Wei School's Three Good Students

Chapter 195 Demons? Resources!
In July of the 5th year of the Tianyou calendar, Xuan Chong's army had completely reached the territory where "no human habitation could exist".

The thickets, like an ocean, have obliterated all traces of society here. Now, even the least human-like lizardmen and the stick insect-like pseudo-wooden figures are gone; all that remains are abstract demons.

Note: The lizardman is covered in scales and doesn't look human, but he is actually human. He can regain his human form by burning him with Vermilion Bird Fire; other things will disappear after being burned by Vermilion Bird Fire.

Xuan Chong continued to expand by establishing strongholds, and had Gongshu Wang use geomancy to find suitable locations.

After observing the mountain terrain and river course, Xuan Chong ordered the sergeant corps to survey the contour lines.

After confirming that this place was indeed suitable as a supply point, they dispatched personnel to set up camp in this overgrown area.

However, no sooner had they set up camp than the logistics officers in the camp reported a completely new situation to Xuan Chong.

When Xuan Chong arrived at the excavation site, a group of soldiers were already standing by the pit with shovels, whispering among themselves. When Xuan Chong arrived, they exclaimed, "The commander-in-chief is here!" and then made way for him.

A little digging revealed neat, uniform layers of rammed earth. Gongshu Wang used a compass to explore further, drew a circle, and continued digging within the circle. The soldiers encountered something solid with their shovels; upon prying it out, they found it to be neatly arranged bricks and stones.

Xuan Chong examined the brick closely. According to geography, this place is an alluvial plain, lacking suitable stone for building fortresses. Therefore, these hard materials were fired from clay, meaning that people here, at least at the technological level of the "Imperial Age," built cities here.

But suddenly, such a city disappeared.

When questioned by Xuan Chong, Jia Mude, the living encyclopedia, stated that there were very few records left in the surviving documents of the Li Huo Sect. He then provided a few seemingly plausible entries. "In a certain year, xx, rebelled, failed, and fled!" This indicates that after the Li Huo Sect became an evil sect, internal power struggles occurred, leading some members to leave the sect after betraying Da Yao and feeling that there was no future in being an evil sect.

Meanwhile, there are no records of "bandits breaking through the pass" in Lingnan during the same period, indicating that the direction of escape was not north, but further south. And what happened after they went south? They disappeared without a trace.

Next, a large number of skeletal remains were unearthed from several excavation pits. Judging from the way the bones were soaked into the soil, they were theoretically about three or four hundred years old. And at that time, the Great Yao was in a period of strength.

Of course, a further speculation would be that this is related to the power struggle that occurred within the Great Yao Dynasty back then. But to know the specifics, we would have to ask Jiamude's ancestors.

Many rebels were forced to flee south of the Lingjiang River. They then further fragmented, forced out of the center, and entered this vast, densely forested area to attempt to establish a defense. But ultimately, they vanished without a trace, until now they have been unearthed.

So what exactly was it that eradicated this feudal militarized force?!
Tigers, leopards, jackals, and wolves? You're kidding. Once humans organize themselves on a large scale, tigers, leopards, jackals, and wolves are completely useless.

Over the next two days, the Xuanchong Legion also discovered ruins at several other suitable locations for building cities. These ruins were not only from three hundred years ago, but some were even as old as seven hundred years ago;
Judging from the thickness of the sediments, these cities have remained unchanged for generations since their construction, and the fact that they have existed for "several generations" is shocking.

In the first generation of tombs, the group that migrated here were still normal humans; while in the second and third generations, more and more protrusions appeared on their heads, gradually turning them into horned people. Later, the mutation became more severe, and before the destruction, there were already aliens with four arms.

"The first generation swells, the second generation becomes stupid, and the third and fourth generations are cut off from the roots." Xuan Chong immediately wondered if there was a problem with the local soil and water. He immediately summoned a doctor to check on the army's condition and told them to return immediately if there were any abnormalities.

The doctors said the soldiers had no problems, but after learning that Xuan Chong was worried about "skeletal deformities," some doctors offered their speculations.

Inside the archaeological pit, the physician said, "Sir, this may be the effect of the abuse of a secret medicine."

Xuan Chong: "Secret medicine?"

Doctor: "Yes, sir, it's available in the military. It originated in southern Xinjiang, and during our journey south, I've found that the medicinal properties here are even stronger."

Xuan Chong: "Tell me about it."

…got the thread…

Xuan Chong wasn't an archaeologist, but after unearthing the ruins, he didn't just sigh and imagine an ancient history like Homer's epic.

Instead, they followed the Eastern approach of digging into their ancestors' past, searching for events in their own region's historical records and conducting research.

Xuan Chong believes that these urban construction activities in the far south are all related to the turbulent events that occurred in the southwest of Da Yao; otherwise, there would not be such a large-scale organization migrating into the jungle.

Xuan Chong immediately piloted his mecha back to Lingnan and requested access to the database. Sure enough, he found documents that corroborated the information. The period from four hundred to three hundred years ago was the chaos of the Fallen Evil Sect of the Li Huo Sect, while seven hundred years ago was the rebellion of the King of Ba in the Southern Frontier.

Therefore, it can be almost certain that the origin of this southernmost city ruins was built by the migrant population after the turmoil on the border of Yaotu.

Another question is, how exactly did these ancient cities come to an end?
Xuan Chong picked up the bones from the pit and compared them. His years of military experience allowed him to clearly identify what kind of weapon caused the wounds on his leg bones and ribs.

Xuan Chong noticed something strange: the bones of those who died in the final stages of their lives showed no signs of being slashed or hacked by knives or spears, but rather mostly fractures. Admittedly, Xuan Chong had encountered these monsters before when he went south to "slay demons and monsters," but they were no match for him! A small tactical squad of a hundred men could wipe them out without taking any losses. Even if the humans who fled south and fled here were disorganized and abandoned their armor, after building a city, these monsters wouldn't pose a threat, would they?
Xuan Chong: Could it be that a large group of monsters confronted the human race from the very beginning when they migrated south and built cities, and then launched an attack and wiped out the city after the human race declined?
Subsequently, Xuan Chong discovered a stone well in the center and retrieved a batch of white jade slips from it. Xuan Chong identified them as being written in the style of the ancient Daoist script from eight hundred years ago, and one of the slips read: "Eight hundred li of thorny bushes, where plants and trees have become spirits!"

When summoned, Jiamude, with his extensive knowledge and excellent memory, immediately recalled a record from the Li Huo Sect, "The Search for Strange Things in the Southern Frontier." This book described how a wood demon lurked in the mountain streams of the south.

Jamud then explained the situation in detail to Xuan Chong and the other generals.

Wu Zhantie laughed heartily, not believing that these monsters posed much of a threat.

Xuan Chong marched south, establishing villages along the way and eliminating jackals, tigers, leopards, and even a few mountain demons. He also assisted the villages in constructing basic fortifications, primarily made of stone and supplemented with timber. Therefore, the threat posed by mountain demons and other strange creatures was no longer a concern.

However, Jamud drew the illustration of the wood demon from the book he had read. It was a lush, leafy tree monster, and to make a size comparison, next to the tree's lower leg, was a rhinoceros from southern Xinjiang. This rhinoceros was about the size of a small dog next to a person's leg.

The warriors gasped; this was a behemoth. But Jamud continued drawing, creating dense thickets of low trees. Then, just when everyone thought he was adding artistic details, he drew eyes on these trees.

Xuan Chong issued a state of alert to all fourteen battalions of the army.

The General Staff devised a plan: all camps would build simple earthen ramparts, the swordsmen and shieldmen in the camps would be equipped with axes, the surrounding trees would be cleared, and they would be on guard against any possible signs of trees.

…strange realm…

At the same time, Wu Qing also shared his information: before Wu Fei brought enlightenment to the Southern Frontier, among the various magical arts of the shamans in the Southern Frontier, there was a method for reattaching severed limbs.

Xuan Chong: "I know that. It's a kind of resin that can bind limbs together." As he said this, Xuan Chong realized something and stared at Wu Qing.

Wu Qing said, "These shamans have some forbidden techniques in the old leather scrolls. If the quality of the resin is high enough, they can graft the flesh and blood of sacred beasts to cultivate 'dragon-skin warriors'."

Xuan Chong understood what those various demons he had encountered earlier were all about. The tiger with vines, the beast whose tongue turned into a venomous snake—these were all manifestations of the resin from the Southern Frontier.

Of course, it's not just the barbaric shamans of southern Xinjiang who have forbidden arts; some doctors in Lingnan also have similar forbidden arts, namely face-changing techniques.

Some older, less attractive women would abduct young girls to act as "masks" for them, relying on a special resin to stick their faces on.

Cultivating this special type of resin is extremely difficult, and each sect uses its own unique methods; the righteous sects inject special stone powder into the spirit tree to form a spirit tumor, while the evil sects cultivate it with flesh and blood; as for the medical resin used by the Wu family army now, it is made by grafting some carnivorous trees and then feeding the carnivorous trees with rendered lard.

Now that we've reached southern Xinjiang, we find that the resin from many trees here is far more potent than the resin used by traditional shamans in southern Xinjiang; so potent that it can directly melt flesh and blood, and reshape decaying skin back into a youthful state.

Of course, one can also mix the flesh and blood of other creatures into their body, and this is the origin of demons.

Several hours later, in the first camp, the squad that went to cut down trees sounded an alarm and fired red fireworks, indicating that there were casualties.

Xuan Chong's prepared reserves brought these troops back. Upon inspection on the stretchers, they discovered seedlings growing within the flesh and blood. Xuan Chong ordered his men to apply concentrated salt water. As the soldiers cried out in pain from the salt applied to their wounds, these gruesome seedlings were the first to die! These spores growing within the flesh and blood were difficult to eradicate, but they could not withstand the external treatment by salt. Xuan Chong understood immediately. In the southern jungles, salt was indeed a strategic resource; it could be used to maintain control in the future.

…The birds flew away in droves, the jungle fell silent, but a murderous aura was brewing…

Multiple battalions of Wu's army were attacked, and fireworks exploded in the sky above each camp to send a message.

From the defensive perspective of the First Battalion, the area fifty paces outside the camp had been cleared; and fifty paces away, in the bushes, the trees swayed, and wooden monsters of varying sizes creaked and groaned as they emerged from the woods.

The first line of ropes used to trip the cavalry was quickly breached. Tree goblins wrapped their vines around the thick wooden fence, and they even flung swarms of venomous insects, resembling caterpillars, towards the Wu family's camp by scattering their branches.

These wooden monsters twisted their bodies strangely, remaining unmoved even after being bolted with crossbow bolts. This threw the crossbowmen who were originally firing into disarray for a moment.

The officers immediately used tin megaphones to announce: "Attention, the enemy has no sense of pain, but their weakness is their slowness! Spearmen are thrusting at the joints, and swordsmen and shieldmen should be wary of the heavy blows from their thick branches. Dodge flexibly and do not take the hit head-on!" Thanks to Xuan Chong's advance preparation, the soldiers had already set up barriers in advance, and as for the spears, they had replaced them with hooks and halberds suitable for "hooking and cutting".

Then, the soldiers with hooks and sickles appeared in the army. They used their hooks and sickles to cut the vines connecting the lower half of the tree demon's body to the ground. The softer the vine, the more water it contained. Once the sap was drained, the hardwood block became dead wood.

These wooden monsters have many vines hanging from their stiff bodies. Their tree trunks look very hard, but the reason why these wooden monsters can move is entirely due to these juicy vines. The overall principle is similar to how the arm of an excavator can move by adjusting the pressure of the fluid in the hydraulic rod.

The halberd and hooked sickle, like those used to cut wheat, are better suited for severing these vines.

Before the makeshift barrier half a meter high, these small tree goblins were quickly met with resistance from the halberdiers behind the barrier's fence and rapidly piled up.

The first few of the hundreds of tree goblins became increasingly slow as they climbed over the fence, thus becoming obstacles to the progress of those behind them.

These tree goblins are on par with ordinary armored soldiers and humanoids in terms of strength and defense, but their reaction speed is a level below that of zombies.

Just as the humanoid tree demons were stuck in front of the military camp fence and unable to move, they began the second phase.

That is, some tree demons begin to sprout vines from the rough bark of trees. The vines of different tree demons gather together like snakes mating, forming clumps.

Soon, on the tree demon's corpse, vine spirits the size of small dogs appeared one by one.

These vine spirits, like balls of yarn appearing among a group of tree goblins, nimbly leaped over the fence after escaping their foes. Some soldiers were accidentally touched by the vine branches and immediately screamed in pain, for these vine spirits, like castor beans, were covered in numerous poisonous thorns.

The sergeant of the first battalion immediately ordered, "Retreat to the second position!" As soon as the soldiers retreated, forty or fifty vine monsters surged in, advancing like tumbleweeds, constantly using one or two branches to poke at the ground as they rolled and charged.

However, these vine demons encountered the iron ribbons stretched out as the second line of defense. Blocked by the iron ribbons, these small soldiers were driven back by the infantry.

Once the Wu family army got into a good position, they cut down large swaths of vines with the ease of an old farmer harvesting wheat, making them extremely efficient.

Eventually, the severed remains of these tree-men piled up at the gate. But a large number of vines continued to sprout from the broken ends, intertwining with each other. Just as this group of wood was eerily reassembling into something in front of the fence...

Ang Ri rode the Taiyue Luan to the door. This large bird with a wingspan of twenty meters folded its wings and transformed into an energy ball.

Then, like marbles falling to the ground, it landed on the vines; the fireball immediately turned into a fire vortex, and in the instant the fire tornado formed, the rising air currents lifted Taiyue Luan up.

Within the vortex of fire, twenty meters in diameter, the tree demons piled up at the main entrance of the First Battalion began to swell and writhe like shrimp chips in a deep fryer. Twenty seconds later, as the vortex subsided, just as the soldiers were preparing to ignite the damp smoke with dry firewood held between their spears, Angri shouted, "Put it out! Put it out! You bunch of incompetent fools! Burn them until they're almost dead, but keep them alive!"

So the soldiers pulled out a few half-ripe tree demons at the gate. Skilled soldiers then used straw ropes to tie up the wriggling demons. Some sap oozed from the tree demons' wounds. This sap was scraped off.

The soldiers collected dozens of jars of resin and sent them to the army's medical team and sorcerers for research.

…many places…

Besides the first camp, the third camp also encountered an attack by tree demons. Since the camps were all built to a standardized standard, their defenses were largely similar, relying on fences and low walls for containment. They also used torches to burn the piles of tree demons.

The two camps were located on two separate battlefields, with identical barracks structures and military organizations, so their procedures for responding to enemy attacks were the same. Their attitudes toward the defeated tree demons were remarkably consistent.

The two teams of laborers from the third battalion, numbering about 220, were cleaning up the battlefield and dragging out the burned tree spirits. Shen Wanqing looked at these spirits of plants and trees and showed a hint of heartache.

He stepped forward to inspect them one by one, ordering his men to drag out the charred tree spirits—not to treat them, of course. They were beyond saving anyway; he was prepared to give them a quick death.

The soldiers used large axes to chop the tree spirit into several pieces, and then used the method of roasting bamboo sap to force out the sap from the broken parts.

As a member of the sect and a long-time practitioner of spiritual plants, Shen Wanqing immediately discerned the medicinal properties of the substance after rubbing his fingers against the resinous secretions of the tree demons.

He then ordered everyone to capture them alive.

When Wu Zhantie came over to inquire, Shen Wanqing said to him, "This is a herbal elixir that can cure miasma and ward off poison. It can even expand the meridians and is a top-grade martial arts elixir."

Wu Zhantie's eyes lit up upon hearing this! It is said that these Wu family armies on the southern route are not afraid of fighting, but they are afraid of fighting a war that is not worthwhile.

Wu Zhantie demanded to test its effects. He gathered some soldiers who had suffered internal injuries from martial arts training and had them mix the substance with wine before consuming it.

As Shen Wanqing said, after these soldiers with injured meridians used the product and regulated their breathing, their internal injuries were repaired. The innate essence in their bones began to stir, communicating with the blood and energy accumulated in their acupoints. There were faint signs of them breaking through to the Great Innate Realm.

In the past, when the Wu family army conquered the southern border, after determining that capturing slaves to open trade routes would help improve their miserable lives, the calls to wage war against the southern border were like tigers and wolves pouncing on fat meat.

The spirit of the Southern Route Army was not some "righteous cause" but rather the pursuit of profit through swords. When a place had fertile land and good mines, the Southern Route Army's households would naturally spring up there.

…The way of man is to take from those who have less and give to those who have more…

That evening, Wu Zhantie opened the ceramic bottle he had just uncorked in his tent. After pulling out the stopper, he saw the clear "Grass Rejuvenating Elixir" inside, took a deep breath, and drank it all in one gulp. His entire body's energy began to circulate rapidly. The surrounding lights flickered under the influence of this aura.

However, he also felt a surge of vital energy flowing within his body. In particular, the hidden injury in his groin showed signs of further healing. He had a sudden inspiration and repeatedly refined this vital energy, subsequently feeling that not only had the ugly tumor disappeared, but he was now becoming stronger and more robust.

Wu Zhantie laughed heartily: "This is good stuff!"

Meanwhile, Shen Wanqing looked at the officer-level Herbal Rejuvenation Pill he had been assigned. After taking it, his meridians were expanding, and this change in his martial arts aptitude stirred his heart, a murderous aura taking deep root within him. Shen Wanqing couldn't help but recall his sect's admonition: drawing in malevolent energy is the path of martial arts cultivation; those of us who seek longevity must maintain a pure Dao heart.

However, nowadays, the essence of heaven and earth plants is of great benefit to cultivation!

Shen Wanqing tried to calm himself down, but his Dao heart couldn't suppress his murderous intent! He walked out of the tent and then froze—not just him, but the entire camp was filled with immense killing intent.

In an instant, he was once again overwhelmed by the murderous aura. Thoughts of "stealing," "plundering," and "cultivation is inherently defying the heavens!" surged into his mind.

But as soon as the bugle sounded in the army, everyone jolted, and the murderous aura was obediently suppressed. The large banner with the character "武" (martial) fluttered in the air, its air of discipline suppressing the ferocity of all the soldiers.

(End of this chapter)