Although the Kan Gang had long been wary of the disaster brought by Ba, they’d been busy fighting the allied army before this, and this calamity had erupted far too suddenly and violently. Aside from reinforcing their defensive grand formation, they had almost no other preparations in place.
As Bao Gu and Yu Mi came out of the Shadow Pavilion’s branch hidden under the Kan Gang compound, they saw many Kan Gang disciples staggering back to the sub-hall, all in miserable shape, some grievously wounded. It looked like they had just lost a crushing battle.
The medics were overwhelmed. The healing medicines they had prepared were nowhere near enough. Medics, wounded disciples, and inner-hall members of the Kan Gang were rushing back and forth through the sub-hall, everyone’s eyes filled with panic and the lingering terror of having narrowly survived.
When the Kan Gang disciples saw Bao Gu and Yu Mi, every gaze turned to them. Quite a few disciples crowded over, stammering,
“Command Master…”
Bao Gu asked,
“What happened? How did you all end up this badly hurt?”
A Kan Gang disciple who had lost his right arm, his whole body dyed red with blood, his face deathly pale, spoke with lingering fear,
“We were hunting down the remnants of Wangxian Sect when, all of a sudden, blood-mist surged everywhere, the earth began to shake, and deep bottomless cracks split open in the ground. Then… then… a lot of… a lot of monsters rushed out from the fissures. They… they were like the corpse fiends and corpse ghosts you talked about, Command Master. They… they…”
Bao Gu asked,
“What about them?”
A nearby inner-hall disciple, his clothes in tatters and his internal injuries severe, lifted a hand to wipe the blood at the corner of his mouth and said,
“They were all skeletons. There were two flickering blood-red flames burning in their eye sockets, their bones glowing faintly red. On their bodies… on their bodies… on their bodies were all kinds of clothes, all mixed together, from many different sects. I… I recognized them. They looked like… like the allied army that disappeared in the Archaic Mountain Range. I… I… I recognized one of them. His clothes were… were those of the Crown Prince of the Golden Crow Sacred Dynasty… I… I heard he vanished with that million-strong army in the Archaic Mountain Range before all this…”
Yu Mi patted the man’s arm.
“Go down and rest. Focus on healing.”
She looked around and raised her voice,
“Everyone already knew this catastrophe was coming, and the Kan Gang has countermeasures in place. There’s no need to panic!”
After calming the inner-hall disciples around them, she took Bao Gu’s hand and led her toward the exit of the sub-hall.
“The inner-hall is already like this,” Yu Mi said. “Who knows how chaotic it is outside. Let’s go take a look.”
Bao Gu gave a soft “Mm” and walked out with Yu Mi at her side. Along the way, wounded Kan Gang disciples fleeing back were practically endless.
When the great quake of the Archaic Mountain Range had just begun, there had been Shadow Pavilion scouts outside the range. They saw blood fiend energy and deathly qi surging into the sky, triggering strange omens in the heavens. At the same time, the earth shook violently and mountains collapsed. After that, all contact with the Shadow Pavilion scouts outside the range was lost. Other news had also come in—some cultivators had extended their divine sense into the Archaic Mountains and seen the peaks crumbling…
Ba was sealed inside the Ba Coffin, bound by chains forged from divine metal coiled around it. The other ends of those divine metal chains were anchored into the nine mountain ranges of the Archaic Range, using the power of the Nine-Dragon Mountain Range to hold them fixed. If all nine ranges collapsed, the nine divine metal chains binding the Ba Coffin would no longer be able to restrain Ba. Without the divine chains, would Ba’s emergence from the coffin and into the world be far off?
Bao Gu did not know whether Ba had already escaped the coffin.
Her mind drifting to the Ba sealed in the Archaic Mountains, Bao Gu stepped out of the Kan Gang sub-hall and was stunned by the scene before her.
The huge plaza outside the sub-hall was packed full of cultivators. From their clothing, there were rogue cultivators as well as disciples from various powers. Almost all of them were in pitiful condition, many badly wounded, clothes in rags, bodies covered in injuries.
Compared to this sight, even the starving refugees she had seen as a child—those who’d fled in droves from a famine-stricken neighboring county to seek refuge in Qing Shan County—had looked better. At least those refugees hadn’t been missing limbs, or drenched from head to toe in blood.
Not far ahead of her, a cultivator was curled up on the ground, vomiting blood in great mouthfuls. The blood he spat out was mixed with bits of internal organs. There was a huge hole in his chest, yet he didn’t even have any hemostatic medicine on him. His blood had already dyed the ground red. If he kept vomiting like that, even as a Golden Core cultivator, he wouldn’t last more than a quarter of an hour.
She couldn’t just stand there and watch someone die in front of her and do nothing.
Bao Gu took a step and appeared beside the man. She knelt down to examine his injuries and found that something sharp had pierced straight through his chest. He had sealed off his meridians and acupoints himself, but the wound showed no sign of healing at all. Clearly, he hadn’t used any healing medicine.
She took out a healing pill and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Hold it under your tongue.”
Then she poured out some external-use medicinal powder and sprinkled it over his wound.
The moment the pill entered his mouth, he coughed up another mouthful of blood, spewing out the half-dissolved pill right along with it. He stared at the medicine he had just spat onto the ground, then grabbed what remained of the pill and jammed it back into his mouth, sitting cross-legged at once to circulate his qi.
Blood stained his hands and his lips; in fact, his whole body was like a figure molded from blood.
Bao Gu’s eyes stung and turned red. Her chest felt painfully tight.
Not far away, a severely wounded cultivator convulsed on the ground, then kicked his limbs straight and stopped breathing. His eyes stared wide open, unclosed even in death.
Bao Gu watched him die, frozen and dazed.
In her memory, cultivators had always possessed strong bodies. As long as they didn’t die on the spot, as soon as spiritual treasures and medicinal pills were poured down their throats, they wouldn’t die. Yet… a Nascent Soul cultivator had just died right in front of her.
She quickly rushed to his side and searched his body, finding several storage artifacts. Inside were plenty of miscellaneous items—but no spirit medicine, no spirit wine, not even a single spirit stone. It wasn’t that he was poor; he still had a few valuables. But he no longer carried anything that could heal injuries or save his life. Most likely, he had used them all up earlier.
Bao Gu put his storage artifacts back on him, stood up, and waved to the guards on duty at the Kan Gang sub-hall entrance.
Two guards hurried over, cupped their fists, and said,
“We’ll drag the corpse out for disposal immediately, Command Master!”
Bao Gu waved her hand.
“Forget the corpse for now. Go to the apothecaries and spirit taverns in the city and see if they have any healing pills or spirit wine left. If they do, have them send everything here. I’ll buy whatever they’ve got.”
The two guards froze for a moment, then cupped their fists and sprinted off.
Bao Gu waved again to the guards at the sub-hall gate.
This time it was the guard captain who rushed over. There were too many cultivators gathered outside the sub-hall, and the Kan Gang was worried something might happen, so they had assigned many men to guard the gate, including a commander who led a thousand troops.
Bao Gu said,
“Go check if any physicians at our infirmary are free…”
Halfway through, she remembered how many inner-hall disciples were injured. She didn’t even need to think to know they wouldn’t be free.
She changed course.
“Send a squad to all parts of Cangdu City to invite doctors. Then send more men to scout the city and find out how many places are in this kind of condition.”
The commander cupped his fists and immediately began issuing orders.
Bao Gu lifted her gaze and carefully swept it over the plaza. Most of the people present were Foundation Establishment and Golden Core cultivators. There were a few Nascent Soul cultivators, but not a single Soul Transformation one.
Any cultivator at Soul Transformation level could carve out a place for themselves anywhere. Even in a calamity like this, it was hard to imagine them ending up lying out on the streets.
When she had secluded herself some years ago, she had worried about getting rusty in alchemy. Every month she had fired up the furnace a few times to practice and test new pill recipes, and over the years she’d accumulated quite a stockpile in her pill room. Most of those pills were suited for Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and Nascent Soul cultivators, with healing pills, Foundation Establishment Pills, Golden Core Pellets, and Nascent Soul Pills making up the bulk.
Human lives were at stake. Bao Gu didn’t feel the slightest reluctance over these pills that usually just sat in the pill room collecting dust. She immediately split off a portion and handed them to Yu Mi.
“Senior Sister, save people first.”
They started with those who were gravely injured and had received no treatment.
It was noon, but because of the strange phenomena over the Archaic Mountains, heaven and earth were shrouded in gloom. To ordinary mortals, everything under that light would be nothing but vague, blurry silhouettes.
Yu Mi said,
“Something like this doesn’t need you or me personally.”
After speaking, she turned back into the sub-hall. Before long she returned with several people wearing Xuantian Sect disciple robes, along with Kan Gang guards. Bao Gu handed over the healing pills, and Yu Mi assigned them to go out and save people.
Before long, the scouts sent out earlier returned.
“Reporting to the Command Master, we couldn’t get a full count. All the plazas in Cangdu City are packed with people, and more are still flooding toward the city.”
Bao Gu could see the dread in their faces.
She nodded.
“Understood.”
She turned to Yu Mi.
“Senior Sister, let’s go look for ourselves.”
Yu Mi summoned her flying sword and followed closely behind Bao Gu.
Bao Gu followed the main road outside the Kan Gang compound straight toward the city gate. Along the way, she saw that both sides of the street were lined with cultivators in miserable condition, clothes torn, bodies covered in wounds. Stains of blood were everywhere on the road.
The taverns and inns lining the street were packed to bursting and filled with noisy chatter. From within came the faint shouts of the staff.
“Everyone, we’re out of spirit wine. Really, we’re out of spirit wine…”
Before long, she reached the city gate.
The Yue Kingdom army stood in battle formation along the city walls, fully on guard. But the city gates were wide open. Cultivators drenched in blood and covered in wounds were rushing into the city in panic, faces twisted with terror. Those who could not run any longer could only crawl forward bit by bit, dragged into the city by the gate guards.
There were too many people grievously wounded. The soldiers guarding the gate couldn’t handle them all. Those so badly hurt they could not be moved, they simply dragged away from the gate and dumped at the base of the walls.
At the foot of the wall, the maimed and dying lay stacked in heaps so thick they almost covered the very corners of the city wall. Some had their bellies split open, their intestines spilling out. Some were missing arms or legs and still bleeding, breaths shallow and ragged. Some were already dead, corpses and the dying piled together in pools of blood, with no one to spare them a glance.
This was the capital of Yue Kingdom. This was the royal city’s main gate.
Yet here, corpses and the wounded formed mounds, and the blood had dyed every brick at the gate scarlet. Every step landed on blood…
Bao Gu had lived through the famine in Qing Shan County, had suffered through two clan exterminations, had even slaughtered tens of thousands in a city before.
But she had never seen a hellscape as horrific as this.
Too tragic.
Her throat clenched, and her eyes grew misty.
Yu Mi had already rushed into the heaps of bodies, digging out those who still had a breath in them, those who were still alive, pulling them from amidst the corpses and forcing healing pills and spirit wine down their throats.
Seeing someone saving lives, the guards started dragging the worst cases over to Yu Mi’s side.
Bao Gu rushed to a female cultivator nearby and poured a mouthful of Monkey Wine down her throat. Seeing that the woman was still somewhat conscious, she asked,
“How… how did you get hurt like this? Where did you come from?”
“Little River Town… skeleton monsters… too many skeleton monsters… corpse ghosts… corpse fiends…”
The woman grabbed Bao Gu’s arm, clutching hard. She stared at Bao Gu and said,
“You’re the Blade Command Master, right? The one… who talked about the Ba calamity… It really is the Ba calamity… Only me… only I… killed my way… out… The rest… they’re all dead…”
She paused to catch her breath.
“There… there was blood mist, mist like blood, full of thick… thick baleful qi. It… it makes it hard… to breathe, you can’t summon qi, your whole body goes weak, like… like being poisoned… Grass… and trees… anything it touches… withers instantly…”
Bao Gu had no idea where Little River Town was, or how far it was from Cangdu City. But even if all the nearby cultivators fled toward Cangdu, there still shouldn’t be this many.
She asked,
“Why… why are you all coming to Cangdu City?”
The female cultivator looked weakly at her and said,
“The whole cultivation world knows you gave Yue Kingdom the method to deal with the Ba calamity. Yue Kingdom has been preparing against Ba for a long time. Though it’s close to the Archaic Mountain Range, this… this is still the sturdiest city around. Haven’t… haven’t you always said so?”
Bao Gu handed her a bottle of healing pills and a jug of third-tier spirit wine.
“These healing pills are enough for you to recover.”
“Thank you…”
The woman swallowed two pills, leaned back against the wall, and burst into tears.
“Help… help me…”
A man covered in blood, missing one leg, his entire body a mass of deep, bone-revealing wounds with barely any intact flesh left, crawled to Bao Gu’s feet. He clutched at the hem of her skirt and looked up at her in desperate supplication.
“Save me… I’m willing… I’m willing to be your slave… to serve you…”
Seeing Bao Gu and Yu Mi saving people, more and more of those unwilling to die struggled to crawl toward them, begging for help.
A gate guard dragging a corpse over glanced at Yu Mi and Bao Gu.
“There’s no way to save them all. Too many are wounded.”
Bao Gu could find no words to refute him.
The Kan Gang Cangdu sub-hall infirmary had prepared plenty of healing medicines, hadn’t they? Yet when she left earlier, she had already heard people saying the infirmary’s stock was almost exhausted and they had rushed to the treasury to get more.
With so many Kan Gang disciples wounded, the physicians barely had time to save their own people. How could they spare anyone to come save the ones outside?
If that was how the Kan Gang was, how could Yue Kingdom be doing better? How could any other faction be doing better? There were just too many injured; everyone was barely managing to take care of their own.
Bao Gu knew that what they lacked was not physicians, but medicine. Even spirit wine would do. If there was no spirit wine, even a handful of spirit stones might help. The spiritual power in them might be enough to trigger a dying person’s dantian into circulating again, buying back a life.
She said to Yu Mi,
“Senior Sister, we have to save them.”
She shoved a large pile of healing pills and spirit wine into Yu Mi’s hands.
“You save people here. I’ll go back to the Kan Gang to arrange for people to bring out medicine to distribute and set up treatment points.”
With that, she hurried back, sending a transmission to the Demon Saint as she ran, describing the catastrophe spreading through the cultivation world.
“Saint Aunt, can you help me fire up the furnace and refine pills? I need a lot of healing medicine… a lot…”
The Demon Saint let out a long, heavy sigh through the communication talisman.
“We’ll come as quickly as we can, Shuer and I.”
Bao Gu returned to the Kan Gang sub-hall and began assigning people, distributing healing pills and ordering them to set up treatment stations wherever the wounded were most densely gathered. She then found Wang Ding and ordered him to send more healing pills and spirit wine to every Kan Gang inn and instructed the inn staff to save people as well.
Cold sweat broke out all over Wang Ding’s back.
The Kan Gang didn’t have that many healing pills and spirit wine to hand out.
“Command Master, the medicines and spirit wine the Kan Gang prepared are already not enough for our own inner-hall.”
You don’t know how bad our casualties are, he thought.
“With the Ba calamity rampaging, we’ll need even more healing medicine in the future. Right now, a single pill is a single life. If we have to choose between our own inner-hall disciples and outsiders, I will always choose our own first!”
Blue veins bulged at his temples in his anxiety.
“Command Master, I understand your compassion and your desire to save them, but the Kan Gang really doesn’t have a single spare pill to give. The Ba calamity has turned many regions into deadlands. Countless herb fields and medicine gardens have been destroyed, no spiritual herbs can be grown. Healing pills will only become rarer, and no one knows when this Ba disaster will end. As long as the fighting goes on, healing medicine will only grow more precious… Even the Kan Gang can barely hold on as it is…”
Just then, another Kan Gang disciple rushed in to report, breathless,
“Left Envoy, we just received word. When the earth shook, Hao Capital City sank entirely underground. Hao Capital is gone. No one from the city escaped…”
Wang Ding nodded stiffly.
“I understand. You may go.”
His eyes were red as he let out a hoarse, grief-stricken roar.
“The Kan Gang’s thirty thousand elite troops were all garrisoned in Hao Capital…”
A chill shot up from the soles of Bao Gu’s feet to the back of her skull, piercing through her entire body.
Not long after, Yu Mi returned. She told Bao Gu that she had used up all the healing pills and spirit wine on her.
A drop in the ocean.
