By the time He Lingchuan found an inn and checked in, it was already late into the hour of the Ox.
Luocang had nearly been turned upside down by them. The prunella spike warehouse had been a full-blown spectacle of sound, light, and blasts, so it would have been a wonder if the townsfolk hadn't been jolted awake.
He Lingchuan took a quick cold shower, washing away all the blood and mud, changed into a fresh set of clothes, and only then headed to the town office.
To his surprise, the dark, fat man's confession had already been extracted. This was thanks to General Ling not wasting a single moment, having begun extracting a confession—no, conducting an interrogation—on the way back.
As a local powerhouse, General Ling enjoyed plenty of privileges, and no one dared stop him from overstepping authority to haul in a prisoner for questioning.
During the battle, that fat man had been kicked off the snail shell by the skunk and captured early on, which ironically spared him from being blown to smithereens, leaving him sound and alive.
Jiao Yu had sat in on the interrogation and confirmed that the dark, fat man was merely an accomplice who followed orders from above and arrangements made by his boss.
The boss was Wan Song.
Still, the dark, fat man had yielded several key pieces of information: for instance, they had started this zero-capital business seven years ago; he had been recruited by Wan Song, who in turn had been recruited by the original captain.
The former captain had raided a porcupine den at Mount Yulun last winter, sustained mortal injuries, and succumbed, so Wan Song had naturally stepped up as captain.
Over the past seven years, they had operated solely within the borders of the Chiyan Kingdom, deploying nearly two hundred times and slaying several thousand demons of various sizes.
This was a rough estimate; he couldn't remember the exact figure.
The tally was so large because some demons were small—bats, for instance, of which at least a dozen or more were killed each time.
"Several thousand?" Hearing this number, He Lingchuan still frowned. "That doesn't sound right, does it? Mount Yulun alone saw more than a hundred porcupines slaughtered."
"That was in the later period," Jiao Yu explained. "In the early days, their demon hunts were cautious. They picked large, solitary wild demons whenever possible so they only had to hunt one or two each time, trying their best to avoid official notice."
Safety was the only way to last.
"It was only starting last year, when the Emperor's Flowing Dew fell, that the number of wild mountain demons surged. Demand for pulp beads from above grew accordingly, so they were ordered to ramp up their hunts."
Otherwise, the matter wouldn't have been exposed.
He Lingchuan finally recalled the main concern: "Then what about the messenger from Lingxu City being hunted?"
"The dark, fat man confessed that they merely treated it like an ordinary demon bird, killing it to harvest its bead. They had no idea it was an emissary from Lingxu City!" Jiao Yu let out a rare sigh. "He wept bitterly before us, saying that if they had known beforehand it belonged to Lingxu City, who would have dared touch it? General Ling got physical just now to make sure he wasn't lying."
With that, Jiao Yu glanced at General Ling. The short-tempered fellow had nearly kicked the bile out of the dark, fat man, so the prisoner was almost certainly incapable of lying.
He Lingchuan wondered, "Didn't that eastern imperial eagle even try to defend or explain itself before it died?"
It was a bird of prey, after all; could it really have died in such a humiliatingly helpless way?
"The monster allocated to Wan Song is called a snail-toad. It can release a colorless, odorless soporific mist at its prey, lulling them into deep sleep without them realizing it. So that eastern imperial eagle truly never woke up, never even getting a chance to speak for itself."
Thinking of this, Jiao Yu felt a lingering chill. "Fortunately, when we set the ambush in the warehouse, we all kept invigorating pills under our tongues. Otherwise, had we fallen asleep and woken to find the culprit thousands of li away, wouldn't we have been humiliated to no end?"
He Lingchuan stroked his chin. "So that's how the porcupines died?"
"Most were. But a few returned from outside and avoided the mist, which led to a fierce battle with Wan Song and his men." Jiao Yu had sorted out the details during questioning. "Relying on the power of the snail-toad, they ultimately prevailed."
"What is the deal with this snail-toad?" He Lingchuan was most intrigued by this. "You got that out of him, right? Tell me."
"As you suspected, that monster is a synthesized demon puppet. But the fat man doesn't know who created it; he only knows it was synthesized from a juvenile evil ghost toad and a snail, and even the shell on its back has quite an extraordinary origin."
"What kind of origin?"
"He doesn't know. He only heard the former captain mention it in passing."
"An evil ghost toad? Are there demons like that in Chiyan Kingdom too?" He Lingchuan had heard of the evil ghost toad. Legend had it that this demon only prowled the countryside during thunderstorms, lying in wait along roads traveled by wayfarers.
Capable of shifting color and shape, it often disguised itself as a cave or cottage. Wayfarers who stepped inside to escape the rain would walk straight into the toad's maw, becoming a delicious meal for the beast.
"Chiyan has none. I've heard that there's an evil ghost toad family in Zeguo, but their lineage is sparse—only three remain," Jiao Yu said, shaking his head. "Evil ghost toads are colossal in size and possess formidable magic; it's very difficult for them to produce offspring nowadays."
The mightier a creature, the harder reproduction inherently was, not to mention in an environment so thin in spiritual energy.
He Lingchuan asked in surprise, "Then where did these people get a juvenile evil ghost toad?"
"Unknown, but I reckon it's inextricably tied to Zeguo," Jiao Yu murmured. "If word of this gets out, it will stir up quite a storm."
No one would let it slide after seeing their child turned into such an abomination—neither demon nor puppet.
Naturally, He Lingchuan didn't care about Chiyan's diplomatic risks. He merely pondered, "A juvenile evil ghost toad... Oh, wait a minute, isn't that just a tadpole?"
No wonder the demon puppet looked so bizarre; wasn't it essentially an incompletely metamorphosed tadpole?
When tadpoles first hatch, they have a classic spindle shape. Over time, the base of the tail swells, front and rear legs sprout, then the body grows rounder while the tail shrinks and eventually disappears, turning into a frog or toad.
Strip away the snail shell and tentacles, and wasn't that demon puppet's form the intermediate phase of a tadpole growing into a toad?
Yet according to biological laws, this phase did not last long and was particularly unstable.
No wonder Dong Rui had said the creature had to feed regularly on prunella spikes. He must have used some method to keep the puppet locked in this form, but the manufacturing process back then had been too rushed to allow further fine-tuning.
What would happen if the snail-toad went without prunella spikes for too long?
Would it turn into a full evil ghost toad?
And would that lead to dire consequences?
He Lingchuan felt that after hearing these confessions, his questions had not decreased, but multiplied.
"How much does he know about Wan Song's current handler, Mr. Mai?"
General Ling chipped in, "He's never met Mr. Mai, and Wan Song rarely mentions him. But when Wan Song returned from meeting Mr. Mai in Baishaqu late last year, he claimed their team had performed the best and received the richest reward."
A year-end bonus? "How much did they get?"
The crew had originally numbered six: the former captain died hunting porcupines last year, two others died a few days ago while trying to poach He Lingchuan's rock sheep, so this time they had faced only three.
"At the end of last year, each received seven hundred taels, plus an additional bonus of one thousand two hundred taels," General Ling said resentfully. "Otherwise, they wouldn't have been fired up with such drive this year to slaughter so many demons!"
"Meaning there are other teams?"
"He couldn't say for sure."
"What about Wan Song's temperament?" This was a specific question He Lingchuan had instructed Jiao Yu to interrogate on.
"Ferocious and ruthless. His subordinates all fear him."
He Lingchuan nodded.
The dark, fat man had been thoroughly drained by these two demons; there was no further value in questioning him. Checking the time, He Lingchuan rose to his feet. "Let's go. To the clinic."
At times like this, he particularly missed Lingguang.
After the midnight battle, Wan Song had been rushed to Luocang's finest clinic for emergency care.
The physicians here were quite skilled. After laboring for over an hour, they had stanched the patient's bleeding and mostly brought down the swelling on his face, but they expressed regret: "His internal organs are too severely damaged. There is no saving him. Even with all our methods exhausted, we can only keep him alive for at most one more hour. Should we wake him now?"
"Wake him," He Lingchuan and the others said, naturally feeling no sorrow. "Time is precious."
So the doctors held a smelling bottle under the wounded man's nose and gently wafted it.
Before long, Wan Song slowly came to from his coma.
Opening his eyes, he saw He Lingchuan, then swept his gaze across Jiao Yu, General Ling, and the other demons. Bewilderment gradually gave way to clarity, which then turned into dead despair.
"Looks like you understand your situation quite well." He Lingchuan hooked a chair over with his foot and sat down. "Answer honestly, and you can spare yourself some suffering."
"Why... why was there an explosion?" Wan Song hadn't been able to figure it out before passing out, and still couldn't now.
"There were several jars of explosives inside the warehouse." He Lingchuan had placed them there, originally intending to detonate them when the monster burrowed into the warehouse from underground.
Who would have guessed it would swallow the warehouse whole?
That worked out even better. He Lingchuan had sent his duplicate leaping right into the creature's mouth to trigger a chain reaction of blasts, whose power was naturally devastating.
Wan Song lifted his head slightly and glanced down at his legs.
"Can I still be saved?"
He Lingchuan spoke bluntly: "No."
"..." To Jiao Yu and the other demons, shouldn't one offer him hope at a moment like this, using his life as leverage?
Yet He Lingchuan knew this man came from a Daoist order and was a desperate outlaw accustomed to walking on a knife's edge; he likely already had an accurate assessment of his own condition, so trying to deceive him on that front would be no easy feat.
Wan Song had an aquiline nose and a gaunt face with high cheekbones. At this moment, his complexion was pallid and grim.
"I'm on the verge of death. What do you think you can still get out of me?"
"Magnate Wan has been arrested and might be implicated because of you." He Lingchuan picked up a cup from the table, approachable and calm. "Want some water?"
"Yes." Figuring a dying man had nothing to fear, Wan Song answered without reservation.
He Lingchuan fed him the water himself, then continued, "Magnate Wan's grandsons are still young. Do you plan on dragging them down to the Yellow Springs with you?"
"If Wan Xianneng hadn't ratted me out, could you have caught me?" Wan Song said with utter indifference. "He screwed me over, I screw him over. We're even."
He was dying anyway; why should he care about someone else's children?
He Lingchuan smiled. "Good, very good. Cold-blooded and ruthless—no wonder Mr. Mai felt so comfortable using you."
Wan Xianneng was his biological uncle and his only surviving relative in the world, someone who had helped him financially in the past, yet Wan Song could cast him aside without a second thought. That precious quality was probably what Mr. Mai valued in him, wasn't it?
Wan Song lifted his eyelids to cast him a look, remaining silent, though his contempt spoke volumes.
He was about to die; what could this person possibly do to him?
Except for death, nothing was a big deal. Whom did he have left to fear?
Chapter 469