White Feather Flying Elephant
Bai Ning Bing carries wooden boxes beside Fang Yuan in the caravan, still turning over why he works so hard for Shang Xin Ci. She has ruled out lust. Shang Xin Ci is ostracised by Zhang clan, has no cultivating talent, and depends on a loyal rank three Gu Master for protection, so her beauty is a liability rather than an asset. Bai Ning Bing works out on her own that the goods Fang Yuan visibly sacrificed during the first beast attack were mostly a decoy. His truly valuable goods, more than half his fortune, are still intact, and she would never have known if she had not noticed by accident. Fang Yuan, sensing what she has pieced together, tells her that keeping her in the dark served to alert himself, since if she notices something amiss the others soon will too; he adds only that it is about time. ch. 247
A beast group, the cold jade owlcat, fails to break the caravan’s third line of defense. The second line holds and clears the attackers. Morale is low afterward. Caravan leader Jia Long and Chen clan vice leader Chen Shuang Jin argue openly over which clan is assigned the first line of defense, and other Gu Masters gossip that Chen clan has begun leaning on Jia Gui while Jia Long answers to Jia Fu. ch. 247
Days later the caravan reaches Xiang Ya mountain, a peak thick with elephant herds, humid rainforest at its foot and snow and cedar higher up. No beast group attacks it for several days, and morale lifts slightly. Then feathers begin drifting down like snow. Hundreds of white feather flying elephants charge the ground caravan at once, each carrying two three-meter curved tusks. The first charge alone kills hundreds, stomping many servants into meat paste, piercing carriages, and killing three black skin fat beetles as panicked winged snakes and ostriches trample more of the column. Jia Long rallies over ten Gu Masters before a second charge scatters them. A third attack is already forming, and he orders everyone into the rainforest. ch. 247
An elephant dives at Shang Xin Ci. Her guard Zhang Zhu draws it off with an attack of his own and flees through the trees. It nearly kills him. A swung branch shatters his defensive Gu’s golden light and flings him bleeding to the ground, and only a frantic roll saves him as the elephant slams into the mountain wall instead, its tusks driving deep into the rock. Zhang Zhu, down to half his primeval essence and his defensive Gu nearly spent, runs back toward where he split from Shang Xin Ci and finds her already gone. Chen Xin, a young Chen clan Gu Master, runs up begging for help with three elephants on his tail. Zhang Zhu, caring only for his own lady, refuses and keeps running, so Chen Xin simply latches onto him and follows. ch. 247
