Chapter 189: The Great Battle Begins

Hearing Wei Nantian's words, Yan Jing's gaze flickered. The statement was far from simple; its deeper implications were worth pondering.

"Rest assured, Commander Wei. Go ahead and take your post. Leave the rest to me," Yan Jing said, cupping his fists.

"That's a whole group of Fourth Tiers. Don't let them scare you when the time comes, Advisor," Wei Nantian chuckled, gripping his reins.

"Don't worry, Commander Wei," Yan Jing said. "They're only at the Fourth Tier."

"Spoken like a true Advisor!" Wei Nantian let out three booming laughs.

The two of them arrived before the gates of Feinan Temple.

A sea of people had already gathered here, yet it was bizarrely quiet. It was exactly like the North Street Intersection they had just passed. Today, Bianliu County felt like a city of Silent Cultivators. There was not a single sound.

Under this eerie atmosphere, the crowd ahead seemed entirely drained of vitality, every face deathly pale. The moment Wei Nantian and Yan Jing arrived, countless pairs of eyes swiveled in unison, fixing dead stares on them. Even many of the Killing Cultivators in the crowd were doing the same.

Acting as if they hadn't noticed a thing, the two dismounted and walked straight toward the open clearing before the temple gates. The surrounding crowd parted, yielding a path for them.

The moment they stepped into the clearing, the crowd automatically closed back in, forming a tight encirclement that trapped them inside.

"Advisor, how long until twelve o'clock?" Facing a crowd radiating such obvious hostility, Wei Nantian asked as casually as if he hadn't noticed a thing.

Hearing this, Yan Jing looked at the surrounding people and called out, "What time is it?"

No one answered. Murderous intent boiled off every person present.

A pitch-black spike oozing thick, billowing fog materialized in Yan Jing's hand. He asked again, "What time is it?"

"Eleven forty-three," someone standing near him immediately answered.

"Seventeen minutes left," Yan Jing told Wei Nantian.

Wei Nantian smiled. "It can't be that no one else is running in the election, right?"

"You think too much," a raspy voice rang out.

The crowd parted, and an old man stepped forward. He wore a long red coat and finely stitched cloth shoes, sporting a handlebar mustache and a skullcap. His incomparably sharp eyes locked onto Wei Nantian as he spoke.

"This old man is also running in the election."

"Big Landlord Lin, forgive my lack of manners in welcoming you," Wei Nantian said, cupping his fists.

"Heh," Lin Changgui chuckled coldly. "Commander Wei truly is an educated man. You can't even tell host and guest apart."

"Who is the host and who is the guest is still up in the air, wouldn't you say?" Wei Nantian looked at Lin Changgui. A handful of ballots shimmering with a dark luminescence materialized in his grasp. "I hold twelve ballots."

The moment he said this, the eyes of everyone in the circle flew wide. They instantly scrambled backward, scattering in complete disarray. In the blink of an eye, the encirclement vanished.

Only four figures remained standing in the spacious clearing: Wei Nantian, Lin Changgui, Yan Jing, and a puppet Wei Nantian had brought along.

Unexpectedly, a stack of ballots materialized in Lin Changgui's hand as well. He sneered. "What a coincidence. This old man happens to hold exactly twelve ballots too."

As if they had been listening in, the scattered crowd surged back together the moment Lin Changgui finished speaking, glaring furiously at Wei Nantian.

Wei Nantian raised an eyebrow, clearly not expecting Lin Changgui to hold so many ballots. "Oh? Then it seems we are tied. According to Across the Lake, how is this situation resolved?"

"Across the Lake never said." Lin Changgui's hawk-like eyes were piercing. "They only decreed that at twelve noon, whoever holds the most ballots becomes the county mayor."

"I see." Wei Nantian nodded. "Then I understand. Why don't you just gift me one of your ballots, Big Landlord Lin? It'll save us the trouble of fighting."

"Heh. Wei Nantian, if we come to blows, don't assume you're guaranteed to win," Lin Changgui said, his voice raspy.

As his words fell, every single person in the crowd glared murderously at Wei Nantian.

Lin Changgui declared, "The things you've done in our Bianliu County recently have provoked public outrage! According to the rules of Minhu, everyone has the right to execute you!"

The moment he finished speaking, someone immediately stepped out of the crowd.

"I am the second manager of the Zhang Family Cloth Shop!" The man pointed at Wei Nantian, his face twisted in resentment. "Wei Nantian's subordinates smashed our shop! They slaughtered our people! We had no grievances with him, yet he did it all just for a ballot!"

"Exactly!" Another person stepped out. "I'm a clerk at Tang's Puppet Shop! Wei Nantian killed our third manager! All for our ballots!"

"Right! I'm from the incense shop..."

"I'm from the seed shop..."

Like a single stone stirring up a thousand waves, people from all the factions whose ballots had been robbed immediately stepped forward, condemning the actions of the Wei Faction Lineage.

Lin Changgui sneered coldly. "Do you see it now, Wei Nantian? You've lost the hearts of the people. Minhu operates on the principle of repaying debts of blood and grievance. You let your subordinates commit atrocities as they pleased, slaughtering the innocent—"

"Who says we slaughtered the innocent?" Yan Jing's voice suddenly cut in before Lin Changgui could finish.

Instantly, shock rippled through the crowd, and every pair of eyes locked onto him.

Lin Changgui's face darkened. He glared at Yan Jing, never expecting this human to dare interrupt him. "What are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that Commander Wei has never ordered us to slaughter the innocent over these past few days. The only reason we took ballots from these people was because they deserved their punishment." Ignoring the curses erupting around him, Yan Jing smiled faintly and looked at the second manager of the Zhang Family Cloth Shop. "The red dye you use for cloth at the Zhang Family Cloth Shop... what is it made of?"

"Dead people's blood, obviously." Called out by Yan Jing, the man's expression turned unnatural, but he craned his neck and shouted back, "Go ask anyone on West Street! Which shop doesn't use dead—"

Smack!

A photograph flew straight into his face before he could finish his sentence. He angrily peeled the photo off, but the moment he saw its contents, all color drained from his face. The hand holding the picture trembled uncontrollably.

"Zhang Family Cloth Shop!" Yan Jing looked out at the surrounding crowd and announced. "The reason their red cloth turns out better than everyone else's is because they use the blood of young children!"

An uproar exploded. The crowd instantly boiled over. Trafficking in the lives of the living—even in Bianliu County, that was a taboo!

Yan Jing didn't stop. He turned his gaze to the clerk from the puppet shop, making the man shudder violently. "And your Tang's Puppet Shop... what kind of bones do you use for the puppet control rods?"

"T-they're ox bones..."

"Liar!" Yan Jing hurled another black-and-white photograph at the man. Then, looking at the masses, his voice echoed like thunder. "The control rods for the puppets at Tang's Puppet Shop are made from the middle fingers of living people! To make those fingers long enough, they use special methods. They bind the hands of children under fifteen, then lightly tap their middle fingers with wooden mallets, fracturing them. They let them heal, only to fracture them again—repeating this torture for five years!"

"No, no, no, it isn't like that!" Staring at the photograph, the clerk panicked. Sweating profusely, he shrieked his innocence: "I'm just a clerk! It was the third manager—the dead third manager ordered us to do it!"

"And the rest of you." Ignoring the man entirely, Yan Jing turned his head toward the others who had stepped forward earlier.

By now, all of them were dripping with sweat, their faces filled with panic. Under Yan Jing's gaze, not a single one dared to meet his eyes.

"The seed shop's so-called premium fertilizer is actually the ashes of elders exactly sixty years of age..."

"The gambling house at the foot of the mountain accepts a specific type of wager, called a blood-kin wager..."

Yan Jing's words struck like heavy sledgehammers. With every blow that fell, the person named grew dizzy, looking utterly devastated.

By the end, someone in the spectating crowd—unwilling to concede—muttered indignantly, "Business in Bianliu County has always been done this way."

Yan Jing laughed. "Then what morality are you preaching? What rules are you lecturing me about?"

His face darkened as he stared down the crowd. "Since that's the case, so what if I killed them? Who among you has a problem with it?!"

For a moment, the crowd fell completely silent.

At this point, only two minutes remained until twelve o'clock.

Wei Nantian burst into uproarious laughter. "My Advisor is right! Damn it, none of us here are saints, so why the hell are you putting on airs?"

He looked at Lin Changgui. The turbulent Weird Energy surrounding his body erupted, instantly sweeping across the clearing. "You old dog Lin! If you want to fight, then bring it on! Don't try to suppress me with the will of the people!"

"Then let's do this!" With his plans ruined, Lin Changgui's face grew incredibly foul. He waved the crimson sleeve of his coat, and violent winds immediately howled around them. Thick, pitch-black vines burst from the soil, draped in eerie white bones, and shot straight toward the sky.

Many people were too slow to dodge. The instant the vines touched them, they were sucked dry. Their flesh and blood shriveled until they were reduced to mummified corpses frozen in expressions of sheer terror, left dangling from the vines.

Finally, the vines stopped growing and began to bear fruit. Judging by the alternating black and green patterns, they appeared to be watermelons, though exactly what horrific effects these melons might have remained unknown.

This was Lin Changgui's ultimate killing move. For an agricultural cultivator, whether or not they had time to set up their field beforehand created a massive gap in combat power.

"All Killing Cultivators! Hunt down the Lin Family and slaughter them!" Wei Nantian bellowed.

Immediately, a portion of the Killing Cultivators drew their weapons and hacked at the people beside them. But another portion of the Killing Cultivators didn't strike out at the enemy—they swung their blades at their own comrades. Clearly, Wei Nantian's ranks had already been heavily infiltrated.

Wei Nantian's expression didn't change. Even if he hadn't known about certain things, he could easily guess them. In that moment, his gaze fell upon Yan Jing.

To him, it didn't matter if the others betrayed him or not. Only one thing was important: whether or not Yan Jing had betrayed him.

Meeting Wei Nantian's gaze, Yan Jing fished a Pocket Watch off a corpse on the ground and shouted, "Commander Wei, there is only half a minute left!"

"Hahaha, good!" Throwing his head back, Wei Nantian laughed wildly, finally setting his mind at ease. His turbulent Weird Energy expanded outward, carrying a thick stench of blood.

In an instant, he revealed his true form.

It was a towering colossus over a dozen meters tall, with a ghastly face, jutting fangs, and wildly disheveled hair. Its entire body was pitch-black. The tattered uniform it wore was riddled with hideous wounds: knife scars, gashes, puncture holes, and deep bruises. Intermingled within many of the wounds were the pale bones of unknown creatures, and inside some of the bloody cavities, severed human heads were arranged in neat, sickening rows...

Watching this scene, Yan Jing recalled Shen Youran's summary of the Surface World, specifically her description regarding Minhu:

"The land of Minhu frequently presents itself in a personified form. Its denizens preach morality, understand etiquette, and use human behavior as their standard. Yet their temperaments are extreme, their likes and dislikes are volatile, and they are exceptionally difficult to deal with."