Immortal Travel of Longevity

"I wonder if Ruyi is still here..."

"I suppose it's my fault. Otherwise, we would have found her long ago."

Hearing this, Lihua said, "How can it be your fault? Unexpected things always happen on the road."

Reaching the Fiend Blood Path should have taken half a month at the slowest pace.

Yet it had taken them a whole year.

This was because they had encountered a demon while passing through Jindi. Tang Zheng had suffered a severe injury to his right arm; without immediate treatment, he would have lost it entirely. Even after the limb was saved, incurable hidden injuries remained. Lihua had to take him to the Tongtian River to beg the Goddess of the Celestial River for help. All of this had eaten up an entire year.

Tang Zheng finally understood what people meant when they said there was always a higher mountain, a sky beyond the sky. He used to think his martial arts were enough to travel the world unhindered. Who could have expected he would suffer such a grievous injury so soon after setting out? Only then did he realize that not every demon in the world was as reasonable as this cat. To them, his skills were nothing more than parlor tricks.

If not for Lihua, his right arm would have been ruined, and he wouldn't even be able to defeat an ordinary fighter in the jianghu.

"Thank you so much for this, Lihua."

Lihua blinked and said, "The Goddess of the Celestial River helped you, not Lihua."

Tang Zheng smiled, thinking to himself how truly innocent the cat was.

He genuinely liked that about Lihua.

Along the way, Lihua had shared countless rumors and tales from beyond the mortal world, greatly broadening his horizons. From those stories, Tang Zheng realized the cat seemed to get along with everyone. He hadn't understood why at first, but now it felt only natural.

Who wouldn't like a cat like this?

Playing along, Tang Zheng said, "I'll definitely offer more incense to the Goddess of the Celestial River when we get back."

"Mhm." The cat nodded.

After they walked for another half day, the surrounding scenery began to make him increasingly uneasy.

He noticed abandoned farmland and dilapidated houses along the roadside, looking as though they had been deserted for years. An occasional stench of blood wafted through the air, and tacky, uncleaned bloodstains dotted the ground.

The patches of blood were scattered, left at different times. Some were likely days old, while others were still fresh.

A foul-smelling corpse lay in a patch of grass by the road, its face slashed to ribbons and its features unrecognizable. It looked like it had been rotting there for days with no one to collect it.

Tang Zheng covered his mouth. Even though he had witnessed murders and beheadings before, the gruesome sight still horrified him. His stomach churned, and he vomited violently.

"What's wrong?"

The cat in the basket on his back grew curious and tried to poke its head out.

Tang Zheng quickly pushed it back down.

"Don't look."

He subconsciously felt the cat shouldn't see such things.

Lihua paused. "Why are you being so secretive?"

Tang Zheng spat out the bitter taste in his mouth. After catching his breath, he said, "Just don't look, that's all."

Lihua smacked its lips but obediently complied, settling back into the basket.

As they pressed onward, the sights only made Tang Zheng feel more nauseated.

More and more corpses appeared, casually tossed by the roadside. There wasn't even a mass grave; they were just left where they fell.

There were even bare white bones.

Wild beasts dragged the bodies into the woods. Soon after, the sound of tearing flesh echoed from within the trees, accompanied by low growls.

Tang Zheng's face was grim as he forced down his nausea. He began to wonder if he had taken the wrong path. It made no sense for there to be so many dead bodies on a single road.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, someone approached from behind.

Tang Zheng's nerves immediately went taut, and he looked back.

He saw a masked man with a sword strapped to his back, leisurely riding a horse in his direction.

The masked man glanced at Tang Zheng, frowned slightly, and said, "A greenhorn."

As he spoke, he suddenly drew his sword.

Tang Zheng jolted. In a flash of sword light, the blade slashed toward his neck.

He slapped his right hand down, and the sword at his waist flew from its scabbard. Grasping the hilt, he stepped back half a pace, barely deflecting the strike.

"Oh?" The masked man sounded surprised.

"Eighth Rank?" The masked man looked him up and down. "Where are you from? Who is your master?"

Tang Zheng furrowed his brows and demanded, "I don't believe we have any enmity, sir."

The masked man sneered. "I just like killing people. Is that reason enough?"

A wave of disgust welled up in Tang Zheng's chest.

The masked man said lightly, "Don't look at me like that. If you died under my sword, I'd actually be doing you a favor. By dying out here, at least people from the outside would still have a chance to collect your corpse."

"So I should be thanking you?"

Tang Zheng sneered, his grip tightening on his sword.

His horse stepped half a pace forward. "You're qualified to go in," the masked man said. "I hope to see you again."

With that, he spurred his horse and continued down the road.

Tang Zheng didn't strike back, but he remained on high alert. Even when the man was far in the distance, he kept his sword drawn, holding it tightly to guard against any sudden danger.

People here were just like that masked man—they needed no reason to attack, and no reason to kill.

For the first time, Tang Zheng truly felt the terrifying nature of the Fiend Blood Path. It felt far more real than the rumors.

It was pure evil!

Carrying the basket and gripping his sword, Tang Zheng continued forward. The corpses grew more numerous, but he had no mind to spare for them. He had gone from visceral nausea to complete numbness in the span of a few hundred paces.

Inside the basket, the cat peeked out through the gaps in the weave.

Seeing the scattered corpses and white bones, it felt a wave of inexplicable disgust. This place made it even more uncomfortable than those corpse puppets had.

Lihua retracted its gaze and stopped looking outside.

As they pressed on, the bodies lining the road only multiplied.

When they finally entered a dense forest, a putrid stench washed over them.

The woods were littered with bones and rotting corpses.

But as soon as they passed through the trees, the view before them suddenly opened up.

Steep valley walls encircled the area, blocking out the outside world like a fortress. Inside, houses were clustered together just like in any ordinary market town. The only difference was the suffocating gloom. The high walls of the valley blocked out the sun, leaving the town perpetually draped in an eerie, sinister twilight.

It looked like a mountain city, but even more so, it felt like a shadowy city of the dead.

Corpses were sparse inside the town itself, though old bloodstains were still faintly visible on the ground.

"So that's how it is..."

Tang Zheng finally understood. The corpses flanking the road had been deliberately thrown there.

Their true purpose was to terrify newcomers into turning back.

He sighed softly. "This place really is bizarre."

Lihua poked its head out, looking at the seemingly bustling mountain town before them.

The cat twitched its nose and pulled its head halfway back. "Lihua doesn't like it here..."

It stared at the city, seeing an aura of death clinging to everything.

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