu at the foot of the mountain was quiet. A few insects chirped in the haystacks. Watching the crows pecking at the rotting carcasses under the trees and the fish circling the flesh in the stream, Old Jiang, who was walking with difficulty, stood on the stone bridge at the entrance of the village, his pupils contracted, and he stood there for a long time.

"What...what happened?"

His voice trembled uncontrollably as he looked at the horrifying, bloody scene before him, and the fear in his heart was gradually overwhelmed by a sense of pleasure.

It comes from the thrill of getting revenge!
He had been by the master's side since he was a child. For him, who was an orphan, the master was the closest person in the world.

Several months ago, the entire patriarch's family was brutally murdered in Xiaoqu Village. Now, seeing these beasts in human skin dying right before Old Jiang's eyes, he felt that they deserved to die!
Old Jiang stepped over the corpses on the ground, searching for a long time. Finally, he found the familiar clothes in a dilapidated shack. He then realized that Bai You, the only bloodline of the Bai family, the patriarch's illegitimate son, and his nominal son born in his old age, was no longer alive!

He laughed maniacally, ran into a house, found a tinderbox, and lit a pile of straw. The billowing smoke gradually grew larger, and the flames engulfed the entire Xiaoqu Village.

Old Jiang knelt facing north in the firelight, laughing loudly as he shouted, "Master! This old servant has come to join you!"

Smoke hangs over the forest, the mountains are shrouded in distant sunlight, and crows mournfully cry in the twilight.

A black crow on the tree cawed a few times, dodged the smoke, and flew into the deep mountains and forests.

The crow flew through the dense forests and landed on Bai Wuxiang's shoulder beside a large tree, cawing softly.

"Gah~"

Bai Wuxiang raised his eyes, turned his head slightly, looked at Xuan Ya, and sighed softly, "I already know."

Upon hearing this, the black crow flapped its wings, flew to a branch, and stood there overlooking the surrounding green forest.

This black raven was the one he nurtured in the underground coffin by guiding the death energy and the yin energy of the earth.

It was no longer an ordinary wild beast, but could be considered a kind of spirit or monster. Moreover, because it cultivated death energy with itself and absorbed the yin energy of the earth for a long time, it could be considered a companion monster.

Bai Wuxiang composed himself and stopped paying attention to the affairs of Xiaoqu Village.

From now on, he is just Bai Wuxiang, a white bone demon!
He wanted to live, to become strong, and to experience the things he couldn't have in his previous life.

All of this requires strength.

He knew too little about this world, so he needed to act cautiously, lest he be subdued and killed by a powerful figure at any time.

Bai Wuxiang looked up at the west. As dusk approached, the shadows of the trees overlapped. In the quiet, deserted forest, the yang energy gradually weakened, and wisps of yin energy slowly rose from the ground.

He circulated the limited demonic power within his body, and the pale black demonic power flowed like mist on the white bones within the human skin. The surrounding yin energy was drawn into his mouth and then flowed through the human skin along the meridians, forming a large and small cycle, and finally transformed into a wisp of pale black demonic power that merged into the true body of the white bones.

As a result, the demonic power within Bai Wuxiang's body increased slightly, and this cycle of large and small cycles took several hours.

Thanks to his human skin, he was able to combine the human body with his skeletal form, allowing him to cultivate at a much faster pace than normal spirits.

After all, if he loses his human skin, he can only passively absorb the Yin energy of the earth with his skeletal body, and it will take him a month to accumulate enough to increase his demonic power.

The pale moon in the sky gradually slanted westward, and the yin energy in the dark forest gradually faded away. Bai Wuxiang stopped his cultivation.

Unlike wild beasts that become demons, he can absorb the essence of the sun and moon, or the spiritual energy between heaven and earth.

The earth has buried many bones. Even in places rarely visited by humans, there are the corpses of beasts and the deathly aura of decaying trees.

These deathly energies merge into the ground, accumulating over time to form the Yin energy of the earth. This Yin energy is essential for the cultivation of undead spirits like Bai Wuxiang. For him, the Yin energy of the earth is the spiritual energy of heaven and earth absorbed by cultivators.

During the day, the yang energy rises between heaven and earth, while the yin energy of the earth can only sink underground, so Bai Wuxiang cannot cultivate in the mountains and forests.

Only at night, when the yang energy diminishes and the yin energy rises, can he absorb and refine it to increase his demonic power.

Bai Wuxiang's most pressing task now is to find a suitable place for his cultivation, build a cave dwelling, and devote himself to cultivation.

He glanced up at the white dawn breaking over the mountainside; daylight was approaching.

Bai Wuxiang stood up, straightened his clothes, shook off the dew from his robes, and then slowly walked into the depths of the mountains.

According to the young master of the Bai family, this mountain range stretched for no less than eight hundred miles and was called Yunze Mountain. It was located at the southernmost tip of Shenzhou, bordering Jiangzhou. Jiangzhou had been in turmoil for many years, so many villains, criminals, and江湖人士 (jianghu figures) gathered near this mountain.

Bandits and thieves roamed the mountains. The government had sent troops to suppress them many times, and although there were some successes, unfortunately, the problem of bandits in the mountains had never been eradicated.

If Bai Wuxiang wanted to find a good place, it would take him quite a while to search for it in the vast mountains on his own.

These thieves are very familiar with the treacherous mountain roads, and may even have drawn up topographical maps. With these, he can find a suitable place to cultivate.

The mountains were filled with tall trees and dense shrubs, where the chirping of various insects could be heard from time to time, and birds occasionally flew by on the branches. Bai Wuxiang, dressed in a magnificent white robe, walked through the deep forest.

He would close his eyes every half hour, as if sensing something.

As a skeleton demon, he has an extremely strong perception of death energy and is equally averse to life energy. Mountain bandits and brigands often gather in the mountains to form strongholds, so there is naturally a lot of life energy there.

However, because these people are extremely vicious and commit many killings, the places where life and death are mixed are mostly where these thieves gather.

As the sun gradually rose higher in the sky, Bai Wuxiang walked through the forest, relying solely on his two feet. In the past half day, he had only managed to cross one mountain.

This was unavoidable; his demonic power was currently weak, and having only recently emerged from his coffin, he was extremely resistant to the sun and could only walk in the shade of the trees in the forest.

At noon, when the sun was at its strongest and the yang energy between heaven and earth reached its peak, Bai Wuxiang felt extremely hot all over, as if his skeletal body, wrapped in human skin, was being boiled in oil.

Helpless, he could only barely support himself and hide under a boulder, sit cross-legged, close his eyes to rest, and circulate the demonic power within his body to resist the overwhelming yang energy.

A hundred feet away, two men dressed in light yellow outfits walked out of a forest. One of them had a rather strange left and right leg as he walked, making him look like a left-handed person. He had a scabbard at his waist and looked somewhat haggard.

The other person carried a long-bladed sword sheath on his back, had dark skin, and triangular eyes, making him look like someone not to be trifled with.

The two walked side by side through the forest. The man on the left, carrying a knife, sighed and said, "Sanwen, why do you think the Second Boss insists on making us patrol the mountain day and night?" The dark-faced man called Sanwen sneered, "The Second Boss is the most learned man in the stronghold. Would he make us do useless things?"
In my opinion, the second-in-command most likely received word that a large caravan would be passing through the vicinity of our Black Stone Village. That's why he sent us to patrol the mountains and provide timely warnings, lest we miss such a golden opportunity to make a fortune!

"Hey, you're right." The man with the knife slapped his hand in sudden realization. "Our Black Stone Village hasn't had any meat in ages! I heard that the Black Dragon Village over there is always eating and drinking well, and everyone's gotten fat!"

"Hmph, those damned bastards are utterly depraved, let's not even mention them."

Sanwen cursed in disdain, walked past a bend in the mountain, and was about to look ahead when he suddenly saw a figure sitting under a large rock a few feet in front of him.

He narrowed his eyes and looked closely, only to be horrified to discover that the skull was strangely revealed beneath the man's skin, like a skull wrapped in a piece of paper!

Sanwen was so startled that he almost collapsed to the ground. The man with the knife next to him quickly grabbed his arm and chuckled, "What's wrong? You've got a leg injury too? Can't you even walk straight?"

"Gah~"

A long, drawn-out crow's cry echoed through the forest, startling several mountain sparrows into flapping their wings.

Sanwen had fought with others for many years and was always quite bold, but at this moment he was a little scared. He didn't respond to his companion's words, but turned his head away and raised his hand to point ahead.

Seeing his appearance, the man with the knife looked in the direction he was looking, and exclaimed with surprise, "Hey! We've got a job! This guy doesn't look like a poor wretch!"

"A poor wretch?" Sanwen was stunned for a moment, then turned his head to look again and found that the figure was an extremely handsome young man. Where was the skeleton?
"Could I be seeing things? In broad daylight, where could there be any demons or ghosts?"

As he pondered this in his heart, his courage returned to normal. His triangular eyes widened in surprise as he drew the long sword from his back and held it in front of him, its blade gleaming coldly in the sunlight.

"Hey you up ahead! This is Black Stone Village territory. If you want to pass, you'd better pay the toll!"

"Not bad! Kid! Look at your fair and delicate skin, hurry up and hand over all the money! Otherwise, if our swords fall on you, it'll be a case of white blades going in and red blades coming out!"

The man with the knife, his face stern and fierce, shouted at the person in front of him, and with a "whoosh," he drew the short knife from his waist, pointing the blade at the person in front of him.

Bai Wuxiang, who had just stopped circulating his demonic power, stood up and saw the two bandits in front of him. He thought to himself with amusement, "I was just worried about how hard it was to find bandits, but someone just delivered themselves to my door."

So he smiled and said, "Brothers, although I have no money on me, if you agree to my request, I may have some."

"What the hell?"

The man with the knife impatiently brandished it again. "Can't you see these are real swords? Enough talk, hand over all your valuables! Otherwise, you'll lose your life. You dare to negotiate with us bandits?"

Bai Wuxiang shook his head and said, "Swords and blades may be sharp, but it depends on who wields them and who they are dealing with."

Having said that, his demonic power surged within him, and he controlled his human form. With a sudden movement, he appeared behind the two of them like a ghost in the blink of an eye. Then, he touched their acupoints, and the two of them immediately felt a numbness in their bodies, and they were unable to exert any strength.

They couldn't even lift their swords; with a clang, the swords fell to the ground, and the two of them collapsed to the ground.

Bai Wuxiang stood in front of the two, looking down at them, and said with a faint smile, "I only need to ask, and you can answer."

The two men paralyzed on the ground paled, their faces filled with terror. The man before them was not the weak young master they had imagined, but rather a legendary martial arts master who had subdued them in the blink of an eye, striking their pressure points and turning them into prey to be slaughtered.

The two men on the ground cried out in alarm, "Hero, spare us! Hero, spare us! We'll talk! We'll talk!"

Bai Wuxiang observed the two men with great interest. Although they looked fierce, they did not exude any murderous aura, which indicated that they had never killed anyone and were significantly different from the people in Xiaoqu Village.

Although the yang energy during the day severely suppressed a pure yin spirit like him, and his own cultivation was shallow, and the two of them had three points of yang fire on their shoulders, Bai Wuxiang was already half a person in this human form.

Even if he couldn't use his limited demonic arts at this moment, he could still easily defeat even martial arts masters by using demonic power to manipulate human skin, combined with his knowledge of human bones, and by employing techniques such as acupressure and immense strength.

"Tell me first what mountain strongholds are around here?" Bai Wuxiang asked after walking a few steps beside the two men with one hand behind his back.

The man with the knife hurriedly replied, "In response to your question, sir, Yunze Mountain is known to have thirty-six bandit strongholds and tens of thousands of wicked thieves."

Within a hundred li of our area alone, there are five villages: Wulong Village, Taohua Village, Xiaohui Village, Duangou Village, and our Heishi Village.

Seeing that his words had been interrupted, Sanwen chimed in, "Among them, Wulong Village is the strongest, followed by Heishi Village, and Xiaohui Village is the weakest."

Bai Wuxiang then asked with a smile, "Do you know which village has a geomantic map?"

"A geomantic map?" The man with the knife looked dumbfounded. "What is that? I've never heard of it."

Sanwen replied, "I know! I know! Wulong Village and our Black Stone Village have this thing, but it is too valuable, and only our village chief and second village chief can see it."

In ancient times, geomantic maps were usually very detailed topographical maps, which were military secrets and generally inaccessible to the public. Moreover, the people in Yunze Mountain were mostly bandits, and they probably couldn't even read many characters.

You wouldn't find this kind of thing in a typical small village.

Bai Wuxiang nodded and said, "Then tell me, how many people are there in your Black Stone Stronghold? Where are they located? Are there any powerful figures among them?"

Hearing his words, the two hesitated for a moment, after all, this could be considered betraying the mountain stronghold.

But when they saw the handsome young man pick up the longsword, a mysterious smile in his eyes, and lightly glide the tip across their foreheads, the man with the knife hurriedly replied, "We'll talk! We'll talk!"

There are over three hundred people in Black Stone Village, young and old. Apart from the elderly and children, everyone in the village is capable of fighting. In addition to the chief, we also have a second and third chief.

The chieftain possessed exceptional martial arts skills; it was said he was once a second-rate martial arts master, and he wielded his pair of iron star hammers with remarkable skill.

Sanwen chimed in, "Although the Second Leader is a weak scholar, he is resourceful, knows military strategy, and is also skilled in medicine. Our Black Stone Village cannot do without him."

As for the third leader, he's a master of concealed weapons; his attacks are unpredictable and deadly! Not long ago, several bandits from Wulong Village died at the hands of our third leader!

"Hehe, that sounds interesting." Bai Wuxiang said with a smile, "In that case, I will spare your lives. The pressure points will naturally be released in two hours, and then you can go back."

"Thank you so much, hero, for your mercy! Thank you so much, hero, for your mercy!" The two men thanked each other profusely, and breathed a sigh of relief, thinking to themselves that it was fortunate that the other party was kind-hearted and not a ruthless killer.

(End of this chapter)