The arrival of Qiu Dong and his men was like pouring cold water into a boiling pot. Though they temporarily relieved Jiang Lian and Meng Qianzi’s predicament, they couldn’t stop the raging fire from swelling back up.

Moreover, the Mountain Ghost’s men were immediately at a disadvantage.

First, there was a vast disparity in numbers—essentially a one-against-ten struggle. Second, Qiu Dong’s team had only come to investigate, not intending to fight, so they carried no effective weapons. Third, the Mountain Ghost’s men held back, only seeking to injure or repel their enemies. After all, killing was against the law, and no one wanted to face a murder charge for a moment’s satisfaction—even if legal consequences could be avoided, their consciences would suffer.

But they quickly discovered that this group of people had no such reservations about killing.

The men had barely entered the fray when they were overwhelmed and surrounded. Soon, a painful cry came from Kuang Xiaoliu as he was struck down by an iron shovel. Qiu Dong’s eyes reddened with urgency as he moved to save him, when a furious roar came from a companion at his side. The man had been seized by three attackers—one grabbing his head, another his legs—violently throwing him to the ground.

At this rate, everyone would perish. Qiu Dong gritted his teeth, leaped up, and knocked down the three people riding his companion. He grabbed a hoe that had fallen to the ground during the battle, swinging it wildly from side to side while shouting hoarsely: “Everyone, cover Miss Meng’s escape!”

Before his words faded, a burly man pounced on the hoe handle, forcefully suppressing Qiu Dong’s sweeping momentum. Qiu Dong tried to wrestle it back when he sensed an attack from behind. He immediately released the hoe and rolled to the side, but was half a step too slow—a sharp pain shot through his shoulder. Looking up, he saw an old man with missing teeth pulling back his sickle, poised to strike again.

Meng Qianzi and Jiang Lian were surrounded by more than ten attackers. Her strength hadn’t fully recovered, and after this intense battle, she was nearly spent. Fortunately, Jiang Lian occasionally provided supporting defense, but even so, she had suffered several wounds. Jiang Lian’s injuries were more numerous, though luckily none were fatal. As they struggled, two villagers who heard Qiu Dong’s shout charged over despite their injuries, roaring with desperation, knocking down one person and kicking away another, momentarily creating a gap in the encirclement.

Jiang Lian seized the opportunity, grabbed Meng Qianzi, and dashed through the opening.

They had barely made it ten steps when a gleaming Miao knife with a ring handle slashed toward them from the side. Jiang Lian stopped abruptly and drew in his abdomen. He felt a chill across his lower belly as his clothes were cut open. His skin burned—another wound, though thankfully, his abdomen wasn’t sliced open.

Bai Shuixiao had finally appeared.

Because of Bai Shuixiao’s intervention, the few seconds of advantage that the two villagers had gained through their utmost effort were wasted. Seeing the pursuers about to close in again, Meng Qianzi spoke rapidly: “Even if it costs your life, hold them back. Don’t let them catch up to me…”

Before she could finish, Bai Shuixiao’s blade came again. Unable to continue speaking, Meng Qianzi rolled to dodge, then pushed Jiang Lian forward as a shield while using the momentum to sprint diagonally into the darkness.

Bai Shuixiao’s target was Meng Qianzi—how could she let her escape? With an angry roar, she turned to pursue.

Truthfully, Jiang Lian hadn’t even understood what Meng Qianzi said. When she fled while pushing him toward Bai Shuixiao, his heart chilled. But seeing Bai Shuixiao dash after her, he instinctively lunged and tackled Bai Shuixiao to the ground. Almost simultaneously, two more people pounced from behind—one grabbing his waist, another his legs.

Jiang Lian could barely use his lower body. Feeling that he would likely meet his end here tonight, he saw Bai Shuixiao struggling to stand. From somewhere, he summoned the strength to reach out and grab her hair bun, pulling her back. Bai Shuixiao cried out in pain as her hair came loose. Jiang Lian had a sudden thought—he wanted to check if the chain was truly hidden there. But from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed two more figures rushing toward them. In for a penny, in for a pound—with his other hand, he gripped Bai Shuixiao’s waist, clenched his teeth, and, using his shoulder and back muscles, hurled her like a sack, knocking down the two approaching figures. The three tumbled into a heap.

Jiang Lian laughed, feeling that move had been truly satisfying. He turned his head toward the direction Meng Qianzi had disappeared and shouted: “Meng Qianzi, if I die, don’t forget what you promised me!”

No sooner had he spoken than his shoulder took a blade. Fighting through the pain, he turned and used his last strength to punch his attacker in the jaw. The man wobbled and fell backward. But behind him appeared the woman in the red spaghetti-strap top, her face so covered in blood that her features were indiscernible. He only knew she must be grinning ferociously because her unusually visible white teeth were stained with blood flowing from her face.

The shouts of pursuit continued unabated, mixed with the villagers’ screams of agony. Jiang Lian smiled bitterly as the fight in him suddenly slackened: with waves of attackers coming one after another, when would it ever end?

As his fingers curled slightly, they suddenly touched a chain on the ground. Jiang Lian had no strength left to examine it, but instinctively clutched it in his palm. Was it Meng Qianzi’s chain? Perhaps—it might have fallen when Bai Shuixiao’s hair came undone…

Just then, across the vast forest under the immense night sky, a strange, majestic howl suddenly sounded.

The sound was like a wave of air, rolling and spreading. Though low in pitch, it seemed to penetrate one’s very lungs. After it passed, the forest suddenly became extremely quiet. The leaves were still, as if even the wind had completely ceased.

Those village people who had been acting like demons momentarily froze. The howl seemed to awaken a primitive terror of the forest, darkness, and ferocious beasts that had existed in the depths of human hearts since ancient times.

Nearby, Bai Shuixiao stood with her hair disheveled, looking up at the distant pitch-black forest, her face as white as paper, her lips trembling uncontrollably.

Then, from this deathly silence, sounds gradually seeped in.

At first, it was like wind, reminiscent of that line from “The Mountain Spirit” in the “Nine Songs” of Chu Ci: “The wind rustles and the trees sigh.” Soon after, rustling sounds filled the air, as if thousands of streams were converging, moving together toward this spot. The distant treetops swayed continuously, one wave pushing another, like endless ocean waves floating in midair.

Jiang Lian stared in shock. The woman beside him, gripping her sickle, forgot to attack him. Her teeth chattered lightly, and the hair on her exposed shoulders, back, and arms stood on end.

Bai Shuixiao whispered hoarsely: “Go.”

The first time she spoke, no sound came out. She absurdly thought of Kuang Meiying—so it was true that in extreme terror, even one’s vocal cords could fail, rendering one truly speechless.

Bai Shuixiao swallowed and tried again. This time, her voice squeezed out, rising to a high pitch: “Go quickly!”

At this, the villagers finally awoke as if from a dream and fled. Amid this routed crowd, several Mountain Ghost men crawled on the ground. The blood-covered Qiu Dong looked up and shouted: “The mountain beasts are stirring! Quickly form the formation!”

As he spoke, he also spotted Jiang Lian. Recalling that this man had seemed to help Meng Qianzi earlier, he hesitated briefly before shouting at him: “You too, come over quickly!”

In such a situation, compliance was the best option. Jiang Lian staggered over, taking two steps where three should have been. As he approached, he heard pattering sounds like raindrops hitting the ground. Turning his head urgently, he saw countless wild monkeys of various sizes dropping from the swaying treetops amid falling leaves. Even more remained in the heights, swinging and climbing, seemingly directed, heading straight toward the fleeing villagers.

Qiu Dong grabbed Jiang Lian forcefully, pulling him to the center of the group, and quickly formed the formation.

The so-called “formation” was merely a posture: several people with their backs toward the center and faces outward, all with heels on the ground and toes raised, bodies leaning inward, backs of their heads nearly touching, forming a cone shape. Their hands were raised beside their heads like deer antlers, fingers spread, while they seemed to be chanting something.

Jiang Lian was enclosed within, forced to kneel. He noticed blood dripping from above. Looking up, he saw that one of the Mountain Ghost men was too severely injured. Despite his companions’ support helping him maintain the formation, he couldn’t stand steadily. His body trembled constantly, making the entire formation precarious. Jiang Lian reached out to support the man’s lower back, acting as a diagonal brace to hold him up. Through the gaps between the men’s legs, he peered outside.

By now, the crowd had dispersed, leaving lanterns, flashlights, and torches scattered across the ground. Disorganized beams of light stretched along the ground, with flickering flames that weren’t fully burning, gradually weakening with soft crackling sounds. As everyone knows, light sources placed high provide maximum illumination. With all light sources now low, the slightly higher areas were left in dim obscurity.

Yet through that almost indistinct dimness, agile and swift dark shadows kept passing by.

There was a group of more than ten, lean as dogs but extremely fierce—Jiang Lian suspected they were the Miao wolves, also known as Ma Biaozi. Some were enormous, weighing at least five or six hundred pounds, sweeping past like a gust of black wind, with diagonal tusks like reversed daggers. Several smaller ones followed—likely the wild boars rumored in Western Hunan to have mouths like iron plows. There were also several cat-like creatures larger than cats, with cloud-like dark brown patterns on their sides—almost certainly wild clouded leopards. There were also hissing creatures with scales reflecting a cold gleam, darting away in a flash—probably the python that made even Master Gan change color when mentioned…

Being so close to so many notorious ferocious beasts without iron bars or cages between them, Jiang Lian couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed by the immense pressure and dangerous aura. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes to calm himself for a moment, and gradually made out the “incantation” that Qiu Dong and the others were repeatedly murmuring in low voices.

It wasn’t an incantation at all, but “The Mountain Spirit” from the “Nine Songs” of Chu Ci by Qu Yuan.

Were they seeking protection from their legendary ancestral grandmother? Would that mysterious, enchanting female spirit from thousands of years ago truly protect them?

Jiang Lian had never believed in such things, but faced with what he was witnessing, he couldn’t help but believe.

The surroundings gradually quieted. The flickering flames had long extinguished, with even the crackling sounds gone. Qiu Dong and the others’ low, hoarse voices blended, becoming increasingly clear—

“…Wrapped in vines and adorned with climbing plants, with a demure gaze and fitting smile, riding a red leopard, followed by patterned foxes, a carriage of magnolia, with banners of cinnamon…”

The recitation stopped there.

Jiang Lian looked outward.

Finally, he saw Meng Qianzi.

Meng Qianzi looked completely different from before, different from any previous time. She wore very little—her sleeves, the lower part of her clothes, and the trouser legs had probably been cut away with a knife. Her waist was wrapped with leaves and vines, most of her skin exposed, appearing especially fair against the night.

She had an excellent figure, but not the delicate kind of beauty: her shoulders and neck were straight, her waistline smooth, her arms slender yet firm, her legs long and powerful. When she moved, one could vaguely see the proportioned, taut muscles. She walked barefoot, her long hair loose and slightly disheveled. Her arms and legs bore streaks of blood, but these didn’t make her look disheveled—rather, they added a nearly wild charm and tension.

Beside her was a…

Jiang Lian drew in a sharp breath.

It was a tiger.

Now he knew where the earlier howl had come from. A tiger’s roar in the mountains—as the saying goes, “Wind follows the tiger, clouds follow the dragon.” Wind is the energy of vibration; when wind and tiger interact, the roar rises, and winds follow from all directions. It was indeed so.

Jiang Lian had seen tigers before, but over many years, tigers had been either confined to zoos or rendered as cartoons, making him almost forget what a real tiger looked like.

This was a somewhat aged tiger, and a large one at that. Nearly three meters long, with a tail like a steel brush that curved slightly upward at the end, measuring about a meter in length. It was a South China tiger, rarely growing to such an enormous size.

When it moved, its thick pads made no sound, but the muscles of its body surged powerfully, suggesting the mountain-shaking force hidden beneath its fur. People say a tiger’s paw strike weighs a ton, allowing it to easily kill a person with a single blow, though he didn’t know if that was true.

Due to insufficient light at night, the tiger’s eyes looked like two large ping-pong balls giving off a white glow. But those deep tiger eyes still made one afraid to meet its gaze, fearing one’s soul might be seized and one’s spirit captured.

As this woman and tiger passed by, Jiang Lian held his breath.

Not just him—Qiu Dong and the others also stood rigidly, enduring this moment. Jiang Lian noticed that Meng Qianzi’s arm and leg facing his side both had knife wounds. The blood streaks dripping down came from these wounds, but they certainly weren’t injuries from the fight: the top three were horizontal, the bottom three curved in reverse, arranged very neatly with almost identical spacing.

Meng Qianzi led the tiger, stopping not far away, freezing into two silhouettes in Jiang Lian’s eyes—one standing, one crouching.

From farther away came the sounds of beasts roaring. Occasionally, one or two extremely miserable human cries could also be heard.

After who knows how long, Jiang Lian saw Meng Qianzi lower her hand and stroke the tiger’s head.

The tiger rose, turned, and walked away. Initially, with slow, measured steps, then after a while, with a leap, it vanished into the vast darkness of night.

Only then did the people around him truly relax. Jiang Lian heard Qiu Dong murmur: “There aren’t many tigers left in our Western Hunan mountains.”

Someone nearby responded: “Yes, I heard my grandmother say that in ’49, the People’s Liberation Army eliminated bandits and tigers. In half a year, more than eighty tigers were killed across eight counties in the region. Just in the valley behind my grandmother’s village, four were killed… Now, in such deep mountains, even with Miss Meng casting such a powerful spell, there was only… this one, looking somewhat aged, without even a cub by its side.”

It was probably the last tiger in the great mountains of Western Hunan.

When the mountain beasts stirred, they gathered as a fierce wave of attack with a heaven-shattering, earth-shaking momentum. But as they dispersed, except for occasional distant beast roars, they were almost soundless.

All that had just happened seemed like a dream in the mountain forest night.

Several bonfires were lit in succession. The battlefield where life-and-death struggles had taken place moments before became a temporary campsite.

Almost every Mountain Ghost member was injured, two of them severely. Qiu Dong’s team hadn’t brought medical supplies, so they had to make do with what they had. He led those with lighter injuries to gather nearby herbs, then divided the manpower into two groups—one to care for the severely injured, the other to help Meng Qianzi bandage her wounds.

Without proper bandages, they had to tear their clothes. The sound of fabric ripping was constant. Jiang Lian couldn’t help, so he stepped aside to avoid hindering others.

Only after Qiu Dong finished bandaging Meng Qianzi did Jiang Lian approach and hand her something: “Yours.”

Meng Qianzi and Qiu Dong both looked up.

In the bright, dancing firelight, a gold-copper colored chain dangled from Jiang Lian’s fingers, the end still trembling slightly. Several thin circular pieces clinked against each other, producing a very faint bell-like sound.

Qiu Dong’s lips moved slightly, as if wanting to say something, but he held back.

Meng Qianzi responded noncommittally: “Oh, this.”

She raised her hand to take it, her fingertips inadvertently brushing his. Only after clutching the chain in her palm did she smile lightly and look up at him: “We’re even now. You can go.”

Then she instructed Qiu Dong: “Call Jinsong and ask if he’s found Kuang Meiying and Wei Biao. If so, tell him not to trouble them anymore.”