Chapter 33: Set a Thief to Catch a Thief

Wu Chang tied his horse outside and stepped alone into the mist.

Visibility within the fog was extremely low; a damp scent assaulted his senses, mingled faintly with the smell of burning and a subtle metallic tang of blood.

Around him, all was deathly silent, broken only by the sound of his own breath. It was as if the mist had become a realm of death.

In one hand, he gripped the silver Dawnlight blade; in the other, the Soul-Cleansing Banner, alert to the shifting mists surrounding him.

By all logic, when temperatures drop below a certain point, the moisture in the air condenses, causing the humidity to decrease.

Near Chenjia Village, the cold was bone-chilling—well below minus twenty degrees Celsius. Under such conditions, thick fog should not form. The presence of such dense mist was unnatural.

As he ventured deeper into the fog, faint sounds began to reach his ears.

A dull creaking, like footsteps sinking into snow, came from right beside him. Yet when he followed the sound, he found nothing but empty air.

A solitary set of footprints appeared out of nowhere, then vanished just as mysteriously.

Quite shy, it seemed.

Without engaging the followers trailing behind, Wu Chang pressed forward, soon spotting the outline of Chenjia Village.

Nestled against the mountain, the village’s buildings were arranged in terraces. To facilitate trade with traveling merchants, villagers had built a small town at the mountain’s base.

At its peak, the town bustled with activity rivaling any normal settlement beyond the mountains. But with bandits ravaging the region, Chenjia Village had fallen into quiet desolation, reviving only briefly at the ends of spring and autumn each year.

The town’s condition was grim, as if it had endured a brutal battle.

The town gate had been violently broken open; the four-meter-high solid wooden door was shattered into three pieces, the breaks clearly caused by a heavy blunt force.

Nearly half the houses had been burned to charcoal, and every mountain breeze kicked up blackened ash.

Known for their martial spirit, the villagers had fiercely resisted the sudden attack.

Blood spatters and scars from blades were everywhere on the streets and walls.

Yet oddly, despite the chaotic battlefield scene, the town was unnervingly clean—no corpses were visible.

Who had the civic virtue to clean up after such a fight?

Going door to door, Wu Chang came upon the seventh house’s backyard, where a faint red aura of resentment lingered.

Beneath it lay a concealed vegetable cellar, its door completely frozen shut from the outside.

Breaking through the ice crust and opening the door, he found a corpse dressed like a traveling merchant collapsed behind it.

The merchant had neither starved nor frozen to death; his face was smeared with blood, and he seemed to have died by striking himself.

Let me see what happened.

The resentment revealed a scene from the village’s tragedy.

The battle had taken place at midnight. That evening, the merchant had just lain down when cries of combat erupted outside.

He hastily dressed and opened the door to find flames roaring skyward. From a distance, he saw a dozen young villagers surrounding a four-meter-tall ghost-faced ape in the center.

The ghost-faced ape resembled the mountain demon Liu Shan had mentioned. The creature shimmered with a golden light, impervious to blades and spears, and slaughtered the villagers in a few swift passes.

Terrified by the monster, the merchant dared not leave. He hid in the cellar, praying for survival.

Soon, the cries faded; all seemed to have passed.

But a sudden fog rolled in, seeping through cracks and filling the cellar.

Within the mist, the merchant’s mind grew hyper-sensitive, consumed by fear. He sat before the cellar door clutching a fire striker.

He dared not look back, as though the darkness behind him hid the world’s most terrifying entity.

As time wore on, his body trembled; his expression shifted from nervousness to unease, then to panic, finally slipping into collapse and madness.

Determined to escape at all costs, even if it meant death by the creature outside, he tried to open the door—only to find it frozen shut.

He pounded and battered the door, but it did not budge.

When his hands gave out, he slammed his head against it, biting and rubbing his face against the wood...

Only after exhausting his last breath did the merchant perish, uncertain whether from fatigue or fright.

The vision faded as Wu Chang withdrew from the resentment.

The fog shrouding Chenjia Village was indeed abnormal. The merchant had been driven mad by prolonged exposure, leading to his death.

Only his extraordinary willpower—many times stronger than an ordinary man’s—and the Soul-Cleansing Banner had shielded him from sensing the mist’s strangeness.

Further searches turned up seven or eight more corpses. Their deaths mirrored the merchant’s—self-inflicted under the fog’s influence.

Sadly, these souls left no resentment behind, leaving no further clues.

Estimating that nightfall approached, Wu Chang ceased his exhaustive search and released his senses, entering a near-meditative state. He sought to find clues through intuition stronger than mere will.

In a daze, he felt the Soul-Cleansing Banner flutter slightly, as if drawn by some unseen force.

Following its guidance, he arrived at the town’s edge near the mountain.

Here had once stood Chenjia Village’s warehouse and trading grounds, where nearby mountain villages gathered goods to sell to passing merchants.

But now, the marketplace had turned into a slaughterhouse.

The storage area was piled high with dead villagers—over a thousand young men arrayed neatly. The biting cold mist filled the air, transforming the space into an immense cold storage.

Ah, so the monsters were raiding the mountain goods as well.

While admiring the monsters’ grand gesture, Wu Chang soon noticed a troubling detail.

When viewing the merchant’s resentment, he had not sensed any problems with Chenjia Village. But now, seeing thousands of villagers lined up, they hardly looked like innocent victims.

All the dead were strong young men. One might excuse this by saying the women and children had been sent away.

Their muscular bodies and robust bones could be explained by frequent mountain travel and rigorous exercise.

Yet seven out of ten bore knife scars or other wounds, which might be attributed to fierce wild beasts in the mountains.

But how to explain the pile of swords, spears, and halberds scattered about?

Even in another realm, hoarding thousands of weapons smacked of rebellion.

Moreover, given the villagers’ physical prowess, their level of armament far exceeded what was needed for self-defense. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to call them a private army raised by some faction.

Piecing these facts together, a bold idea formed in Wu Chang’s mind.

Could Chenjia Village actually be the bandit group Black Mountain Gang, fleeing into the Bailihuai Mountains?

If so, then the village’s destruction by monsters might be poetic justice—evil meeting its match.

The villagers were all strong and vigorous, prone to intense resentment after death.

Through their lingering resentment, Wu Chang gained a complete understanding of the calamity that befell Chenjia Village.

Five days prior, on the day the palace lantern was returned to Huaigu Village.

Villagers and merchants drank heartily, discussing the recent relaxation of government control over the Bailihuai Mountains and whether to increase the twice-yearly trade fairs to four times.

Amidst the revelry, the village’s anti-monster formation suddenly shattered, and the tower lights extinguished simultaneously.

In the ensuing chaos, a mountain demon slipped near the village, breaking in with five or six other monsters and slaughtering the entire village.

Two of these monsters were familiar to Wu Chang—the mountain demon couple he had encountered at the black market when first entering this realm.

No wonder the cold storage looked like a meat locker—those two had a habit of butchery.

Recollecting the five or six monsters that appeared in the resentment, Wu Chang felt a headache coming on.

From defeating a single evil spirit to facing an entire team of monsters—that was a marked increase in difficulty, likely due to this realm’s corruption.

However, since entering Chenjia Village, no attacks had come his way, indicating the monsters had already left.

Before their return, he must act swiftly.

Having gathered sufficient intelligence through the resentment, he left the trading grounds.

As he stepped outside, the fog enveloping the village swirled into a vortex, coalescing into a figure in the central square.

An icy chill and murderous intent washed over him.

Wu Chang shrugged—apparently, the monsters had left a sentinel behind.