Middle three continents, Yunmeng Prefecture.
“Master Xuan Sun, they have already left. Their itinerary is unknown.”
Ding Huaimeng retracted her detection artifact and reported to the man wearing a hawk-bill mask.
“Who is this Ling Yao? Do any of you have an impression of her?”
Xuan Sun chewed on a piece of foxtail grass and asked in a casual tone.
All twenty-four members of Squad 762 looked at one another and then slowly shook their heads. They did not understand why Master Xuan Sun would suddenly bring up this female Cultivator.
“A bunch of idiots.”
Xuan Sun rolled his eyes and tossed out a wanted poster.
The portrait on it was eighty or ninety percent similar to Ling Yao!
“Which damn area were you patrolling before?! Why was a small demon in the Foundation Establishment stage able to escape your inspection?!”
Xuan Sun stepped on the wanted poster, spat out the grass, and his gaze under the mask swept across the group. His voice was as cold as a blade tempered in ice.
“One of the only two remaining seedlings of the Flood Dragon race, an untransformed juvenile Flood Dragon. Her demonic aura is mottled, but her bloodline is not weak.”
“Three months ago, she sneaked into the Kingdom of Zhao in Yu Gong province from the Southern Wilderness Demon Realm.”
“Along the way, she attacked and killed seventy-three rogue Cultivators and devoured 269 heads of livestock in mortal villages.”
“She disturbed the borders of three provinces, causing turmoil in the mortal dynasty. This wanted poster has been up for two months, with a bounty of 8,000 high-grade spirit stones.”
Every word he spoke felt like a giant axe hacking at their hearts.
“And you, you chased her for twenty-three days — from Lancang River to Qixia Ridge, and from Qixia Ridge to Mochou Mountain — only to tell me that you fucking ‘lost her’?”
Xuan Sun suddenly leaned over, his hawk-bill mask nearly touching the forehead of Ding Huaimeng, who stood at the front.
“Ding Huaimeng, tell me, how can a small demon in the Foundation Establishment stage, under the gaze of twenty-four people and forty-eight eyes, grandly cross Yu Gong province and slip into the most prosperous Liuli Valley in Yunmeng Prefecture?”
“And how the hell did she have the audacity to fight the daughter of the Everlasting Su Clan right in front of Liuli Valley?”
The sharp tip of the hawk bill cut a thin layer of skin on Ding Huaimeng’s forehead like a sharp blade.
Her lips trembled, but she did not dare to make a single sound.
“Don’t tell me it’s because you had to accompany me on this bullshit patrol mission!”
Xuan Sun straightened up, his voice suddenly rising, sounding like a hawk’s cry tearing through the air.
He abruptly raised his hand, pointed his index finger at the chest of each squad member who was acting like a frightened quail, and said, “Departing at sunrise, camping at sunset, questioning villages according to regulations, and recording traces according to the manual… What a fucking standardized process!”
When he pointed at Lu Wenbo, Xuan Sun’s tone suddenly softened. “Come, Big Lu, tell me, will the demon race run according to your rules and regulations? Don’t be afraid. Be brave and speak up.”
As the captain of Squad 762, Lu Wenbo was currently under much more pressure than the other members. His back was already drenched in sweat, and his fingers were shaking.
“Did I not fucking teach you?!”
Upon hearing no response, Xuan Sun ripped off the mask, revealing a face covered in scars and a fierce, aggressive aura. His eyes were filled with fire.
“Demons do not understand human nature, but they understand the ‘nature of killing’! They can smell the laziness on you and hear the perfunctoriness in your formations! When you set up detection arrays, did you even skip the ‘Triple Alternate Warning’?”
“Do you think the middle three continents have been peaceful for so long that the demon race has learned your damn ‘Three Obediences and Four Virtues’ and started studying the ‘Four Books and Five Classics’?!”
The humidity in Yunmeng Prefecture was heavy, and sunny days were rare.
Now, the dark clouds had returned, thunder rolled, and pale lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the equally pale faces of the squad members.
Xuan Sun suddenly laughed.
“Fine, very fine… Do you still think you’re being responsible? That you didn’t hurt anyone or slack off, and that you followed every step according to the protocol?”
Xuan Sun bent down to pick up the wanted poster and lightly flicked the footprint off it.
“Then let me tell you now. On the way to Yunmeng Prefecture, this Ling Yao killed the guards of the Kingdom of Zhao’s treasury and two female disciples of the Danxia Sect.”
“The one who was allowed to escape was a personal disciple of the Danxia Sect’s Sixth Elder. If she hadn’t had a protective artifact, her corpse would be cold by now.”
Silence.
A deathly silence.
No one would be stupid enough to step forward and ask Xuan Sun where his information came from, or why he was only just learning of this delayed intelligence himself yet could still berate them so righteously.
They knew that the source of all these tragedies stemmed from the dereliction of duty of these twenty-four “front-line inspectors.”
Their mission was to “discover and intercept,” relying on on-site observation and real-time reaction.
Given that there was already a wanted poster and plenty of information, they should have used professional means to continuously gather intelligence and capture her.
Yet, they allowed the target to cross several provinces and enter the core area. The fundamental reason was their perfunctory attitude and lack of execution, not objective limitations.
Meanwhile, Xuan Sun was responsible for overall command, resource allocation, and intelligence synthesis.
What he learned were new crimes committed by Ling Yao after she had left the squad’s sight. This was a common delay in the intelligence network’s information, not his own investigative error.
In short, if Squad 762 had captured Ling Yao in the first place, none of the subsequent events would have happened.
So, Xuan Sun had every right to scold them.
Even if he were to hang Squad 762 up and beat them, it would be a reasonable way to “hold them accountable.”
Xuan Sun exhaled, and his voice lowered, becoming deeper and heavier, as if pressing down on everyone’s spine.
“What is the first iron rule of the Demon Inspection Department? — ‘Protect the people, sever the source of calamity.’ Tell me, what did you protect? And what did you sever?”
He put his mask back on, his tone as calm as the sea before a storm.
“From today onward, all members of Squad 762 are downgraded to ‘Observation Period.’ Three hundred merit points will be deducted, and you are not allowed to take any mission above Grade A for three years.”
A fledgling newcomer wanted to argue, but was pinned back by the glares of Lu Wenbo and Ding Huaimeng.
Who would dare to cross Xuan Sun at a time like this? Wouldn’t that be a death wish?
Many people died in the Demon Inspection Department every year. Not many died due to superior-subordinate conflicts, but that didn’t mean it never happened.
After all, their mission was to “slay demons,” and they were almost always fighting on the front lines. Once a rift appeared in a squad, it could easily cause a major strategic error that the entire team could not afford.
“It’s only right that you’re not satisfied. I have no interest in making you as submissive to me as maids.”
Xuan Sun turned around, his back to the crowd.
“But please remember, every formation you skip, every wisp of demonic aura you miss, and every moment you delay your pursuit will lead to more cries in the next village and more corpses in the next region.”
“The Demon Inspection Department can have idiots and brutes, but it will never tolerate ‘clever’ slackers.”
“All of you, get the hell back to headquarters and rewrite your patrol reports!”
“Mark every place Ling Yao might pass through in the next three months — if you get one wrong, another three years will be added. From now on, I will be in full charge of these two demons. Go back and reflect on yourselves.”
“Xiao Jiu, is the person drawn on this wanted poster you?”
Standing behind Ling Yao, who was wrapped in a cloak, Shizi tore a wanted poster off the city wall and asked curiously.
“…It’s me.”
Ling Yao remained silent for a long while before speaking in a hoarse voice, “But the atrocities on it weren’t committed by me. Our Flood Dragon race does not have a bloodthirsty nature.”
“It’s just that the Dragon race wants to exterminate us, so they forced those crimes onto me and… that monster. I can’t go back to the demon side for now because I’ll be arrested by the Dragon race.”
“So, I can only survive on the human side and play hide-and-seek with the Demon Inspection Department.”
Shizi was shocked.
“The most obvious situation is these new criminal records.”
Ling Yao pointed her index finger at a line of text on the wanted poster. “Shizi, we left Cuiwei Village together.”
“Along the way, I did knock out a few Cultivators and steal their artifacts, but I didn’t kill anyone. You saw this with your own eyes.”
*Hiss—*
Shizi sucked in a breath of cold air.
This was true.
Even though she had only been by Ling Yao’s side for a few days, she could see that while Xiao Jiu was sometimes paranoid, her heart was not bad — at least not to the point of being “unforgivable” or having “countless crimes.”
Even her paranoia was traceable. Only when the man named “Yun Heng” was mentioned would Ling Yao have a huge emotional outburst. Other times, she was quite normal.
“In other words, on the human side… there’s a ‘traitor’?”
Shizi weighed the words she had recently learned.
“Half and half. There are high-level humans involved, as well as the Dragon race.”
Ling Yao rubbed her temples as if she had a headache. “But you don’t have to worry. I remember all their names. I will find them one by one and kill them, one after another.”
In her previous life, Yun Heng hadn’t used a ring for his proposal.
Instead, it was a list, a Nine-Pattern Pill that had huge side effects but could quickly increase one’s cultivation, and an offensive artifact that was purely for attack and extremely sharp, but also extremely fragile.
He said, “If you can’t win, run. I’ll be waiting for you twenty steps behind you.”
And it was also at that moment that Ling Yao had made up her mind to stay with Yun Heng for the rest of her life.
“Xiao Jiu? Xiao Jiu! What’s wrong? You look terrible!”
Ling Yao suddenly felt a splitting headache. Her eyes rolled back, and she actually fainted on the spot.
‘If I kill my way there again…’
‘Yun Heng, will you still wait for me…’
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