Giant Pythons Touching the Level 6 Threshold? One Slash!

"Rumble, rumble..." Several colossal crimson pythons tore through the cloud layer and swept the long sky. Just so, wrapped in a terrifying momentum that set the mountains trembling, and carrying blasphemous, maddened shrieks, they came biting toward the mid-slope of Egret Mountain. Enormous bodies ground through the air. The air boiled. The storm filling the sky evaporated into pale mist the instant it touched them. Even light warped nearby, leaving several writhing black trails across the sky. "They're actually going to cross half the city and come straight for me?" Bai Zhou's pupils contracted. Was this... a return gift for the thunder arrow that had crossed half the city? Python after python crossed more than a hundred kilometers of sky. Their trunks wound along the mountain road and climbed. Jagged rock was ground to powder wherever a trunk passed. In the blink of an eye, the ferocious pythons reached the place where Bai Zhou stood. The first to arrive opened its maw. Venomous fangs grew in winding clusters. A bloody light thick with the aura of destruction brewed in the depths of that maw and drove straight at Bai Zhou. Just as the destructive breath was about to blast toward Bai Zhou— Bai Zhou vanished from the spot. The pedicab under his feet went with him. "Eee!!!" Amid Fang Xiaoxia's scream, the wheels scraped the ground into blinding sparks. The pedicab drifted sideways at an angle that nearly flipped it. As the pedicab cleared the spot, Bai Zhou launched himself from the saddle, his body stretching out like an arrow leaving the string. With a pop, Bai Zhou pulled the stopper and drank the second bottle of burst reagent. The liquid, red as blood, dissolved the moment it entered his mouth. Mysterious vapor rolled down his throat. "Rush..." Qi and blood, stirred, ran like a surging river. Spirituality boiled. Strength surged. The knowledge of the Nine Basic Slashes spun at high speed through the depths of his mind. Countless angles of a slash, techniques of putting forth force, circulations of breath, and fragments of experience deduced and recombined madly in Bai Zhou's mind, faster than the rain could fall. At the same time, the Celestial Pivot turned of itself. In the depths of Bai Zhou's eyes, a flood of rune-knowledge surged. Where his will reached, spirituality answered—one micro-ritual after another was sketched into form across his body in an instant, then awakened, and started! "Hum! Hum! Hum! Hum!" Strength Enhancement, Body Fortification, Super Agility, Adrenal Burst... four micro-rituals activated on Bai Zhou in the same instant. The rituals' faint light cloaked him, flickering on and off across his skin. Every inch of muscle rejoiced. The speed of his neural reactions rose sharply, and his five senses were magnified in a rush. In that brief instant, Bai Zhou's condition reached an unprecedented peak. All was ready. Then he drew the saber— "Clang!!!" The saber rang again and again, leaving its sheath in the same instant Bai Zhou flipped through the air and landed. Its clear, solemn cry even drowned the wind and rain filling the sky, and the pythons' howls. Purple-gold saber qi spread like moonlight. Rampaging edges tore the road. However wild the wind and rain, all of it was torn to shreds, and even the shattered raindrops were stained with vigorous, surging battle intent. Battle intent boiled. Saber qi ran wild. The rainstorm bore witness—the saber qi stretched long! He clenched the hilt. Force burst from his feet, and broken stone flew. In the instant the rock split, his whole body had already shot skyward like a meteor wrapped in purple-gold light! Facing a python more than ten meters long as it struck, Bai Zhou did not dodge. He met it head-on! "Hiss, hiss, hiss!" The surging battle intent clinging to the saber seemed to send up a low cry, louder than the wind and clearer than the python's roar. It was as if it said... Even a python from the abyss—draw the saber. Slash! What slash was this slash? The Nine Basic Slashes, mingled with surging battle intent, underwent countless minute changes in the instant the saber swung. Battle intent drove the saber's path through ten thousand subtle adjustments. Rushing spirituality completed reconstruction after reconstruction upon it, and the momentum on Bai Zhou changed and changed again, climbing notch by notch! Fang Xiaoxia's heart thudded. She watched tensely as Bai Zhou lunged at the python in midair. In the hazy downpour filling the sky, the girl's eyes could only make out nine blurred figures roughly in midair, each swinging a different saber move, as if Bai Zhou had split into nine shadows dancing in the sky all at once. "He..." The girl drew a deep breath. Her stunned voice was quickly drowned by the surging rain. "He's practically a superhero with his underwear on the outside!" Crow, standing to one side: "......" The previous Fourth Basic Slash let Bai Zhou, by that move, unleash out of thin air an amplitude five times his ordinary full strength. The Fifth Basic Slash, which had to be used fused with Intent, the slash that had helped Bai Zhou break through to a Level 5 Extraordinary, had an amplitude of six times. After Bai Zhou drank the burst reagent, that amplitude was forced still higher. For three minutes, the amplitude the Nine Basic Slashes granted Bai Zhou would reach the terrifying figure of 6.5 times! Yet at this moment a full three hundred and sixty units of spirituality were burning fiercely inside Bai Zhou. That meant that when he swung the Fifth Basic Slash—it was roughly equivalent to two thousand three hundred and forty units of spirituality burning at once! Even an ordinary Titled Extraordinary, setting aside Spirit Intent Domains and the many forms of Spirit Intent, and judging by quantity of spirituality alone—could they have a number like this? This was the ultimate crush of raw numbers! With the purest, most violent "numbers," crushing every flashy trick... the towering character of the Adventurer pathway's top secret technique was displayed to the fullest in this moment. This slash was destined to be hard to control. The surging power far exceeded the command an Extraordinary of this level ought to possess. But the Celestial Pivot gave a hum and turned of itself, making Bai Zhou's spirituality stronger while his control over himself also far surpassed others. The Celestial Pivot combed and guided the violent power that would have burst someone of the same level. Its fine control let not a thread of force go to waste or leak away. A ritualist's Celestial Pivot, an Adventurer's secret technique... the two joined perfectly. Ritual or battle intent, under Fang Xiaoxia's dumbstruck gaze and Teacher Crow's witness—Bai Zhou's growth this night would, at this moment, be verified in practice. All that had passed, everything, fused in this moment into the single slash in Bai Zhou's palm. "Slash—!" Bai Zhou's low roar fused with the blade's mournful shriek as it split the air. As it tore the curtain of rain, it seemed to tear the fate stretched before him as well. Let every swing of the saber be like a swing at fate, with every ounce of strength... Bai Zhou thought. Then. "Crack!!!" The blasphemous breath cut off. The opened, bloody maw had not yet touched the purple-gold edge before a biting cold light split it down the middle. "Riiip." The enormous snake head split in two and slid away to either side. The saber-light, mingled with surging battle intent, was like a living warrior. Its speed did not drop. It kept cleaving flesh, charging upstream against the body, and in the end the whole python, more than ten meters long and flying in the sky— was cut in half while it still lived! In that instant, time seemed to freeze. The next moment— "Crack... boom!" Dust filled the sky. The monster fell into the dust. The python, more than ten meters long, split down the middle and smashed into Egret Mountain. The remaining trunk did not lose its life at first. It twitched and twisted without cease, struggled for a while, and only then let out a mournful wail. In the end it collapsed inch by inch and dissipated into the rainstorm. But the blood it spilled across the sky seemed to have substance. Countless crimson fragments, mixed with something like strange black ash, became a harrowing black-and-red rain of blood and poured down. "Whoosh." Mountain wind passed, and the sound of the wind grew fiercer. Standing at the center of the blood rain, bathed in it, Bai Zhou held his saber and stood tall. The great wind snapped the corner of his clothes, but the hand gripping the purple-gold long saber was steady as bedrock, and for no clear reason it made one admire him, and feel at ease. "He actually..." Crow's expression shook hard. Her always-cold face lost its composure in the wind and rain. "These pythons that came across the sky—each one has clearly touched the threshold of a Titled Extraordinary. That alone would have been enough to show the Major's methods are no small matter. Even a true Titled Extraordinary, arriving here, could handle only one python. Tangled up by several, they would certainly risk dying." "But..." Disbelief flashed through Crow's eyes. —A python that had touched the threshold of a Titled Extraordinary, cut down by Bai Zhou in a single slash, just like that? Hadn't he only just advanced to Level 5? Crow had seen it clearly just now. This slash was clearly not the form of Moon Cinder Holy Oath Slash, but the secret technique from Bai Zhou's later advancement to Level 5... She could even tell that, in the instant this slash swung through the air, it had undergone two hundred and forty-three reconstructions of spirituality. With each reconstruction Bai Zhou's momentum grew a little stronger, and the power attached to that final slash was already several times what it had been when the saber first came out, and more. —A secret technique like this was simply unheard of! What kind of secret technique could be pushed to such an extreme? Was this what a Heavenly Mandate Adventurer looked like, once grown? Even Teacher Crow, who prided herself on having seen much, could not help a blank look at the sight of Bai Zhou displaying such divine might. At this moment Crow stood on the pitch-black mid-slope of Egret Mountain, wind and rain tossing, watching python after python come on, and the night view of Egret Mountain itself, rising and winding like the pythons, as if a white egret were lifting its wings high... She suddenly thought again of that children's rhyme about Egret Mountain. "White egret, white egret, when will you lift your wings?" So the one spreading wings into freedom was not only Fang Xiaoxia, but Bai Zhou as well. So the moment of spreading wings was this very night. ...This night, in this tense hour before dawn, it was not only here, with Crow, that a heart felt shock. Toward the summit and toward the foot of the mountain as well, Bai Zhou's sudden change here set off shocks of different degrees— At the foot of the mountain, the gorgeously dressed Gem Witch was tracking her way here, wand in hand. Her figure rose and fell atop one dim yellow streetlamp after another. Each time the toe of her high heel landed on a streetlamp, the broom-shaped grappling hook shot up with a whoosh, and then her splendid figure swept a long way farther through the night. Soon she saw a corpse lying at the mountain's foot. A multicolored mask lay broken to one side. A dense mesh of thin cuts covered him from head to toe, as if he had not known, in life, how many blades he had taken. "This is... Picasso?!" The Gem Witch's eyes went sharp. Her horrified gaze went to the weapon that had caused these wounds— a shard of glass from a light bulb. "Heavens... what kind of monster could have methods like this?" The Gem Witch was still muttering inwardly when a roar from the edge of the sky suddenly reached her ears. The girl looked up in shock and saw several crimson pythons flying in, target clear, in a savage frenzy. Then purple-gold saber-light lit up on the mid-slope. Even standing at the mountain's foot, the Gem Witch felt a bone-piercing, bitter cold from that hazy saber-light. She felt something familiar in the purple-gold saber-light, and could not help staring, dumbstruck. "No way..." Muttering under her breath, the Gem Witch cast the grappling hook and quickened her climb. Unbelievable as it was, one guess rose in the Gem Witch's heart with particular clarity, and would not leave. The thunder-flying arrow just now, and now these heaven-reaching pythons sweeping through the air... These grand scenes that were shaking the whole city... —They couldn't all have something to do with her good ally, Bai Zhou, could they? At the summit, fully armed combatants were in a fierce fight. At first the gunfire roared. Soon only scattered shots remained. Two Titled Extraordinaries assisted a being above Level 6, wrapped in green light, and fought without rest against an elder in a white suit on the small platform at the summit. Afterimages flew. Several holes had appeared in the white suit on the silver-haired old man. His figure looked a little battered, yet he strove to keep the red rose at his chest intact, and a basic elegance with it. As the fight reached white heat, the two sides were somewhat deadlocked. At least these official forces had no way to deal with this mysterious man. There was no other reason. He was too slippery! This old man seemed to keep his depths hidden, and in a head-on fight he did not pose an excessive threat to the green-light man above Level 6... yet he was "fast" to a degree no one could understand. —Fast was strong! This made the green-light man angrier the longer he fought, and a thought rose in him that he did not want to keep tangling with the other. "A very weak Extraordinary of the same level. His pathway probably isn't suited to combat, or else he advanced by some clever shortcut, yet he's especially good at dodging..." This was the judgment the green-light man, ranked above Level 6, made of the uninvited guest blocking the road. "Boom." Then the huge sound from the mid-slope drew the attention of everyone on the summit. Looking through the wind and rain that filled the sky, the green-light man saw the purple-gold saber-light flare, and his expression shook. "Every one of those pythons is comparable to a Titled Extraordinary who has only just advanced! And that saber-light..." "—Sure enough, the hand behind the scenes is on the mid-slope!" The green-light man was first astonished, then moved on instinct to set off. However. "Hum." The summit platform beneath their feet was suddenly steeped in gorgeous color. The air seemed to grow several times heavier and more viscous all at once, and movement became sluggish. They turned and saw the paintbrush in the silver-haired elder's hand writhing. A multicolored domain quietly opened with the paintbrush at its center. "The spoils I just obtained are rather useful, as it turns out." The silver-haired elder raised his head, his gaze fixed on the man wrapped head to toe in green light. "Didn't I say so? Keep this retired old man company here, and talk a while." As he spoke, the elegance on the elder gradually became a dangerous chaos. Under the green-light man's shocked, incredulous gaze, the silver hair actually returned to black little by little, and filthy wicked desire gradually manifested on this former principal. His back slowly straightened. Even his appearance grew younger. The face that still kept its smile somehow became dangerous: "If you like leaving without a goodbye so much..." He said, smiling, "Then I, this retired educator, will have to give you a proper lesson in manners." Not really knowing what was happening separately at the summit and at the foot, Bai Zhou still had to face the remaining pythons. Three hundred and sixty units of spirituality were arrayed in the layout of stars across the sky. Spirituality burned fiercely. Surging power circulated inside his body. The Fifth Basic Slash held an amplitude of 6.5 times. Each time the purple saber-light rose and fell, lighting the wind-tossed night, a python was smashed to pieces, or else badly wounded. Bai Zhou spent his strength freely. He knew that swinging at full power like this would soon leave him weak, but there was no time now to think of anything more. Fang Xiaoxia was behind him, sitting on his pedicab, and beneath their feet was the mid-slope of Egret Mountain, where the cliffs rose high. They had no road of retreat. Only... "With a spectacle this big, I'm afraid even the ordinary people of all Tinghai can see it, can't they?" Amid the surging purple-gold saber qi, Bai Zhou suddenly felt puzzled. "Can the officials tolerate something like this appearing?" "They cannot." Crow took up the subject and gave her answer. "The commotion that Major has made this time is not the least bit smaller than yours." "So I think the officials are certainly busier than you imagine right now... and more anxious!" The facts proved Crow right— With the appearance of the sky-piercing pillar of light, and the pythons sweeping the horizon, Tinghai tonight was already in utter chaos. "Damn it, what are they going to Egret Mountain for!" Almost at the same moment the sky-piercing pillar and the pythons appeared, in the shadowed corners of the city, at more places than could be counted, urgent alarms and suppressed roars rose at once. Taverns, societies, cult strongholds, official agencies... all of them were in a flurry. "Alarm! Alarm! The alarm has been sounded under the Veil Protocol!" "Spirituality index assessed as 'Orange'!" "Trajectory prediction points to the mid-slope of Egret Mountain—the path will pass over five densely populated areas!" The headquarters of the Disaster Response and Investigation Agency, which had just been through an explosion, was bustling hotly at this moment. Amid the mechanical alarms, row after row of staff sat before the equipment, operating in a flurry. The commander's hoarse voice rose again and again on the encrypted channel: "At any cost!! These things must not be exposed to public view!" Buttons and keyboards were struck until they clattered. The subordinates' answers were all over the place: "The equipment deployed all over Tinghai has been fully activated. We're trying to distort and conceal its optical image." "The citywide consciousness-distortion ritual is starting, and the hypnosis ritual has started too. The shared goal is to lower the sense of presence of these things." "This thing's presence is too strong... there's a risk of failure at any moment!" All over the city, every sort of hidden device and ritual activated at the same time. Heaven knew how many methods Extraordinaries had left in every corner of the city, in order to hide this mystical world that stood behind Blue Star. And just as the Black Box Special Administration was dedicated to watching over black boxes— the Disaster Response and Investigation Agency was the corresponding department specially founded decades ago by Tinghai's Statute Hall, for preventing Extraordinary disaster-tides and for the secret work of veiling the mystical world. Any problem of leaks and secrecy involving mystical incidents and supernatural incidents was handled by the Disaster Response and Investigation Agency. But now the equipment this disaster-response agency had always been proud of was overloading, piece after piece. A string of error data came back. Red characters flickered frequently on the equipment screens inside the agency. One flurried staff member after another—there was hardly a forehead that was not sweating. "Report! Data error. The level of the spirituality is extremely high. Many methods cannot be applied!" "This spirituality does not seem to come from the present world. It is directly related to a demon..." "Forgive me for speaking plainly, but I'm afraid none of this can be concealed!" "Ordinary people's minds will be directly contaminated! We have to come up with a corresponding method!" They spared no effort. Their fingers nearly flew into afterimages over buttons and keyboards. But layer upon layer of concealment, and ritual after ritual for twisting cognition, broke one after another before the writhing of those giant snakes. Before that pair of unknown old enemies clashed, a fiercer and still less known clash without form had in fact already unfolded here. The tails of several giant pythons quietly swept the sky at the city's edge. Enormous shadows fell, amid thunder, onto this extraordinary rainy night. Although the equipment and rituals set in every corner were running for all they were worth, deflecting light, making illusions, altering cognition, so that people could not see that they existed... yet when the warped shadows swept over the residences, a nameless sense of pressure still rose of itself. Some people jerked awake from sleep and sat bolt upright in bed in the instant pale lightning flashed across the sky. Others felt a tremor and a fear by instinct. Formless contamination and influence quietly spread and crept outward, together with the sense of fear. "They absolutely cannot be allowed to affect ordinary people—not even a little! No compromise!" "—Don't give me excuses. Talk, talk, talk—you sow-spiral fried dough!" The man in the white windcoat, his mouth full of "spiral fried dough," slapped the table and roared. His messy head was messier than a bird's nest. At his side, a secretary was frantically injecting him with a tranquilizer. "Boss, this is the fifth tranquilizer already..." the secretary reminded him quietly from the side, yet still could not stop his superior's heart rate from climbing all the way up. The white-coated man brought a terrible pressure down on every staff member in the hall, but the pressure he himself bore was in fact the greatest. His blood-red eyeballs bulged as if they would glare their way out of their sockets. FZDC had already lost enough people tonight and committed enough offenses. The crime of losing the demon's corpse was already enough to raise a storm through the whole city— but now the commotion at Takuro Private Middle School had brought him to the most desperate moment of his life. "If these things are really exposed before the world, I'll resign and take the blame, all of you will face investigation, and the cleanup afterward will be an even deeper pit..." His roaring voice echoed through the hall. "Everyone will become a sinner of Tinghai! Everyone!" At this moment, hanging by a thread— "I'll do it." The heels of leather shoes tapped the floor. An aged voice, carrying a little weariness, reached everyone's ears. The white-coated man turned to look, and saw a crowd escorting two people as they came. Of the two in the lead, one was an elder in a suit, a badge of a cross bound by chains at his chest, weariness in his expression. The other was even more travel-worn. His expensive suit was covered in dust and even had several conspicuous holes, but a golden badge reading "YC" hung at his chest. "Elder Song, Old Qi... why have you come?" The white-coated man looked at the arrivals and could not help frowning. With the arrival of the two, not only did the irritable white-coated man look a good deal calmer; even the restless atmosphere of the whole hall grew heavy and still. —The acting director of the Black Box Special Administration! And the director of the Anomaly Investigation Bureau! The two heads of the only two first-rank agencies under the Statute Hall's supervision, true great figures standing at the peak of Tinghai's mystical world—they had come together. Seeing the chaos on site, the director of the Anomaly Investigation Bureau surnamed Qi, the golden "YCC" badge hanging at his chest, drew a deep breath: "I am very sorry that all of this has happened—as for Deputy Director Liu, the Anomaly Investigation Bureau will certainly give you an accounting!" "However, right now..." His voice paused briefly, and he turned to look at the elder beside him. The elder called Elder Song came over. He looked advanced in years, yet when he walked he had a vigorous, tigerish spirit. Then, no one knew from where, he turned his palm up and produced a sealed black box carved with exquisite patterns. On the surface of the black box there was also a warning plate with three red exclamation marks, and beneath it, in small characters, was marked: [D-1237, A Golden Millet Dream]. "As I understand it, FZDC has the largest influence amplifier in all of Tinghai. Bring it out." The elder said slowly, "The commotion outside is too great... Tonight, let the people of Tinghai have a good dream." The instant he saw this sealed black box, the white-coated man's heart went cold. "Go and carry the influence amplifier over, quickly!" The white-coated man immediately gave a stern order. "The largest one!" Footsteps scattered. Several technicians in white lab coats, their movements crisp, soon carried over several specially made large metal cases and took a series of components out of them. In no more than twenty seconds they were rapidly assembled into a behemoth. "Beep! Beep..." The machine made a sound. On a black cylindrical base one meter high, a radar, as if under some magnetic force, hung in the air and spun of itself. An antenna carved with mystical runes, more than two meters long, pointed straight up. A prism-shaped crystal core at the center of the radar circulated a translucent glow. Complex streams of data and all kinds of wave charts surged madly like waterfalls on the equipment wired out from the radar. "This can't wait. Begin directly!" Elder Song's voice rose. He brought the sealed black box in his hand close, yet did not open the box. Instead he opened several ports on its exterior and fed in several connecting lines from the influence amplifier. No one knew what was hidden inside the black box. Perhaps an unnameable monster. Perhaps a bodiless, dreamlike mass of light. Or else an utterly ordinary pebble, a fragment of shell... People only saw Elder Song's lips move. His expression was solemn, and he murmured under his breath, as if inviting a god, or praying. As Elder Song's motions proceeded, the data on the equipment outside the radar began to swell explosively! "Connection successful. Frequency modulation..." Researchers held the equipment and adjusted it quickly. "Amplify the influence. Cover the whole city!" "Hum." The black box in Elder Song's hand began to vibrate, rapid and rhythmic. The spin of the prism crystal at the radar's center suddenly quickened. Soundlessly, pale colored ripples wavered in the air. The colored ripples were conducted through the antenna and rapidly spread, spread, spread... The ripples were like a dream. Centered on the antenna, they wavered outward in every direction, pierced the surrounding walls, ignored physical obstacles, and swiftly melted into every corner of Tinghai. "Hua-la..." In only a few blinks, amid the tossing wind and rain, colored ripples swept the city's sky and covered the whole city in the turn of an eye. A formless influence quietly cloaked Tinghai. People who, a moment before, had felt an unaccountable unease and woken from nightmares were flooded with drowsiness, and sank into deep sleep in the rainy night. Fear and the sense of pressure both vanished. "Beep, beep, beep..." The influence amplifier ran steadily, giving off a low, stable hum. Only now did the people around it dare to let out a breath. "A Golden Millet Dream has taken effect. Those asleep are safe. Those awake find everything as usual. Anyone who has not awakened a Fate Principle will have their cognition twisted, and will neither see nor hear any supernatural phenomenon!" Elder Song cradled the black box with care. "Now, no matter how the various places kick up a fuss, Tinghai's ordinary people will pass this night of storm safe in sweet dreams." "Therefore..." He turned toward Director Qi of the Anomaly Investigation Bureau and FZDC's white-coated man beside him, his gaze sharp. "Now the idle bystanders have been cleared away, and the stage has drawn its concealing curtain—" "What remains is for us to act!" He said, "Those things that should never have appeared in this city must be cleaned away, one by one." "—For example, who can tell me?" Elder Song's low voice was biting. "Why, at Takuro Private Middle School, when personnel should clearly have arrived already, has a commotion like this still been kicked up!" At these words, Director Qi of the Anomaly Investigation Bureau frowned. "This is exactly what puzzles us." "As I understand it, the Statute Hall's inspector on duty, White Horse Star, arrived there long ago." "White Horse Star?" Elder Song frowned. "That youngster's thoughts run deep. I have never liked him... but I also admit he has always been meticulous in what he does. How could he make a mess this big?" "Perhaps the pressure and the trouble there are a little greater than imagined?" The host of this place, the boss of the Disaster Response and Investigation Agency, the white-coated man, analyzed it so. At the same time he scratched irritably at his scalp a few times, and a red tinge faintly rose again at the rims of his eyes. Director Qi spoke again then: "However, as I understand it, the Armory's Elder Wu has already set out for Takuro Middle School." "Traveling with him, it seems, is also that chief instructor of the Special Control Bureau, the Swordbearer?" Director Qi turned toward Elder Song, a little inquiry in his gaze. "Counting the time, they should have reached the scene. Presumably... all is well." At the side, FZDC's white-coated man let out a breath at these words. Elder Wu... the previous generation's second-in-command of the Armory, both a master of rituals and a master of potions, a founding elder who had built the Armory with his own hands, and whose fierce name had resounded in those years. The Swordbearer chief instructor was even more a renowned killer of this age. She had once trained further at the Genius Training Camp in Tianjing... There was even a rumor that a great figure had tried to recruit her, wanting her to remain in Tianjing, but she had politely refused. But... "Not enough!" Elder Song spoke abruptly, his gaze sharp: "Whatever White Horse Star's situation is now, whether or not there is a problem... one thing was outside all of our expectations." "Just now, the appearance of those pythons exposed the scent of a demon!" "In other words..." Elder Song looked around. "Today's case of the stolen demon corpse at FZDC, and what is happening now, are in fact the work of the same group!" "Not only that. The thunder arrow shot toward Takuro Private Middle School clearly carries the shadow of 'Senior Zhou,' who back then obtained the Sky-Thunder Bow in the Reflected Ruin Realm and shot a demon dead." Elder Song said in a low voice, "Perhaps it is this 'Senior Zhou' reminding us that the demon, or the person behind the demon, has come back again!" "Elder Song's meaning is..." Director Qi said gravely, "Two people, or rather two factions, are playing a match with the whole city of Tinghai as stage and battlefield?" "—And all of us are the audience?" At these words the white-coated man slapped the table with a bang. "Taking us for an audience? Whatever faction they are and wherever they come from, how dare they be so rampant!" Just then, as if oil poured on the fire, a subordinate reported the latest news. "Report!" "The latest intelligence shows that those pythons that flew across the sky toward Egret Mountain have already been cut down, one by one, on the mid-slope by a mysterious man using a saber!" "......It looks as if those crimson pythons were going straight for that mysterious man. They are fighting across the distance." When these words were spoken, all three great figures whose word carried the weight of law in Tinghai fell silent. Fighting across the distance, as if no one else existed? They were simply treating all of Tinghai as if it were not there. Worse, treating the few of them as air! Air worth less than a few old radishes and rotten cabbages! "Ha... did you hear that?" Elder Song was even a little amused by his anger. He coughed a few times and turned to the others: "A great battle this heedless of anyone else, and all that's missing is a few bites of watermelon to pack us off to the audience seats... This truly is the greatest shame for us officials!" "I don't know what strength those mysterious existences actually have... but I do want to take them on." "So Elder Wu and the chief instructor, only two people, will not do—" Elder Song looked at everyone, his voice low. "I suggest we all go!" "All of us!" "Tinghai ought to move!" The elder who had held the Special Control Bureau for many years glared at this moment, his voice ringing and forceful, as if he had settled on some resolve: "We'll simply act together and strike with a heavy fist!" "I have to see this ambitious man tied to the demon, hidden beneath Takuro Private Middle School..." "Just how many-headed and many-armed he really is, and how dangerous a figure he is to provoke!" "Crackle! Whoosh." Takuro Private Middle School. Raging fire burned everywhere. Undying arcs of lightning wound and flashed. The underground base someone had carefully prepared was, at this moment, like a miserable hell on earth. The Major stood calmly at the center of the encircling flames, beneath a mysterious altar, confronting someone across the distance. That person wore a fierce, archaic metal mask. The brows and eyes turned up, the mouth curved, like a pitch-black smiling-face mask, in sharp contrast with the deathly white tall hat on his head. At his neck, on a red cord, hung a deep-emerald piece of green jade, and inside it a cottony mist trembled and flowed. A black smiling face, white clothes, green jade. A baleful air, stern and cold, free and graceful, and yet a full sense of pressure. "Rustle..." Sheet after sheet of scraps like spirit money fell around the masked man. These scraps melted the moment they touched the ground and vanished. Looking closely, one found that all of this spirit money was inscribed with occult incantations of unclear use. Amid the burning flames, the white-hatted, smiling-faced man spoke with indifference: "Colluding with a demon, toying with life, betraying the officials, secretly building a hidden force..." "Impressive. Truly impressive." Beneath the pale tall hat and the smiling metal mask, the man lightly clapped his hands. His stiff tone was so cold it did not seem to belong to a living person with feelings. He stood suspended in the air like this, and under the firelight looked down at the Major, whose face was iron-blue: "But have you thought about it?" "Stirring up a disaster this large—how many heads do you have?" This great figure from the Statute Hall, one of the Four Great Inspectors standing at the peak of Tinghai, White Horse Star, sent a cold, gloomy murmur through the crackling of thunder and fire. "It seems I really will have to get you under control..." "Little brother."