bookbashuk Chapter 412 The Black Tide is Coming
Chapter 412 The Black Tide is Coming
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A crack stretched across the sky, like a wound torn open by some force.
Zhou Da stood at the entrance of the teahouse, head tilted back, motionless.
He had lived most of his life, seen the snowstorms of the northern frontier, the scimitars of the barbarians, and mountains of corpses and seas of blood. But he had never seen anything like this.
A dark red light flowed along the edge of the crack, like blood or fire. From the crack, a low, guttural roar could be faintly heard, as if countless ancient beasts had been awakened from their slumber and were struggling to crawl out.
"What...what is this?"
The young scout's voice came from behind, trembling violently.
Zhou Da didn't turn around; he didn't even move. He simply stared at the crack, at the black mist gushing out from it, and at the increasingly clear figures within the mist.
He remembered many things.
He recalled the scene sixteen years ago when he followed Commander Wei on his northern expedition and first witnessed the barbarian army pressing in. Back then, he stood just like he is now, gazing at the dark, oppressive tide on the horizon, his palms sweating, yet he did not retreat an inch.
At that time, what he feared was death.
He doesn't know what he's afraid of now.
A loud crash came from behind—the sound of a teacup shattering on the ground. The young scout's legs went weak, and he had to lean against the doorframe to keep his balance. The other nineteen riders weren't in much better shape. Some instinctively reached for the swords at their waists, some trembled as if trying to say something but couldn't utter a word, and some simply closed their eyes, as if waiting for something to happen.
But Zhou Da noticed something else.
Those mortals working in the open fields—
They were also looking up.
An old man carrying a hoe craned his neck, gazing up at the crack. The hoe was still on his shoulder, but he just stared. A younger farmer beside him leaned over and said something. The old man shook his head and continued to stare.
The children who had been chasing the ball stopped. The youngest girl, with her hair in a topknot, pointed to the crack in the sky and turned back to shout, "Mom! Look! What a huge black worm!"
Her mother looked up from the well, glanced at the horizon, then lowered her head to continue washing clothes, muttering, "Don't point nonsense, come and hang the clothes up."
The girl reluctantly ran over, took the wooden basin, but kept looking back at the sky.
Zhou Da was stunned.
He looked at the ordinary people, then at the pale-faced elite soldiers of the Western Army behind him, and suddenly felt as if he understood something.
These people are not afraid.
It's not the kind of fearlessness that comes from not being afraid of death; it's that the word "fear" never even crossed my mind.
They lived on this land for two years, a year, a few months, and saw too many strange things. Square houses, water that flowed without the need for wells, glass windows so transparent they could cover an entire wall, and immortal masters who never bullied mortals.
In their eyes, the crack, the black mist, and the shadowy figures—
It's probably just one of the "divine methods".
Zhou Da's Adam's apple bobbed violently.
He recalled what the scholar Shen Mo had said: "It's quite nice here. We have food to eat, shelter to live in, and work to do."
Those mortals stand here not because they are not afraid.
It's because they believe.
They believe in this mountain, in the immortal masters who never bully them, and in the fact that no matter what happens, there will always be someone to protect them.
Zhou Da didn't know how this "trust" was gradually built up.
But he knew that as he stood there, gazing at the crack in the sky, the chill that ran down his spine was not fear, but awe.
Awe of a mountain.
The awe of "Master Chen" whom we have never met, yet who makes every mortal dare to stand up and look at the sky.
The cracks are getting bigger and bigger.
The black fog grew thicker and thicker.
The shadowy figures finally broke through the mist, revealing their true forms—
Those are soldiers.
It was not any kind of soldier that Zhou Da had ever seen.
They were over ten feet tall, clad in jet-black armor with dark red patterns flowing across its surface, resembling dried blood or some kind of ancient runes. They wielded long swords, their blades as black as ink, yet faintly gleaming with a blood-red light. They surged forth from the crevice, forming square formations, one after another, row upon row, like a black tide rolling in from the horizon.
No one speaks.
The ordinary people on the open ground quietly watched the black tide. The children forgot to chase the sphere, the women stopped washing their clothes, and the old man carrying a hoe put it down and just stood there.
The twenty elite cavalrymen behind Zhou Da no longer touched their swords.
They just stood there, staring, like twenty stone statues who had forgotten how to move.
The black tide was getting closer and closer.
As they drew closer, Zhou Dacai could finally make out the faces of those "soldiers"—not human faces. They were faces mostly covered by armor, with only their eye sockets visible. There were no pupils in their eye sockets, only two eerie, dark red lights, like two inextinguishable hellfires.
The Kuroshio Current did not recede.
The overwhelming black torrent suddenly split when it approached within a thirty-mile radius of Yunyin Mountain.
Like an invisible giant blade cleaving the entire sky, 500,000 demon soldiers split into more than a dozen groups, sweeping off in different directions—to the Purple Lightning Gate in the east, the Joyful Union Sect in the southwest, the Azure Sun Valley in the due north, and the scattered dens of rogue cultivators and the residences of small sects in the mountains and forests.
None of the teams remained.
Not a single soldier was left at the foot of Yunyin Mountain.
Zhou Da looked up, gazing at the black torrents streaking across the horizon, like countless black dragons roaring and surging in all directions. His knees were numb; not because he wanted to kneel, but because he had been standing for so long that he had forgotten to move.
The young scout behind him finally couldn't hold on any longer and sat down on the ground with a thud, his lips trembling, but he couldn't utter a single word.
Inside the teahouse, Shen Mo emerged at some point and stood beside Zhou Da, also looking up at the receding black tide. His face was also somewhat pale, but he was much calmer than the soldiers of the Western Prefecture.
"This is... the 'good show' that Master Chen was talking about?" Zhou Da didn't look at Shen Mo, but stared blankly at the sky, muttering to himself.
........................
Qingyang Valley.
Xuanzhenzi stood atop the main peak, gazing at the rapidly approaching black torrent on the horizon, his beard and hair trembling slightly in the wind.
He had lived for 973 years, witnessed battles between powerful cultivators and demons, sieges by monsters, and the panicked flight of cultivators when natural disasters struck. But he had never seen anything like it—it was neither a cultivator, nor a monster, nor anything he could define using any known experience.
That's a demon.
A pure, undisguised demon, as if crawling out of the depths of hell.
"Valley Master!" Qingluo's escape light landed beside him, her voice trembling noticeably for the first time, "What is that?"
Xuanzhenzi did not answer.
He recognized him.
Two years ago, at dusk, he stood thirty miles away from Yunyin Mountain, sensing the "disobedient" spiritual energy and the faint yet omnipresent sense of oppression. At that time, he wondered what kind of trump card the young man hiding on Yunyin Mountain held.
Now he knows.
"Pass down the order," Xuanzhenzi's voice was calm, as calm as if he were talking about the weather, "All disciples, abandon the valley."
Qingluo was stunned.
"Valley Master..."
"Abandon the valley," Xuanzhenzi interrupted her, "Run as far as you can—"
He didn't finish speaking.
Because that black torrent has arrived.
Zhou Su stood in the courtyard of the outer gate's steward's hall, looking up at the dark tide that blotted out the sky. The jade slip in his hand slipped and fell to the ground, breaking in two.
He had lived most of his life, climbing step by step from a menial servant to an outer sect steward, witnessing countless events and meeting countless people. He thought nothing could make him lose his composure anymore.
But at that moment his legs were shaking.
It wasn't fear, but rather an instinctive reaction ingrained in one's bones when facing divine might.
The Kuroshio stopped above Qingyang Valley.
Those figures, each about ten feet tall, hovered in mid-air. Their black armor gleamed eerily in the sunlight, and dark red patterns flowed slowly, like countless eyes watching everything below.
The leader, clad in armor thicker than the other demon generals, wielded a jet-black longsword taller than a man. He looked down at Qingyang Valley, the two dark red orbs in his eyes flickering slightly.
"By order of the Lord—"
His voice was like muffled thunder rolling across the sky, causing the entire Qingyang Valley to tremble slightly.
"Those who surrender at Qingyang Valley will be spared death."
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