A Mortal’s Immortal Gourd
Chapter 72: The Storm Is Coming

This time, Ergouzi obtained the corpses of three locust demons in total: one was one foot long, and the other two were two feet long each.  

If used separately, they could evolve six giant geese into spirit beasts.  

However, when it came to distribution, he still showed favoritism.  

He was more biased towards the goose that had been through life and death with him and had even been imprisoned alongside him.  

He fed the entire two-foot-long locust king corpse to that particular goose.  

After eating the insect corpse, this goose began to shed feathers and its body size skyrocketed.  

Two new feathers appeared on the tips of its wings, resembling steel in hardness.  

These additional feathers were even harder and sharper.  

Now this giant goose was the largest and strongest among the flock, having become their leader.  

After feeding this goose, the remaining two locust kings were divided into four portions, allowing four more giant geese to evolve into spirit beasts.  

At present, he had a total of 42 giant geese, among which seven had already reached spirit beast level, with strength comparable to cultivation practitioners at the Qi Refinement stage.  

Having raised so many geese, he couldn't just let them idle all the time.  

Today, Ergouzi rode the Goose King, followed by more than twenty giant geese, flying down from Shekou Mountain together.  

Qiuyue had already gathered several hundred people here, armed with bamboo brooms and other tools, waiting for a long time.  

Although she had seen this many times, every time she witnessed Ergouzi leading a flock of geese flying out, it still felt breathtaking.  

Last time, Qiuyue was slashed by Constable Wang, and her injury was severe enough that she lay in bed for half a month.  

Ergouzi had even gone to the county town to buy a pile of healing medicines to treat more than a dozen injured people.  

When calculating, the money spent on healing medicine was far more than what he paid to buy the geese.  

"Boss, everything is ready!"  

"Good, follow me, let's go!"  

Ergouzi did not fly too far with the goose flock but stopped at a relatively flat barren mountain.  

Upon arriving at the barren mountain, Ergouzi took out a large pottery jar from his gourd.  

Inside the jar was the white Demon Transformation Fruit tree he had planted.  

This Demon Transformation Fruit tree, stored inside the gourd, could grow normally just like it did outside.  

However, it required daily manual watering to maintain a growth rate ten times faster, which was somewhat troublesome.  

He deliberately came to this barren mountain today to attract some locusts.  

Autumn was coming soon, and no matter how wild the locust disaster had been, it would end once the weather got cold.  

But since food couldn't be bought now and there were still many people under his command, to survive the whole winter, a large stockpile of grain was needed.  

Ergouzi could only focus on the locusts.  

He placed the Demon Transformation Fruit tree on the mountaintop. After about an hour, a small swarm of insects was attracted by the tree and came right to him.  

Before his subordinates could act, the insect swarm was already wiped out by the giant geese.  

Qiuyue and the others only needed to sweep up the locusts on the ground, easily harvesting several dou of grain.  

Soon after, a larger swarm of locusts also came on its own...  

In this way, Ergouzi and the giant geese worked continuously for more than two months and finally accumulated over one hundred shi of locusts.  

Combined with some grain saved earlier, they should be able to eat for half a year.  

At the same time, he also captured two more locust kings.  

He fed them to the giant geese as well, and now he had eleven spirit beast-level giant geese.  

As the weather turned cold, the locust disaster that had ravaged several counties finally subsided.  

However, the situation did not improve; instead, it worsened because, except for a few wealthy landlords, no one had any grain left.  

One day, right after Ergouzi returned from outside, Huang Laocai came to find him.  

Huang Laocai was carrying a string of fatty pork and greeted Ergouzi with a beaming smile, handing over the pork.  

This expression reminded Ergouzi of the first time he went to rent land from Huang Laocai.  

At that time, he had also bought a string of fatty meat to give to Huang Laocai.  

"Master Zhang, I want to ask you for a favor."  

"What is it?"  

Ergouzi was willing to help Huang Laocai whenever possible.  

"It's like this. Things have been chaotic lately. I want to move my whole family to live at the foot of Shekou Mountain for a while."  

"Master Zhang, rest assured. Once the drought disaster ends, I'll move back immediately."  

Although Huang Laocai no longer had fields, he had accumulated some savings over the years.  

Now with so many bandits and robbers, who knew when they might raid the village and rob his home.  

After stealing the money, they might also assault women, kill people, and set fires.  

At least with the Scholar Lord still around Shekou Mountain, it would be somewhat safer.  

"No problem, you can move here."  

Ergouzi didn't hesitate to agree to such a small request.  

The next day, Huang Laocai set up a shed at the foot of Shekou Mountain and moved his family here.  

Seeing Huang Laocai's move, A’hu imitated him and requested to move to the foot of Shekou Mountain as well.  

Although his family had no wealth, they could squeeze two liang of oil from dry bamboo joints. No matter how poor, scraping the land still yielded some grain and money.  

Besides, this year he also harvested some millet and sesame.  

Ergouzi agreed to this as well.  

Other tenant farmers in the village followed suit and came to ask Ergouzi.  

Thus, more than twenty thatched huts were built at the foot of Shekou Mountain.  

As things got increasingly chaotic, Ergouzi wanted to make some weapons for his people to defend themselves.  

A few days ago, he went to Sanchazi Town to buy some iron ingots from the blacksmith.  

He found the blacksmith shop had long closed, empty without a single piece of iron.  

Now, aside from refugees, there were hardly any normal people left.  

The old scholar who was the township head had his courtyard wide open, long since occupied and ransacked by refugees.  

Other wealthy families in town either moved to the county seat for safety or were already ruined.  

These starving refugees didn't care if you were a lord; they broke through gates, robbed money, grain, and women.  

Once addicted to looting, these refugees formed bandit groups, killing and plundering wherever they went, destroying families—worse than the damage caused by the locusts.  

Currently, such bandits were everywhere in Anchan County, some large, some small, some strong, some weak.  

Among the stronger bandit leaders, there were even cultivators.  

Around Sanchazi Town, there were two such mountain bandit groups.  

One bandit group was called Breaking Heaven, gathering over a thousand people, and the leader was rumored to be a cultivator.  

The other was more mysterious, with no name, and its leader was unknown. Everyone wore black cloths wrapped around their heads, so they were called the Black Scarf Bandits.  

With the situation so chaotic, Ergouzi felt very insecure.  

He himself could hide in the mountains without coming down; with food and drink, no one could touch him.  

But the people he bought were mostly women and children; the males barely reached a hundred.  

Yet, there were over a hundred unmarried young women and over a hundred young wives.  

After robbing money and grain, these bandits, once full and warm, indulged in their lusts. Ergouzi’s Shekou Mountain became the fattest piece of meat in this chaotic world.  

He wanted to buy more iron ingots and have Huang Fugui forge weapons to distribute to everyone for self-defense.  

Unexpectedly, after going to several places, he only managed to buy just over two hundred jin of iron in total.  

Salt and iron had always been important resources.  

With bandits and robbers causing chaos everywhere and strict government control, iron became even scarcer and harder to buy.  

Handing this iron to Huang Fugui, they barely managed to forge some small knives and a pile of spears.  

At least most people now had weapons in hand.  

The weapons were all distributed, and for those who still lacked them, wooden sticks and bamboo poles were used instead.  

Ergouzi had been continuously buying people; he had purchased over a thousand people in total.  

Five to six hundred of them were over eight years old and considered capable of fighting. Now, all these five to six hundred people were armed.  

Based on previous experience fighting locusts, he reorganized these people into military units.  

Among them, the males over fourteen barely reached one hundred people. Each was assigned an iron spear; some also received small knives, forming the elite hundred-man squad.  

The young wives and unmarried young women formed three hundred-man squads. Only half of them had iron weapons; the rest wielded wooden sticks and bamboo poles.  

Though all female, they came from poor families and had worked the fields like men since childhood.  

Their strength was not much less than that of men.  

The remaining one hundred or so people, mixed genders and between eight years old and not fully grown, were only equipped with lighter long bamboo poles as weapons.  

Each hundred-man squad had a captain and squad leaders for better management.  

Then, Ergouzi taught them some simple stabbing, chopping, smashing, and sweeping basic moves to practice daily.  

Born in chaotic times, these people trained diligently and earnestly.