Only the dead are clean
Every large black skin fat beetle in the caravan is dead, and the two surviving winged snakes are crippled; only the small, quick baggage toads have mostly survived, while the ostriches, similar in size but prone to burying their heads at the first sign of danger, have suffered the worst losses of all. ch. 253
Shang Xin Ci walks among the toads carrying Zhang Clan’s goods and weighs what has changed. The caravan leaders once treated her with indifference while Zhang Zhu was alive; now, seven to eight days after Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing killed Ou Clan’s father and son, the same leaders send her goods unasked and look at her with reverence and fear. She feels secure beside the two, and afraid of how easily they kill. Xiao Die no longer dares breathe loudly around them, and Shang Xin Ci avoids Fang Yuan’s gaze, a change he expects and is not worried by, since pressure from the beast groups and the will to keep living should wear the estrangement down. ch. 253
Fang Yuan’s remaining worry is Chen Xin, the Gu Master who fled with Zhang Zhu and whom Fang Yuan had assumed was smashed into meat paste by a white feather flying elephant. Having lost the Earth Hearing Ear Grass and any other way to scout, he does not know how much Chen Xin has learned, but he has already planned for the worst: if the truth reached Shang Xin Ci and turned her against him, he was ready to kill her, since her own father, the Shang Clan leader, does not know she is his daughter and would trace no blame back to him. Weighing the outcome so far, Fang Yuan judges his luck neither the best, since he left a trail behind, nor the worst, since Shang Xin Ci’s still-transparent emotions convince him she suspects nothing. ch. 253
A crocodile-elephant group closes on the caravan, part of Fang Yuan’s own plan, and the caravan scatters into the rainforest. Crocodile-elephants are roughly the size of yaks, scaled and armored beyond a white feather flying elephant, with a crocodile’s trailing tail. One meets Fang Yuan’s group; he charges it head on, and it dies with its skull shattered, thrown back a dozen steps into a tree trunk, while the white light armor on his body only flickers. Xiao Die, who had only ever watched Zhang Zhu dodge and heal in a fight, stares in shock at the sight. The beast group withdraws after about two hours, costing the caravan one Gu Master and a dozen servants. ch. 253
Over the next half month, black rock bears, iron crown deer and other beast groups attack the caravan as it crosses toward Mu Bei mountain, and Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing keep Shang Xin Ci and Xiao Die from any harm. The two women grow warmer toward Fang Yuan and no longer wary of him, since in their eyes he and Bai Ning Bing ask nothing in return and only repay a debt, conduct they judge more honorable than much of the righteous path shows. ch. 253
Zombies begin appearing once the caravan reaches Mu Bei mountain. The mountain earned its name after a Gu Master of the large clan that once lived there seized a servant’s wife on their wedding day and humiliated her to death. He buried the hatred, obtained the inheritance of a figure known as the Zombie King, and endured nearly a hundred years to reach rank five. With that strength he commanded an army of zombies against the clan, slaughtering everyone and sparing no corpse, turning each one into a zombie, then raised a tombstone on the ruins carved with his wife’s name. The event shook the whole Southern Border, and the zombies he left behind still roam the mountain today, feeding on blood and spreading their ptomaine into any corpse they reach; clans send yearly hunting parties, but the numbers are endless and no expedition has ever cleared them. ch. 253
The caravan camps at the mountain’s base for the night, and Fang Yuan studies the dark peak and decides the time has come to settle things. Chen Xin must die, but killing him alone risks trouble, since Fang Yuan does not know how much the young man has told or who else may have witnessed the murder; rather than find out, his plan is for Chen Xin to die alongside others. ch. 253
