The illusion vanished in a flash.
Yet that distant gaze seemed to pierce through nothingness and reality, falling squarely upon Ji Jue and sending a chill straight down his spine.
Even more terrifyingly, he discovered that—merely through the faint resonance brought on by the blood covenant—the venom of the wolf blood had already quietly corroded its way deep into his soul!
The wolf's insidious stealth was truly pervasive! With nothing more than a single glance, it had already planted the seeds of aberration within Ji Jue, seeking to silently assimilate him into a member of the pack.
Ji Jue couldn't help blanching as he felt the blood-like wolf venom rapidly drinking in his spiritus, sprouting swiftly, about to coil around... his matrix?
*Wait, buddy, are you serious?*
Ji Jue was almost moved to laughter.
He didn't even need to react. The matrix of Non-Offensive flickered faintly, and a wisp of residual brilliance stemming from the Edge of Revolution surfaced and vanished, mincing the wolf-blood oath—which had dared sidle up looking to snuggle—into fine hash like chopping vegetables.
*What kind of garbage is this? Don't even try to touch me!*
Heavily battered and shattered, the wolf venom scattered in an instant, fleeing, slithering, and reassembling as it attempted to hide inside Ji Jue's physical flesh.
In a fraction of a second, it followed the bloodstream straight toward his heart, leaping right into the thunder pool of its own accord and slamming face-first into Zhanlu, which was quietly undergoing its metamorphosis amid endless arcs of lightning—
Having transformed into spirit essence, Zhanlu hummed faintly for a moment, completely perplexed.
*What's this junk?*
*Burn it!*
*Snap—*
Before it could even react, the blood covenant was violently torn apart by the burst of lightning erupting from Zhanlu the instant they met, incinerated into dregs. The surviving traces of crimson scattered once more, trembling in terrified agitation, and decisively changed direction.
This time, having abandoned both matrix and flesh, it attempted to hide inside his soul.
And so, deep within Ji Jue's soul, Chunjun seemed to slowly type out a question mark.
[?]
*A little snack delivered right to my door? Why be polite?*
One slurp, and instantly refined.
At once, amid the rising black flames, a faint, elusive wisp of crimson appeared.
Right upon the chest of the vile fiend's shadow, above the gaping hole where the black flames surged, a thorny crimson brier crept silently outward, coiling around the perimeter of the void, flickering in and out of sight.
The brand-new development left Ji Jue stunned for a moment, utterly bewildered—how had this wolf-blood oath suddenly been absorbed by his vile fiend form?
Good news: the vile fiend form seemed to have grown.
Bad news: he seemed to be turning a little bit wolf!
Had he been an ordinary vile fiend, he probably would have attracted the gaze of the Wolf of Great Sin by now, sprouting black fur all over at breakneck speed. Yet because Ji Jue's sin had formed of its own self-nature, having no dealings whatsoever with Great Sin, it had simply pirated everything, freely borrowing from competitors—a complete, unadulterated free ride.
After swallowing and digesting the rotting giant wolf's blood covenant in a single gulp, it casually unlocked a brand-new skill tree—and one that was a total rip-off of the Wolf Sin to boot!
So what did that make him?
A wolf, or a dog?
During the tedious wrap-up work, he drifted casually toward the window, plucking up the courage to circle near the An brothers and the Dragon Tongue Hunter a few times. As it turned out, the White Stag Hunters didn't seem to react at all. The brothers were merely slinging their arms around the Dragon Tongue Hunter while gesturing toward him, muttering who-knew-what.
There wasn't the slightest hostility.
And yet, Ji Jue's perception seemed to have expanded significantly, growing far sharper. Going by sensation, his reaction time and speed had likely increased by a fair margin as well.
At the same time, crucially, his awareness of malice had grown even clearer!
Take right now in the conference room: the witnesses from the Imperial Bureau of Secrecy, Doledonville laughing and chatting with Fan Yun, and even... the man chatting and laughing with Doledonville—
—Fan Yun?!
[???]
Ji Jue suppressed the urge for his face to twitch, completely at a loss: *Wait, old man?*
*I wouldn't claim to have laid down my life for the Federation, but at least I've made contributions, delivered results, and hit my KPIs, right? No matter what, my reputation standing ought to be 'Friendly'! What do you mean by this?!*
*I might occasionally pull some shady stunts, but you old dog, you're a real ungrateful bastard of a white-eyed wolf!*
Noticing Ji Jue's gaze, Fan Yun even gave him a slight nod mid-conversation, offering a warm, genial smile.
Anyone who didn't know better would think the old geezer was showing gracious courtesy to a worthy subordinate.
Yet in that very instant, the malice Ji Jue sensed surfaced once more—while it didn't quite reach the level of an irreconcilable feud like a thorn in the flesh or a nail in the eye, it could certainly be described as distaste and disgust.
To put it plainly, it was like encountering a car holding up traffic on the highway, a customer taking forever in front of you at the checkout, someone hoisting a glowing phone screen right ahead of you in a movie theater, or an insignificant minion suddenly digging up a live bomb when all you wanted was stability... An eyesore no matter how you looked at it!
It vanished as quickly as it came.
Everything appeared normal.
And so, Ji Jue straightened up with apparent gratitude, smiling back in return.
*Hah. Tianyuan!*
Once the dissection concluded, came the discussion and exchange, followed by summaries and reports.
In this stage of the proceedings, it was hardly Ji Jue's place to chime in or show off. He only needed to carry out his duties as a modest, invisible accessory and keep his ears open.
In the end, during the post-dissection and analysis meeting, Aignu delivered the conclusion no one had wanted to hear: the corrupted turning into wolves was an undeniable reality, and it was both reproducible and executable.
Put simply, it wasn't just the dissected specimen that could transform; others could as well. In fact, as long as someone was from the White Nation, every single one of them could change.
According to the analysts' deductions: so long as specific conditions were met, a sacrificial ritual directed toward Great Sin was performed, and specific bait and catalysts were supplied, any person of the White Nation could instantly transform themselves. Which Great Sin was targeted went without saying, and the ritual's exact requirement was even simpler—'eating'.
All it took was to feed.
Devour!
The strong prey upon the weak; that was the imperishable nature of the wilderness.
Because the scope was so broad, the specific bait and catalysts required for the ritual could not yet be determined, and the final forms would vary according to each individual's aptitude.
However, the most crucial prerequisite—that 'specific condition'—was possessed by virtually every single soul in the White Nation!
What else could it be?
"The wolf-blood covenant of the former Priest-King of the White Nation," Aignu said decisively. "As long as one falls within the scope of the Priest-King's wolf-blood covenant, every single person possesses the potential to turn into a wolf."
"..."
For a time, the entire conference room fell deathly silent.
Before his death, wolf blood had flowed along the Priest-King's curse, contaminating all the subjects and members of the White Nation. In a sense, the entire White Nation had become his pack.
So long as the pack endured, the alpha wolf would not perish, and one day he would return. By the same token, as long as the alpha wolf survived, the scourge of the wolf pack would coil over this land, impossible to resolve.
The wolf-transformation technique possessed by the Restoration Front seemed terrifying, but once deciphered, its underlying nature proved hardly worth mentioning—it was nothing more than using sacrifice and offering to forcibly activate the wolf-blood oath hidden within the soul, thoroughly assimilating the sacrificial subject into an avatar of the Wolf Lord.
Its principle was not turning humans into wolves, but allowing humans to be devoured by the wolf, becoming a part of it.
Even if every person in the White Nation were turned into a wolf through this technique, in the end, only a single wolf would emerge—and that was the Priest-King, the Wolf Lord!
And precisely because it was constrained by the Priest-King's current state, along with the crude nature of the transformation and sacrifice rituals, the finished products possessed no brains whatsoever. Yet a lack of brains was hardly a drawback; rather, that was what made them the most troublesome and lethal threat of all.
Now, anyone could be the Priest-King.
Imagine the scene: overnight, the entire White Nation, every single person turning into rabid wolves, a chaotic carnival of dancing devils...
—*Breaking a sweat yet, punk?*
They were sweating indeed.
In the quiet conference room, the central air conditioning blew chills through the air, yet everyone suddenly felt a suffocating, sweltering heat as if trapped inside a furnace, sweat drenching their backs.
In the deathly silence, not a soul spoke.
It was as though the room had crashed.
Yet what could they say?
"[Splendid! We finally have an excuse—let's go slaughter those damned White Nation scum together!]"
Were they insane?!
Who could afford such a price?
The Federation? The Empire? Or the Wilderness Market?
Tianyuan couldn't bear it, and the White Stag couldn't stomach it either.
The ties between the wolf and the tower were tangled in ten thousand threads, nearly impossible to unravel. The Empire and the Federation could not accept the shadow of the tower expanding as a result, nor could the Wilderness Market permit the wolf's taint to grow stronger once more.
What was more, the more they killed, the greater the death and curses would mount. Fueled by the feedback of that sinful karma, the Priest-King would recover all the faster. At this rate, before they even finished the slaughter, the Priest-King might revive outright, making another assault on the realm of Sage and Dragon and completely merging as part of Great Sin.
Yet if left unchecked, allowing the White Nation Restoration Front to continue down this path, the Priest-King would revive all the same.
Now, they were trapped at both ends.
The matter of the fusion bomb hadn't even been settled, yet a brand-new crisis was already rushing in headlong.
A total nightmare!
No one in the conference room spoke, but secretaries entering from outside kept leaning in to whisper into the ears of Fan Yun and Doledonville, conveying urgent inquiries and directives from Midtown and Dadu.
The expressions of both men grew darker and darker.
Until it became unmistakable—beneath the whitewash of raw power and violence, the order and stability the Federation and Empire sought to enforce no longer possessed any foundation whatsoever.
The "Peace Plan", jointly decreed and implemented by the highest authorities of both sides, had lost every shred of feasibility in the White Nation.
In fact, execution failures in Tacheng threatened to compromise the entire Mid-Continent theater.
The only chance left was damage control—mending the pen after the sheep had bolted.
"Then let's fight," Fan Yun said, stubbing out his cigar in the ashtray and exhaling one last wisp of gray smoke.
"Fight," Doledonville said, his face dark as stagnant water, eyes clouded with gloom. "Fight until this so-called Restoration Front ceases to exist."
The two exchanged a final glance, rose to their feet, and departed together.
Only then did the others in the room finally register what had happened, their vision going dark with shock. In a daze, they seemed to hear the rumble of thunder freshly cast down by the Federation and the Empire amid the dead silence!
Before conscious thought could catch up, they instinctively rose to follow in the wake of those two retreating figures, hurrying after them.
A surging tide of people.
In under half a minute, the previously packed conference room emptied out completely.
"Fighting and killing... what a pain."
Lin Shouyi's eyelids drooped as though his mind were wandering in distant realms. He gave a yawn, tucked his hands behind his back, and sauntered out.
From start to finish, the An brothers and the Dragon Tongue Hunter had not uttered a single word. Having finished their dried fruit and the honing of their arrows, they acted as though they hadn't heard a thing, strolling out with hands shoved in their pockets.
What else was there to say?
Sharpen the weapons, feed the horses, and prepare to hunt wolves!
Only the uninvolved scholars remained, dutifully updating case files and data, heads bowed as they jotted summaries and traded low murmurs.
Finally, Aignu snapped his notebook shut and stood up.
"A bountiful harvest. Though the technique is somewhat crude, the underlying concept has its merits," he remarked with a sigh. Looking at Ji Jue beside him, he offered a sudden suggestion: "Why not come back to the Association with me, and we can hold a seminar to exchange notes?"
Ji Jue shook his head with an apologetic sigh. "Thank you for your kind offer, Master, but biology really isn't my forte, and I don't have the bandwidth to look into it right now. I think I'll pass."
"Is that so? What a pity."
Aignu nodded, patted his shoulder, and turned to leave.
The seminar was merely a pretext.
If Ji Jue had wanted to extract himself from this quagmire, he could have easily seized the opportunity to follow Aignu back to the Association.
Though the Ring of Taiyi was notorious for ruthless cuts, exorbitant licensing fees, grotesque greed, bloated bureaucracy, heaps of dead weight, and so forth, it remained reliable at moments like this—at the very least, it could guarantee Ji Jue wouldn't get dragged into the mess.
Yet since Ji Jue had no such intention, Aignu saw no need to push further. Since when was it his job to worry about Chaosheng's affairs? For all he knew, the kid was eagerly waiting for this chance to scavenge a haul of materials!
Hadn't he already secured the first-mover advantage?
Whatever the case, it was foreseeable that Mid-Continent, renowned as a quagmire, was about to welcome a tempestuous new storm.
Amid the churning waves, who knew how many would be swept up in the fray? When the time came, how many in the entire White Nation could hope to keep their hands clean?
And so, in the quiet, Ji Jue finally rose and stepped out of the deserted conference room.
He cast one last backward glance.
Gently, he pulled the door shut.
*Click.*
A soft latch.
From that moment on, the winds of war swept across the entirety of Tacheng—
Whether there was wind, and whether it swept across Tacheng, Ji Jue did not know. But he knew that he was probably doomed.
Because no sooner had he stepped out of the Federation garrison base than Ye Xian's call came through.
No pleasantries, no beating around the bush, and certainly no pretexts or evasions.
As blunt as ever, she got straight to the point and asked a question that clearly left no room for doubt.
And then, Ji Jue began to sweat.
Ye Xian asked:
"—You're in the White Nation, aren't you?"
Chapter 615