"Oh? Well now, looks like there's an inside story?" He Lingchuan clapped his hands and chuckled. "I love an inside story. Come on, tell me—how exactly would it do no good?"
"This stuff is something the people above specifically ordered!"
"Above?" He Lingchuan asked curiously. "Which 'above'?"
Master Wan fell silent.
Jiao Yu suddenly asked him, "The Lingxu City courier being murdered—was that your doing?"
Master Wan panicked completely, waving his hands frantically. "Not me, not me! I know nothing about any courier!"
He Lingchuan brought the topic back. "There were over a hundred porcupines. How did your nephew kill them?"
Master Wan still kept his mouth shut.
He Lingchuan suddenly forced his jaw open and shoved an elixir pill into his mouth.
The medicine dissolved into saliva and slipped down his throat; Master Wan couldn't even spit it out. "This medicine will keep you conscious for the next two double-hours, so you won't pass out no matter how much you're tortured," He Lingchuan said flatly. "Now that the cat is out of the bag, you end up dead either way. The only difference is whether you want your young grandsons and granddaughters buried with you."
Master Wan pulled a mournful face. "If I confess, that's when they really won't be able to stay alive."
"You mean even the Crown Prince can't protect them?"
Master Wan hung his head and said nothing.
Jiao Yu licked a paw. "I'll go fetch his grandson and eat him right on the spot."
Wan Xianneng blanched in terror. "Don't!"
He swallowed hard. "Lord Envoy, if you can guarantee my grandchildren's safety, I'll risk being sliced to ribbons and tell you everything!"
"I promise on the Crown Prince's behalf." He Lingchuan gave his word without the slightest qualm. After all, it would be the Crown Prince of Chiyan Kingdom who had to fulfill the promise—what did that have to do with him?
Wan Xianneng hung his head, crestfallen. "My nephew, Wan Song, was very gifted. He originally trained in a Daoist order, but was expelled after accidentally killing a fellow disciple. For several years he was frustrated and down on his luck, and I was the one who supported him. Later, he went out to roam the world on his own. There was no word from him for years, and I thought he'd died out there. Who knew that the year before last he'd suddenly return home, riding high on success and having amassed quite a substantial fortune.
"As you know, my business was already in decline back then, and my household was pinched for cash. I even had to secretly sell off some family assets to keep up with the expenses of such a large household. When Wan Song heard about it, he came knocking and roped me into a venture with him!"
He Lingchuan raised an eyebrow. "A business of killing humans and demons?"
"M-mainly killing demons," Wan Xianneng said with difficulty. "The jobs I took often involved cutting roads and building bridges deep in the mountains, so I had plenty of chances to run into mountain demons and wild monsters. Even though this is a demon kingdom, those creatures are born in the mountains and die in the mountains, left to fend for themselves. Zhitian Township rarely intervenes and can't manage them anyway. Wan Song set his sights on them, claiming that some noble in Lingxu City needed a kind of blood bead condensed from a demon's entire essence-blood. Since wild demons are unmanaged anyway, we used them to refine blood beads. The money came far faster than backbreaking work cutting through mountains and paving roads!"
Jiao Yu suddenly interjected, "How many demons did you kill?"
"Not counting that den of porcupines..." Wan Xianneng pondered carefully. "Roughly sixty or seventy. If they were as small as bat demons, five would count as one."
*Scritch, scratch.* The tiger subconsciously extended its claws and scratched the ground. Sixty or seventy in less than two years? It seemed the provincial and commandery records were only the tip of the iceberg.
Catching the beast's gaze, Wan Xianneng shuddered.
"Stop scaring him; he was only the scout finding the demons." He Lingchuan smiled at Wan Xianneng. "Keep going. You originally only targeted lone demons, didn't you?"
"Y-yes, to avoid suspicion," Wan Xianneng murmured. "Besides, they kill each other sometimes anyway. No one looks into that sort of thing."
Let alone demons, humans fought fiercely and slaughtered their own kind as well at times. A few dozen demons dying in the wild each year—who would think twice about it?
"Then why did you wipe out an entire den of over a hundred porcupine demons last year? Weren't you trying to avoid attention?"
Wan Xianneng couldn't help but sigh. "Killing over a hundred porcupine demons at once was partly because we wanted to mine the stone blood vein to make money, but on the other hand, the blood beads we turned in last year were too few and fell short of the quota, so by the end of the year we had to rush the work."
"How many blood beads do you have to hand over a year?" He Lingchuan asked. "Do you have any on you? Let me see."
"At least ten. The higher-ups said that to avoid trouble, we shouldn't exceed twenty at most." Wan Xianneng pointed toward the study desk. He Lingchuan walked over, opened the hidden compartment as directed, and pulled out a brocade pouch.
There was only one round bead inside.
Just as Manager Lu had described, it was round and smooth, the size of a pellet.
He Lingchuan pinched it in his hand; surprisingly, it was quite resilient and springy.
Nowadays, whenever he obtained an unusual object, he would bring it near the divine bone necklace to see if it had any appetite for it.
Yet the divine bone remained completely quiet, clearly looking down on this thing.
"How many blood beads can be condensed depends on the demon's size and cultivation. It takes several porcupine demons to refine a single red pill."
"Can this be refined using humans?" He Lingchuan sniffed the red bead; it had a faint, clear fragrance.
"No." Wan Xianneng smiled bitterly. "Otherwise, why would we go through the trouble of hunting demons? Any casual battle Beijia fights yields countless living human captives."
"Then why have there been repeated human deaths and disappearances?"
"I'm not sure." By this point, Wan Xianneng held nothing back. "Perhaps they were used as bait?"
He Lingchuan frowned. "Bait?"
"The new demons that appear after an outbreak of Emperor's Flowing Dew are often ignorant and bloodthirsty, so living humans work better as bait," Wan Xianneng said cautiously. "That's just what I heard from my nephew. I haven't seen it with my own eyes."
So these people were fishing for mountain demons and wild beasts just like anglers, except anglers used earthworms and dough balls, while they used living human beings?
He Lingchuan glanced at General Ling and asked coldly, "Why kill the wind-boring beasts? They have backgrounds; they aren't wild mountain demons."
"The higher-ups placed an extra order on short notice." Wan Xianneng gave a wry smile. "Word was that the blood beads were falling short of demand. Coincidentally, two successive falls of Emperor's Flowing Dew within six months had spawned many new demons, so the higher-ups ordered us to ramp up our captures. These new demons appeared in large numbers within a short window and slaughtered one another, so no one could keep count of how many lived or died. To us, it was... it was harvest season!"
He Lingchuan recalled the chaos and slaughter among demons by the shores of Three Hearts Lake during the last outbreak of Emperor's Flowing Dew, triggered merely by a chunk of Emperor's Flowing Dew paste. Indeed, just as Wan Xianneng said, their life and death went unnoticed and uncounted, even here in a demon kingdom.
"We caught plenty of new demons, but the number of blood beads condensed was still not enough. With the deadline fast approaching, we had no choice but to... hunt elsewhere." Wan Xianneng knew the risks and dangers of hunting registered demons, but at that point they couldn't afford to care. "Wan Song was very confident. He believed we would never be exposed."
At this point, tears streamed down his face.
General Ling had been unusually quiet, standing by like a statue without uttering a word. Only now did he say coldly, "Impressive. Truly impressive. To you people, the lives of demons are just money."
Sensing sudden danger, Master Wan shook his head frantically. "I was only responsible for collecting and delivering the beads! The hunting of the demons was all done by my nephew and his men!"
General Ling demanded a definitive answer: "You mean my children were killed by them?"
"...Yes."
General Ling uttered several "Good"s in succession.
Master Wan offered up another piece of information: "The original hunt leader died in the porcupine den last year, so after that, my nephew took charge."
Those fellows lived by the blade, licking blood from knife edges; their risks were hardly small either.
"Where is your buyer?" He Lingchuan held up a second finger. "And where is your nephew?"
"Whenever the deadline for delivering blood beads arrives, someone comes from above." Master Wan drooped his head. "A delivery was made in Shuanglu Town just a few days ago. I don't know if that person is still there."
"What's this person's name?"
"His surname is Mai—tall, thin, very refined, but I don't know his full name. We all call him Mr. Mai." Master Wan didn't dare hide anything. "The delivery point is on the east side of Shuanglu Town, the third residence in Buffalo Lane."
General Ling pressed, "The killer... where is your nephew?"
"H-him, I can't find him." Master Wan smiled wryly. "It was always him who came to find me."
Seeing General Ling raise a hoof to kick him, he hurriedly shielded his head. "I'm telling the truth! Everything I said is true! I'd never joke with my grandchildren's lives!"
A nephew was only a nephew—how could he compare to his own flesh and blood?
"It seems your nephew doesn't trust you."
"He... he..."
Seeing him hesitate, He Lingchuan found it amusing. "Are you afraid of him?"
"Ah..." Wan Xianneng hung his head. "Though he's my own nephew, he's actually a desperate outlaw. Fierce and ruthless since childhood—who wouldn't fear him?"
"In that case, you should have known that sooner or later he'd drag you down."
Wan Xianneng stammered, unable to form words.
Walk enough night roads and you'll eventually run into a ghost—he knew that well enough. But the money came so fast, and he... he could no longer step off the boat.
He Lingchuan paid him no more heed and said to General Ling, "If the General has no leads for now, follow me first."
At this point, their objectives diverged. To fulfill Fu Shanyue's commission, He Lingchuan needed to investigate upward, pursuing Master Wan's buyer, Mr. Mai. General Ling, on the other hand, was bent solely on vengeance, swearing to cut down Master Wan's nephew, Wan Song, with his own hands.
General Ling snorted and didn't object, but couldn't resist delivering a kick to Master Wan, leaving his mouth and nose bleeding and knocking out three of his teeth.
"Stay behind and watch him," he ordered one of the wind-boring beast guards. "If he makes any suspicious move, directly... beat him half to death!"
He had intended to say kill him directly, but seeing Jiao Yu at his side, he knew the tiger needed to preserve a culprit for the county magistrate, so he altered his words on the fly.
...
He Lingchuan rushed toward Shuanglu Town. Those at his side were either fast runners or flyers, truly moving like lightning at full throttle.
Covering these twenty-some li took just over two quarters of an hour.
While Jiao Yu the tiger panted with his tongue hanging out, the wind-boring beasts strolled along leisurely, their chests hardly heaving.
Their natural gifts were different; wind-boring beasts were inherently adept at running, whether over short sprints or long distances.
The Buffalo Lane residence Master Wan had identified was easy to find: simple and unassuming from the outside, with a very tidy entrance bearing only a few fallen leaves.
Chapter 457