"Mister Demon, are you home?"
The dazzling Unlocking Spell blasted apart the boulder plugging the cave mouth. Heedless of the heat rolling out at her, Li Fei ducked her head inside, a lantern swinging from one hand, and asked politely.
The lantern gave off a chilly ghost-fire glow. Li Fei swept her gaze around the cavern. Empty. Whatever demon should have been lairing here had left no trace of itself.
"Your Highness, the great blood-drinking demon and the rest of them really were here, I swear… They must have—they must have run off early. Give me one more chance, please—"
The lantern in her hand spoke in human words, begging.
"No thanks. The neighbors don't seem happy to see me, so I'd better be going."
Li Fei smiled sweetly. Crimson battle qi surged out of her, and in the space of an instant the lantern monster that had turned guide-for-the-invaders to save its own skin lay scattered in fragments.
After the Tree Demon died, Li Fei had rested only briefly before leading her group out to slaughter every demon in the region. The early going had been smooth — experience piled up fast, and she'd carried off tens of thousands of Wealth Points' worth of spoils along the way.
But Li Fei had made rather a lot of noise. In little more than half a day, the local demons were either dead or fled, and her efficiency dropped through the floor.
Level: 26
Wealth Points: 443759
With the sky darkening and three empty caves in a row behind her, Li Fei glanced at her System Panel, took the reins of her newly subjugated mount, and headed home still hungry for more.
"Stop right there, enchantress!"
Deep in a dense wood, a man in a blue-black python robe chased the small figure ahead of him — white robe, golden hair — murder cold in his eyes.
In two days, three of his brothers had already fallen to that enchantress.
He'd given up his little fantasy of taking the blonde, blue-eyed creature alive for a taste. Now he only wanted her dead, and quickly.
Yet though the enchantress clearly wasn't running fast, he couldn't close the gap. His legs grew heavier and heavier, his lungs burned, and his vision was starting to swim.
"Damn it… I've got to cut back on the wine. Running this little and I'm already finished."
At last the man in the python robe could no longer drag his lead-filled legs another step. Wheezing hoarsely, he watched that bouncing golden ponytail vanish from sight.
Then it hit him that something was wrong.
He'd stopped, and the exhaustion hadn't lifted. If anything it had deepened — his flesh had gone slack, every joint ached, and sweat poured off him like his life depended on shedding it.
"Something's not right. That woman must have hexed me. I need to find someone to look at this—"
Muttering, he raised a hand to wipe his brow, and then the motion froze mid-air. His face went grim, then uncertain, then frightened.
He lifted both hands and rubbed them over his face, his palms reading the wrinkles that had crawled across his forehead sometime without his noticing. His right hand scratched at his scalp on reflex, and several strands of hair came away at the touch, snapping off — like pulling a weed out of soft soil, no effort at all.
When his trembling hands finally left his cheeks, the man stared in disbelief at the backs of them, gone pebbled and loose as chicken skin, and at the withered grey-white hairs lying in his palm. Terror sank deep into that old face.
He was only sixty-odd! Even if human lifespans couldn't rival a demon's, cultivating as far as the Heaven Realm bought a man four jiazi of years. How could he be showing his age at a time like this?
The rustle of footsteps reached his ears. The man in the python robe raised his head, terror all over his features, and looked at the enchantress who had circled back at some point without a sound.
"Witch! What did you do!"
He demanded it with his eyes bulging as if they'd split, hoisting his Meteor Hammer and charging at Lilith like a madman, gambling on one last thread of survival.
Lilith had no intention of explaining her methods to an enemy. In silence, she converted the vitality she had been quietly stealing from him into death-energy, raised her staff, and loosed a swathe of deep black like unrolled silk.
Most of his life-source had been eaten away without his knowledge. A candle guttering in the wind — how was he supposed to stand against the heavy death-energy howling toward him?
The Meteor Hammer tore free of his grip and punched through several ancient trunks. He went down like those falling trees himself, eyes wide with grievance, knees folding, and did not get up.
"Sleep forever."
Lilith sighed.
The inherited spell [Enervation] let her siphon an enemy's vitality without pause; once she had banked enough of it, she could invert life and death and swing the [Reaper's Scythe] to harvest the soul itself.
Which meant the longer a foe fought Lilith, the more life she took from him. As time passed the enemy grew weaker and weaker, while the Reaper's Scythe, fed by that thick brew of life and death, grew more terrible — one side waning, the other waxing. With that, she even stood a slender chance of killing a mid-Sequence powerhouse.
It was only that both spells were too savage, too merciless. Her enemies' souls were snuffed out along with their bodies, and every time she cast them her nerves crawled, an ill omen welling up in her unbidden, as if she were walking step by step toward hell.
All Lilith could do was keep calling to mind the [Anchor] named stepmother, guarding the light in the deepest part of her spirit so that her soul would not fall into the endless dark.
Then, abruptly, Lilith's head snapped around, all senses alert.
A sky-drowning tide of demonic aura rolled outward like a landslide, like a tsunami, closing on this spot fast.
Lilith pressed her lips together and said nothing. Without hesitation she mounted her broom, and her figure vanished into the high dark.
That morning was not a peaceful one.
A tall, long-limbed skeletal horse stood chained to a post, demonic flame curling about her frame, scarlet ghost-fire dancing in the bone-white sockets of her skull. She looked like a beast that had walked up out of hell, radiating a bloodthirsty violence.
She thrashed in restless fury, letting out wild shrieking whinnies, her surging strength making the taut chains ring and sing and throw off dazzling sparks.
A female ghost crept forward, trembling, hoping to feed her. The skeletal horse showed no gratitude at all: her forehooves reared high, the ghost-fire in her eyes flaring a ring wider, and the thick ghost-aura simply flipped the female ghost off her feet, scattering the pitch-black crystals from her hands across the ground.
"I want flesh… and blood…"
The skeletal horse murmured it, and her voice turned out to be low and cold and sultry — a mature woman's voice, with a rasp in it.
Just as the female ghost was at her wits' end, a slender, tender white arm reached out to the skeletal horse's mouth.
"Here. Eat mine."
The voice that reached her ears was gentle and bright as an oriole calling for a mate.
But the skeletal ghost-mare, so unbroken and arrogant a moment before, heard that mild tone and the ghost-fire in her sockets began to shudder violently as she remembered the unspeakable scenes of yesterday's dream.
Then she went quiet. She lowered her head docilely and obediently munched the crystals off the ground, as though nothing at all had happened before.
"Very good. That's a good girl."
Li Fei sounded thoroughly gratified.
Having Moonlight Wolves pull a carriage was far too cheap-looking. While sweeping out the local demons, Li Fei had taken one look at this mare — the one bold enough to buck at her — and known she wanted her.
A Heaven Realm ghost creature: plenty of horsepower, excellent presentation, and best of all she could be stored in the [Ghost-Rearing Gourd]. An ideal mount, all told.
On top of that, the smoky older-sister voice was lovely to listen to, the bones were nicely white, and even the skeletal structure looked elegant and long-lined, with a certain gothic beauty. If she ever learned to take human shape as a horse girl, she wouldn't necessarily come off worse than those phoenix big sisters back at Tingbao's place.
Watching from the side, Nie Yunyi clicked his tongue in wonder.
This ghost-horse had a ferocious aura. Yesterday Li Fei had nearly taken her apart joint by joint and she still hadn't submitted. Then the enchantress had simply found a nearby cave, gone in, come out roughly half an hour later — and the clattering skeleton was suddenly obedient as a lamb.
Nie Yunyi had asked, offhandedly, how. To this moment he still could not make head or tail of the answer: "I let her cuddle with horse girls in her dreams."
"Hero Nie, I'm leaving the Lin'an business in your hands."
Li Fei waved a hand, and a five-hundred-square-meter luxury villa tore itself up out of the ground, shrinking and shrinking until it settled into her palm as a dainty little model.
The extraordinary materials that couldn't be compressed had long since been packed up in neat bundles, with the female ghosts minding them.
"Immortal arts, truly divine craft…"
Having witnessed such a power with his own eyes, Nie Yunyi voiced his admiration again — and a Purple Longsword shot out of the sword case on his back.
The blade had a spirit of its own. It circled Nie Yunyi twice like a puppy let off the leash before floating quietly beneath his feet.
"I'll be waiting for you in Lin'an."
With that easy farewell, Nie Yunyi merged body and sword, became a streak of rainbow light, and rode the blade cleaving the sky away.
The demons here had been cleared out, and he had a rough grasp of Li Fei's aims, so there was no reason to linger. He would set out early for Lin'an to contact old friends and put affairs in order — groundwork for bringing Lu Qianfan down and putting Li Fei in his seat.
Li Fei, meanwhile, was returning first to Luyuan County, to wait and rendezvous with her dear stepdaughter.
"Off we go."
At Li Fei's call the skeletal ghost-mare surged into motion, hauling the carriage toward Luyuan County, hoofbeats rolling like thunder.
Li Fei sensed something wrong before she even reached the city.
The gate stood all but deserted. The guards looked either jumpy or vicious, none of them slack the way they'd been before.
And a whole row of severed heads hung along the wall — over a hundred of them. The bloody tears on those faces hadn't blackened yet, the features twisted and wretched, and stray trickles of blood still ran down as they swayed in the wind. Clearly they'd been cut off not long ago.
Beyond that, portraits of Squire Wang and his household had been pasted up in a tidy row beside the gate — and Li Fei and Lilith were no exception.
"What ugly work. Far worse than the picture books my daughter keeps hidden away."
Li Fei grumbled indignantly, then fixed her eyes on that dense rank of heads and found several faces rather familiar.
With the inhuman memory granted by over two hundred points of Intelligence, she recognized at once that a good many of them were Wang family servants. Who the rest of the poor wretches were, she had no idea.
So Lü Zhengchun's death at the Wang estate had come to light.
A moment's thought and Li Fei had the gist of it. She turned and instructed Qiao'er and the others, "I'll be back shortly. Stay here, all of you, and don't wander."
Then her figure drifted off. She circled a short way along the base of the wall, quickly found a blind spot in the patrols, and rode the female ghosts' lift up onto the battlements.
Seconds later the female ghosts were hauling the corpses of the guards who'd spotted them into a hidden corner, and Li Fei had achieved a flawless infiltration.
She didn't pause for an instant. Alone, sword in hand, she cut toward the City Lord's manor, carefully avoiding the soldiers and retainers criss-crossing the grounds and, when avoidance failed, erasing the witnesses. Before long she found a certain hall.
The sky hadn't even darkened, yet inside the hall there was music and dancing. The paunchy City Lord reeked of wine as he and his cronies took turns toasting the Demon Suppression Bureau man in the blue-black python robe.
The City Lord was already drunk, but he still swayed there with his cup raised, tongue tangling as he babbled his flattery:
"With you here, Lord Chiliarch, Luyuan County will know peace! With you here, Lord Chiliarch, we have a clear blue sky at last!"
"Heh." One arm around the City Lord's concubine, the blue-robed man affected modesty. "That fugitive's whole family is still at large, and the two enchantresses haven't been brought in either. Let's do without the 'clear blue sky' for now."
"The Lord Chiliarch spends himself utterly in the court's service. Truly a model for the rest of us." The lean, wiry secretary at his side hurried to take up the thread, and soon steered the subject onto Lü Zhengchun.
"Every time I think of how the diligent, upright, incorruptible Lord Lü was murdered by those demons and those traitors, my heart aches so that I cannot sleep at night! And Lord Lu as well — since taking charge of the Demon Suppression Bureau he has thought of nothing but the public good, and slain who knows how many demons. Glory enough to shine for a thousand years! What a pity heaven is blind, that Lord Lu should suffer the loss of his own son…"
As he spoke he made a show of dabbing away a couple of crocodile tears, as though he really grieved over Lü Zhengchun's death.
"Mm." The blue-robed man turned his wine cup slowly, then changed tack, his tone weighted with meaning. "I hear from the confessions of the criminals' associates that the two enchantresses are exceptionally beautiful, the black-haired one especially. Though who knows whether it's true…"
"Set your mind at ease, Lord Chiliarch." The secretary thumped his own chest at once. "I'll have my men ride day and night to track those enchantresses down! Once we've dragged them back, we'll deliver them to your residence, my lord, so you can question them thoroughly — question them in detail — question them without leaving a single thread untouched!"
The blue-robed man heard this and gave the secretary's shoulder two satisfied pats, whereupon the man bowed his head, overwhelmed by the honor, the picture of terrified gratitude.
"My lord, we've caught the enchantress!"
A pleasant female voice drifted in from the doorway.
That fast?
All of them turned to look toward the door.
A woman with hair black as ink leaned against the frame, smiling charmingly, a heart-stopping allure moving in her eyes.
When that nation-toppling face came into view, even the ever-glib secretary held his breath, sighing on instinct:
"Fish sink and geese fall from the sky… beauty fit to shame the whole realm…"
As for the Chiliarch of the Demon Suppression Bureau, relaxed and off his guard, he lost himself entirely for a moment. By the time he noticed the blood dripping from the sword in the woman's hand, it was too late.
The Startling Swan Sword Flash swept past, and a head with horror written all over it dropped to the floor.
In the span of a single exchange a Heaven Realm master was cut down, adding one more line of "merit" to Li Fei's tally.
Before the head even landed, crimson sword-light burst forth again and again, crossing and churning through the hall, shutting every witness's mouth forever before they could scream. Only the City Lord survived, his own mouth clamped shut by a [Qian Division] female ghost who had floated in behind him unnoticed.
At the same time more female ghosts surfaced without a sound and drew the doors and windows closed.
Li Fei kicked the sweat-drenched City Lord onto his back, set her blade against his throat, and asked with murder in her voice:
"Who gave you permission to put out a warrant for me?"
Not everyone got to enjoy the [Sundome Interrogation Method] — and besides, in certain situations plain force and a plain beating were more efficient than the [Sundome Interrogation Method] anyway.
In the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the useless City Lord — a man who occupied his high seat purely by birth and hereditary right — obediently laid out the whole chain of events.
The night before last, the Thousand-Year Tree Demon had been passing its tribulation. To draw Nie Yunyi away, it had sent a host of demons to attack Luyuan County, using thoroughly vicious and underhanded methods that pinned Nie Yunyi down in the county town for a long while; he didn't get free until daybreak.
Once that happened, news of the death of the long-absent Lü Zhengchun could no longer be kept quiet.
So after Nie Yunyi left, the city's guards and the belatedly arrived Demon Suppression Bureau Chiliarch joined forces to investigate the truth of Lü Zhengchun's death — and swiftly turned up a mountain of clues. Two enchantresses ruinous enough to topple a nation had entered the city, seen by many with their own eyes and fresh in everyone's memory; with Li Fei's looks, keeping a low profile was simply not on the table. That same day Lü Zhengchun died, and Squire Wang fled overnight with heavy silver and his entire household. And after that, the demons attacked the city…
The City Lord slapped his forehead and filled in the "truth" himself:
The two enchantresses must have been the demons' scouts, casing the city!
The Wang family had colluded with the demons and run before the disaster fell!
Thank heaven Hero Nie had descended like a divine soldier to sweep away every specter and phantom and every wicked scheme, and keep the county town whole.
As for the Demon Suppression Bureau Chiliarch, he upheld his lifelong principle of "better to kill the innocent than let one guilty man slip." Everyone touched by the affair was branded a fugitive. Not content with posting warrants, he rounded up the Wang household's servants, the witnesses, and even passersby whose faces he disliked and commoners with pretty wives and daughters, tortured them all savagely, then beheaded them in public and hung the heads along the city wall as a warning.
"Ohh… I see now."
The killing intent drained from Li Fei's eyes. She spent one single Wealth Point in the System Store on the cheapest slow-acting poison available, then crouched down and said to the City Lord in the softest, kindest voice, "Drink this, and then you and I will have a nice long chat."
"Wh-what is this…" The City Lord's face was a mask of terror.
"A poison refined from corpse oil, demon cores and eighty-one ingredients in all. It's called [Gut-Piercing Poison]."
Li Fei smiled radiantly, spinning the lie off the top of her head. "Drink it, and if you don't get the antidote within three days, your bowels will rot through and burst, and you'll starve to death in agony."
"Drink it. Behave honestly, and I'll give you the antidote."
"Otherwise — you die."
When the edge of the blade drew a shallow red line on his throat, the City Lord drank the poison down, shaking all the way.
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