"Lord, where are we going?" Yu gazed at Yang Kai with curiosity.
Ever since leaving that village three days ago, the three-thousand-strong force had been marching in a peculiar fashion — sometimes veering left, sometimes right, sometimes heading south, sometimes north, with absolutely no discernible pattern. It was as though Yang Kai was issuing movement orders on a whim, pointing them in whichever direction struck his fancy.
In theory, Yang Kai was the leader of this army, and his orders naturally had to be obeyed by all.
But this aimless, baffling march left everyone scratching their heads.
After enduring it for several days, Yu finally couldn't hold back and wanted to get to the bottom of it.
"Pass the order — turn southeast, full speed ahead!" Yang Kai barked the command, then leisurely glanced at Yu and flashed a grin. "Where else would we be going? Obviously, to settle the score!"
Settle the score? Yu and Lu, who was standing beside her, both froze.
Settle scores with whom? Go where to do it?
Over these past few days, the scouts hadn't brought back any useful information, and apart from that one surprise ambush they'd stumbled into at the village, it had been eerily quiet — so quiet that some had begun to suspect the Demon Folk had all retreated. Now Yang Kai suddenly mentioned settling accounts, and naturally, no one understood what he meant.
But Yang Kai had no intention of explaining. A faint psychic thread connected his mind to something ahead, guiding him toward the direction they needed to go. He gazed toward that point, eyes narrowing, a cold gleam flickering within them.
There had been a Sand Demon hiding in that village — Yang Kai had known that at the time.
He simply hadn't struck it down immediately. Instead, he'd quietly split off a sliver of divine sense and attached it to the Sand Demon. Shortly after his force departed the village, he'd felt the Sand Demon leave as well, heading in a certain direction. Half a day later, it had stopped at a fixed location, and for the past few days it had remained there — a place that was unmistakably a Demon Cave.
His target was that Demon Cave.
The results of their first battle had been far from ideal. Facing only a few dozen Sand Demons, the three-thousand-strong force had still lost over a hundred men. For days now, every barbarian warrior had been simmering with suppressed fury, hoping to encounter more Demon Folk so they could fight them properly and avenge their fallen comrades.
That Demon Cave was the perfect outlet for their rage. And the Wuniu Tribe needed a decisive victory to lift its morale.
These past days of marching had not been aimless. Seen from high above, it would have been clear that the Wuniu Tribe had been conducting a sweeping patrol in a three-hundred-li radius, using the Demon Cave as its center.
The situation was better than Yang Kai had anticipated — there were no other Demon Folk lurking in the vicinity. Within a thousand li, it seemed that only this single Demon Cave existed. That meant once the Wuniu Tribe engaged it, they wouldn't need to worry about being attacked from behind.
The only remaining question was how many Demon Folk were inside the cave, and what caliber of powerhouses held it.
Half a day later, the army arrived at a mountain hollow. Yang Kai raised his hand slightly, and the three-thousand-strong force ground to a halt.
He issued orders for the tribesmen to rest in place and eat their dried rations to recover. He then summoned over a dozen shamans for a private council. When they learned that a Demon Cave lay barely a hundred li ahead, every one of them was stunned, scarcely able to believe it.
Over the past few days, they hadn't noticed anything unusual from Yang Kai — he hadn't even left the main force. So where had this intelligence come from?
And when they learned that Yang Kai intended to personally scout the Demon Cave, all the shamans showed deep concern. Yu and Lu volunteered immediately to take on the task themselves. Though they were shamans of the Southern Barbarian Tribe, they had spent many years training in the Shaman God Temple and had some mastery of concealment and stealth shamanic arts. Such reconnaissance work didn't require overwhelming strength. But if they were discovered, the consequences would certainly be dire.
Yang Kai naturally refused the sisters' kind offer.
After exchanging a few more words with the shamans, Yang Kai flickered and vanished on the spot. Die was accustomed to this trick of his, but the other dozen shamans couldn't help but gape, glancing all around in search of Yang Kai's figure — only to find no trace of him.
A short while later, inside the Demon Cave a hundred li away, Yang Kai drifted in like a specter. The Demon Folk guarding the entrance might as well have been decorative.
It was a cavern hollowed out from within the mountain — enormous in space, its internal passages winding and twisting, making it easy to defend and difficult to assault.
Yang Kai held his breath and stilled his mind, concealing his presence while probing for intelligence.
Not knowing whether any powerhouses were stationed here, Yang Kai dared not release his divine sense freely. He could only inch forward, gathering information little by little.
The mountain cavern certainly held a fair number of Demon Folk, and they didn't appear to belong to a single race — their builds varied enormously. Some towering demons were even more massive and imposing than the strongest barbarian warriors, while others stood barely three chi tall, like miniature humanoids. Without exception, all of them radiated the Demon Qi that Yang Kai found so repugnant. The varying density of that aura betokened differences in their strength.
This was his first time dealing with the Demon Race at such close range. Not knowing what abilities they possessed, Yang Kai couldn't afford the slightest lapse in caution.
As he moved through the cavern, Yang Kai soon discovered something else that gave him a headache.
A number of demonified barbarians were being held inside.
These barbarians clearly belonged to the four annihilated tribes. Intelligence had reported that those four tribes had been wiped out entirely with no survivors — but apparently that wasn't quite true. A portion of them had simply been demonified and turned into demon thralls.
It was immediately obvious that these demonified barbarians held a vastly lower status than the genuine Demon Folk. Any demon could bark orders at them and wave them around, and the demonified barbarians showed not a shred of resentment. On the contrary, they were extremely deferential and cautious around the demons, bowing their heads in absolute obedience.