Chapter 229 The Beggar’s Prophecy

The night was thick and heavy.

Deep within the Prince of Southern Town’s mansion, in a secluded courtyard, dim candlelight flickered like ghostly flames over a mass grave, casting a wide shadow of a figure cloaked in black that twisted and contorted unnaturally.

At this moment, Xiao Zhengnan lowered his head, his tone cold and hard.

“Sir, they’ve taken the bait. By dawn tomorrow, they’ll set off into the Ten Thousand Mountains.”

The laugh of the black-cloaked figure sent chills down the spine.

“Good.”

The figure slowly turned, face obscured beneath the hood.

“Remember, I want only that woman surnamed Su.

And she must be alive!”

Xiao Zhengnan remained silent, his rigid expression revealing his impatience.

The next morning.

At the city gate, carriages and horses were ready.

A Liao led the lead horse as if he were a soulless marionette, moving mechanically.

Su Hewan and Yu Qing mounted their horses with practiced agility.

Thankfully, they had previously begged Lu Yan and Shen Jue to teach them how to ride!

Shen Jue and Lu Yan mounted on either side, guarding them closely.

Just as the four-person squad was about to step out of the city gate—

“Hehe… you’re all going to die! Everyone’s going to die!”

A filthy, disheveled mad beggar, hair tangled like withered straw, suddenly appeared from nowhere.

He moved with astonishing speed.

“Stop him!”

The city gate guards panicked, drawing their swords.

But the mad beggar was like a slippery eel, wriggling effortlessly through the gaps between the flashing blades.

He charged straight toward Su Hewan’s horse!

The horse panicked, letting out a nervous whinny and rearing high.

“Wanwan, watch out!” Shen Jue’s gaze sharpened, the folding fan in his hand poised like a blade ready to strike.

“Wanwan!” Yu Qing cried out.

Su Hewan nearly fell from her horse, both girls’ faces drained of color in terror.

Yet the beggar did not attack her.

Instead, taking advantage of the horse’s raised hooves, he lunged under the horse’s belly, grabbing her reins with a mud-covered hand.

“Take… take it!”

Tilting his head back, his face smeared with dirt, only his eyes shone brightly—frantic, teetering on the edge of death.

With incredible speed, he forced something into Su Hewan’s palm, hanging at her horse’s side.

“Don’t go… there’s no return…”

Mumbling incoherently, he appeared utterly insane.

Then, suddenly, he screamed at the top of his lungs, issuing a prophecy that made the listeners’ skin crawl.

“Blood will bloom with flowers; Shennong will have no grain!”

“Blood will bloom… Shennong will have no grain!”

Before anyone could react to this horrifying curse, the guards recovered from their shock and pounced like wolves.

“Impudent mad dog! How dare you charge at the imperial commissioner!”

Several guards pinned him mercilessly to the ground.

“Drag him away! Beat him to death with sticks immediately, don’t dirty the lords’ eyes!”

The leader of the guards went pale, terrified that the imperial inspector might punish him, and barked the order frantically.

The mad beggar no longer struggled and was roughly dragged away by the guards.

A piercing, eerie laugh mingled with the scraping sound of his body being dragged, gradually fading around the corner of the city gate.

The atmosphere at the city gate instantly became suffocatingly tense, as if the very air had frozen.

Su Hewan steadied her startled horse, then slowly lowered her gaze and opened her tightly clenched right hand.

In her palm lay an object roughly woven from withered, yellowed grass.

It was a flower that had completely dried up, utterly lifeless.

Yet from the uniquely strange shape of its petals, it was clearly a miniature version of the Illusory Flower!

The ominous warning it carried pressed directly upon everyone.

Yu Qing, sitting atop her horse, instantly went pale.

【Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap! What kind of hellish start is this?!】

【Isn’t this exactly the classic horror game NPC scene where they forcibly hand you an item as a clue?!】

“‘Flower blooms in blood, Shennong has no valley’? Doesn’t this mean that Shennong Valley doesn’t even exist, or that it’s a death trap designed to lure people in?” Yu Qing couldn’t help but ask.

Lu Yan, riding his horse, tightened his grip on the embroidered spring knife.

He didn’t understand what NPCs or games were, but he could clearly sense the little girl’s overwhelming fear.

Without showing any emotion, he guided his horse slightly forward, his tall frame shielding Yu Qing from the cold wind.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m here,” Lu Yan said, lowering his voice.

Su Hewan, however, showed no signs of panic like Yu Qing.

“No… it’s not that simple.”

Her voice was unusually calm, cutting clearly through the chilly morning air.

“If the goal was merely to scare us and keep us from entering the mountains, there was no need to use such a cryptic method.”

She raised her head, her gaze burning as it swept across everyone.

“‘Shennong has no valley’—this must not be taken literally to mean that such a valley does not exist.”

“In ancient texts, place names were often derived from people’s names or totems.”

“I suspect that ‘Shennong’ is not a prefix for a place at all, but a code—or… it might even be the name of the mastermind behind all this!”

“As for ‘no valley,’ perhaps it indicates that the place doesn’t have a fixed valley form; maybe it’s movable, or hidden using some kind of mystical technique, making it a deadly trap.”

Shen Jue stared intently at Su Hewan’s face.

Listening to her calm, logically tight analysis, the faint smirk on his lips gradually widened.

This girl’s mind was sharper than the most brilliant legal strategist in his Eastern Bureau by hundreds of times.

【That beggar’s steps seemed chaotic, but his stance was rock-solid; no ordinary person who’s been starving for long could have such physical control.】

【He was deliberately placed to warn us—or… to intimidate us.】

Su Hewan’s thoughts reached Shen Jue clearly, aligning perfectly with his own judgment.

Shen Jue suppressed the smile on his lips, and a flicker of bone-chilling murderous intent flashed in his deep phoenix-like eyes.

Daring to play this kind of ghostly trick right under his nose—this person clearly didn’t value their life.

He slightly turned his head, using the corner of his eye to glance at the Eastern Bureau agent disguised as a common follower behind him.

No words were needed; a barely perceptible look sufficed.

The agent immediately understood, silently holding his horse’s reins, and using the chaos at the city gate to slip into the alley where the mad beggar had gone.

“Since someone has gone to such lengths to send us this… gift, then all the more reason we must go to the Hundred-Thousand Mountains.”

Shen Jue twirled the ribs of his folding fan gracefully between his fingers.

“Let’s go. Don’t keep the wandering spirits inside waiting too long.”

Led by Aliao, the group finally departed from Dongzhou City, plunging into the edge of the Hundred-Thousand Mountains, a place that seemed capable of swallowing all light.

The miasma drifted like a gray veil among the ancient trees, blotting out the sun.