“Yin Qing, why did you run so far to relieve yourself? This mountain is dangerous!”
Mo Xiu ca over, panting slightly, only to see Yin Qing standing there stupidly.
“Are you already done? I might as well go then, too.”
While speaking, Mo Xiu went behind a rock and started to unfasten his belt.
“No, no, I haven’t started peeing yet.”
Yin Qing responded and hurriedly approached the other side of the mountain face. While unfastening his pants, he looked around. He did not see the strange-looking man who claid to be a mountain god with a stutter, nor did he see the paper crane.
In truth, Yin Qing had only seen the paper crane two or three tis before, and each ti he watched the paper crane fly to Hu Yun to peck at him. He had heard about how Mr. Ji wrote a lot of words on the paper crane, but the surface of its body still looked white and empty.
By the ti Yin Qing and Mo Xiu had both finished urinating, Yin Qing had inspected almost every stone and bush with his gaze, but still couldn’t find anything.
“Let’s go, what are you looking at?”
“Ah, let’s go.”
There was nothing else he could do, so Yin Qing had to go back with Mo Xiu. However, on the way back, the paper crane flew back to Yin Qing’s side once more, sliding into his arms while Yin Qing was surprised.
In fact, the paper crane was not very intelligent. In addition to its instinct to seek good fortune and avoid danger, it could also simply distinguish its master’s orders and give clear responses. The reason why it had pecked Yin Qing three tis earlier was not because it understood the true aning of the question, but because it understood basic facts: one peck ant that its master was here, two pecks ant he wasn’t here anymore.
When Yin Qing and Mo Xiu returned to where everyone was resting, the group was preparing to set off again. They recounted so interesting tales in the anti, and had been resting for a quarter of an hour.
The group took another half hour to circumnavigate Huanggou Ridge. The terrain began to descend from its previous upward trend, until they finally reached a large downhill sloping path.
“Great! Finally, I don’t have to climb up anymore. I can finally walk down. This will save a lot of energy!”
Lin Xinjie was so excited that he announced these words as if he had been given an imperial pardon.
“Haha, young man, there is a saying that it is easier to go up the mountain than to go down. This section of the road is where you need to be careful. Huzi, Li Yin, Chuanzi, keep an eye on these three scholars, make sure they avoid any accidents.”
“Hey!”
“I understand, Uncle Lu.”
“I understand, Uncle Lu.”
The three scholars scratched their heads, but didn’t ask why Yin Qing was not included in the protection. After all, as long as they weren’t blind, they could see that Yin Qing’s physical strength was not inferior to that of the traveling rchants.
Sure enough, just as Old Boss Lu had said, going down was far more difficult than going up. It consud a lot of physical energy. So people felt that their legs were going to give out as they walked down the mountain. In addition, the road was slippery after the rain, so everyone advanced extrely carefully.
A strong man whose leg was bitten previously was full of energy, and didn’t feel that it was expending too much of his energy. However, on his very next step, he landed on a loose stone.
“Hey, hey…”
“Be careful!”
“Grab him! Grab him!”
“Clatter-taktaktak…”
The stone rolled directly down the mountain path, and the man was so frightened that he couldn’t stop slipping, even after planting his feet. He was about to fall all the way down, but he suddenly found several small protrusions on the mountain path under his feet, which gave him a foothold. Only then was he able to stabilize his toppling body and grab a small tree nearby.
“Are you okay, Xiao Liu?”
“Brother Liu!”
“Slow down, take it easy!”
A few people to the side quickly gathered around.
“Hooh… That was dangerous, I almost fell. If I had rolled all the way down like that, I might have lost my life!”
The man surnad Liu sat down on the slope, looked down. and wiped the cold sweat off his forehead with his sleeves. He had sweated more in that mont than he had in the entire previous half hour.
“Hey, Brother Liu, there’s blood on your trouser legs!”
Hearing this, the man rolled up his trouser leg and looked at the place where he had been bitten by the fox yesterday. Sure enough, blood started seeping through the bandage. He untied it to take a look and found that the wound had split open again.
“Ouch, it looks a little infected. This fox’s mouth is quite poisonous!”
“Let’s watch over it tonight. Now is not the ti to rest!”
After being frightened by this incident, the group traveled more cautiously. At noon, they had a al of cold water in bamboo tubes, so biscuits, and stead buns. Before dark, the rchants found a cave on the trail that was about one zhang deep and about four or five zhang wide.1
This cave looked quite scary, as if a large rock had been split down the middle by so supernatural axe, and felt as though it would fall down at any ti. However, it was in fact very stable. This was a customary place for this group of traveling rchants to take shelter and rest.
So people were busy cooking, while many others were unbuttoning their clothes and trousers to check the places where they had been bitten and scratched last night.
“Hooh…”
“Wow… this is serious!”
“It’s all infected…”
“My skin is all swollen, why didn’t I feel any pain or itching during the day?”
“Ouch, now that you ntioned itching, I feel a little itchy now.”
“Don’t scratch it!”
“Treat it again with herbs!”
Everyone was worried now. After all, they had not been injured by an ordinary fox. The wound’s progress was not looking good. However, they were lucky enough to find a lot of herbs along the way. Now, several people were making poultices and preparing to apply dicine to everyone.
Behind the bushes in the distance, three foxes gazed at the group of mortals in the distance with cold eyes.
“Hehehehe…”
“If you dare to fight against this old lady, you must not even know how to write the word ‘death’!”2
“We must devour these people!”
“Aiya, those scholars… Let’s slow down first, maybe spend a night of passion together first~”
“Yes, yes, hee hee hee…”
They had not truly cultivated the ability to transform into a human form. Their human appearance was just an illusion, similar to an inflatable balloon, and could be easily popped. They were essentially incapable of engaging in sexual acts with humans. Their so-called ‘night of passion’ was nothing more than seducing a scholar and sucking away his essence when he was in an excited state.
On the other side, the rchants and scholars under the monsters’ malicious gazes felt so uneasiness in their hearts. They simply gathered around the campfire, and did not dare to go too far, even to pick up firewood.
“Everyone, be careful. There are no walls to protect us tonight. On top of wild beasts, who knows, maybe those three vixens from last night will co back!”
After so many years as a traveling rchant, he had encountered nurous strange and bizarre events. However, most of them were either not worth investigating, or he didn’t want to investigate them too deeply. In order to avoid trouble, he would rather keep things unclear. However, this ti was no doubt the most bizarre, as he had encountered a real monster.
“Awooo…”
“Awooooo…”
After night fell, the howling of wolves sounded in the mountains, making everyone more nervous. After a few monts of silence, it sounded again.
“Awooo…”
Many people brought out their hatchets and huddled behind the fire.
“Uncle Lu, the wolf howls seem to be getting closer?”
The man who spoke glanced at the others, and a little sweat beaded on his face.
“Well… we have to be more careful tonight. The hungry wolves might be more dangerous than those vixens. As the old saying goes, a pack of hungry wolves is more ferocious than a tiger…”
However, the three fox spirits they were talking about were clearly even more nervous than the traveling rchants. In a small valley about a hundred feet away from the traveling rchants, the three foxes had already huddled together.
“Hic-wuuu…”
“Wuwuwuwu…”3
“Awoooo…”
A pack of wild mountain wolves appeared nearby, their numbers constantly increasing, surrounding the three foxes from far away. Many of them bared their teeth and roared at the foxes, saliva dripping from their fangs.
“Ah, what’s wrong with these beasts…”
“Why are these beasts coming at us?”
“Bi-big sister, what should we do?”
“There so many wolves, have all the wolf packs in Datong Mountain co here…?”
The eyes the wild wolves glowed green in the moonlight. So perched on high slopes, while others were on the near side of the mountain. They all stared at the three foxes.
The human beings a hundred or so zhang away started a fire. Although the fire was visible through the many trees and boulders, the wolves obviously ignored the humans’ plans.
As if they had received so kind of signal, one of the leading wolves let out a roar: “AWOOO…” and all the wild wolves bared their ferocious fangs and rushed towards the foxes.
As the saying went, everything had a weakness.4 Although the three fox spirits had refined their horizontal bones and gained spiritual powers, their cultivation path was different; their own cultivation and abilities were not enough to make up for their natural defects. What was more, wolves and even dogs have certain abilities to destroy evil, so it could be said that these foxes had encountered their neses.
“Aaaah…”
“Ugh…”
“Wuwuwu…”
“Roooar…”
“Aaaah…
“Roar…”
“Big sister, save –“
The roars and screams of the vixen and the wolves clearly startled the crowd a little ways away. The roars of the beasts that were fighting were terrifying, and they sounded so close that it even felt like they were just outside the cave.
“Hey… I thought I heard a cry for hep just now. Was soone…”
“Stop talking nonsense, I didn’t hear anything!”
“Shh, don’t speak, be careful not to get their attention, let’s increase the fire!”
“Yes, yes, make the fire burn brighter!”
The whole group was trembling with fear. The wild wolves seed to be going crazy tonight, and there were wolf howls both far away and nearby. The sound of biting and fighting continued outside the cave for a long ti, even then continued on to farther places.
In any case, no one had the courage to go out and check on anything before dawn ca.
The next morning, the entire group that hadn’t slept all night dragged their tired bodies and set off cautiously. After hesitating for a long ti, they finally moved towards the place where they had first heard the sound of the beasts fighting last night.
When they arrived at the small valley, they saw so traces of tragedy.
“Woah… that’s a lot of blood!”
“Yeah, and here is so blood-stained hair!”
Old Boss Lu walked behind a bush, poked it with a hatchet, and pulled out a piece of red-haired, bloody claw, attached to a dismbered leg.
“This… looks like a fox’s leg?”
“Looks like it… isn’t that…”
“Hooh… could this be from the vixen from the night before last?”
“I really can’t tell!”
“Oh… Datong Mountain is too dangerous!”
Old Boss Lu had a gloomy expression on his face. He wondered whether he should consider taking the rchant routes through Datong Mountain less often in the future, r simply just give up the route entirely.
“Let’s go, hurry up, we must get out of the mountain before it gets dark today, it’s too dangerous here!”
“Yeah! Uncle Lu is right!”
“Hurry up, let’s go!”
No one in the group dared to hesitate any longer. Even the scholars stopped complaining about being tired along the way; it was better to lose a leg than to lose a life.
When the sun began to set that evening, nearly twenty exhausted people finally walked out of the uninhabited boundary line marking the edge of Datong Mountain.
As soon as they turned out of the small road, they saw a large outpost station that was still in operation on the mountainside ahead, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Yin Qing, who felt so movent in his arms, looked down, then turned to look behind him. Behind a large beige-yellow rock beside the mountain path, the hunchbacked Mountain God bowed to him from afar.
Seeing this scene, Yin Qing suddenly understood what happened last night. We suspected that it had been the Mountain God who had taken action, so he hurriedly bowed and paid his respects.
“Scholar Yin, what are you bowing to?”
“I’m thanking the God of the mountain. If there was a god of this mountain, he must have blessed us to get out of the mountain safely this ti!”
“Yes, yes, it makes sense!”
“Then I’ll also say goodbye.”
“ too!”
After experiencing the recent incidents, everyone in the group still had lingering fears, and sincerely went to pay their respects to the Mountain God together.
Rather than being a Mountain God, it would be more accurate to classify it as a mountain spirit who was still cultivating towards the position of Mountain God. At most, it had barely stepped into the threshold of divinity, and did not care much for the beasts in the mountains or the people who travelled through it.
Moreover, there was no Mountain God Temple in Datong Mountain. It wasn’t that the Mountain God didn’t want one, but rather that he didn’t yet have the ability to gather incense power, nor had he grasped the essence of how to do so. But at this mont, the land spirit hiding behind the rocks suddenly felt the power of these mortals’ prayers.
T/n: get wrecked, foxes
3.3m deep and ~13-16.5m wide / 11 ft deep and ~43-54 ft wide i.e. “you’re so stupid you can’t even write the word for what’s coming for you” Pathetic crying sounds 一物降一物 (yīwùxiángyīwù): lit. “one object bests another object,” there is a rock to every scissor, a scissor to every paper, and a paper to every rock
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