Chapter 4: Midges Rise upon the Wind
Without much trouble, Li Shun logically persuaded Feng Guan.
Li Shun was not worried that Feng Guan would report him to the authorities or betray him.
Firstly, he held the heaven-defying trump card of Threefold Awakening; all of today’s schemes, whether they succeeded or failed, were but reflections of the moon in water or flowers in a mirror.
Secondly, having wallowed and struggled in the mire of Lengshan County for the better part of a lifetime, he already knew Feng Guan’s nature as clearly as the palm of his hand.
Though this man was timid, cowardly, and easily swayed by persuasion, he possessed a dull-witted sincerity toward his friends.
Having lost both parents in childhood, Feng Guan had been left all alone. In his early years, he had barely learned some bottom-tier methods of the Xiaoshuo school to make a living, only to be unexpectedly conscripted into corvée labor in Lengshan County. Once he plunged in, he had toiled for a lifetime.
...
In truth, during previous cycles of the Threefold Awakening, Li Shun had already subjected Feng Guan to multiple harsh tests. Facts proved that, at least in their current predicament, Feng Guan was absolutely a man who could be put to use.
The reason he entrusted the task of placing the Shadow-Retaining Coins to Feng Guan was primarily that Li Shun’s current body was crippled, making it truly inconvenient for him to move about.
And Feng Guan indeed did not disappoint Li Shun.
At the hour of noon, he came running back, panting heavily. Uncharacteristically, his aged face did not hold the fear of a thief with a guilty conscience; instead, it was flushed with a trace of morbid excitement.
"Cripple, I’ve hidden all the Shadow-Retaining Coins at the locations you specified and activated them one by one! It was too damn thrilling. All along the way, I was terrified someone would discover me..."
Li Shun remained noncommittal and did not take up the conversation. He silently calculated the time in his heart. Estimating that the moment the Xiang remnants would launch their attack was drawing near, he grabbed Feng Guan and decisively ducked into that dark underground earthen chamber.
Once the tunnel was sealed, Li Shun’s fingertips tapped repeatedly, activating all ninety mother-coins of the Shadow-Retaining Coins in sequence.
In an instant, image after image shimmering with ghostly light leaped into the air like water mirrors. Though they could not cover every blind spot of Lengshan County, they brought the most core areas of the town into full view.
Li Shun’s gaze was fixed on the images before him as he waited patiently.
Around three in the afternoon, the sudden change erupted.
A pitch-black figure streaked across the sky like a meteor from the horizon, coming to a sudden halt directly above the Magistrate’s office, standing arrogantly in mid-air.
Such a blatant provocation naturally drew the immediate alert of the constables guarding the Magistrate’s office gates.
Just as they drew their blades and were about to bark out a stern reprimand, the shadow of a colossal, eight-armed demon-god, eerie and surging with yin energy, condensed and manifested behind the newcomer without warning!
Terrifying baleful aura crashed down like a heaven-swamping wave. The group of constables did not even have time to scream before they collapsed in unison like straw swept by a gale, unable to muster the slightest bit of resistance.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Rapid and shrill alarm bells instantly echoed through the Magistrate’s office. A thick, earthy-yellow barrier of an array rose from the ground, shielding the Magistrate’s office within. Simultaneously, the garrisoned Black Armor Army, sensing the disturbance, donned their armor and grasped their weapons, rushing to reinforce from all directions.
The progression of all this was not off by a hair from Li Shun’s encounter "yesterday."
"Truly... truly there are rebels attacking! How did you know in advance?!" Inside the cellar, Feng Guan’s voice trembled from extreme shock. At this moment, he was thoroughly convinced of Li Shun’s previous "persuasion."
Li Shun remained deaf to him, his gaze firmly locked onto the shifting light screens around them.
Everything was like a pre-written script: the eight-armed demon-god unleashed its might, and the elite Black Armor Army retreated step by step like clay chickens or pottery dogs before him. Under the mad scorching of the sky-filling flames, the Magistrate’s office's thick array barrier dimmed visibly to the naked eye, becoming precarious.
Boom!
Accompanied by a deafening, earth-shaking roar, the light screens of the hovering Shadow-Retaining Coins flickered violently, and some of the images instantly shattered into darkness.
"Destroy Qian and restore Xiang! Today is the day!"
The savage roar of the Xiang remnant leader echoed once more through the skies of Lengshan County without hindrance.
At the same time, hysterical cries of response erupted one after another throughout various parts of the town.
The surviving Shadow-Retaining Coins naturally captured the faces of some of these Xiang remnants.
Li Shun’s eyes narrowed slightly as he carved these faces deep into his mind.
"There really are a few familiar faces."
"I originally thought they were just poor, fated laborers like myself, caught in circumstances beyond their control; I never imagined they were spies of a fallen kingdom lurking here."
While Li Shun was rapidly calculating in his heart, Feng Guan beside him felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar. That pitiful trace of excitement on his face had long since faded, replaced by uncontrollable dread and cowering.
He never would have dreamed that these rebels were so fierce that even the Magistrate’s office, representing the supreme majesty of the Great Qian Empire, could be forcibly breached by them!
Li Shun knew Feng Guan’s temperament too well; he saw at a glance that the man was having second thoughts. He immediately barked in a cold voice: "Old Feng, it’s your turn!"
Seeing Feng Guan’s face filled with struggle and hesitation, Li Shun added a bone-chilling and meaningful sentence: "Once the bow is drawn, there is no turning back the arrow..."
Feng Guan shuddered at the words, gnashed his teeth in dejection, and could only brace himself and nod.
This time, the vessel for his consciousness-attachment was not the ant from yesterday, but a tiny flying insect, a Midge that Li Shun had taken great pains to capture in advance.
These things were extremely common around Lengshan County, no larger than a grain of ash. They were difficult to notice even on ordinary days, and if they blended into the current chaotic battlefield of billowing smoke and flying sand, they would be as good as invisible.
Feng Guan was not entirely a spineless coward. Since there was no way to retreat, he simply stopped being coy.
He fiercely plucked a stalk of Lengshan Grass and stuffed it recklessly into his mouth, chewing and swallowing the extreme bitterness along with his terror.
Then, his fingers pinched a seal as the secret art reappeared: "Listen to the Wind, Seize the Shadow..."
In an instant, Feng Guan’s murky eyes were once again filled with an eerie, deathly white, and his surrounding aura became chaotic and ethereal. The tiny midge at his fingertips fluttered its wings unsteadily, preparing to fly.
In that lightning-fast moment...
"Soul-Splitting Transformation," Li Shun’s voice echoed ghostly.
A lifetime of silent meditation and deep cultivation, coupled with the extreme practice of the tireless puppet within the Fangcun Realm for twenty-six years without a day’s rest, had allowed Li Shun’s attainment in this Soul-Splitting Transformation Art to reach the pinnacle of perfection. Regarding this path alone, it would likely be difficult to find anyone in the entire Great Qian Empire who could rival him.
The moment the technique was cast, Li Shun felt as if a segment of his most fundamental essence and blood had been severed by an invisible blade. A surge of intense weakness immediately rushed to his heart.
However, in sharp contrast to his wilted state, the midge in the air, which had been swaying unsteadily, immediately stabilized its form. It became visibly sturdier.
Simultaneously, a profound and mysterious bond was quietly forged between Li Shun and that midge.
"You may depart."
At Li Shun’s murmur, Feng Guan operated the midge like a marionette, flying silently outward through the cracks of the tunnel, heading straight for the Magistrate’s office.
Relying on that thread of essence-blood connection, the scenes witnessed by the midge also manifested synchronously in Li Shun’s mind like ripples on water.
Truly, Feng Guan was indeed trustworthy.
But since he was plotting for a treasure as grand as the Lengshan Vessel, it was more reliable to see it with his own eyes!
The midge flew at high speed through the gale and smoke, soon drawing close to the Magistrate’s office, which had been turned into ruins.
It did not rashly approach but found a swarm of midges dancing haphazardly at the periphery. It merged into them without a trace, looking down upon the chaotic scene below from a height.
By now, all resistance from Great Qian at the Lengshan Magistrate’s office had been slaughtered to the last. Dozens of Xiang remnants had completely taken over the area and were spreading out, frantically searching for the whereabouts of the Lengshan Vessel.
As for that stalwart leader of the remnants, he stood suspended in mid-air with his hands behind his back, overseeing the entire situation with a cold, stern expression.
Because of Li Shun’s severe warning before the technique was cast, Feng Guan suppressed his inner curiosity and did not divert even a fraction of his gaze to spy on that leader. The midge merely followed the swarm in aimless circling, locking all its attention onto the search paths of the remnants below.
A small half-day flew by. They had nearly dug three feet into the earth throughout the Magistrate’s office, yet they still found nothing.
In desperation, they could only attempt to expand the search radius to the periphery.
Finally, at the hour of sunset, when the remaining light was as red as blood, an extremely excited roar came from the distance: "Jin! It has been found!"
The remnants’ figures leaped, gathering at that spot in an instant.
"Such a precious thing, and it wasn't even placed within the Magistrate’s office. Instead, it was kept so brazenly in a concubine's house..."
This absurd result was clearly far beyond his expectations. The man called "Jin" raised his brow slightly and casually flicked a spark of crimson flame, instantly incinerating the shivering woman beside him into a pile of ash.
"Great Qian must perish!"
The surrounding remnants seemed emboldened by this, raising their arms and shouting in unison.
"Great Qian must perish!"
"Hmm?"
Amidst the impassioned fervor, as if sensing something, Jin’s expression shifted slightly.
He suddenly turned his head, his five fingers spreading and making a fierce grasping motion toward the empty air outside the house. A fly that had been lurking in the swarm, behaving suspiciously, instantly fell uncontrollably into his palm.
"Interesting..."
With a light pinch of his two fingers, he crushed the midge. Jin’s hawk-like gaze pierced directly through the twilight, locking onto a position within Lengshan County.
In the next instant, his body crashed into a streak of light, vanishing from the spot.
At the same time.
The underground earthen chamber where Li Shun and Feng Guan were hiding had its top cover completely torn off amidst a massive roar.
"Hiding your heads and showing your tails, treacherous rats." Jin looked down and let out a cold snort, appearing like a demon-god descended to the world.
Under the terrifying pressure of the eight-armed demon-god, Feng Guan predictably stiffened all over, instantly losing the ability to speak.
However, Li Shun, who was facing death for the second time, relied on the residual adaptation from "yesterday" to forcibly resist this trembling, barely managing to move his throat.
He raised his head, meeting that destructive gaze, and sneered with deliberate mockery: "Are you not also one who hides his head and shows his tail?"
Jin was visibly startled. Then, his eyes narrowed, and his voice became so cold it seemed capable of freezing the soul: "Listen well, the one who slays you is the scion of Great Xiang, the lone blood of the Imperial House, Xiong Jin!"
Having spoken, the heaven-swamping flames descended like celestial punishment.
They swallowed Li Shun completely.