Chapter 82: Soaring Freely (Part One)

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“You mean you’ve found another monster?” The Elder of the Luo clan narrowed his eyes.

“Not just one, Clan Chief—two of them,” the hunter corrected.

“In Leishan?” That place was a full hundred and twenty kilometers from Luo Village.

It was a new site the hunting party had found following the map Tang had given them.

But the name Leishan wasn’t chosen by the Luo clan—it was designated by the Hot Witch tribe.

There were many possible origins for the name: perhaps the first discoverer saw lightning strike the mountain, or perhaps it was onomatopoeic, or maybe the finder’s name was Lei. There were many reasons.

Whatever the cause, the mountain was now called Leishan.

“Just two?” the Elder confirmed.

Yu, the hunter, nodded emphatically. “Yes, Clan Chief—two.”

“Tietou has reached the level of Spirit Refinement. If it’s just two monsters, he should be able to handle them,” the Elder mused.

Yu shook his head. “The captain says he’s not confident. They seem very formidable.”

Hearing this, the Elder told Yu to lead the way—but didn’t wait for him to do so. He simply grabbed Yu and darted out of the cave, then fixed his direction and began flying low above the ground.

The power of his spirit now let him break free from the earth’s pull, soaring up to a thousand feet in the air.

Though, in the wilderness, even such a height might not match the ancient trees.

The trees of the wilds were truly enormous—growing a hundred feet in a month, a thousand in a year, three thousand in ten years, ten thousand in a century… And those weren’t even the finest species. Some spirit-trees could reach ten thousand feet in just a month, or in a single day if the environment was especially rich in spiritual energy.

So, the Elder’s flight was truly low altitude by comparison.

Of course, a thousand feet was still low altitude, even by the standards of his previous life.

Even so, his speed was tremendous.

He could feel the air pressing against him like thick paste.

He was nearing the sound barrier.

“Cl—mmmph—Chief…” Yu, mouth filled with a rush of wind, head buzzing and body chilled, could barely speak, his words muffled and oddly endearing.

The Elder then set a shield of spiritual force around him.

But the shield was not powered by the Elder’s own strength—it was drawn out from Yu’s own body. The Elder would never be so indulgent as to do otherwise; how else would his people grow stronger?

With the shield in place, Yu felt much better and quieted down, carefully sensing the changes in his own strength at the Elder’s urging.

But he didn’t have long for reflection, because they—

“Chief, you’ve gone too far!” Yu tugged at the Elder.

But the Elder ignored him, flying straight ahead and stirring a wild gale through the high forest canopy, making the towering trees sway and raining leaves down like a shaken sieve.

He didn’t need to look; his spiritual sense had already swept the area.

He hadn’t found the monsters they spoke of, but he had located Tietou and the others.

As he drew closer, his spirit finally sensed the monsters.

They were cloaked in some shroud that concealed their presence—a shield that prevented his spiritual sense from detecting them.

How curious. The Elder felt a strong urge to capture them and interrogate them thoroughly.

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But then he sensed something amiss—a faint, chilling trace of danger.

These two monsters were not ordinary—they were threatening.

Upon closer inspection, he found that one of them was shaped like an ox, exhaling threads of mist that formed webs, binding the nearby foliage for a full five hundred meters.

This one was wary.

The other monster seemed wounded. Where there should have been six heads, only three remained: a bear, a wolf, and a fox, while the other three necks ended in smooth stumps.

The wounds had long since healed, leaving scars as wide as bowls.

A “true warrior,” it seemed.

The neck injuries were old; a new wound pierced its chest—a bizarre iron spike, looking like a spear, or perhaps a pike or some other mysterious weapon.

This iron spike confirmed one thing: these were no ordinary wild beasts.

They likely belonged to a monster tribe.

That was significant.

Recently, the monster tribe of the Chou Pheasant had suffered a great defeat, so the Elder suspected these two were remnants of that tribe.

After the Chou Pheasant tribe had been crushed by the Hot Witch tribe, so many great monsters had been killed that there was likely no one left to look after such lesser monsters.

But strife between witches and monsters was nothing new; these two might not be from the Chou Pheasants at all.

Were it not for the growing sense of danger, the Elder might have already swooped in to finish them off.

But outright slaughter was not his way; face-to-face brawling was too crude—fit for beasts of the forest, not for a human.

He was of the human race—wisdom was his weapon.

And he had more than enough spells and magical arts at his disposal; why trouble himself with close combat?

Still, the two monsters had been alerted by his rapid passage; had he paused for even a moment, their frayed nerves would have prompted immediate attack.

Only after the Elder had flown a full ten miles did the two, still tracking his movement, finally relax.

Then the Elder heard them conversing in monster tongue, specifically the Chou Pheasant dialect.

Had he not recently crammed that language, he might have been lost.

“Gugji gugji”—the Elder didn’t understand this bit, but guessed it was a name—“what was that?” asked the ox-headed monster, eyes wide.

The three-headed creature responded with its fox head: “Hali hali”—again, unintelligible—“must be some mutant monkey.”

“A monster? Looks a bit like a witch to me.”

“No, there’s no witchly aura on them. Don’t attack—we need to be careful not to attract the Hot Witches, or we’ll never get our revenge for the tribe.”

“Oh, oh, oh.”

The conversation ended there, and the Elder understood—they were indeed survivors of the Chou Pheasant tribe.

How interesting.

Judging by their auras, they were only false immortals, not true ones.

So—“If I can’t handle true immortals, can’t I deal with you?”

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With this thought, the Elder moved to act.

He wasted no time on courtesy; his spirit extended, his thought became action, and across ten miles a spell struck them.

Boom!

Flames shot skyward.

This was also the Elder’s signal to Tietou and the others.

The hunters, who had been watching for some time, now shouted and hurled their own spells.

Tietou was ready to lead the charge.

If not for the Elder’s warning, he would have already barged straight into battle with the ox-headed monster.

Roar!

The monsters, enraged by the ambush, couldn’t see the Elder but fixed on Tietou’s noisy party.

Exactly as the Elder intended.

He unleashed a barrage of spells, summoning thunder and fire to rain down around them, leaving the monsters no time to respond to Tietou’s wild shouting.

Most of the hunters’ spells couldn’t reach the monsters anyway, given the three-mile distance.

So when the monsters, wild with fury, saw the paltry attacks, they were momentarily confused.

This gave the Elder more opportunities; his spells landed in swift succession, battering them senseless, disorienting them, roasting the flesh on their bones.

The Elder’s attacks weren’t just elemental or destructive; he also unleashed illusions to confuse and manipulate their minds.

Under the fog of these spells, the monsters grew dizzy and dazed, their pain momentarily forgotten.

They had no chance to fight back—or rather, they didn’t even realize they should.

Satisfied the matter was settled, the Elder sent forth another spell—“Sun and Moon in the Pot!”

This spell was never meant for creation or shaping worlds, but the Elder had adapted it for his purposes.

It was, in fact, a spell for imprisoning enemies.

And now, at last, he used it as intended.

“Where’d the monsters go?!” Tietou exclaimed, waving his arms in surprise.

The “dazed” hunters also paused, eyes wide, their shouting and gesticulating coming to an abrupt halt.

While they all stood bewildered, the Elder drifted over with Yu in tow.

“Let’s go home,” the Elder urged.

Though still full of questions, the group obeyed.

This too was the custom of the hunting party: after a hunt, they would immediately process the prey, carve it up, sling a carcass over each back, and retreat quickly.

Otherwise, they might attract scavengers—or worse, the great beasts of the wilderness.

Such was the wisdom born of hard experience. Only after suffering losses had they learned to withdraw swiftly and in perfect order.