Chapter 47: Yellow Sparrow Lurks Behind (Part 1): Bird, Mountain, Shadow Part 2

If they had been willing to try once more—or even sent more brave men the first time—perhaps the yellow sparrow would have been slain.

Mu Qian Tan said, “What other reason? They were scared shitless. The yellow sparrow knew crowds were dangerous and probably wouldn’t raid the village anymore. But the villagers didn’t know that. They sacrificed a few to buy a false sense of security, praying it would eat its fill and leave them alone.”

Shang Shan said, “To survive themselves, they sent others to die.”

Mu Qian Tan replied, “No choice. After all, the ones brave enough to pick up weapons and resist were the first to die.”

Nurtured by human lives, the yellow sparrow grew ever stronger and more vicious. One day, as it pondered when to descend the mountain and devour everyone for a feast, the villagers offered up a woman.

She was a delicate girl, perhaps only in her early teens, with a slender body—but her belly protruded noticeably.

The villagers tossed her down and fled in panic, terrified anew by the numerous animal corpses littering the ground. The girl stroked her belly, tears streaming down her face, as she sat on the largest tree stump in the Shadowless Land. She gazed at a man in the distance who had come down the mountain with the villagers but kept looking back.

Their tearful eyes met—eyes filled with the pain of abandoned love after losing courage. Their fragile romance, thinner than paper, was crushed by the impending death, unsalvageable as the dead stump beneath her.

But at that moment, she stopped crying. She saw a tender green sprout emerging from the edge of the stump, waving as if beckoning. Fragile enough to snap with a touch, yet brimming with vibrant life that touched the heart.

She watched, mesmerized. When she realized darkness had fallen before her eyes, she jerked her head up and saw that the Shadow Yellow Sparrow had approached and was now looking down at her.

No facial features were visible in the shadow, but the girl felt its gaze upon her. The yellow sparrow opened its mouth and flicked out a long black tongue, brushing her belly and slicing a thin wound.

As fresh blood flowed, it caught the strange fragrance it had smelled at its birth and recognized her as the girl whose knee injury had lured it here years ago. At the same time, it heard two heartbeats—one strong, one weak—coming from her body.

She was pregnant.

Qin He said in slight surprise, “She looks like she’s only in her teens, but she has a baby. That must be so hard.”

Fu Li wore a similar expression. They were the same age as the girl, for whom such matters still felt distant. Discovering a peer swept into a different current of fate left them incredulous.

Shang Shan struggled restlessly. “What is it going to do? Eat more people! Why can’t I move?”

Mu Qian Tan said, “What good would moving do? It’s all in the past—you can’t change it. Just stay still and behave.”

The yellow sparrow sensed the life still gestating within her. In its grasp, it was as fragile as the sprout on the stump, yet it possessed an undeniable power. Inconceivable.

Having learned communication from the brains it had eaten and digested, it now possessed the ability to speak with humans.

It asked, “If only one can survive, your daughter or you?”

The girl replied, “My child is a daughter? She must be so cute… Please let my child live.”

The yellow sparrow repeated the question three times, receiving the same answer each time. Then it asked, “If only one can survive, you or your mother?”

The girl didn’t understand why she asked that. Then, she saw it reach its hand into its own abdomen through the wound and do something to the child that hadn’t fully formed yet. The child surprisingly spoke up, in an extremely childish voice: “Please let my mother live.”

She asked three times, and the answer was the same each time.

The Yellow Sparrow was somewhat conflicted, unsure which side to choose, so it took the girl back to the village.

The sacrificial offering that had just been sent up the mountain suddenly appeared together with the demon. Everyone was shocked and panicked, thinking the sacrifice had failed, and they screamed as they fled. In the chaos of chickens flying and dogs jumping, the Yellow Sparrow asked who the child’s father was. After getting the answer, it killed everyone in the village except the girl’s husband.

The village’s water sources were all dyed deep red, the air filled with a pungent bloody stench, and even the moon seemed tainted by the blood color. The Yellow Sparrow faced the only surviving husband and asked: “Do you want your daughter to live, or your wife?”

The demon couldn’t make up its mind, so it came to ask others.

The husband was scared out of his wits by the village massacre and trembled as he said: “I want to live.”

The next second, his head fell to the ground.

The Yellow Sparrow laughed heartily, ate the corpse, and took the girl back up the mountain. The girl survived, and so did the daughter. There was no need to choose at all—the power of life and death was always in its own hands.

However, the demon didn’t spare their lives out of pity. It wanted to find a suitable vessel for itself.

It had suffered an undeserved calamity, its fleshly body smashed by a falling boulder from the sky, leaving only its shadow. It didn’t want to continue existing in its current form, so it tried to seize other living bodies, but all attempts failed. The animals it casually killed nearly filled the shadowless land.

In its pain and rage, it happened upon the pregnant girl and felt a spark of hope—perhaps the new life growing in her womb could be used by it.

Months later, the girl gave birth to a baby girl in the Yellow Sparrow’s embrace. The demon could wait no longer and tried to enter the infant’s body.

The child, just born, was about to end her life in this way. The girl couldn’t stop it and could only weep bitterly. Her tears fell onto the infant’s face and slid into her mouth. The child tasted the bitterness, opened her eyes, and saw her crying mother.

The child, who had gained spiritual intelligence from answering those three questions, had witnessed the tragedy of her family’s death alongside her mother and didn’t want to leave her lonely mother like this. Thus, she fought with the Yellow Sparrow inside her body.

The purest newborn had the most boiling blood, nearly drying out the Yellow Sparrow. The demon shadow flowed out from the child’s body but couldn’t fully detach. In extreme agony, it crawled away, roaring, and ultimately fell into the deep pool.

Immediately after, a mountain burst out of the water, rising majestically and merging with the surrounding mountain ranges. A waterfall hung from its peak, flowing into the deep pool at its base. The pool water was eerily still, mist drifting over the mountain, as if it had existed there naturally for tens of thousands of years.

It was the shadow of the mountain. After seizing a fleshly body, it turned back into a mountain.

The girl wanted to find her daughter and saw a cave on the mountainside. It seemed she heard the child’s cries, so she walked in.

It was pitch black before her eyes. After walking for a moment, her abdomen suddenly hurt. When she reached down to touch it, there was a soft umbilical cord, the other end connected deep into the mountain, and the cave entrance behind her had sealed shut again.

After that, the child, now fused with the great mountain, continuously hunted by opening wide cave mouths, devouring thousands of lives—even sect disciples who later entered the cave by mistake during trials to rest.

Piles of white bones hid within the mountain walls, never seeing the light of day, their souls and flesh turning into nutrients absorbed by the Yellow Sparrow to nourish the girl in its belly and sustain her fragile, mortal life.

Time flew by like a sea turning into mulberry fields; centuries passed in an instant. As a mere mortal, the girl miraculously survived to this day. The mother lived within the child’s belly, just as the child had once gestated in her mother’s womb.

However, even cultivators rarely had such long lifespans. The girl had long since gradually assimilated with the mountain, turning into a monstrous figure that was neither human nor ghost.

At the same time as she lost her original appearance, it meant the child’s nature was gradually being reoccupied by the Yellow Sparrow. Once it cultivated back into a demon and regained its freedom, the centuries of accumulated resentment would likely make it wreak havoc on the world in even more cruel ways, repeating the tragedy of countless mountain villages.

The group’s final vision stopped inside the mountain’s belly, all the scenes condensing into shadows under flickering firelight. The cave fell quiet for a moment before Shang Shan said angrily: “That Yellow Sparrow, it killed so many people… Truly detestable!”

Fu Li stroked the startling item in her hand and looked around: “So this is inside the belly of the mountain demon?”

The woman still stood in place, smiling faintly. Qin He asked: “Why did you show us all this?”

The woman changed to a new gesture, sliding her thumb across her neck, then pointing to the top of the cave, and sliding her thumb again. The meaning was very clear: kill her first, then kill the Yellow Sparrow Mountain Demon.

She was asking them for help.

Shang Shan said straightforwardly: “Sure!”

Qin He pondered for a moment, about to say something. Mu Qian Tan refused first: “No.”

The three instantly looked over. She continued: “You’re worried the Yellow Sparrow will bring disaster to the world? No need. You probably haven’t gone out in a long time, so you might not know—this forest is surrounded by a formation belonging to Tianyu Sect. Even if the Yellow Sparrow cultivates into form, it can’t escape the surveillance of four… five hall masters.”

“We won’t act ourselves, but we can promise to find people to help right after we get back.”

Ridiculous. They didn’t even know what level the Yellow Sparrow demon was. How could they risk their lives? It was better to think about how to deal with those two mantis demons and escape without exposing their identities.

Faced with the direct refusal, the woman didn’t show disappointment. She just let out an extremely faint sigh. Surprisingly, Mu Qian Tan saw a look of compassion for the world on that petrified face. But immediately after, she realized something was wrong.

The cave was too quiet, to the point where even the breathing of those three kids was clearly audible.

But there was a waterfall right at the cave entrance; it couldn’t possibly be this quiet unless…

Mu Qian Tan turned to look. The cave exit had vanished, replaced by a solid wall.