The Human Emperor c1-2382

by Huangfu Qi (皇甫奇)

  Although they arose from different clans, in their hearts, Wang Chong held a higher status than even their clan patriarchs.

  "Let's go!"

  Wang Chong nodded and gave a wave of his hand, ordering his forces to set off.

  Departing from the summit of that verdant hill, Wang Chong did not lead his forces straight to those precipitous mountains. Instead, he circled around them, heading toward the northwest.

  If one followed the Silk Road from the capital in the direction of Anxi, the lands would grow more barren and remote the farther west one went. Of all the sections of the road, Wushang was the most barren and remote. That not even bandits were willing to enter this place was a testament to this fact.

  As he gazed at the peaks that thrust into the clouds, even Wang Chong had to admit that climbing those dangerous mountains was no easy task. Even he would find it very difficult to enter the heart of the mountain range, the Wushang village, by directly crossing the mountains.

  However, Wang Chong also knew that though most of this mountain range was dangerous and steep, with the ever-present risk of dropping into a deep abyss, there was a place in this mountain range that was safer and less steep, a small path of sorts.

  Entering the Wushang village from there would be much easier.

  Around an hour later, in a place ten-some li from their starting point, Wang Chong looked forward. The sunlight seeped through the clouds, falling between two towering peaks, revealing a long and narrow, almost unnoticeable 'thin strip of sky1'.

  (TN: A thin strip of sky, as the name describes, refers to when there is a thin gap between mountains such that one can see the sky between them.)

  "This is the place!"

  This 'thin strip of sky' was several dozen meters tall and four feet wide, making it almost undetectable from a distance. Anyone except Wang Chong would have never noticed it.

  "How did Lord Marquis know of this place?"

  Gao Feng and Nie Yan looked at each other in surprise.

  From the moment they had left the capital, they had kept very close to Wang Chong. They could guarantee that Wang Chong had not come to scout this area beforehand, but for some reason, he seemed to know the place like the back of his hand.

  "Follow close behind me, and don't get lost," Wang Chong said, paying no attention to Gao Feng and Nie Yan. "This place is extremely dangerous, and if you drop from the mountain, at your level of cultivation, the drop of several hundred zhang will shatter your bones."

  Neither experts of the True Martial realm nor those of the Profound Martial realm had the ability to fly through the air, so the only outcome that awaited them in a drop from these heights was death. This was also the reason the bandits on the road to the west were not willing to set up their bases here.

  "Yes, Lord Marquis."

  Without another word, Wang Chong bent down and entered that 'thin strip of sky'.

  As one ventured further into the path, the steep mountains towered on both sides, and the stones forming the path were so sharp that they stabbed into the soles. Awooo! A howl came from the distance, echoing through the mountains.

  "Lord Marquis!"

  Gao Feng and Nie Yan paled, and they unsheathed their swords with vigilant expressions.

  "There's no need to be nervous—it's the Wushang. Let them be; they still haven't discovered us yet."

  Wang Chong smiled and had Gao Feng and Nie Yan sheathe their swords. Although the Wushang were cut off from the world, the roads to the west were still crawling with bandits. The Wushang lived nearby, so they were very wary and vigilant.

  The Wushang were extremely wary of outsiders.

  They really haven't changed at all!

  The distant cries caused a faint smile to appear on Wang Chong's lips and a warm feeling to surge through his heart.

  Before they were formally made into soldiers and trained, the Wushang had maintained their primitive traditions. This primal and steep geography had trained the Wushang into the most agile of people. They shuttled through the mountains like apes and used these short and sharp cries to communicate with each other.

  Wang Chong had tested their speeds once, and the most formidable Wushang villager could even outrun a warhorse!

  I'm finding myself filled with more and more anticipation!

  Wang Chong's eyes shone, a hint of excitement in his eyes.

  "Let's go."

  When they emerged from the thin strip of sky, the terrain was rather low, but as they traveled, it grew higher and higher, steeper and steeper, the road more and more difficult to traverse. At some point, a white fog suddenly began to billow around them.

  "Milord, be careful!"

  "This fog is strange!"

  Gao Feng and Nie Yan widened their eyes, instinctively sensing danger. It was still daytime, and when their party had entered the mountains, the sun had been right over their heads. For this kind of fog to appear on such a clear day was far too strange.

  This coupled with the howls from before made all of them very uneasy.

  "Haha, there's no need to be nervous. There are a few springs beneath this mountain, rather large ones. The temperature of these springs is rather high, resulting in this fog. There's nothing strange about it."

  Wang Chong gave a faint smile, a confident look on his face. This confidence influenced the rest of the party, making all of them relax.

  Wushang were courageous and pugnacious, filled with hostility toward outsiders.

  And the place they lived in was also full of dangers. The first line of defense was the steep mountains, where the slightest misstep would lead to a long fall and shattered bodies. The thick fog was the second line of defense. In his last life, when the Wushang killed many of the invaders, many people had wanted to recruit them, but the majority of them had been defeated.

  Many of them had failed to even get past the first line of defense, much less the second.

  Wang Chong had been the only one to succeed.

  Unlike the others, Wang Chong never panicked, not when he encountered those Wushang people flitting across the mountains or that thick fog. He had even been able to determine the true source of the fog when he saw a spring bubbling out of the earth.

  "Extend your sheaths and grab on to the sheath of the person behind you. Stay together and follow me! This fog will disperse in around fifteen minutes and isn't dangerous in itself. The true danger is the ravines and abysses being shrouded by the fog. If you're not careful and fall, even I won't be able to save you," Wang Chong indifferently said.

  Gao Feng and Nie Yan glanced at each other and didn't dare to say any more. The group made a line and followed behind Wang Chong, quickly disappearing into the thick fog.

  ______________

  1. A thin strip of sky, as the name describes, refers to when there is a thin gap between mountains such that one can see the sky between them.

  Chapter 696: Wushang Village II

  Chapter 696: Wushang Village (II)

  Translated by: Hypersheep325

  Edited by: Michyrr

  The white fog was thick and deep. Occasionally, someone's foot would knock a stone over a cliff. The long pause until the sound of its impact could be heard left all the members of the party shocked. Only Wang Chong remained unperturbed, confidently leading the way as though this was his own home.

  Gao Feng and Nie Yan closely followed behind Wang Chong, growing increasingly astonished all the while. This fog was so thick that it was impossible to see which direction was which or make out any kind of object. Yet Wang Chong was not panicked in the slightest.

  It was like he always knew where he was going, without even needing to see his feet.

  After some time, the fog around them began to fade. Gao Feng and Nie Yan inwardly rejoiced, as they knew that they were about to leave the bounds of the fog.

  "Hmph, none of them are working, and yet they send me to dig. Are they not afraid that I'll get captured?"

  The grumbling voice of a girl came out of the disp
ersing fog, coupled with the sound of someone kicking stones.

  "Lord Marquis, this is?"

  The party members turned to Wang Chong.

  "Don't say anything, just follow."

  At the sound of this familiar voice, the smile on Wang Chong's face only widened. Stepping on the fine and sharp mountain rocks, he walked toward the sound. The grumbling voice of the girl grew louder and louder, clearer and clearer.

  "Digging every day, digging when the sun is up, digging when the moon is up!

  "Stupid hoe! Stupid hoe!

  "Oh no! This a problem—the hoe handle broke.

  "Uh-oh, I can't let Grandpa or the others know. Stupid, stupid Grandpa…"

  ……

  The prattling girl's voice grew closer and closer, and by now, even the ten-some subordinates Wang Chong had brought with him for this excursion could hear it. Their expressions were odd, both suspicious and curious.

  Wang Chong paid no attention to the looks on the faces of his subordinates. By following that voice, it took only a few moments for Wang Chong to see a girl of eight or nine years old, her hair tied into two braids, a bamboo herb basket larger than her body on her back. She was sitting on a large and barren stone, next to which a massive pine tree grew.

  The girl had her back to Wang Chong, so Wang Chong couldn't see what she looked like, but he could hear loud and clear that her mutterings were brimming with discontent.

  Crack!

  As he watched, the sound of a breaking stone came from behind him. The girl, who had been just kicking her legs out as she sat under the pine tree, jumped up in fright at the sound. She immediately slid down the rock and looked behind her.

  At this moment, Wang Chong finally caught sight of her face. This little girl who seemed to be carved from jade was rather different from the girl in his memories, though there was still some of that girl's likeness present.

  The girl was carrying that big basket on her back, one of her hands holding a broken wooden handle while the other hand gripped half of an herb hoe. While she had been complaining, she probably broke it in her carelessness.

  "Ah!"

  The girl's face was filled with fear as she saw Wang Chong and that group of strangers behind him. She ran off, hollering as she went.

  "Uncle Qi, Uncle Jiu, it's bad! Bad people have come in!"

  The girl's age belied her agility and speed as she screamed. The moment her two feet hit the ground, she immediately lunged off the rock, her body flying over the ground. With a single leap, she had covered six or seven zhang, and then she was off through the mountains like a civet cat.

  When she next appeared, she was already twenty or thirty zhang away.

  And all this had happened in the blink of an eye.

  "This… is this girl a human or a ghost?"

  "She looks to be only eight or nine. How can she be so fast?"

  ……

  Gao Feng, Nie Yan, and the other elite soldiers behind Wang Chong were dumbfounded. The speed and dexterity this girl displayed were at least at the True Martial realm, and yet she was not even in her teens!

  The girl and her large basket were on the verge of vanishing. But Wang Chong was in no rush, not heading off in pursuit. He only asked a question.

  "Xiaoyan, why are you running?"

  Buzz!

  At these words, the dexterous form of the girl rapidly fading into the distance suddenly trembled as if it had been struck by lightning. Her body seemed to almost impossibly come to a sudden stop.

  "Are you calling me?"

  The girl peeked out from behind a rock, looking in disbelief at Wang Chong.

  Wang Chong nodded and smiled.

  "What did you call me just now?"

  The girl's face was filled with surprise.

  "Are you not called Xiaoyan?" Wang Chong said.

  "How did you know my name?"

  The girl's eyes went wide, and she no longer seemed intent on running. Standing around twenty zhang away next to a pile of rocks, she stared at Wang Chong. Her round eyes carefully sized up Wang Chong and his followers.

  She had never encountered a situation like this. These were all strangers that she had never seen before, and yet they actually knew her name.

  "I don't just know that your name is Xiaoyan. I also know that you have a pet called Luoluo, a red fox with snow-white claws."

  Wang Chong smiled and seated himself down on the rock that the girl had just recently vacated.

  "Impossible!"

  The girl's eyes opened even wider. She threw off the large basket and sat down on the pile of rocks. At this moment, her curiosity toward Wang Chong had suppressed everything, including her fear.

  She was secretly raising a white-clawed fox, and only the people in the village knew of this, but not even the people in the village knew that this fox was called Luoluo. Just how did this stranger know?

  "How did you know about my Luoluo?"

  The girl's eyes twinkled, completely captivated by this stranger.

  She truly didn't change one bit.

  Wang Chong inwardly smiled. She was just as curious as he remembered.

  "Didn't your grandfather ask you to gather herbs? Have you gathered them?" Wang Chong asked, changing the subject.

  "Hmph, a bunch of baddies! They only know how to bully me. There's only rocks here! Where am I going to dig up wujian grass?" The moment Wang Chong mentioned it, the girl remembered her task today and started to fume, her foot lashing out at a nearby rock.

  This casual kick sent that rock that was about the size of a human head sixty or seventy zhang. This sight caused the eyes of Gao Feng, Nie Yan, and the ten-some other guards to widen in shock.

  This little girl had an astounding strength.

  "You need wujian grass? That's not easy to find. Feng Mu, bring it over."

  "Yes, Lord Marquis."

  With this voice, a tall and muscular guard appeared, dragging a large chest behind him.

  "Open it."

  Wang Chong raised a hand, ordering the guard to open the box. In an instant, a box stuffed with herbs appeared before everyone's eyes.

  "Wujian grass!"

  The girl's eyes shone at the sight of the box. She lunged over, completely forgetting that Wang Chong and his followers weren't from the village.

  "Wow! Wujian grass! It really is wujian grass! How did you know that I needed to gather wujian grass? Haha, this is great! With this much wujian grass, I won't need to leave the house for the next three months."

  The girl excitedly snatched two handfuls of wujian grass and gave a laugh that sounded like the ringing of silver bells.

  Wang Chong couldn't help but smile as well.

  Before the calamity, Wushang Village was actually very xenophobic. The surprise failure of Li Siye's recruitment operation made Wang Chong remember this and realize that this operation would not proceed as he easily as he had imagined.

  The stronger the faction, the harder it was for them to submit to someone else. If the Wushang were that easy to subdue, the otherworldly invaders wouldn't have suffered so many casualties, and the fifty or sixty thousand Wushang wouldn't have dwindled to not even one-tenth that number.

  But there was no soil in the world that was not ruled by someone. Since the Wushang still lived on the Central Plains, they had to accept the mobilization orders from the Imperial Court. As long as the method was appropriate, it wasn't impossible to recruit the Wushang.

  The girl called Fang Xiaoyan before him was crucial to this effort.

  The Wushang were so xenophobic that they would immediately attack strangers without even asking why they had come. Many people ended up failing at only this first stage.

  But Wang Chong knew that there was a pivotal character in Wushang Village that one could use to gain the good graces and acknowledgment of the Wushang, and this character was Fang Xiaoyan.

  Wang Chong had chosen to enter through the thin strip of sky not merely because the terrain there was easier to traverse, but also b
ecause he knew that Fang Xiaoyan would be gathering herbs there.

  Wang Chong chuckled and said, "I'll give this wujian grass to you.

  "Oh, that's right, can you bring me to see your grandfather?"

  "You know my grandpa?"

  The girl tilted her head, he brow furrowing in shock.

  "I don't."

  Wang Chong shook his head.

  The girl raised her head and said, "Then I can't bring you in. My grandpa said to me that I'm not allowed to bring strangers into the village."

  "Although I don't know your grandfather, I have a friend with your grandfather. Can you take me to see him?"

  Wang Chong smiled and rubbed her head.

  A doubtful look appeared in her eyes, but she quickly squinted in comfort, apparently enjoying the feeling of her head being rubbed.

  "Friend… Grandpa… friend is where Grandpa is… Grandpa's friend! Then you're Grandpa's friend! No wonder you know so much, even about my Luoluo." The girl suddenly seemed to understand something, her eyes opening wide as she grinned.

  "If you're Grandpa's friend, then there's no problem at all. Let's go! I'll take you to see Grandpa."

  As the girl spoke, she lifted the iron chest and placed it on her shoulder like it weighed nothing. Turning, she began to walk away, leaving Gao Feng, Nie Yan, and the others to look on in astonishment.

  Chapter 697: Wushang Village III

  Chapter 697: Wushang Village (III)

  Translated by: Hypersheep325

  Edited by: Michyrr

  Gao Feng and Nie Yan walked up to Wang Chong and whispered, "Lord Marquis, just what is the background of this girl? How can she be so formidable?"

  "That's right! Although the wujian grass in the chest isn't heavy, the chest itself is. How can she be so strong?"

  "Haha, this is Wushang Village. You just need to get used to it."

  Wang Chong grinned, got up, and began to follow the girl. From ahead came the girl's faint voice.

  "Hurry up!"

  The girl's speed was much faster than they had imagined.