Chapter Sixty-One: The Clear-Sighted Grand Governor of the Mortal Realm

First, he sliced off a piece of flesh and, through manipulation of creation, analyzed its minute structures. Then, he cut another piece and, using the same art, sought to restore it to its original form.

Unfortunately, the essence of the Vengeful Pheasant was too profound. In the end, the Ancestor of Luo could only shape a brilliantly plumed mountain fowl. It could do nothing but cluck and lay an egg.

Luo Ancestor picked up the egg, a hint of puzzlement in his expression. “A female?”

Cluck, cluck—another egg dropped.

He seized the mountain fowl, sent a current of true qi through it, and probed its general structure. It was indeed female. Even at the subtle level of cellular genetics, the evidence was there.

He also remembered what Tang had told him: that mighty beings among the demons once sought to alter their race, granting them a bloodline inheritance like the sorcerers—so their descendants would always be demons, not just random chance.

Luo Ancestor examined the genetic legacy, but found nothing. Perhaps the experiment had failed, or perhaps the change had not reached the Vengeful Pheasant’s line. Or maybe some encryption was at play—being no demon himself, Luo Ancestor could not find it.

But what he truly sought was not the demon inheritance, but an understanding of the Vengeful Pheasant’s nature.

So, he directly infused the brilliant mountain fowl’s mind with the Ritual of All Life’s Adoration of Sun and Moon, channeling solar essence into its body.

After two flutters, it turned instantly into a lump of blackened charcoal.

It did not become a roast chicken, to Luo Ancestor’s great disappointment.

He adjusted the dosage and forcibly guided the mountain fowl through the ritual. After going through seven such fowl, he finally succeeded.

Cluck, cluck.

Yet the nascent intelligence was not enough for the mountain fowl to speak, whether in human or demon tongue. It only spat out a wisp of smoke and lunged at Luo Ancestor.

With a gentle motion, he dispersed it. This mountain fowl’s rebellious nature was not to be underestimated.

Afterward, Luo Ancestor picked it up and tossed it into the earth, making it an ordinary beast of the wilds. Of course, its form was enormous—a foot tall, yet in the eyes of the little humans seemed like a mountain range stretching for miles.

Even the great beasts of the wilderness paled in comparison. A single step could trigger an earthquake.

Aware it would disturb the current balance, Luo Ancestor suppressed it in a great mountain at the far western edge of the wilds and put it to sleep, ensuring it would slumber undisturbed.

As for the Vengeful Pheasant’s flesh, Luo Ancestor tried infusing it with spiritual energy to maintain its vitality and stave off death.

To his surprise, it showed no signs of truly dying.

But the soul of the Vengeful Pheasant had likely been claimed by the sorcerer. In that sense, it was dead, though its powerful demonic body retained muscle memory within its flesh.

This was why Luo Ancestor tried to extract its secrets.

But fate was unkind. The soul, and thus the cultivation, had been taken—perhaps already destroyed—leaving only the secrets hidden in the flesh.

Unwilling to give up, Luo Ancestor deemed the living tissue a fine subject for study, not to be discarded lightly.

While he conducted his research, the battles upon the land reached their fiercest point.

The allied armies of the barbarians and demons invaded deep into the heart of the First Kingdom. In three months, eighteen great cities fell; the humans were slain, surrendered, or fled.

The Barbarian Lord’s name resounded across the land. Tales of his monstrous visage spread, said to terrify even crying infants—a blood-red maw, three heads, six arms, a wolf’s head and a tiger’s back, a butcher of men who devoured ten pounds of human flesh each day.

Warned by the Central Guard, the Grand Marshal of the First Kingdom, Rong, declared an alliance with two southern powers to resist the barbarian invasion.

With this declaration, all realized that the barbarians—once dismissed as dull-witted—posed a grave threat. They could no longer be seen as mere cattle or swine but must be treated as equals.

Yet the barbarians bought and kept in their households still behaved like fools, making it hard to see them as equals.

This dissonance left them unsettled. The threat was real, confirmed by refugees from conquered lands, who spoke of the barbarians’ savagery—garbed in beast-hide, riding monstrous creatures, wielding crude iron weapons, charging city walls in wild assaults.

Those fearless, bloodshot eyes haunted their dreams, and every night in the eastern cities was restless with fear.

At this turbulent time, rebellion flared among the humans. With the Barbarian Lord’s secret aid, deeply hidden half-barbarian hybrids rose in revolt.

This time, the Barbarian Lord seized the opportunity, leading his never-rested army to attack.

Yet he did not expect this chance to be a deliberate trap set by the humans.

Under Rong’s strategy, the Five-Viscera Lords of the southwest borrowed passage through the now-empty demon lands, cutting off the Barbarian Lord’s supply lines. The barbarian army was lured to a lakeshore, where human experts, having dug trenches and tunnels beforehand, unleashed water-controlling magic. In an instant, the lakeshore collapsed into marsh, trapping the barbarians—especially the giant beasts, which were then slain by humans with newly forged giant demon-hunting crossbows.

With this, the tide between humans and barbarians turned in a heartbeat.

The barbarians, isolated and beset, survived only because the Barbarian Lord, with unmatched strength, withstood the combined assault of seven Sun God-level masters, buying precious time for his people.

In the end, out of a hundred thousand, only thirty thousand barbarians remained. The Grand Marshal sacrificed himself to let the Barbarian Lord escape the seven great masters. Two vice marshals perished, surrounded by human warriors. Of five generals, three fell; of sixteen commanders, seven died—a truly grievous toll.

Though they broke out of the trap, they were driven onto a barren mountain.

There was no water, no food, not even insects—only withered autumn grass as far as the eye could see.

Clearly, the trap was not yet sprung. To avoid a desperate last stand, Rong devised the classic “surround but leave an escape” stratagem, driving the barbarians and their lord into utter despair.

The barren mountain was encircled by human armies, with ten demon-hunting crossbows at each point, over a thousand archers, and Sun God masters in command. Unless the barbarians could all sprout wings, escape was impossible.

Even if the Barbarian Lord broke through, a single Sun God master could delay him until others arrived to surround and kill.

“This day, our army triumphs! Humanity prevails!”

In the human camp, the armored generals raised their cups in celebration.

They were all officers of the Grand Marshal’s palace.

At the head sat the Grand Marshal himself, Rong. Though joy lit his face, after draining his cup he raised his hand, quieting the hall.

“This victory is thanks to the devotion of our soldiers and the unity of our lords. We have imprisoned the Barbarian Lord—but we must not become arrogant. Remember, arrogance leads to defeat.”

His words, as expected, drew a chorus of flattery from the assembled officers.

Yet after the tide of praise, one man stepped from the table to stand before the gathering.

“The Grand Marshal speaks truly. Though the Barbarian Lord is routed and besieged, we must not grow careless. Surely you too have sensed the strangeness here—the demons who aided the barbarians have vanished without a trace. I fear there is more to this than meets the eye.”