Chen Chuan sent a reply saying he would head over shortly.
He had already learned from Zhan Jiyue that this Ren Xinshan was, like himself, a member of the Purist Faction—a senior figure within their ranks.
He recalled the man's background. Born into a prominent family, Ren strongly advocated the Purist Faction's ideals and possessed extraordinary talent. Entering the Purist Faction headquarters for training in his teens, he had reached the third limit at just nineteen years of age.
With such natural gifts, becoming a martial artist would not have been difficult for him. Yet after coming to understand how sorely the Purist Faction lacked influence along political avenues, he made a calculated decision to abandon the pursuit of further martial breakthroughs and pursue a career in politics instead.
Ren Xinshan had also pulled strings behind the scenes to expedite Chen Chuan's earlier appointment as a commissioner in the Department of National Security. Only by crossing that threshold and building up achievements could Chen Chuan smoothly transition into an administrative commissioner.
Otherwise, even if his merits earned him a promotion, the leadership might well have shunted him to a high-ranking department with no real authority, making any subsequent cross-departmental transfer far more difficult. Even if manageable, it would likely have cost him a year or two of wasted time.
Chen Chuan unpacked and arranged his personal belongings, then took a closer look around his new office.
From the outside, this office appeared to have no windows at all, looking like nothing more than a solid, dam-like wall. Yet looking out from within, he found that most of the exterior wall was near-completely transparent, offering an unobstructed panoramic view.
It had likely been constructed using some specialized biological material.
The decor had been left behind by his predecessor. It was extremely outdated and old-fashioned, filled with garish colors and depictions of auspicious beasts across the walls—an aesthetic he did not care for.
Fortunately, Shenyu offered over a dozen layout templates to choose from. If none of those proved satisfactory, he could hire outside specialists to create a custom design, and as long as it stayed within the allocated budget, the department would approve and reimburse the expense.
He tapped open the field screen, selected the most minimalist layout, and toggled a few functions on and off.
Most importantly, he needed a spacious weapon armory and an enclosure suitable for Chaoming. Fortunately, the office suite was expansive enough to accommodate all his requirements.
There were even private living quarters reserved exclusively for him, allowing him to work and reside here directly if he so chose.
Within the ministry grounds lay a luxurious residential quarter where most senior officials resided. Each administrative commissioner was assigned a courtyard residence or villa; should one bring family over from the provinces, they could settle there.
Furthermore, within the administrative sector, he could apply for a private training arena equipped with comprehensive facilities and unlimited access to simulation resources.
To him, however, that held little value; at his current level, a simulation field could no longer construct an opponent capable of matching him.
After stowing his belongings, he changed into the navy-blue uniform issued by the department, put on his cap, instructed Chaoming to stay behind, and stepped out. Guided by Shenyu, he walked down the straight corridor toward the ministerial office suites situated nearby.
Secretary Pei had been waiting outside. Bowing slightly as Chen Chuan approached, he said, "Greetings, Commissioner Chen. I am Pei Hui, secretary to Deputy Minister Ren. The deputy minister is waiting inside for you. Please come in."
Chen Chuan stepped inside. Ren Xinshan rose from his seat, walked around his desk, and shook his hand firmly. "Commissioner Chen, good to meet you."
Chen Chuan returned the handshake. "Minister Ren, good to meet you."
"Deputy," Ren corrected.
Ren Xinshan looked him over, a faint smile touching his face. "Make yourself comfortable," he invited, circling back behind his desk. Once Chen Chuan took a seat, Ren Xinshan sat down as well.
"We are comrades from the same faction, and I hope we can cooperate sincerely in this department going forward. I won't waste words on pleasantries—reaching where you are today, Comrade Chen, you have seen no less than I have.
"I will only say this: Zhongjing is filled with pitfalls at every turn. Stay clear of them whenever you can; even if they cannot harm you, they can still splash you with mud."
Chen Chuan gave a slight nod.
Ren Xinshan pushed forward a folder sitting on his desk. "This is a request for assistance regarding an anomaly. Take a look. If I recall correctly, you used to deal with all kinds of anomalies in the past? Word has it you're an expert in this field."
Chen Chuan took the report, opened it, and read through it carefully. He hadn't expected that right after arriving in the capital, he would already be crossing paths with an old acquaintance—an urban legend. The coincidence struck him as rather curious.
Ren Xinshan did not disturb him. After waiting a short while until Chen Chuan looked up from the document, he asked, "Can you handle it?"
Instead of answering immediately, Chen Chuan asked, "Senior Ren, wouldn't the Esoteric Cult Examination Bureau be better suited to handle this kind of anomaly?"
"This was forwarded to us from their hands," Ren Xinshan said in a deep voice. "Not long ago, a major incident broke out in Haixi Dao. The General Esoteric Cult Examination Bureau dispatched a large force of their elite personnel on a mission. While they managed to resolve it by the skin of their teeth, they suffered heavy elite casualties. On top of that, numerous lingering consequences remain, forcing them to draw additional personnel from across the provinces.
"They simply cannot keep up with the endless wave of anomalies springing up everywhere. Quite a few matters have already been outsourced to our Purist Faction. As for this particular anomaly, troublesome as it is, Mount Jie lies fairly far from here and won't spread to Zhongjing anytime soon, so it was deprioritized. In the end, it was passed to our department with the hope that we could assist in dealing with it."
Chen Chuan pondered this. Though Ren Xinshan's account of the General Esoteric Cult Examination Bureau was brief, Chen Chuan gleaned a great deal from it.
According to Director Lei, the General Esoteric Cult Examination Bureau was exceptionally formidable, having inherited much of the Old State Religion's legacy. If even an organization like that had suffered serious casualties, one could imagine how immense the crisis must have been.
Moreover, he sensed that something deeper might be lurking behind it.
Pushing those thoughts aside for the moment, he looked at Ren Xinshan and said, "I can handle it."
"Commissioner Chen, are you certain?"
"I am certain," Chen Chuan affirmed.
He truly had the ability to resolve it; this was not blind confidence. Urban legends generally shared common traits, typically confined to a specific pattern of events or a bounded geographic area.
This one was clearly restricted to a certain mountainous stretch of Mount Jie; otherwise, it would have broken loose long ago. If all else failed, he could simply obliterate that uninhabited stretch of mountains, and the problem would resolve itself.
As for why this hadn't been done before, perhaps the situation had never escalated to that degree, or perhaps martial artists of his caliber had not been dispatched. More likely, no one had the confidence to do it—for even if one intended to level a mountain range, one still needed to pinpoint the general boundaries, which required knowledge of esoteric rituals.
Of course, it was also possible that no one had possessed the resolve or the willingness to bear the responsibility. But Chen Chuan did not care. Where others hesitated, he dared.
"Good!"
Hearing his answer, Ren Xinshan did not ask how he planned to do it. Since Chen Chuan said he could handle it, Ren gave him his complete trust.
Chen Chuan's past merits and achievements had already proven his reliability. Furthermore, at Chen Chuan's level, he had long surpassed the stage where he needed merits to validate himself.
"Commissioner Chen, you didn't bring your own personnel to the capital this time, did you? In a moment, I'll assign a team of resonators and security personnel to you—all trustworthy people. Also, I'll have Old Zhan contact you later. He's been in Zhongjing for several years and knows the lay of the land well.
"If you're confident in handling this, take care of it as soon as possible. I still have official business to attend to, so I won't keep you."
"Understood. Thank you, Minister Ren," Chen Chuan said.
"Deputy," Ren reminded him.
Chen Chuan smiled. "Then I will take my leave."
Ren Xinshan stood and escorted him all the way to the door before returning to his desk to resume his work.
After stepping out, Chen Chuan returned to his office.
He noticed that although the physical fixtures had not changed, Shenyu had already used a simulation field to transform the decor into the style he had selected.
He nodded slightly. It was certainly more pleasing to the eye.
Sitting down on the sofa, he picked up the dossier to study it once more.
The Mount Jie urban legend had first emerged six or seven hundred years ago, spanning three dynasties. Although its manifestations varied over time, it had never truly ceased, resurfacing intermittently across the centuries.
The earliest archived record dated back to the Qi Dynasty. A scholar traveling to the capital for the imperial examinations had gone on an excursion to Mount Jie for a spring stroll. Halfway up the mountain, he spotted an old man wearing a conical bamboo hat and a coir raincoat sitting motionlessly, seemingly fishing.
Out of playful curiosity, the scholar walked up and tapped the old man on the shoulder. But when the old man turned around, the scholar found to his horror that the man possessed the face of a fox. Terrified out of his wits, he fled without looking back. Upon returning home, he fell gravely ill and sank into a deep, uninterrupted slumber. One day, when someone tried to wake him, they found that his body had completely withered—leaving behind nothing more than a hollow human skin.
The human skin later vanished without explanation. Sometime after that, travelers visiting the mountain began reporting sightings of a figure dressed like a scholar sitting there, fishing.
The second account dated to the Chang Dynasty. In Mount Ru, people would occasionally spot a donkey lurking behind the woods, staring at them with hollow, deeply unsettling eyes.
No matter where one went, the donkey would periodically appear. Some people angrily tried to drive it away or hunt it down, but none succeeded; instead, everyone who took part in the hunt vanished, never to return.
Strangely enough, Mount Jie had never produced donkeys historically, yet during those few decades, the Mount Jie Market became renowned as a bustling market for donkey hides.
Following that, during the Final Dynasty, people frequently witnessed a ceremonial procession dressed in theatrical costumes blowing horns and beating gongs, sweeping past like a gust of wind. Those who encountered it fled down the mountain in terror; only several days later would they realize that some of their companions were missing. When they went looking, whole families were sometimes found to have disappeared without a trace.
Once the old era came to an end, rumors of the Mount Jie urban legend vanished completely, leaving only thrill-seeking youths hunting for old tales to seek excitement there.
Then, just a year ago, tourists visiting Mount Jie began occasionally encountering a woman whose face was veiled by long hair. Without a word, she would hand over a camera, gesturing for them to take a photo of her.
If the person refused, then whenever they had a photograph taken or posed for a portrait from that day on, that woman would inexplicably appear behind them.
If they agreed on the spot, then several days after returning home, they would bring friends and family into the mountains to take pictures, sometimes even inviting strangers along. Those people, in turn, would invite even more individuals. Once the number of people reached a certain threshold, everyone who entered the mountains never came back out. The last recorded incident involved over three hundred people entering together. Although local authorities caught on and attempted to intervene, even when people were persuaded to turn back at the time, they would turn around and return shortly after—bringing even more people with them.
At present, the local security forces had resorted to blockading key intersections and roads. Even so, people continued to go missing from time to time, including several security personnel and even a martial artist who had ventured in to investigate.
The situation was now extraordinarily grave, prompting them to shut down all access roads completely and institute a total travel ban.
Having reviewed all of this, Chen Chuan felt that although these legends took different forms across the eras, there was a subtle thread connecting them.
There had to be a single origin behind it all. If that source could be found, a way to dispel the phenomenon might well be uncovered with it.
Chapter 1363