Phoenix's Requiem

In fact, Yun Ruoyan and Lin Qingchen’s guesses were correct. In addition to having left the misdirection array, they had somehow managed to get to the center of the imperial territory, the thousand-herb valley.

Having been warned of magical beasts ahead, Yun Ruoyan quickly corralled everyone backwards in an attempt to avoid the beasts to their front. But before they were able to exit the valley, Zhuo Lin’er and Qiuqiu began to send out warnings again.

There were beasts to their back as well!

“Can you sense what rank these beasts are? Are we able to handle them at all?” Yun Ruoyan hurriedly asked Qiuqiu.

After having fought with such beasts a few times by now, Yun Ruoyan was rather confident in her team’s skills and abilities. As long as the beasts weren’t as strong as the saber-toothed tiger, she believed that they still had a fighting chance.

But before Qiuqiu could respond, Zhuo Lin’er became so scared that she started to cry. “Brother, run, quickly! There are so many beasts!”

“Is it a herd?” Zhuo Yifeng turned towards his sister, and her small, pale face nodded.

By this time, they could even hear what sounded like a stampede from front and back, growing noticeably louder with time. Along with the noise were dust clouds floating up from a distance.

The early days of summer were highly suited for growth. The valley was full of lush greenery, the ground neither arid nor dry. Unless there was a particularly large disturbance, there wouldn’t have been any visible dust at all.

Yun Ruoyan’s party, having escaped a two-pronged attack in the snake cave, was once again besieged by beasts in all directions. 

It would have been a lie to say that they didn’t panic. Even the naturally calm Lin Qingchen and inexpressive Zhuo Yifeng showed signs of anxiety once more, let alone Zhuo Lin’er and Lin Qingxue.

“What should we do?!” Lin Qingxue had already unsheathed her sword, her eyes looking at the dust clouds ahead, and then at the disturbance behind her. “Quick, think of a plan! I don’t want to be bitten to death by snakes, nor trodden to death by a beast stampede!”

Yun Ruoyan appeared to be much more calm than the other members of her group. After all, this was her second chance at life, and she was older and more experienced than these youths. Furthermore, the pain, hopelessness, and death that she had faced had strengthened and tempered her will.

Perhaps even Yun Ruoyan herself was unaware of these qualities, but whenever she was in a pinch, she always seemed to be able to face it in a clear-headed manner.

Yun Ruoyan’s eyes scanned her surroundings.

The little path along the valley wasn’t much larger than a street in the capital, and it would be large enough for about two carriages at once. From this, she could deduce that there could be about four or five mid-sized beasts running through at the same time, whereas there could only be one or two if the beasts were as large as the saber-toothed tiger from earlier.

This further meant that the beasts approaching from ahead and behind would inevitably end up in a clash, neither side willing to give way to the other.

Yun Ruoyan’s gaze landed on the mountainous terrain surrounding the valley. The mountains were impressively large, and if they wanted to scale the sides of the valley, it would be almost a vertical climb. Dotting the sides of the valley were some strange rugged rocks, as well as wild plants of unknown origin.

“Climb!” Yun Ruoyan called out, and she nimbly jumped up and found footholds in the rocky terrain. The sound of the stampede was growing louder and louder, and the others quickly followed suit without a second word.

By the time they were about twenty meters up, it sounded as if lightning had just struck the valley.

All sorts of crashing noises resounded, and a large cloud of dust rose up to obscure it all, almost swallowing up Yun Ruoyan’s group whole.

Yun Ruoyan was stepping on a protruding rock, her two hands clasped around a crooked tree. She twisted her upper body so she could observe the scene below, seeing thousands upon thousands of magical beasts’ horns and hides.

Because there were so many of them, and because the valley path was so narrow, there would frequently be beasts trampling over each other or crying out as their horns got tangled with others. 

The entire party was shocked by the scene below them: ever since their birth, they had remained in the capital. When had they ever seen so many beasts together at once?

The density of beasts outside of such realms was quite limited, after all, at least in the Li kingdom.

Even disciples from the larger families, while undergoing training to fight against magical beasts, would only get a chance to do so in their families’ schoolyard against young or injured beasts that had been captured. And there weren’t even many chances to do so: after all, there weren’t that many beasts to be had, and capturing them alive was even harder.

“Qiu, qiu!” Qiuqiu let out an excited hum in Yun Ruoyan’s mind. “Mistress, these are all herbivorous beasts, and if we encounter them while they’re not stampeding, as long as we don’t provoke them, they’re actually quite harmless.”

“Look, that’s a long-horned goat, and that’s a flame-touched steed.” As Qiuqiu described the beasts, Yun Ruoyan could indeed see that there were some beasts that looked like goats, but on a significantly larger scale.

As for flame-touched steeds, those were the beasts leading the stampede. They looked no different from ordinary horses except for their fiery-red manes, and when a herd of them gathered, it looked like bunches of kindling set aflame.

The Chenyuan continent had a record of magical beasts kept by all four of the kingdoms, recording tens of thousands of magical beasts of all natures. There were ones as small as the bunny whose core Yun Ruoyan had found, and ones so large and rare that Yun Ruoyan and the others had never encountered them.

But this record of magical beasts was kept as a treasure in one of the buildings in Kongming Academy. Most people would never see the genuine record, but only the few incomplete fragments floating around the market, scattered and copied by hand.

Suddenly, an ear-splitting cacophony rang out from below. The two groups of beasts had finally clashed, and those at the forefront were howling and groaning after the initial encounter.

Yun Ruoyan and the others couldn’t clearly see what was going on due to the dust that had appeared once again. Based on the cries and commotion alone, however, they could guess just how frightening the situation must be on the inside.

“My goodness!” Lin Qingchen glanced down at the beasts below her, still running forward heedless of the commotion. “If this keeps up, who knows how many beasts are going to die? If we loot all those carcasses, we’ll be rich!”

“Quick, look!” Lin Qingchen pointed at a dust plume ahead. “That plume’s moving towards us!”

It was indeed moving, quite slowly, towards Yun Ruoyan’s group.

“It looks like the beasts closer to us aren’t a match for those further away. Quick, we’d better climb up higher!” Yun Ruoyan continued her climb.

“My arms are so sore!” Lin Qingxue glanced at the near-vertical climb and grumbled.

Unlike most other families of their status, the Lins hadn’t set up a private schoolyard because of how few descendants there were, and Lin Zainan hadn’t arranged for private tutors for the two sisters. Instead, he taught them himself. He was stricter toward Lin Qingchen; faced with Lin Qingxue’s naivete and her surprisingly adept cultivation, he had subconsciously gone easier on her.

So although the two sisters had similar levels of cultivation and skill in terms of martial arts, Lin Qingxue was somewhat less athletic than her sister. She had only been climbing for a little while, but Lin Qingxue’s arms were sore and her legs trembling.

The group climbed up another few tens of meters, and within this time, the leading beast herd had pushed its way forward until the clash was directly under their feet.

The cries, moans, and howls of thousands of beasts were about to burst their eardrums, and some smaller-sized beasts were even flung up completely into the air by the collision, their bodies making an almost comical half-revolution before they smashed back down onto the ground once more.

This stampede would likely be seared into their minds for good.

“Be careful!” Yun Ruoyan suddenly saw a pig-sized beast about to fly into Zhuo Yifeng.

Zhuo Yifeng was nimble and the most athletic out of everyone in the group, so dodging wouldn’t have been too hard. The problem was Zhuo Lin’er, who was clinging onto his back like a koala. She was already at the limits of her strength, and if Zhuo Yifeng were to make too sudden or too large a movement, it was likely that she would fall.

Although Yun Ruoyan saw what was happening, she was too far away to help. But in the instant right before the collision, Zhuo Yifeng moved.

He twisted his body so that his sister was sandwiched between his back and the face of the cliff. With one hand, he grabbed onto the trunk of a small tree growing on the cliff, and with the other, a crevice in the rock. He lifted his right foot and accurately kicked at the beast’s head with a loud thud.

The beast, which was already half-dead from the clash that had sent its body up in the first place, died before it could fully land on the ground once more. Fortunately or otherwise, it avoided much of the pain associated with being trampled.

“Brother Zhuo, that was amazing!” Lin Qingxue couldn’t help but praise his athleticism. Were it not for the fact that her two hands were both clinging desperately onto the side of the cliff, she would surely have clapped loudly.

But just as the others were feeling relieved for the beastkin siblings, Zhuo Yifeng’s foot began to slip.

“Ah!” Accompanied by a few shouts, Zhuo Yifeng’s foot swung through the air as he desperately scrabbled for purchase. He quickly adjusted his posture in order to find new footholds, but his other leg slipped as well!

For a precarious moment, Zhuo Yifeng’s entire body hung in midair, supported solely by his powerful arms.

“Don’t move! We’re coming to rescue you!” Even the calm Yun Ruoyan couldn’t help getting nervous.

Lin Qingxue was so scared that she was almost on the verge of tears. If the two of them were to fall down now, their bodies would be obliterated by the beasts below.

Although the Lin siblings were closer to Zhuo Yifeng, they were both struggling just to keep themselves clinging onto the cliff, let alone someone as large as Zhuo Yifeng. Yun Ruoyan was the only one who could be of assistance.

Yun Ruoyan began her agonizingly slow movement towards Zhuo Yifeng.

Zhuo Yifeng also knew that the safest thing to do now would be to remain still and wait for Yun Ruoyan to save them, but Zhuo Lin’er simply couldn’t hold on any longer.

Zhuo Lin’er had slender arms and legs, in stark contrast with her brother’s powerful limbs. Her small body slowly slid down from Zhuo Yifeng’s back, unable to support her body weight any longer.

“Brother…” She looked down at the beast stampede below in despair, then glanced at Zhuo Yifeng once more. “Brother, I can’t hang on.”

She released her grip, and her body began to fall.

“Lin’er!” Zhuo Yifeng shouted immediately, releasing his left hand, tilting his body, and catching her in the nick of time.

But now, all that was keeping the two of them from falling was his right hand, desperately gripping onto the slender tree trunk on top of them, which was showing signs of curving under the burden.

The two siblings were like a leaf desperately clinging onto its branch at the end of autumn, precariously bobbing to and fro as dust swirled around them.