0097 Demonic Energy

As they neared the forest, Ping Luanshan’s face went a little pale.

Jiang Feng, alert to every movement around him, noticed at once that something was wrong. He turned and asked in a low voice, “What is it? Scared?”

Ping Luanshan wiped his face and barked, “How could I be scared?” Then, with a pained look, he added, “It’s just that this demonic energy stinks too much. It makes me feel sick…”

A voice suddenly sounded in Jiang Feng’s mind. “Some people are especially sensitive to demonic energy and react strongly to it. For such people, there are generally three ways to deal with the problem…”

It was Ye Xiao’s voice. This time, when Jiang Feng came out, he had brought the rabbit along as well. When Ping Luanshan saw it, his expression turned odd, and he was about to point at Jiang Feng and laugh, but Hua Su nodded as if it were perfectly natural. “Mm, good. Bringing it along is fine.” That one remark immediately strangled Ping Luanshan’s laughter in his throat.

After hearing Ye Xiao’s words, Jiang Feng held out his hand. “Give me your hand.”

Ping Luanshan’s face had been bleached white by the foul demonic aura, and he looked as though he might vomit at any moment. Jiang Feng took his hand. In the next instant, a flash of golden light fell, and Ping Luanshan cried out.

In the blink of an eye, Jiang Feng had made a tiny cut on each of the ten fingertips. As bright red beads of blood welled up, a pale golden force surged inside.

Before long, Ping Luanshan’s complexion returned to normal.

Teng Zhi asked in surprise, “It doesn’t stink anymore?”

Ping Luanshan sniffed. “It still stinks, but it’s not as disgusting.”

Hong Cheng suddenly chuckled. “Never thought you, Old Ping, were as delicate as a young lady.”

When an honest man mocked someone, the blow landed especially hard. Ping Luanshan stared at him, then immediately exploded, “Old Hong, you’re the one who’s a young lady!”

Jiang Feng and Teng Zhi laughed as well. By now they were not far from the woods, and their voices carried over at once, drawing puzzled and displeased looks from several city defense soldiers.

Someone gave a deep shout. “Who is making such a racket here?”

Jiang Feng instantly composed himself and stepped forward. “We are martial cultivators, ordered here by Lord Hao Xing to report to the guard captain!”

The man turned around, revealing a face handsome enough to pass for some young nobleman’s. But at the moment, half his face was smeared with black blood, giving him a fierce and savage look.

He wore silver armor and held a long saber. With one sweep of the blade, a head fell, and a demon was slain instantly. He called out, “This place does not need a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears brats!”

Ping Luanshan was just about to speak, but Jiang Feng stopped him and said calmly, “Lord Hao has already granted permission. Please assign us our duty, Captain.”

The young captain surnamed Wei let out a cold snort and pointed with his saber. “There’s an opening over there. Go and hold it!”

The four of them looked over at once, all showing strange expressions. The place Captain Wei pointed to was outside the forest, about a hundred yards from the city defense line. Not a single demon had come that way. It was as safe an area as one could hope for.

Clearly, what the captain meant was: “Stay put over there and don’t come causing trouble.”

“We are not—” Ping Luanshan began.

Before he could finish, Jiang Feng pressed a hand on his shoulder. “We obey Captain Wei’s orders.”

With that, he really did lead the other three toward the open patch of ground.

Ping Luanshan was nearly frantic. “Old Jiang, he’s obviously just brushing us off. You should protest!”

Jiang Feng said, “Did you forget what Teacher Hua said before we came?”

Hua Su’s first instruction had been simple: obey the orders of your superiors. So long as your superior was not ordering you to go die immediately, you had to comply. Right now, the guard captain was their superior. His order was certainly not to send them to their deaths, but merely to keep to one side. That was fully in line with Hua Su’s requirement, and they had to obey.

Ping Luanshan pressed his lips together and said no more. He followed Jiang Feng to the open ground, and the four of them spread out into a defensive formation, watching their surroundings warily.

Captain Wei fought the demons while keeping an eye on them from afar. He could see every expression on their faces clearly. He had noticed Ping Luanshan’s dissatisfaction, and had already thought of the next words with which he would rebuke him.

To his surprise, the youngest one, still carrying a trace of childishness, said a couple of sentences, and then the other boy calmed his anger. The four of them obediently went to the designated spot according to his order.

And the formation they had taken up…

A thoughtful look appeared in Captain Wei’s eyes, but he said nothing. Turning away, he called to his subordinates and continued to maintain the current defensive line.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes…

Time passed slowly, and the captain still made no new arrangements for them.

Ping Luanshan grew a little restless again, but this time he said nothing. After glancing at Jiang Feng’s expression, he forced down his impatience.

Jiang Feng was observing the situation around them.

He switched to his force-sight and looked deep into the forest.

The demon cavern was still some distance away, but he could already see those thin wisps of black mist. Beneath the mist, the force around the trees and the people seemed somewhat dimmer.

He discovered that demonic energy indeed affected the circulation of force. After long periods of fighting, the soldiers’ power grew weaker not only because of fatigue, but also because the demonic aura was eroding them, making the flow of force less smooth.

Among Captain Wei’s subordinates, Jiang Feng could observe a total of twenty men. With just those twenty, he held this stretch of the line.

To maintain a defensive front for the long term, they could not keep fighting without pause; rotation was essential. He had divided the twenty men into three shifts, allowing each group to fight for an hour and then rest for half an hour.

Half an hour was not enough for the demonic energy inside them to disperse. Thus, the longer this dragged on, the weaker their combat strength would become.

Jiang Feng’s heart sank.

So long as the demon cavern remained, this would be endless combat, and these soldiers would eventually be worn down and die here.

But the twelve demon caverns were fully interconnected. Only by having twelve Bright-Heart Martial Sages strike at the same time could they all be sealed together. Otherwise, if even one remained, the others would regenerate again, and all their efforts would be for nothing.

The demons they were facing now were all low-level demons. In human terms, they were equivalent to low-tier martial practitioners who had not yet entered the realm. The city defense soldiers were all above the Dawn realm, so fighting them was still manageable…

As he calculated things in his mind, a cry suddenly rose from within the forest.

Jiang Feng’s expression changed, and he abruptly lifted his head!

In his force-sight, he saw a place suddenly open up. In other words, there was a huge black shadow there, forcefully breaking through the soldiers’ defensive line and rushing toward the edge of the woods!

Soon, he saw it: a demon like a spider, with the upper half of a woman’s body. With a twist of her waist, she shot a streak of white liquid from her navel. It struck a soldier’s shoulder and instantly turned into threads, sticking him fast.

Then the threads jerked, hauling the soldier backward by brute force. Though the threads looked weak, they were astonishingly powerful. The soldier was dragged down, struggling as he was pulled toward the spider-woman demon. A group of demons hissed and swarmed around him.

Just as the soldier was about to be sacrificed, Captain Wei let out a long howl and swept over like wind and thunder, his long saber turning into a whirl of silver light. In the blink of an eye, he cut down the small demons as easily as slicing melons and chopping vegetables, and the demon’s spider silk was severed in two by a single stroke.

The female demon shrieked, and Captain Wei had already hurled the soldier clear.

In a flash, he was engaged with the demon again. While fighting, he called back, “He’s injured. Take him away!”

Jiang Feng shouted, “Ping Luanshan, go!”

Ping Luanshan immediately responded, streaking over like the wind. He caught the soldier and brought him back to the open ground.

Jiang Feng fixed his gaze on the direction of the female demon and said in a grave voice, “In two quarters of an hour, the fighting will spread to here. Be ready!”

The three of them did not ask at all how he knew. They nodded heavily at once and immediately rose to their feet, taking up a vigilant stance.

Jiang Feng bent down to examine the soldier’s injuries.

The soldier was young, about twenty years old. He was tightly clenching his teeth, his body trembling uncontrollably. His face had gone blue, a streak of black energy on it, and sweat poured down his forehead like rain.

His thigh had been torn open by a massive gash, and half a strand of spider silk still clung to his shoulder. Half his body had already begun to turn black.

As soon as Jiang Feng reached out, he discovered that the spider silk contained a great amount of demonic energy. It had invaded through the soldier’s wound and thrown the force within his body into utter chaos.

The reason for his current agony was half the injury itself and half the effect of the demonic energy.

Jiang Feng forced himself to calm down and close his eyes halfway as he concentrated.

His hand slipped into his robe and gently stroked the rabbit’s fur, but Ye Xiao remained silent.

Earlier, when discussing Ping Luanshan’s sensitivity to demonic energy, Ye Xiao had mentioned three methods. One was direct stimulation with force, one was medicine, and one was a treasure artifact.

Direct force stimulation could only be used on one person at a time. Jiang Feng could not possibly treat them one by one. As for medicine, he was not skilled in preparing it, and the crucial ingredients were not available here. That left only treasure artifacts.

He had only recently begun learning how to make such artifacts. Could he really complete a task like this?

Jiang Feng sat down cross-legged, took out the illustrated treasure compendium left to him by Fang Liuxian, and began to study it intently.

Ping Luanshan and the others exchanged a glance and guarded him even more tightly.

At this moment, new monsters like the spider-woman demon kept appearing in the woods. They were slightly weaker than ranked demons, counting as high-grade mixed demons, but they were much stronger than the small demons that had appeared earlier. As soon as they emerged, the city defense soldiers immediately came under pressure.

After slaying the female demon, Captain Wei looked back.

On the open ground, the other three boys were still on guard, but the one in the middle was actually leisurely flipping through a scroll.

Though he knew they had been tossed over there by him, he still could not help but fly into a rage.

While the soldiers were fighting the demons there in life-and-death struggle, what exactly were they doing over here, taking a holiday?

He was just about to unleash a furious reprimand when Jiang Feng suddenly put away the scroll and looked up. “They’re here!”

At once, a gap appeared in the city defense line, and a squad of demons burst through it, charging straight toward the four boys on the open ground.

There were more than thirty demons in this squad. The first five were all at the same level as the spider-woman demon. They marched in formation, a black mass pressing forward, demonic energy swirling thickly around them. Even before they came close, they already brought with them a crushing sense of pressure.