Edited by: NZRose
All the people inside this Youshan Capital were living dead — they had already died back when the Youshan Capital was sealed, but it was probably because the ancient god’s kindness left them a chance of survival, so these people could still live like normal people.
They had human bodies and five senses, and they were not much different from ordinary people except in two areas — they couldn’t leave the capital, and once they died again, their souls would scatter and they would never be able to reincarnate.
But demonic beasts were not so lucky.
They didn’t even have a flesh-and-blood body anymore, let alone the five senses. Furthermore, the majority of demonic beasts could only use their souls to condense into their original appearance. They were still fine after being released into the wild, but once humans captured them, they would become puppets who lost their sense of self and fully become a walking dead.
Such a demonic beast was called a “Youshan beast” by the local people.
But even so, it was still a dazzling thing to have a Youshan beast who obeyed you. After all, most of the Youshan beasts were hidden in the mountains. They were very difficult to catch and tame.
The wide-winged bird came down from the air, and Manager Mo also alighted from the warm carriage. He said to the youth who jumped off the bird’s back, “Young Master, it’s freezing outside, so why do you need to come here in person?”
The “Young Master” that Manager Mo referred to was precisely Lianying Qi, the only child of the Lianying family. Over the past tens of thousands of years, he had been extremely spoiled. In the capital, he could do whatever he wanted, and no one would stop him. He was also the one who made Yan Tianhen’s life in prison miserable.
Lianying Qi toyed with a hand-warming ball as his gaze frivolously swept over this group of prisoners, revealing disgust. “I can smell their foul stench from far away, so hurry up and have them get lost!”
Manager Mo waved to the prison guard, and the prison guard hurriedly took away those who barely managed to get up from the ground.
“Wait!” Lianying Qi saw someone who seemed familiar. His hand tossed the ball around as he walked leisurely towards the prisoners.
The prisoners didn’t dare to look up, for fear of angering the young master and making their situation even more difficult.
Lianying Qi stopped in front of Yan Tianhen and laughed playfully as he looked at Yan Tianhen’s black eyes that didn’t show any signs of fear. “How does the whip feel? Ugly bastard.”
With that, he used his other hand to grab the long hair covering the left side of Yan Tianhen’s face and saw the extremely ugly scar. He said in disgust, “As soon as honourable me sees this face of yours, he wants to throw up.”
Yan Tianhen looked at him coldly and made no reply.
Lian Yingqi was completely angered by the killing intent in his eyes. After a moment’s pause, he suddenly said, “You guys, come here for honourable me and gauge out his eyeballs that always look at places they aren’t supposed to! Just what kinds of people did you find for honourable me?”
Yan Tianhen, “&#k2026;”
I advise you to be kind.
The prison guard gave Yan Tianhen a harsh kick. “Young Master Lianying, please don’t be angry. This boy is a tough one. We’ll dig out his eyes so as not to hinder Young Master’s sight!”
Lianying Qi hit Yan Tianhen with that ball and chuckled cheerfully when he saw Yan Tianhen’s pained expression. Then he said impatiently, “Forget it, leave them for now so that he can mine. When he comes out, honourable me wants to see those eyes in a box placed on my desk.”
“Yes, yes!” The prison guard repeatedly promised.
After Lianying Qi finished bullying Yan Tianhen, he left in satisfaction.
The prisoners continued to follow the prison guard down.
The teenager who sat next to Yan Tianhen earlier said sympathetically, “How did you offend that tyrant? It’s too pitiful. A prisoner offended him before and was chopped into pieces and fed to the dogs.”
Yan Tianhen gently turned his wrist. Instead of answering his question, he asked, “What’s the use of digging up so many sparrow mines?”
The young man explained, “Sparrow spirits can maintain the lives inside the Youshan Capital, which should have disappeared a long time ago. However, because of the Jianmu tree’s protection, this city was able to endure until now. But as early as many years ago, the Jianmu tree’s spiritual Qi was almost gone. If we want to continue to maintain the lives inside the capital, we can only find sparrow mines.”
Yan Tianhen looked at the short, thin, and weak-looking boy as he asked, “How did you become a prisoner?”
The youth grinned and said shyly, “Me? Because I sent information to the enemy during the great war, I was caught and stuffed into a cell.”
Yan Tianhen then asked, “Why did you send information?”
The boy replied, “Because I like him very much, and I don’t want him to die.”
Yan Tianhen paused. As he looked at the young man’s free and easy smile, his lips also curled up slowly. Not all demons were necessarily bad, and not all humans were necessarily good.
The sparrow mine was just around the corner, and a frozen trail close to the cliff that only allowed one person to pass at a time appeared in front of everyone.
The prison guard wouldn’t go any further. He stood at the back and ordered, “Since all of you ate pills to avoid the cold, you won’t be affected by wind and snow anymore. If you dig up sparrow spirits, you can come up. If you can’t dig anything up, you will always dig here. Alright, now get down there!”
One by one, the prisoners walked numbly to the front.
At the bottom, a huge mining cave appeared in front of them.
This should be a mine blasted open with some kind of magic tool. Before they even entered, they could already feel a cold gust of air rushing towards them, and they couldn’t help but feel a stabbing pain from inside their bones.
Yan Tianhen took the lead in walking in. He didn’t use the pill. Instead, he warmed his body with evil Qi. He didn’t feel the icy Yin wind howling.
The cold wind blew through the cave and was so strong that it distorted the shape of their faces. In this mine, there wasn’t even a supervisor, which showed how harsh this environment was.
Yan Tianhen studied the surrounding environment.
From time to time, they could see the miners who had been frozen into ice. Some of them only had the lower half of their corpses left, while others were frozen in the middle of a drilling motion.
Someone cried in despair, and then, the crying grew louder and louder, with new voices joining in.
Yan Tianhen didn’t join them. He only thought about how to dig out the sparrow spirits buried deep in the mountainside — not to mine for those people, but to keep it for his own use. Yan Tianhen’s fingers gently pressed on the bracelet attached to his right wrist, then squeezed it, and the bracelet made of extremely hard metal was squeezed in half. Yan Tianhen casually threw the broken bracelet onto the ground and let out a few tendrils of his almost-depleted spiritual Qi. Soon, the spiritual Qi was absorbed by the mountain walls.
Yan Tianhen raised his eyes and saw a sparrow spirit shining with dim black color in the thick ice. This was the sparrow spirit closest to the outside that he could see.
Yan Tianhen looked around. After the prisoners finished crying, they all began to take out hammers and chisels to cut apart the ice. They were all very careful for fear of injury.
Because in this environment, once injured, only death awaited them. They would be instantly frozen into blocks of ice. Yan Tianhen did not use any tools. An awl made of pulsing black flames with bony thorns gradually formed in his hand. Evil Qi rose and stabbed straight into the hard ice.
The hard ice that had been condensed for tens of thousands of years seemed to be unable to bear the evil Qi. First, it split into several wide cracks, then it was melted into icy water by the dark purple flames that spun around the bony thorns, dripping down and condensing into ice again.
The bony thorn on Yan Tianhen’s awl stretched longer and longer, and finally came across a thin layer of rock. The sparrow spirit seemed to be a little irritable. Even in the cave wall, it could still feel the energy that gave it extreme repulsion, so it couldn’t help trembling.
With this shaking, the entire mountain seemed to shake as well.
Yan Tianhen expressionlessly pierced the mountain wall and directly hooked out a sparrow spirit the color of inky jade. The sparrow spirit was palm-sized and was warm to the touch. Not even this cold ice cave could stop the warmth it was emitting.
“To think that you’ve already dug out a sparrow spirit!” No one knew who uttered that, but everyone looked towards Yan Tianhen. There was astonishment on their faces.
Yan Tianhen’s eyes calmly swept over them, then he threw the sparrow spirit into his arms and went to find other sparrow spirits. Sparrow spirits could only be absorbed after they were taken out of the mine. If someone tried to absorb sparrow spirits inside the mine, it was quite easy to be sucked dry by the sparrow spirits. After all, this was the sparrow spirit mine. Countless sparrow spirits were buried in the mountain wall, waiting to capture spiritual Qi and absorb it.
Yan Tianhen ignored these prisoners and started walking deeper inside. Yan Tianhen got more than ten sparrow spirits in the same way. He had no intention of concealing his actions, which stunned the prisoners so much that they forgot what they were doing.
The farther inside, the lower the temperature. The evil Qi in Yan Tianhen’s body was enough to expel the cold, but one by one, the prisoners who originally wanted to go in with him no longer dared to venture any farther.
The mine was very deep, and Yan Tianhen walked for a long time but never came to an end.
……
“He went in.” A prisoner said, “Just like that, he walked in. We originally wanted to follow him to see what he was doing, but the icy blizzard raged, and we only walked a few steps before being stopped. Moreover, he dug up a lot of sparrow spirits.”
Then another prisoner added, “We don’t know how he dug them up. It looked effortless. In any case, the tools in his hand seem different from ours.”
Manager Mo twisted his brows slightly, and his cloak was lifted in the wind.
This was already three days later.
They sent people down to bring the prisoners up and check the collected sparrow spirits, only to find that apart from the seven dead people, one person was missing — Yan Tianhen.
Without them asking, someone took the initiative to recount the whole story about this strange event. Manager Mo felt that this matter was not simple, so he immediately brought several witnesses and informed the Lianying family head of this.
“…Someone even saw that he was holding something in the shape of an awl when he broke the ice.” Manager Mo continued, “There was something like a pulsing live flame spinning around the awl. He was not affected by the environment inside the ice cave. He went deep into the snowy cave and never came out again.”
After hearing this, even the Lianying family head frowned and felt that this was a troubling matter. He said, “No spiritual Qi or magic treasures can be used in the sparrow spirit mine, or else their spiritual Qi will be absorbed. If that’s really so…”
The Lianying family head narrowed his eyes.
Manager Mo’s eyelids twitched. “Could it be a demon?”
The Lianying family head said gravely, “I’m afraid it’s not as simple as a demon. Sparrow spirits will also absorb the demonic Qi inside demons and convert it into spiritual Qi for storage. I’m afraid that prisoner has a connection to evil Qi.”
“A being made of evil Qi!” Manager Mo suddenly raised his head, and a trace of fear flashed through his eyes.
Ea: Ah Hen’s counterattack begins~
Also a note that malevolent Qi will be changed to evil Qi. Sorry for the confusion.
