Chapter 486 (1/2)

Back Off, Let Me Do This First

As if they sensed danger in the air, the little trading parties quickened their pace. Although all was quiet, there was a feeling that made their hearts race.

Something was about to happen.

The cattle and horses pulling wagons were scraping their hooves against the ground anxiously, some even wanted to run away. The traders did all they could to hold their animals back.

An animal that looked like a deer without antlers breathed hard through its nostrils, looking frustrated and ill-tempered. It kept getting up as if it wanted to stand on its hind legs, many people had to come keep it down.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, it’s going mad!”

“Not just ours, look around!”

Everywhere, it didn’t matter if the animals were originally placid or aggressive, all of them were antsy like they wanted to break free and run away.

Horses neighed, beasts roared. It was chaos.

“What the hell is happening?!” yelled someone.

“Wait, listen!”

Rumble---

There was a rumbling from afar.

The ground shook. Although it was not obvious, there was movement.

The careful ones held their carriages and horses in place, watching their surroundings cautiously. Some turned around to look at the suspicious, migrating tribe they had just passed. Was it them?

No, no. The sound was coming from another direction.

Soon, the sound grew more obvious. Even people without totemic power could hear it.

Far away, a cloud of dust between the earth and the skies formed. There wasn’t much dust in this grass plains but it was obvious enough.

A large army of thousands appeared.

Metal armour and weapons glinted in the sun, it looked as if the entire army was covered in light. As rows and rows of people moved, it looked like ripples of light on the surface of a lake.

From far, a rough estimation yielded that this army was larger than four thousand. However, most tribs only had one to two thousand members. An armed group like this could wipe out a tribe effortlessly!

Gulp.

Everyone who saw this gulped audibly. They did not know how to react.

They’d live here for so long, yet they haven’t seen anything like that before.

The nobles? Only nobles would have such a well-armed mercenary. But why would they come this far? For what?

It didn’t matter why. As the army approached, the traders quickly went into hiding. They feared this bunch more than the tribe they just passed. Previously, that tribe also consisted of many elderly, children and women. Here, they were all warriors prepared for battle.

“Run! Run!”

All the traders urged their animals, avoiding this army as soon as possible.

Rumble…

It sounded like rolling thunder.

In the largest carriage.

Yi Zong frowned, looking ahead in confusion. He grabbed a fist full of fine golden sand from a ceramic pot next to him and scattered it on a square board.

The golden sand formed lines on the board. The sand arranged themselves similar to the patterns drawn on the board.

The golden sand was still moving. Some approached the jadestone, some avoided the jade. However, soon, the changes stopped. There was a light ‘poof’ and all the golden sand scattered.

“How did it go, Yi Zong? What did the reading say?” Several people leaned over.

“Flaming Horn is in front. But I can’t find out anything else.” Frustration slowly crept up his calm features. He wanted to know more but there always seemed to be a layer of fog. It was always chaos in his reading, his jade stones didn’t yield much results, everything was a mess. Especially when he did readings about the legendary young Elder of Flaming Horn. The readings told him nothing.

In the beginning, it was understanding if his readings failed. However, he was more well-informed now, plus he had many speculations. His readings should yield results! Yet, other than the general direction of Flaming Horn, the readings didn’t tell him anything!

Yi Zong once heard Yi Bing say that Yi Bing also attempted to conduct a reading on Flaming Horn in the tower next to the city gates. At the time, his readings failed too. It was the same for Yi Zong now!

Unbelievable!

It was no wonder the Yi family was always cautious of Flaming Horn, this was very unsettling to them. If such a questionable group wasn’t destroyed, the Yi family would never be settled. Yi Bing too. Ever since he returned from the tower, he seemed to meet a bottleneck and made no improvements. In private, the older generation discussed that if Yi Bing was unable to break through his bottleneck, then he would remain there. To the Yi family, this meant that they would stop putting in resources to train this person.