After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 464: Chapter 463: Frost and Dew Town

”Oh? Well now, looks like there’s an inside story, huh?” Hee Lingchuan clapped his hands and laughed. ”I love inside stories. Come on, hurry up and tell me. What do you mean, ’no benefit’?”

”This thing was specifically requested by the higher-ups!”

”Higher-ups?” Hee Lingchuan asked, intrigued. ”Which higher-ups?”

Wan the Wealthy fell silent.

Jiao Yu suddenly asked him, ”The murder of the Lingxu City Messenger—was that your doing?”

Wan the Wealthy was scared out of his wits, frantically waving his hands. ”It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! I don’t know anything about a Messenger!”

Hee Lingchuan brought the topic back. ”There were over a hundred Porcupines. How did your nephew manage to kill them all?”

Wan the Wealthy remained silent.

Hee Lingchuan suddenly pried open his jaw and stuffed a Pill into his mouth.

The Pill dissolved and went down his throat before Wan the Wealthy could even spit it out. ”This pill will keep you conscious for the next two double-hours. No matter how you’re tortured, you won’t pass out,” Hee Lingchuan said calmly. ”Now that everything’s come to light, you’re dead either way. The only difference is whether you want your young grandchildren to be buried with you.”

With a face full of despair, Wan the Wealthy cried, ”If I confess, they’re the ones who will die for sure.”

”You’re saying not even the Crown Prince could protect them?”

Wan the Wealthy lowered his head and said nothing.

Jiao Yu licked its paws. ”I’ll go get his grandson and eat him on the spot.”

Wan Xianneng cried out in terror, ”Don’t!”

He swallowed hard. ”Lord Special Envoy, if you can guarantee my grandchildren’s safety, I’ll risk life and limb to tell you everything!”

”I make this promise on behalf of the Crown Prince,” Hee Lingchuan agreed without the slightest hesitation. ’After all, the one who ultimately has to fulfill the promise is the Crown Prince of the Chiyan Kingdom. What’s it got to do with me?’

Wan Xianneng looked down, his eyes listless. ”My nephew, Wan Song, is exceptionally talented. He originally trained at a Daoist Sect but was expelled after accidentally killing a fellow disciple. For a few years after that, he was depressed and unaccomplished, and I was the one who supported him. Later, he left to make his own way in the world. I didn’t hear from him for many years and thought he must have died out there. But then, the year before last, he suddenly returned home, triumphant and having amassed a considerable fortune.”

”You might know that my business was already failing by then. My family was struggling to make ends meet, and I even had to secretly sell off heirlooms just to cover our expenses. When Wan Song heard about my situation, he approached me and insisted I go into business with him!”

Hee Lingchuan raised an eyebrow. ”The business of killing people and demons?”

”P-primarily killing demons,” Wan Xianneng said, struggling. ”My work often took me deep into the mountains to build roads and bridges, so there were many opportunities to encounter Mountain Demons and Wild Beasts. Even though this is a Demon Kingdom, those creatures are born in the mountains and die in the mountains. They live and die as they please, and Zhitian Village rarely interferes—not that it could. Wan Song decided to target them. He said a certain dignitary in Lingxu City required a type of Blood Pearl, which is created by condensing a demon’s entire Essence Blood. Since no one keeps track of Wild Demons anyway, we started using them to create Blood Pearls. The money was much faster than breaking our backs building mountain roads!”

Jiao Yu suddenly asked, ”How many demons have you killed?”

”Excluding that nest of Porcupines...” Wan Xianneng thought for a moment. ”Around sixty or seventy. For smaller ones like Bat Demons, we’d count five as one.”

SCRATCH, SCRATCH. The great tiger unconsciously extended its claws, raking the ground. ’Sixty or seventy in less than two years? The prefecture’s official records are just the tip of the iceberg.’

Meeting the tiger’s gaze, Wan Xianneng shuddered.

”Stop scaring him. He just finds the demons,” Hee Lingchuan said to the tiger, then smiled at Wan Xianneng. ”Keep talking. You originally only targeted solitary demons, is that right?”

”Y-Yes. It was to avoid suspicion,” Wan Xianneng said in a low voice. ”Besides, they sometimes kill each other. No one ever looks into it.”

’Never mind demons; humans can be just as aggressive and will kill their own kind. What’s the big deal if a few dozen demons die in the wild over a year?’

”Then why did you wipe out a whole nest of over a hundred Porcupine Demons last year? Didn’t you want to avoid attracting attention?”

Wan Xianneng couldn’t help but sigh. ”Killing over a hundred Porcupine Demons at once was certainly because we wanted to mine the Stone Blood Ore for money. But it was also because we fell short of our Blood Pearl quota for the year and had to rush to meet it.”

”How many Blood Pearls do you have to turn in each year?” Hee Lingchuan asked. ”Do you have one? Let me see.”

”At least ten. And the higher-ups said that to avoid causing trouble, we shouldn’t turn in more than twenty at most.” Wan Xianneng pointed to the desk in the study. Hee Lingchuan walked over, opened a hidden compartment as directed, and pulled out a Brocade Bag.

Inside the bag was a single, round pearl.

Just as Steward Lu had described: perfectly round and the size of a musket ball.

Hee Lingchuan held it in his hand and gave it a squeeze. It was surprisingly resilient.

These days, whenever he obtained a peculiar object, he would bring it near his Divine Bone Necklace to see if it reacted.

The Divine Bone, however, remained silent, clearly unimpressed by the bauble.

”The number of Blood Pearls you can create depends on a demon’s size and the depth of its Daoist Practice. It takes several Porcupine Demons to refine a single Red Pearl.”

”Can you make these using humans?” Hee Lingchuan sniffed the Red Pearl. It had a faint, pleasant scent.

”No.” Wan Xianneng gave a bitter smile. ”Otherwise, why would we go to all the trouble of hunting demons? After any given battle, Beiga has countless prisoners of war.”

”Then why do humans keep dying or disappearing?”

”I’m not sure.” Seeing how things stood, Wan Xianneng no longer minced his words. ”Perhaps... they were used as bait?”

Hee Lingchuan frowned. ”Bait?”

”The New Demons that appear after an Emperor’s Liquid surge are often simple-minded and bloodthirsty. Live human bait works quite well on them,” Wan Xianneng said carefully. ”That’s just what my nephew told me. I never saw it with my own eyes.”

’So these people were fishing for Mountain Demons and Wild Beasts, just like anglers? The only difference is that anglers use earthworms and dough, while they use living people?’

Hee Lingchuan glanced at General Antelope and asked coldly, ”Why kill the Wind-Drilling Beasts? They have patrons; they aren’t just some wild demons.”

”The higher-ups placed a rush order,” Wan Xianneng said with a wry smile. ”I heard the supply of Blood Pearls couldn’t meet the demand. It just so happened that two Emperor’s Liquid surges in six months created a flood of New Demons, so our superiors demanded we increase our haul. These New Demons appear in droves, then kill each other off. Nobody can keep track of their numbers, so for us, it was... it was a bountiful harvest!”

Hee Lingchuan recalled the last Emperor’s Liquid surge. He remembered the demons battling and slaughtering each other on the shores of Three-Heart Lake, all over a single piece of Emperor’s Liquid Paste. It was just as Wan Xianneng had said: their lives and deaths went unnoticed and uncounted, even here in a Demon Kingdom.

”We caught plenty of New Demons, but we still couldn’t produce enough Blood Pearls. With the deadline looming, we had no choice but to... hunt elsewhere.” Wan Xianneng knew the risks of capturing demons that were part of the official registry, but he was in too deep to care. ”Wan Song was certain we’d never be exposed.”

As he said this, tears began to stream down his face.

General Antelope had been surprisingly silent, standing to one side without a word. Only now did it speak, its voice cold. ”Impressive. Truly impressive. The lives of us demons are nothing but money to you.”

Sensing a sudden wave of danger, Wan the Wealthy shook his head frantically. ”I was only responsible for collecting and delivering the pearls! My nephew and his men did all the hunting!”

General Antelope needed a clear answer. ”Are you saying they were the ones who killed my children?”

”...Yes.”

General Antelope just kept repeating one word: ”Good.”

Wan the Wealthy quickly offered up another piece of information. ”The man who was originally in charge of the hunt died in the Porcupine Den last year. My nephew took over after that.”

’A life of licking blood off a blade’s edge came with considerable risk.’

”Where is your handler?” Hee Lingchuan held up a second finger. ”And where is your nephew?”

”Someone from the higher-ups comes whenever it’s time to turn in the Blood Pearls,” Wan the Wealthy said, his head hung low. ”I already made the delivery in Frost and Dew Town a few days ago. I don’t know if he’s still there.”

”What’s his name?”

”His surname is Mai. He’s tall, thin, and very scholarly, but I don’t know his full name. We just call him Mr. Mai,” Wan the Wealthy confessed, not daring to hide anything. ”The drop-off point is the third house in Water Buffalo Lane, on the east end of Frost and Dew Town.”

But General Antelope pressed, ”The murderer... what about your nephew?”

”I... I can’t find him.” A wry smile touched Wan the Wealthy’s lips. ”He’s always the one who comes to me.”

Seeing General Antelope raise its hoof to kick, he immediately covered his head. ”I’m telling the truth! Everything I’ve said is true! I would never gamble with my grandchildren’s lives!”

’A nephew is just a nephew. How could he possibly be more important than one’s own flesh and blood?’

”It seems your nephew doesn’t trust you.”

”He... he...”

Seeing him hesitate, Hee Lingchuan chuckled. ”Are you afraid of him?”

”Ah...” Wan Xianneng’s head drooped. ”He may be my nephew, but he’s a wanted man, a desperado. He’s been ruthless since he was a child. Who wouldn’t be afraid?”

”In that case, you should have known he’d drag you down with him sooner or later.”

Wan Xianneng was rendered speechless.

’He knew that if you play with fire, you get burned. But the money came so easily... He was in too deep to get out.’

Hee Lingchuan ignored him, turning to General Antelope. ”If you have no other leads, General, you should come with me.”

Their objectives were now diverging. To fulfill Fushan Yue’s mission, Hee Lingchuan needed to follow the chain of command upward and track down Wan the Wealthy’s handler, Mr. Mai. General Antelope, however, was consumed by a single-minded desire for revenge, vowing to kill Wan Song with its own hands.

General Antelope snorted. It didn’t object, but it couldn’t stop itself from kicking Wan the Wealthy. The blow sent him flying, blood pouring from his nose and mouth, and knocked out three of his teeth.

”Stay here and watch him,” it ordered one of its Wind-Drilling Beast guards. ”If he tries anything, just... beat him half to death!”

It had wanted to say ”kill him,” but General Antelope glanced at Jiao Yu. Knowing the tiger wanted to leave a prisoner for the County Magistrate, the general changed its order at the last moment.

...

Hee Lingchuan rushed toward Frost and Dew Town. Surrounded by companions who could either run like the wind or fly, their party moved with lightning speed, going all out.

They covered the ten-odd miles in just over half an hour.

Jiao Yu, the great tiger, was panting, its tongue lolling out. The Wind-Drilling Beasts, however, looked as if they were on a leisurely stroll, their chests barely rising with each breath.

The two species had different natural gifts. Wind-Drilling Beasts were born runners, excelling at sprints and marathons alike.

The house on Water Buffalo Lane that Wan the Wealthy had pointed out was easy to find. The exterior was plain and unassuming, and the entrance was immaculate, save for a few fallen leaves.