"Spirit fire, profound light, clear raging flames, Fire Lord descend your Qi, all evil spirits perish! Fire Spark Curse, Hasten!"
Sevrin chanted the spell, and the seven or eight yellow talismans in his palm immediately burst into flame, transforming into seven or eight golden-red fire swallows that took wing and flew off in every direction.
A few breaths later, seven or eight sources of fire ignited one after another within the Xin Family mansion.
This talisman fire, created through Magical Arts, could be called an indiscriminate eater. Besides stone and soil, it could burn almost anything else it touched.
Thus, one by one, the houses, trees, and corpses—a scattered assortment of objects—were all devoured by the talisman fire in a short period of time, beginning to burn with a crackling sound.
CRACKLE!
Immediately after, Sevrin began to cast another spell:
"Wind talisman, arise! Cleanse the evil! Where the power reaches, all demonic nightmares perish! Sunda Wind Curse, Hasten!"
WHOOSH!
As the remaining few yellow talismans turned to ash, a series of powerful gales immediately blew in from the southeast, fanning the talisman fires and causing them to sway back and forth, spreading toward even more areas.
With the wind feeding the flames, the brilliant firelight rapidly swept across every corner of the Xin Family mansion.
Seeing this, Sevrin no longer lingered. With his back to the raging inferno, he hastened toward another part of Nina Town without looking back.
The fire in the Xin Family mansion grew ever larger after he left, eventually turning into a towering conflagration that engulfed the entire estate.
Fortunately, the Xin family, out of a sense of contempt for the town's commoners, had intentionally cleared the land on all four sides of their mansion, isolating themselves from others.
As a result, once the fire spread beyond the estate's boundaries, there was nothing left for it to burn.
Thus, it could not spread to other areas. Otherwise, nearly half of Nina Town would have been in peril.
One could only say that while the Xin family had committed a basketful of evil deeds in life, at least in death, they didn't bring trouble to others.
A good death, a truly good death.
On the other side, Sevrin had leaped across rooftops for several miles, finally coming to a halt in front of a standalone building designed like an ancient temple.
Unlike the lively, bustling shops nearby, this building's pitch-black wooden walls and tightly shut doors gave it an extremely cold and grim appearance, much like a prison.
However, the building's exterior was not important. What mattered was the sign hanging at the front.
Inscribed on it were three characters: Tea, Hall, Shop.
Indeed, this was the local outpost of the Graew Demon-Slaying Bureau that Canji had mentioned.
Just as Sevrin glanced at the sign and planned to walk over and knock on the door, a passing elderly man called out to stop him:
"Hey, youngster! Are you planning to enter this tea shop?"
Sevrin found the old man somewhat inexplicable, but out of politeness, he still replied:
"Old sir, do you have something to tell me?"
"Nothing much. Uh, this old man just wanted to give you a heads-up..."
The elderly man paused, then whispered mysteriously, "This place... it's haunted. Best stay away."
"?"
This statement left Sevrin with a head full of question marks.
What was the meaning of this? The local outpost of the official department dedicated to slaying ghosts and exterminating demons was haunted?
This was a bit too much of a slap to the Demon-Slaying Bureau's face.
"Old sir, explain it to me in more detail," Sevrin asked again, puzzled. "I've just arrived in Nina Town and don't know much about many things. This tea shop looks perfectly fine. How could it be haunted?"
"Ah, so you already knew this place was a tea shop. I thought you were just an outsider wandering in blindly."
The old man looked left and right, then spoke mysteriously once more. "It's like this. Aside from the tea being very expensive and having very few customers, this tea shop had actually always been quite normal. But yesterday, something terrifying happened here."
Sevrin asked in confusion, "What happened?"
"Last night, the tea shop was open as usual. But at nine o'clock, all the lamps inside suddenly extinguished. It was pitch black. From the outside, you couldn't see anything, and you couldn't hear anything either."
At this point, the old man sighed and continued, "The Militia sent a few men over this morning, but as soon as they entered the tea shop, they got stuck inside and haven't come out yet. So now, no one dares to go in."
After hearing this, Sevrin frowned and asked, "The Militia didn't follow up after that?"
The old man shook his head. "Probably not today. I reckon they'll have to wait until tomorrow to send more men."
"Alright," Sevrin nodded. "I understand."
With that, he turned and walked toward the tea shop.
Seeing his actions, the old man realized his words had fallen on deaf ears, and he immediately shouted from behind:
"Youngster, you must listen to this old man! Do not go in there! If you go, you really won't be able to come back out!"
In response, Sevrin simply waved his hand without a word. The anxious old man could only hop around in place, not daring to take a single step closer to the tea shop.
Standing in front of the tea shop's closed doors, Sevrin gave them a light push.
CREAK!
With a soft sound, the doors opened.
Immediately, a surge of ghostly Qi, so thick it appeared black, billowed out and washed over Sevrin's face.
But what his naked eyes saw was the interior of a seemingly very ordinary tea shop.
The tables and chairs were all neatly arranged.
On one of the tea tables sat a teapot and teacups.
It looked as if someone had just been sitting there, drinking tea.
However, upon closer inspection with his senses, there wasn't a single trace of living Qi within this tea shop.
There were only wisps of mysterious, hazy mist, continuously drifting and circulating through the shop.
Looking at all of this, Sevrin wore a bizarre expression:
"A Demonic Land?!"
Indeed, this Demon-Slaying Bureau outpost had invisibly transformed into a small-scale Demonic Land.
No wonder outsiders couldn't see what was happening inside the tea shop. With this sinister mist present, how could they see anything clearly?
"Strange, truly strange."
Sevrin murmured as he walked over and sat down at a tea table. "Combining all the facts, this Demon-Slaying Bureau outpost must have turned into a Demonic Land last night, and the Demon-Slaying Lieutenants stationed here have all vanished.
Tsk, how could everything be timed so perfectly? Just as I was about to arrive, the whole place goes belly-up. If it had only happened a little later, at least I could have finished copying their skills. Sigh~"
After a frustrated sigh, he stood up and began a comprehensive investigation of the entire tea shop, hoping to find any possible clues left behind.
But after searching for only a moment, Sevrin slapped his forehead and said with annoyance:
"I almost forgot, I'm a Ghost too."
With that, he abruptly transformed from human to Ghost, shifting into his ghostly entity form.
Within his ghostly vision, the tea shop was instantly transformed into a gloomy burial chamber, crudely constructed and filled with a dozen weathered coffins.
Aside from the coffins, the chamber was dotted with flickering, eerie green ghost-fires. As for the tea tables and chairs, they had vanished without a trace.
"I can sense it..."
Sevrin, whose face was now as pale and greenish as a corpse's, slowly shifted his gaze downward, murmuring faintly, "Beneath this burial chamber, there is more space."
As he muttered, he performed a "dive" through the floor, vanishing from sight in an instant.
Upon plunging beneath the chamber, Sevrin immediately realized that this was not a second burial chamber at all, but a dark tunnel plunging straight down, with no visible end.
Furthermore, spiraling down along the pitch-black inner walls of this long tunnel were layers upon layers of intermittently connected stone steps.
It felt as though it led straight to the Netherworld.
An ordinary person facing such a seemingly bottomless tunnel would find it hard to muster the courage to explore, never daring to descend those stairs one by one.
But Sevrin was no ordinary person. Actually, at the moment, he wasn't even human.
So, Sevrin didn't bother with the stairs. He simply let himself fall into the dark tunnel in a freefall.
This was much faster than taking the stairs.
During his descent, Sevrin could clearly sense the sinister energy all around him growing thicker, eventually even surpassing the central region of the Demonic Land at Geo Fortress.
Therefore, he boldly speculated that at the end of this tunnel-shaped Demonic Land, there would very likely be a higher-level ghostly entity that surpassed the Vengeful Spirit rank.
When Sevrin had fallen to a depth of nearly 300 meters, he suddenly noticed several human corpses lying on a set of stairs to his left.
He immediately hovered to a stop and flew toward them.
Upon inspection, he discovered that these corpses were all clad in heavy armor.
However, the armor was now tattered and torn, and the bodies beneath the plate were riddled with blood-filled holes of various sizes, looking as though they had been burrowed into and gnawed on by countless serpents or centipedes.
"They're from the Nina Town Militia."
Standing on the stairs, Sevrin flipped the bodies over to examine them.
He found that the depth of the holes in the corpses was even greater than he had imagined—almost piercing through their entire bodies—and they were scattered everywhere, from head to toe.
"Is it a ghostly entity that can control snakes or insects?"
Hesitant, Sevrin considered switching back to his living state to see what this narrow, long Demonic Land looked like in the actual world.
But after careful consideration, he decided against it.
He worried that if he left his ghostly vision and returned to reality, only to find the area replaced by a solid, thick layer of underground rock, he would be crushed alive.
The weight of 300 meters of earth was not something the Steel Tendons and Iron Bones realm could withstand.
Immediately, Sevrin ignored the corpses, jumped off the stairs, and resumed his descent down the tunnel.
He continued falling.
When he reached a depth of about 4,300 meters, Sevrin once again hovered in mid-air.
The reason was simple: he had discovered more corpses.
These corpses, also riddled with holes and lying on the stairs, were uniformly dressed in black double-breasted leather uniforms and black tall boots. Each of their garments was printed with a small character: Slay.
"Demon-Slaying Lieutenants?"
Driven by curiosity, Sevrin flickered onto the stairs and began to study the corpses.
His primary focus was investigating the martial arts realms they had occupied while alive.
Sevrin found this extremely interesting.
Overall, martial arts is a craft focused on developing and enhancing the strength of one's own physique.
Therefore, even with these people dead, it was still possible to determine their martial arts realms from their remains.
After some investigation, Sevrin discovered that the realms of these individuals were all uniformly at the Vitality Circulation stage.
In other words, they were at the same level as Huin.
"Could it be that Vitality Circulation..." Sevrin pondered, "...is the baseline combat power for Demon-Slaying Lieutenants?"
After thinking it over, he believed this was likely the case.
Even the weakest Wandering Soul ghostly entity, when situated within a demonic land, possessed a killing potential equivalent to someone at Huin's level, but with much greater speed.
Only after leaving a demonic land would a Wandering Soul entity's threat be significantly weakened; at that point, a martial artist at Huin's level could truly achieve a complete victory over them.
Immediately after, Sevrin left the stairs and continued falling down the tunnel.
During the remainder of his descent, he discovered more Demon-Slaying Lieutenant corpses at depths of 5,000 meters, 6,000 meters, and 6,600 meters.
Furthermore, every one of these corpses had died in exactly the same way: riddled with blood-filled holes.
"The cause of death is identical," Sevrin thought silently during his descent. "It looks like there's likely only one ghostly entity in this tunnel."
Continuing his descent, Sevrin discovered no more remains.
He fell for a full 12,000 meters before finally reaching the end at the bottom of the tunnel.
This depth far exceeded the Mariana Trench on Earth; even describing it as the abyss of Hell felt insufficient.
Yet, in this profound place, there existed a vast arena along with numerous rooms that were now in tattered ruins.
Surrounding the edges of this now-scarred and crumbling arena were massive mechanical components, resembling mine shaft elevators.
Furthermore, these devices, along with many damaged items on the training grounds, were all printed with the small character: Slay.
Sevrin understood immediately:
"I see. This arena must have been the underground facility for the tea shop, and those elevators were the equipment used to travel between the surface and the underground."
Under normal circumstances, a local outpost's underground facility wouldn't be built deeper than the Mariana Trench; even if it were intended to survive a nuclear bombardment, such a depth would be absurd.
Thus, there was only one possibility: this suddenly manifested demonic land had forcibly dragged the tea shop's underground arena down to a depth of over 10,000 meters.
"There's a living aura here," Sevrin noted, his gaze sweeping around. "Though it's very weak, it definitely exists."
Following the aura, he began to search the arena.
Soon, Sevrin came to a halt in front of a room situated at the edge of the training grounds, which was now severely twisted, deformed, and damaged.
In such a dangerous environment, he didn't risk switching to his living form. Instead, he made his form ethereal and phased through the layers of debris to enter the room.
Inside the pitch-black room, Sevrin saw an elderly man leaning against a ruined wall, clutching a broken steel whip, looking as though he were at death's door.
This old man was also dressed in a black double-breasted uniform and black tall boots. However, there were no holes in his body; instead, his abdomen was nearly severed in half, with blood and intestines spilling out.
Yet, even in this state, the man stubbornly clung to life. Thus, Sevrin could clearly see all the old man's personal interface information:
[ Character Name: Unknown
Level: Mainstream Martial Arts → Steel Tendons and Iron Bones, Occult Techniques → Astral Travel
Mastered Skills: "Vajra Elephant-Hurling Art""Furious Flood-Dragon Whip""Ghost and Monster Tracking""Yin-Yang Eyes""High-Level Primal Breath Yang-Refining Method""Lifespan-Draining Power-Gathering Art""Heavenly Incision Yang-Guiding Art""Stuacn Spirit-Suppressing Talismans (Damaged)"
Special Traits: [Level 2 Robust Physique][Level 2 Stamina][Level 2 Wrath][Level 2 Intuition][Level 2 Yang-Absorption][Level 2 Spirit-Concentration][Level 2 Magical Power]
Expert Shards: None ]
In a single thought, Sevrin learned all of this man's techniques.
And at the same moment he saw the Demon-Slaying Lieutenant, the man naturally saw him as well.
The elderly Lieutenant let out a weak sigh and said:
"How tragic. I never expected that at the very end, the one to see Old Tea off would be a ghostly entity."
"Hello," Sevrin, mistaken for an evil spirit, said as he walked up to the man and asked gently, "Are you the Tea Master?"
The old man looked at Sevrin coldly and remained silent, clearly having no desire to speak a single word to a ghostly entity.
Right then, Sevrin pulled a familiar-looking letter from his robe and said with a grin:
"Whether you believe it or not, Canji invited me to join your Demon-Slaying Bureau. He said he wanted me to... slay monsters, for the benefit of all living things."
Looking at the letter and hearing those words, the old man was completely bewildered on the spot.
"Impossible! You... you, a ghostly entity... how could you have a Demon-Slaying Bureau letter?"
The elderly man named Tea was initially shocked, then shouted in a deep voice, "Could it be that you, evil spirit, murdered Canji and stole the letter to deceive me...?"
"Alright, alright, don't get so worked up, old-timer."
Sevrin shook his head and reverted to his living state right in front of the old man, leaving him slack-jawed with shock.
"You... how did you turn into a human?!"
Clearly, this scene had left his mind in a state of confusion. For a moment, the old man began to ramble. "I must be close to death, so... so I'm hallucinating."
"No, it's not a hallucination," Sevrin said, improvising. "I am indeed a human; it's just that I have a Bloodline Divinity that allows me to temporarily transform into a ghostly entity."
He then gave a brief, summarized account of how he had slaughtered evil spirits in the Geo Fortress demonic land and how he had chanced upon Canji.
"Alright, I understand."
Being so weak, the old man didn't want to expend too much mental effort debating the truth or falsehood of Sevrin's words. He only gasped for breath as he asked, "In short, you are a human and not a ghost. Knowing that is enough."
With that, he gritted his teeth and labored to pull out a jade box, barely half the size of a palm and covered in strange talismans, from behind his back. He spoke in broken phrases:
"This is the Soul-Binding Cocoon, a type of Occult tool. Half an hour ago, I trapped the ghostly entity wreaking havoc here inside this secret tool."
After speaking, he handed the jade box to Sevrin, while also laboring to pass over a worn book.
"This catastrophic incident at the Nina Town outpost was absolutely no accident. There must be someone maliciously behind it, pulling the strings. Otherwise, it would be impossible for such a large demonic land to appear out of thin air without any warning. Unfortunately, I no longer have the strength to investigate this matter."
His face deathly pale, the old man looked at Sevrin. "Take this Soul-Binding Cocoon. To be safe, go into hiding for now and do not show your face. The headquarters will send someone to investigate this place; they should arrive in a few days. When they do, hand it over to the arriving Demon-Slaying Lieutenant.
Also, this book is the personnel registry of the Nina Town Demon-Slaying Bureau outpost. Find any blank page and carve your name onto it, use your fingertip."
"Carve it with my finger? Fine."
Sevrin took the book and gave it a casual flip, discovering that the material of the pages was remarkably hard, neither metal nor jade. An ordinary person using a sword or knife would likely fail to leave a complete name, let alone someone using their bare finger.
However, for Sevrin, this was a trivial matter; indeed, for any martial artist at the Vitality Circulation level, it was effortless.
In an instant, Sevrin's name was carved into a page of the registry with his finger.
Strangely enough, as soon as he carved his name, the registry flashed with a brief radiance, as if it had been activated.
Seeing this, the dying elder spoke once more:
"Congratulations. You have officially become a member of the Graew Demon-Slaying Bureau. Somewhere on this training ground, there is a piece of equipment; it has already molded and stamped your Lieutenant medallion. Go find it for yourself in a moment."
After rattling off such a long speech in one breath, the old man leaned back against the wall in total exhaustion, whispering:
"Everything has been entrusted to you. Do not mind me; I am beyond saving. Go quickly. Transform into a ghost and leave this place... let me... let me finally sleep for a while."
With that, he closed his eyes and his vitality gradually faded away.
Seeing this, Sevrin could only sigh and turn to leave.
But right then, as if experiencing a final flash of lucidity before death, the old man's eyes snapped open. With sudden vigor, he barked at Sevrin in a deep voice:
"Youngster, always remember... in this world, there are no gods or immortal magics, nor are there Buddhas or high saints. There are only us, the Demon-Slaying Lieutenants, sacrificing our lives to protect the millions of common folk. From this day forth, you are the backbone of the people under heaven. When others retreat, you cannot; when others flee, you cannot. If the sky is shrouded in darkness, then you... are the only Sun!"
After shouting this passage, the old man's life force vanished completely, and he breathed his last on the spot.
"Until the very end, I never even learned if you were the Tea Master."
His heart filled with complex emotions, Sevrin let out a sigh. He immediately shifted from human to ghost, his ethereal form phasing through layers of obstacles to reach the outside of the room.
However, he did not immediately follow the old man's dying wish to leave. Instead, he began to wander about this silent, gloomy training ground.
"If this is an organization's outpost, there must be a warehouse or something here."
Muttering to himself, Sevrin's gaze swept around, searching for anything of value.
Perhaps guided by his Wild Nature intuition, he soon discovered what appeared to be the outpost's warehouse in a corner of the vast training grounds.
Inside this storage room, rows of large iron cabinets were lined up.
Although more than half the warehouse had collapsed, crushing most of the cabinets into scrap metal and mangling their contents beyond recognition, a few iron cabinets had luckily survived, successfully protecting whatever was inside.
Opening one of them, Sevrin found it filled with neatly stacked yellow talismans, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of them.
"The real deal," he nodded. He raised his hand, the word Naeaie glowing on his palm, and in an instant, the entire iron cabinet was pulled into the Kiyou Grotto.
The second cabinet he opened contained various files, documents, and other records. After flipping through them briefly, Sevrin tossed them into the grotto as well.
The third cabinet was filled with sets of folded black uniforms, the same double-breasted leather attire worn by the Demon-Slaying Lieutenants.
"Honestly, these clothes look quite sharp."
With that thought, Sevrin stored this cabinet in the grotto as well.
The fourth cabinet held pairs of black tall boots that matched the uniforms. Naturally, since they were part of the same set, Sevrin took the entire cabinet.
Then came the fifth, sixth, and seventh cabinets.
These contained small-to-medium denomination banknotes, a considerable number of medicine vials, seven or eight occult tools of unknown purpose, and a pair of steel whips shaped like bamboo segments, shimmering with a dark red light.
Every single item was swept into his pocket, or rather, the grotto.
The only exception was that pair of clearly extraordinary bamboo-segment steel whips, which Sevrin hung from his waist, one on each side.
In short, he enjoyed a thoroughly satisfying looting session.
At the same time, Sevrin discovered the medallion stamping machine the elderly Demon-Slaying Bureau member had mentioned, tucked away in a corner of the collapsed warehouse.
"So the old man's intention was for me to find this warehouse and take everything with me."
Pondering this, Sevrin walked over to the machine and found a medallion, still warm to the touch, sitting in its tray.
He picked it up and saw the following inscribed on it:
[ Name: Sevrin ]
[ Number: 3527 ]
[ Title: Wood-Rank Lieutenant ]