Evil Demons

The leader of the granite goblin party died as well. It ruptured its own heartstrings to end the unbearable pain. For Wu Qianyu, this was both good and bad. It was good in that her Dao of pain was improving steadily and had great effectiveness. This was also bad because she didn't have adequate control over its intensity and side effects.

Right now, she was like a wild beast charging through a busy city market. She had no regard for anything except the maximum amount of pain. This would be counterproductive in certain conditions where she needed finesse. The purpose of her Dao was to cause her enemies pain as retribution, not let them kill themselves for an easy death.

She wanted to do better. She needed to do better.

Wu Qianyu meditated on these lessons and experiences until the next day. She cleaned up her tracks and set out for the mercenary fortress. Along the way, she saw signs of battle all around as well as broken weapons and armor littered across the forest path. These scenes increased in frequency until she broke through the trees and emerged onto a grassy river basin.

It was a scene out of a painting. Tall, wind-swept grass led down a steady slope towards a winding river that flowed from snowcapped peaks in the distance. A particularly wide part of the river contained a rocky island in the middle that was completely taken over by a fortress made of white stone. Its tall walls went all the way to the water's edge and the only way in or out was pair of bridges that cross the river and through the fortress.

This was the famous white star within the wild forest, the mercenary outpost named White Diamond Citadel.

She approached White Diamond Citadel carefully. She stretched her spiritual senses to the limit but there was no one nearby. There were no mercenaries, no demons, and no beasts. There were no corpses either.

She finally sensed something when she got to the stone bridge. It was an eerie aura, unlike anything she had felt before. It felt demonic and yet human at the same time, something that shouldn't have been possible.

She drew the Purple Jade Sword and wrapped herself in sword energy. She wasn't afraid, she wasn't going to back down from a challenge. All the evils of the world that caused people pain, she would exterminate them. This was her creed.

Wooosh!

She swept the deathly aura aside with her sword energy and entered the gates. The heavy metal doors were wide open and there was no one inside. She expected some kind of strange creature to pop out and ambush her but there was nothing. There wasn't a soul alive anywhere.

The fortress wasn't too large but it could house over a thousand cultivators. Dormitory-style lodgings were built directly into the walls that were at least four stories tall. These had windows facing inward that overlooked various taverns, stables, and weapon shops on the ground floor.

She checked the taverns first and found them empty. Tables and chairs were smashed. Broken plates and cups littered the floor. There were rotting piles of food but no flies or maggots. She couldn't tell how long ago this place had been abandoned.

The stables held no horses and no corpses either. The weapon shops were similarly abandoned but the curious thing was that all the good weapons and armor were gone too. Only broken pieces were left, as not even ghosts would want those.

She moved onto the dorms and checked each room one by one. They were all the same, an empty scene of death. Blood covered the hallways. There were craters and damaged stone walls where mercenaries made their last stand. There were empty beds with bloodstains, where the occupants had been killed in their sleep. And still, there were no bodies anywhere.

Wu Qianyu took to the walls and studied the surrounding land. She was the only living creature for many kilometers. There weren't even any insects or rodents around. She wondered what could have caused such a catastrophe.

Beasts were definitely ruled out. Even intelligent beasts were messy by nature. They would leave behind bones, bits of flesh from their prey as well as themselves, as well as claw and fang marks. There was no evidence of any of that so it had to be some kind of demon, something evil.

Demons were less understood by human cultivators than beasts. Beasts were simple-minded, at least before they reached wisdom. Demons naturally had wisdom and were smart enough to hide and cause trouble when least expected. There were all kinds of demons that didn't follow common sense or human reason. Even the best demon experts were still unsure where demons came from and why they existed in this world.

What was known was that demons generally fell into three types.

The first type of demon was humanoid monsters. These included goblins, ogres, giants, centaurs, jueyuan, mermaids, and other fantastical intelligent races. They had physical forms similar to humans but they were all enemies of the human race. They had their own habits and behavior which usually involved hunting humans.

The second type manifested from pure spiritual energy. These included such beings as ice fiends, fire fiends, and nature spirits. These were born from spiritual energy and the very world itself. They were naturally aggressive against all other life forms but their intentions were usually straightforward and revolved around the desire to become stronger.

The third and last type was the most fearsome, creatures whose sole purpose was pure evil and destruction. These included jiangshi, hungry ghosts, and other malevolent spirits. They were rarer than the other two types but when they popped up within human populations, it usually resulted in a bloodbath and mass chaos.

Chen Mo had been mistaken for a trickster ghost that preyed on the innocence of children. His carelessness had evoked a massive response from human cultivators in the surrounding area. He was only able to escape with his innate abilities as a shadow fox.

Wu Qianyu felt a chill through her body as she considered the most likely possibility, that the carnage with White Diamond Citadel had been caused by an evil demon. She had never fought something like that before but the rumor was that they were very powerful as well as scheming.

She wondered how her Dao of Pain would do against a ghost, something she couldn't even comprehend. If she couldn't even fathom the creature, how could she hurt it and cause it pain?

And it wasn't just the Dao of pain either. Other spiritual arts had similar weaknesses against all kinds of evil demons. Sword arts were notoriously bad against ghosts which had no physical form. It was the same with elemental arts as there was nothing for the cultivators to attack if they couldn't see or grasp the enemy. Evil ghosts often used mental and spiritual attacks which were a weakness for many humans.

The only natural enemies of evil demons were divine beasts with their divine arts that touched upon the laws of the world and human sects that specialized in hunting these terrifying foes. These sects developed specific methods of hunting and killing certain kinds of demons through countless generations of trial and error. The best ones were even able to gain fame and wealth across the land.

Wu Qianyu moved to the eastern wall and looked over at the river flowing into the fog. She had no intentions of letting her Dao of pain be useless against evil, not when her purpose for treading down this path was to fight against evil and wrongdoers that caused innocent people pain.

Thus, she decided that she would get to the bottom of this massacre and uncover just exactly who or what was responsible for it.