Lord of the Desert

Chapter 435 Chaos
After many days of trekking, it was the second day of March.

To the left of Yaogong Mountain, it is fifty miles away from Feiyan Pass.

The setting sun brushed across a few traces of dry snow on the jagged rock peaks, illuminating the bald heads of gliding vultures.

The thousand-man team avoided the main road far away and camped in the gap between two mountains.

Being deep in the war zone, the crowd did not dare to light a fire and just swallowed the cold food with spring water.

Dozens of miles away, Hong Fan, who was out on reconnaissance alone, ran through the mountains and rushed towards Feiyan Pass - in order to avoid attracting unwelcome followers, he did not choose to fly.

A quarter of an hour later, a faint vibration was heard across the last hill, like the uneasy breathing of a nightmare sufferer.

Hong Fan grabbed onto the crevice in the rock with two fingers and swung up the cliff with one arm.

There was no obstacle ahead, and the view was broad and dim.

Feiyan Pass was suffering from the flames of war.

The most eye-catching thing in the chaos was a red ball of light; an old man in a bright red robe was hanging in front of the pass, holding it above his head.

A few miles away from him, a giant insect thousands of times larger than a human was flying against the light. Its limbs were thick and strong, and it had an iron-colored hard shell covered with spikes, and a ferocious horn in front of its nose.

A ball of light shot out.

The giant insect did not dodge or evade, but used its horn, which was soaked in green light, to lift it up and send it flying vertically.

The ball of light flashed instantly after hitting the sky, and the sky was instantly filled with red clouds, which even suppressed the sunset.

With the help of this fleeting red light, the densely packed flying insects in the air suddenly appeared, like countless eyes suddenly opening.

Hong Fan's breathing stagnated and he drew his attention to the battlefield.

Feiyan Pass is even more majestic than Tiewa Pass. The wall of the pass is about 30 meters high and is light gray all over. It is actually made of cement.

There were no traditional watchtowers on the city wall. Instead, half-man-high battlements were stacked on top of the wide surface. Many real insects in the upper city were stuck in them and were being besieged by groups of warriors using pickaxes and hammers.

The stone walls below the city were covered with broken pieces of varying sizes, like leprosy pits. There were two spots on the top of the east side that seemed to have been bombarded by heavy artillery, with half-old wounds more than ten meters wide and five or six meters deep.

The defense of the city had apparently lasted for many days.

The soldier hiding cave at the bottom of the city wall has been crushed, and small red spots are dotted among the ruins.

At this time, more than a thousand real insects were piled up at the foot of the pass, using each other's exoskeletons as steps to climb up - their huge weight did not support vertical movement on the wall.

Thousands of sub-insects climbed the city walls even faster, smashing into the defenders' armored formation like raindrops, and were hacked into pieces into thick blood plasma, like a layer of freshly painted green paint.

On both sides of the city gate, as long as the real insects and warriors can climb up the steep cliffs, the battle will never stop.

The red light had long since dissipated.

Hong Fan took a short breath and followed the battle between a man and a bug in the cloud. Suddenly, he saw two rays of light, one white and one blue, coming back to the battlefield from between the distant mountains. They collided and bounced off each other several times along the way, hovered after a brief loss of power, and then entangled again and went around the back of the pass.

This pair are both powerful people at the Yuanci level.

The white light came from another strange giant insect, which was several times larger than the general insect. It had well-developed muscles, a slender body, and three pairs of wings on its back.

The middle-aged man who was competing with him was thin, with long hair that spread several feet long, and his whole body was burning in green flames.

When the two human Yuanci were far away from the city gate, another black-robed man appeared from the densely stacked insect swarm. His arms burst into purple light, and he shattered three layers of walls with one palm, and blasted several heavily armored soldiers into the air, disintegrating them into human form.

Due to the great distance, Hong Fan couldn’t hear any movement for the time being.

But almost at the same time, a giant umbrella appeared on the city wall - a dragon pattern was faintly visible on the umbrella, and raging waves were surging under the umbrella - in a moment, the wind blew up and covered the entire place.

When Feiyan closes the gate, the world explodes.

Hong Fan closed his eyes slightly, and felt that in the distance, the innate spiritual energy was boiling and swirling like a turbulent flow, like a mountain fire and a whirlpool in the sea, far exceeding any Hun Tian technique he had seen before. The black-clothed warrior who used the Zixiao Hualong Sutra had lost a lot of arrogance, and his fighting style changed from wild to conservative.

Just at this moment, a dull thud passed by his ears, probably coming from the explosion of the earliest ball of light.

This was a high-intensity war that Hong Fan had never experienced before.

He lay on the cliff, watching the battle quietly for a quarter of an hour. Finally, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and returned silently.

······
The night is a group of silent people in black, sitting in a circle with their knees hugged between two mountains.

Inside the tent, a fire burned cautiously, illuminating all the faces.

"What Master Hong saw were the personal guards of the Tree God."

Nie Bo folded his arms and lowered his voice.

"According to our Shengzhou legend, they are special individuals created by the tree god in his body. They have different body shapes and abilities. Not only are they as smart as ours, they can also speak human language."

His eyebrows trembled slightly as he spoke, as if he was remembering the time when Huaxue City was broken.

"The old man holding the red sun must be the princess's guardian, 'Red Sky' Zhou Wenyang; the long hair and green flames are the symbol of the completion of the 'Yaksha Rampage Canon', so the second venerable must be the 'Wandering God' Wei Yuanbai of the Wei Clan in Erbai City."

"As for that giant umbrella, it is the divine weapon 'Rankai' held by the eldest princess. I saw Her Highness use it when she was helping in the battle at Maoyan Castle two years ago. The price was the consumption of her own blood."

Yin Feihu took over the conversation.

"Once the world is in chaos, the innate spiritual energy will no longer obey the command of any warrior. It can not only suppress the power of most high-level killing methods, but also prohibit the creation of true essence. Once the Dantian is exhausted under the giant umbrella, the Qi realm warriors will not be able to resist the siege of the army."

Hong Fan understood what he said.

For warriors, innate spiritual energy is like an amplifier. The higher the level of cultivation, the more power one can gain from it to amplify the power of his killing methods.

Under normal circumstances, warriors can still make up for their quality by quantity even though they are in a different realm - for example, Hong Fan, Gu Yixin, and Qiu Yuankui once fought against Feng Manyun together.

Once there are two levels between them, there will be a qualitative gap in the qualities of the warriors in all aspects; with Yuanci's absolute advantage in strength, speed and true energy recovery ability, even a large number of Hunran realm warriors cannot consume it.

The chaos is equivalent to breaking this natural barrier.

"According to previous estimates, the Princess and the remaining troops at Tiewa Pass should have retreated to Feiyan Pass around the third day of February, but the insect swarms will continue to sweep left and right, delaying the retreat by four or five days at most."

Gu Yixin breathed a sigh of relief and said something that he had been embarrassed to say before.

"To be honest, I was worried that Feiyan Pass had been breached - after all, Tiewa Pass was only defended for three days - but I didn't expect it to hold out until now..."

“The difference between being prepared and not being prepared can often be as simple as a few days.”

Xi Zhi replied.

"There are 5,000 people stationed at Tiewa Pass. This time, facing the sudden attack of three Yuanci warriors and 10,000 real insects, if it weren't for the princess and her entourage, I'm afraid they wouldn't be able to hold out for three days. And when the insect tide surges to Feiyan Pass, the permanent troops, the remnants of the Shengyu Army, and the retreating defenders of the three cities between the two passes will probably be able to pile up to 20,000 elite troops - and this doesn't even include the warriors and young and strong men intercepted from the civilians."

"No matter how fierce the insect swarm is, it is still made up of living creatures. No matter how unstoppable the attack is, there will inevitably be casualties."

He gritted his teeth slightly, paused, and added this sentence.

"Then stop them outside Feiyan Pass?"

There was a fire in Gu Yi's new eyes, and his tone became lively. But after he finished speaking, there was no response from inside the tent.

"I'm afraid it's hard to defend."

After a moment, Xi Zhi replied in a muffled voice.

Gu Yixin turned to look at him.

"Captain Xi is right."

Hong Fan's voice was stern.

"After passing through Tiewa Pass in the north, the insect swarm encountered almost no resistance. This means that they had the opportunity to set up a mother nest near Feiyan Pass a month ago. Now is the time when the first wave of real insects will hatch."

"If the records in the Shengzhou Geography I read are correct, there are a total of 300,000 people in my tribe south of Tiewa Pass, and there are far more other livestock and poultry. It is estimated that 70% to 80% of them have become nutrients for the insect tide. Excluding the loss, based on the vitality, at least 20,000 to 30,000 real insects can be hatched, or more than ten times the number of sub-insects..."

At this point, not only did the tent become silent, but even Hong Fan himself felt a chill in his teeth.

After a while, Gu Yixin couldn't stand the depressing atmosphere anymore and stood up suddenly and opened the tent.

The night air is damp and cold, and the stars and the moon are bursting out in the sky.

"Time waits for us not."

Hong Fan stood behind him, looking toward the knife-like back of the Yaogong Mountains in the east. On the steepest part, the remaining snow illuminated by the moonlight was embedded in the rugged rocks, extending into a pair of silver leaf veins in the gray-black stone.

"For now, we have to race against time. Everyone, we will only rest for half a night tonight and go into the mountains before daybreak."

He said decisively in a deep voice.

······
At dawn the next day, the sky was still dark, with only the outlines of the mountains plated with steel blue.

The team abandoned their vehicles and used livestock to carry the most important food, water, clothes and blankets, and went deep into the mountains from the east.

The northern section of Yaogong Mountain is flat, which is something everyone in Shengzhou knows.

But smoothness is relative.

The team climbed mountains and crossed valleys in the mountain barrier with a straight thickness of forty miles, and the altitude fluctuated between zero and two thousand meters. Fortunately, Hong Fan's ability to consolidate sand and turn it into stone was very mature, and they built ladders on cliffs and bridges over water, saving at least half of the time.

Even so, there are people who cannot keep up and die in the mountains every day.

Three days later, early in the morning of March 6th.

Hong Fan, who was leading the way, cut through the bushes and climbed up the high hill on the damp weeds. He saw the morning light shining obliquely on the mountain shoulder like a sword, piercing out a deep valley.

In front of him, a white river fell to the bottom of the valley. The river was covered with rugged stone scales, like a long snake with its belly turned upside down. At the tip of the tail of this white snake, there was the vast fertile plain outside the mountain.

Hong Fan stood still at his post.

More and more people passed by him, gradually slowing down their pace in the morning light, realizing what was happening.

Starting from the south of Chaojiang River, after a month's trek, they finally crossed the Yaogong Mountain.

For a moment, many tears flowed silently, while more roars of joy, anger, or hoarseness like stones burst out, rolling back and forth in the valley.

In the afternoon, the team completely left the Yaogong Mountain area and shot straight towards Erbai City across the plain like an arrow.

Hong Fan and Gu Yixin finally completed their responsibilities.

He made an agreement with Nie Bo, Xi Zhi and others to meet again, and rejected the three hundred taels of silver note that Shen Shaochuan had sewn on the back of his boots and gave him with great reluctance. The two of them said goodbye to each other amidst the countless thanks from everyone, and went to Feiyan Pass with a relaxed mood.

Two hundred miles to the northwest.

With Hong Fan and his men's cruising capabilities, it would only take them fifteen minutes.

At the time of Shen, when the two saw from a thousand meters in the air the majestic gray-white body of Feiyan Pass that seemed to stand forever, they saw black tides spreading on it, like a reef that was gradually being swallowed up.

Behind the city gates, a human army that had maintained its organization was retreating at full speed, surrounded by a few panicked and frightened fleeing soldiers who were like ants.

"Hong Fan, what should we do?"

Gu Yixin came closer and asked loudly.

"Meet them."

Hong Fan responded by accelerating his dive.

PS:

(This part was added after publication and is not counted in the word count)
I would like to say something to my readers here.

I wrote very little in October, and even in the middle of the month, I felt empty inside for a long time when I thought about writing.

This is because psychotherapy has gradually moved into deeper waters and has touched upon some more fundamental aspects.

Simply put, psychoanalytic psychological counseling is a bit like tracing back the river of life, first locating the important nodes that construct the current "self", and then re-experiencing and correcting them, in this way reconstructing a healthier self.

Therefore, during the treatment process, the anxiety, fear, and avoidance that I have experienced before will resurface many times, bringing about periodic discomfort - I was in this cycle in the first half of October, and my condition was especially bad during the National Day holiday.

In the second half of the month, my condition gradually improved, but new unexpected problems arose.

I used to have three motivations for my efforts at writing.

The first is pure love, the second is self-affirmation, and the third is seeking material rewards.

Passion comes naturally, while the latter two correspond to my Oedipus conflict and existential anxiety, which are negative drives - similar to fear and whipping - and are of course effective, but they will also bring a series of negative products, making writing itself a burden.

Now that the treatment is working, the underlying conflicts and anxieties are gradually being resolved, and the negative drives are disappearing as well.

Simply put, I no longer pursue recognition from others or social success, nor do I consider myself a parasite because I don’t make money from writing.

This is certainly a good thing, as it reduces a lot of internal friction and pain, but the result is that the motivation to write online articles is suddenly reduced by half.

Of course I like reading online articles. It is enjoyable, relaxing and can kill time. But from another perspective, what can a writer who is driven by passion gain from writing enjoyable articles?
Not for making money or getting ahead, but for writing crude and shallow words, characters with labels or even no labels at all, and plots without any narrative skills just for the sake of excitement, what's the point?
This is exactly the problem I am facing now, which is to rebuild my motivation for writing in a positive way - or to rediscover my original intention.

After stripping away a series of goals such as gaining recognition, material rewards, self-proof, etc., I need to re-examine myself.

Why do I write?

What kind of thing should I write?
My current way of reconstructing is to read the classics.

For example, poetry, for example, the works of masters.

There are some results.

I don’t know if the above nonsense can explain my experience clearly - many people may feel incomprehensible, or think that I am complaining without reason (laugh, this is actually normal).

Finally, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I have never thought of discontinuing this book, but I may write it in more detail later - after all, when writing, one must first satisfy the author himself.

(End of this chapter)