Volume 4, Chapter 22 – Escalation

Maozhou, Lianshui Circuit.

It was just after nightfall. On a slightly empty street, a taxi crawled along under a fine, misty drizzle.

The front window on the passenger side was half rolled down. Wind slipped in through the crack, and as it left, it faintly carried out the broken static of the car radio.

[According to frontline reports from our station’s correspondent, the war between Luohou, Qinghuai, and Stansa officially enters a ceasefire today. The three heads of state held a final meeting in the Imbu Federation’s capital, Tabul, and reached a consensus on future peaceful development…]

[Beep—]

[Social news: the enormous whale-beast discovered on May 3rd has once again appeared in the Westwind Ocean. Witnesses captured video at the scene, but the whale-beast’s outline could not be clearly identified.]

[Beep—]

[Star Tower Group’s new chairman, Roms-Aurora, publicly accused Lori Aurora of being dull and inactive during her tenure, alleging that she enabled competitors to plant viruses inside the company, causing the deaths of many board members.]

[Beep—]

[Oh sisters, let’s get moving!]

A soft, coquettish voice came through, accompanied by a wild, pounding beat. The driver finally took his hand off the radio buttons, and his whole body began twisting along with the music.

“You laborers probably don’t get much time for fun, huh?” He wriggled as he spoke, turning his head to glance at the passenger in the back seat.

It was a young man in a bright yellow mining uniform, a safety helmet still on his head, not yet taken off. The face beneath the brim was smeared with grime, and a pungent stench rose off his body.

Normally, taxis didn’t like taking passengers like this.

But the guy had agreed to pay triple the fare, so the driver had reluctantly let him in.

Even so, he still felt a certain superiority over this filthy laborer.

Driving a taxi wasn’t exactly a high-skill job either, but it was certainly more respectable than risking your life in a mine.

The driver watched the passenger, but the man remained completely unmoved.

Boring.

Curling his lip, the driver twisted his body to the blasting music, humming along under his breath as he maliciously guessed at the other man’s identity and why he was in such a hurry to take a taxi out of the city tonight.

He probably wasn’t a fourth-class servitor citizen.

Fourth-class servitors weren’t allowed to receive wages. Even though Maozhou’s newly established rules around this were relatively flexible, anyone designated a fourth-class citizen had definitely committed some heinous act in the past, and there was no way they’d be given freedom to go out like this.

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So he was likely a third-class labor citizen?

Being a manual laborer fit the picture. He had some money in his pocket, but not much. Bleeding out like this to pay triple, and in such a rush… eighty percent chance he was going out to catch a cheating spouse.

Drawing on the experience he’d gained working in Chilong Circuit back in the day, the driver quickly sketched out the passenger’s “political status” in his mind and even made up a motive for him, happily wondering whether he should stick around later to watch the show.

Soon, the vehicle approached the towering city gate. The driver obediently eased off the gas and joined the queue for the checkpoint to leave the city.

While they waited, he craned his neck to look outside a few more times, sighing in admiration. “No matter how many times I see it, it’s still shocking… these city walls sure are tall!”

Lianshui Circuit’s walls rose over thirty meters high. Looking up from the base, they were like some grim giant beast, drowning everything that came near in their vast black shadow.

Halfway through, he glanced back at the passenger again and saw that the man’s head was slumped against the seat, as if he had fallen asleep.

He didn’t think much of it. After the inspection, the car passed out through the gate and pulled over at the road into a village outside the city called Qingmu Village. Only then did the driver plan to wake him.

“Hey! Don’t sleep!”

“We’re here, time to get up!”

The passenger’s body gave a shudder, as if he had heard the call, and he slowly lifted his head with an unnaturally stiff motion.

The driver watched him the whole time. For some reason, he felt there was something off about the way the man “moved.”

It seemed a bit too stiff.

The weather had turned cooler recently. Had he gone numb from being out in the rain?

Before the driver could think any further, the dirty face under the helmet brim tilted all the way up, finally revealing a pair of blood-red eyes, completely sunk into madness.

“Ah!” The driver let out a terrified scream, but in the next instant, a black shadow pounced onto his face. A strange sound followed, like a straw sucking at the very bottom of a bottle.

Time passed. A rainy night went by, and the next day, the sun rose again.

Song Ruhua pushed open a car door and got out, first lifting his gaze to look above the village.

A cultivator’s soul-sense was keener than that of ordinary people. He had, after all, switched to the Path of Qi from the Core-Embracing Realm, his soul evolving, and he could now feel a murky aura coiling in that patch of sky.

Could those be vengeful spirits?

Song Ruhua’s expression darkened.

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His junior brother, Guo Rongzhi, had lately been keeping himself shut up in the laboratory building. On the rare occasions he came out to find Song Ruhua for a meal, he always muttered about things like “airship propulsion” and “marvelous soul-refining methods.”

Curious, Song Ruhua had asked, and only then learned that in the Illusory Realms there actually were methods that could seize and bind souls. From that moment on, he had become unusually sensitive to anything like vengeful spirits or ghosts. Every time he came across a site of death, he was extremely cautious.

Like this time.

Several villages in a row…

What a sin.

Entering the village, he saw a middle-aged woman in an old-style black dress, tapping at something on her phone. Song Ruhua walked up and asked her, “How is the situation?”

Without even looking up, the woman said, “As you can see, the whole village is dead.”

“On top of that, it spread to Qingyang Village and Xiakan Village as well. Dead and wounded together exceed three thousand.”

Song Ruhua frowned. “Any survivors in the other villages?”

“Yes.” The woman nodded. “But they’re no different from dead.”

He froze for a moment, but then, thinking of how a Demon Pool like this poisoned and twisted the mind, his brows knit even tighter. “We must report this to Zhennan!”

Lianshui Circuit lay right next to the Long River, Maozhou’s most fertile stretch of riparian plain. After Zhang Xianzhi took office as governor, he discussed it in detail with the Bai family, and both sides agreed this was the ideal place to turn into a grain-producing region. As a result, the surrounding villages were extremely dense.

With so many villages, once pollution started spreading here, how many people would die was one problem. Even worse was how much damage it would do to the harvest and how badly it would hit grain output.

This was outrageous…

Report it!

They had to report it quickly!

“By the time you report it, the daylilies will be cold.” The middle-aged woman shot him an exasperated glare.

“I already told the Dao Lord before you even got here. The Dao Lord said she’d send more inner disciples to lead teams over, and ordered us to impose a cordon here first.”

Only inner disciples?

Song Ruhua froze, unable to figure out what that Dao Lord junior-sister was thinking.

But his master was by her side as well.

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If even Master hadn’t raised any objections, then this had to be the best course.

At the same time, in Maozhou, Zhennan. Bai Zhuqing was holding up a phone, reading out the flood of information that had just come in to Bai Xiang.

“Lianshui Circuit: 3,400 people. Longchuan Circuit: 2,300 people. Longguan Circuit: 1,200 people.”

“Aunt, they’re really going to fight us to the bitter end!”

Bai Xiang was seated upright behind a computer. Hearing this, she first took a sip of tea, then asked, “Which Dao elder reported first?”

Bai Zhuqing answered at once. “It was Aunt Nanyan from Lianshui Circuit!”

The woman she meant was Gu Nanyan. She was not only the Dao elder of Lianshui Circuit but also an outer disciple of the Shenming Sword Dao.

Before being granted the Shenming Refining Qi Formula and switching to the Path of Qi, she had already cultivated to the Condensing-Aspect Purple Blood Realm. She too had suffered in the demon disaster, and after being rescued, she became utterly loyal to the Bai family.

She was very decisive in how she handled things.

Bai Xiang nodded to herself inwardly.

Her senior brother Song Ruhua, despite somehow muddling his way into the False Core realm, really did not have a personality that put one at ease.

With Gu Nanyan helping him, and with Ma Yue and Lian Feng already sent to investigate the case, they should be able to fully bring out Song Ruhua’s advantage in combat power. Lianshui Circuit did not require excessive worry.

“Aunt.”

Seeing that Bai Xiang only nodded and asked no more, Bai Zhuqing couldn’t quite understand and asked, “Aren’t you worried those Seven Illusory Heavens Alliance people will turn Lianshui upside down?”

It wasn’t that she looked down on Song Ruhua, but the demons from the Upper Realm truly were vicious.

If they chose Lianshui Circuit as their main line of attack, it was really uncertain whether Song Ruhua could hold them back.

Bai Zhuqing had worked in dojo affairs before and often helped the family check for gaps and make up for weaknesses, so she knew the current state of all Maozhou.

Finances were very tight. While many merchants, drawn by Maozhou’s prospects, had come here to invest, and many great clans from other prefectures had moved branches or relatives here, one must not forget that when the demon disaster struck before, the surrounding prefectures had sent in a lot of material aid.

That had not all been a gift. Much of it had to be repaid.

And if Maozhou wanted to develop in the long term, it had to find its own ways to generate revenue. Aside from some internet companies, tech firms, heavy industry, and pharmaceutical companies, the main pillar of fiscal income was Yuming Peak.

To spell it out—those subsidiary companies once controlled by Yuming Sword Dao, and the patents for the products they had developed.

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Things like Mingyu Frost and all manner of cosmetics.

And then there was “Yuming Workshop.”

The swords sold under that brand were the most famous in the country. After all, they bore the label “Forged at Yuming.” Across the whole Great Yu, five out of every ten swords came from Yuming Workshop.

Grain was not what worried Bai Zhuqing. With the Loss of Order worsening, some crops could even be harvested more than once in a season.

But some of the herb fields…

Some of the herb fields in Lianshui Circuit were directly tied to the company’s flagship products.

To be this unconcerned—was that really alright?

Seeing that Bai Xiang clearly did not want to explain, Bai Zhuqing left with her doubts.

After she left, Bai Xiang rose, stepped onto the rooftop terrace, and slipped through the sky toward another mountain peak.

This peak sat right next to Yuming Peak, its summit wreathed in a light white mist. Thick vines and green pines wrapped around the mountaintop, leaving barely any place to stand.

Bai Xiang was already very familiar with the place. Her body flew sideways, circling halfway around the mountain, then stopped before a crack in a sheer cliff face. She reached out and knocked on the rock wall.

Before long, a muffled, familiar voice came from within the stone. “Password.”

“Candied Hawthorn Skewers.”

Bai Xiang’s expression was a little speechless.

With a swish, the rock wall split open, revealing a roughly hewn stone passage. Standing just inside was Xiang Xian.

“Good Xiang’er~ come to see me?”

Xiang Xian greeted her warmly, gave Bai Xiang a hug, then led her inside as the rock wall rumbled shut behind them.

“How’s the interrogation going?” Bai Xiang asked Xiang Xian as they walked.

“We can basically be sure their main strike is aimed at Zhennan.” Xiang Xian sounded very certain.

“If you’re still not at ease, Xiang’er, you can question them again yourself.”