Clop, clop.
The tall, powerful demon-horses crushed the muddy street underfoot, revealing the pitted and uneven blue-brick road surface beneath.
The young man held the reins, looking straight ahead.
Behind him, Zhang Xuan rode in pursuit, both awed and apprehensive. “Commander Shen…”
“Don’t speak.”
Shen Yi offered the mild reminder.
Zhang Xuan froze for a moment, then realized that all along the street, the townsfolk with their dull, numb expressions had stopped what they were doing. At the sight of the black armor on his body, their clouded eyes had begun, at last, to flicker with something.
With so many gazes washing over him.
Zhang Xuan straightened instinctively in the saddle and kept pace behind Shen Yi, sweeping quickly down the street.
To offer a people who’d been crushed beneath demon rule for years even the smallest thread of hope — what was needed wasn’t soft words. It was a back so certain of itself it held no question at all.
The black armor unbroken, the blade’s edge still keen.
The Demon Suppression Division had returned to South Peak City, and demons would be brought to justice for it. Blood debts repaid in blood.
The two demon-horses soon arrived before the Demon Suppression General’s residence.
Shen Yi glanced sideways at the skull on the pike, its features long past recognition, and reached out to lift it free, passing it back.
“Commander Shen.”
Zhang Xuan looked at that skull, and something in his chest suddenly locked up tight. He gathered it against him with one arm.
Within the sprawling Demon Suppression General’s residence, a mass of dazed people had gathered, some of them stripped bare and rinsed clean not long before, still naked as they ran out to see.
In this demon city, decency and propriety had long since ceased to exist — those were things only the living had any right to consider. What they were was nothing more than a collection of walking dishes on the hoof.
“Notify the Demon Suppression Division. Take back this city.”
Shen Yi’s voice was unhurried — pitched just right for those nearby to hear.
With that, he tugged the reins again and left through the southern city gate.
Now that he had a rough measure of the divine spirit’s strength, there was no need to bring the blade along. He sent Lady Qinghua ahead directly, with the storage pouch, to handle the other county towns scattered across the prefecture.
One demon lord was enough to hold down a city, but no single demon lord could keep a grip on an entire prefecture.
There were bound to be more demons spread across the outlying counties. This sort of cleanup work didn’t require him personally.
The horse shot away, leaving a trail of dust.
A neat black robe, and a blood-red general’s cloak over it — both carved themselves into the memory of every person watching.
Ordinary people might not recognize the former, but a Demon Suppression General’s cape, that they still knew.
“Has rescue come?”
The middle-aged man who had only just finished preparing himself to go into the pot said, in a faint, halting voice.
Then came a deep, shuddering breath, and he pressed the back of his hand against his eyes, scrubbing hard.
The black blade had come and gone in an instant.
Just like those two demon-horses — here one moment, vanished the next.
He was terrified it had all been a dying hallucination, and turned back on instinct to look at the table in the council hall, where the demon blood had not yet dried.
The crimson was vivid, almost brutal — and it drove the numbness out of his chest.
A long stretch of silence.
Then, at last, a sharp, desperate cry erupted along the long street.
“The Demon Suppression Division is back!!”
With the noise behind him fading into the distance.
Zhang Xuan stared at the black-robed figure ahead, and only now did it finally settle in — this young man and the title of Demon Suppression Division Inspector truly were one and the same.
Patrolling the Nine Provinces. Suppressing demons across the land.
That was exactly what this was supposed to look like.
“Commander!”
Zhang Xuan wheeled his horse around. He’d been about to say something earlier, back in the city — perhaps they should notify the General first, plan it out carefully before making any move, to avoid startling the prey. Killing the leopard demon was well and good, but if it provoked the Red-Eyed Demon King and brought down something even worse…
But the instant the man had pressed that colleague’s skull into his hands.
Zhang Xuan, ever-burdened Zhang Xuan, felt something like reckless abandon surge suddenly into his chest. “I’ll go notify the Division to take back South Peak City. Then I’ll bring people to find you at once.”
Better to spend whatever strength was left on killing a few more demons than to keep sitting here waiting to die!
“Go ahead.”
Shen Yi gave a small nod and swung down from the saddle.
“Are you—?” Zhang Xuan looked over, puzzled, and then saw a cluster of red cloud gather at the man’s feet and shoot straight up into the sky.
His mouth fell open as he stared upward, the bewilderment in his eyes only deepening.
That cloud… the more he looked, the more it looked like demon cloud.
And another thing — how was he supposed to find Commander Shen later? With no one standing at his side, who was going to protect him if he sent the divine spirit out?
Standing on the crimson demon cloud.
Shen Yi watched the panel, where the demon lifespan total would tick upward every now and then.
Mostly by a few dozen years at a time, occasionally by four or five hundred.
Lady Qinghua had been a demon king once — finding demons was, if anything, something she was even more practiced at than he was.
He closed the panel and left her to get on with it without bothering to micromanage.
The golden eagle divine ability came into play again, and combined with the Mountain-Seeking Qi-Gazing Method at Perfection, he swept toward wherever demon qi ran thickest.
By his usual habits, Shen Yi would simply go looking for the demon king.
But after what he’d seen in South Peak City, something had quietly shifted in his thinking.
Another imposing city came into view beneath his feet.
Shen Yi had never seen this kind of situation before — every demon lord dutifully waiting in the Demon Suppression General’s residence as though they’d all been assigned seats.
He withdrew the demon cloud.
His body plummeted straight down.
The sprawling estate collapsed instantly beneath the force of the impact, broad roof beams reduced to splinters and powder.
Boom—
The noise was tremendous enough to plunge the entire city into silence.
About thirty breaths later, the dust settled.
A figure in a black robe walked out of the wreckage, dragging behind it the corpse of a demon whose skull had been smashed flat.
He picked up the body.
Shen Yi mounted the cloud again, opened his mouth and reduced it to three drops of demon blood, then used his spiritual sense to notify Lady Qinghua to come along and mop up. Four full prefectures — a hundred, two hundred county towns at minimum. There was plenty of work to go around.
A thread of red cloud swept across Song Prefecture’s sky at a speed too fast for the naked eye to catch.
The same scene repeated itself above four successive prefecture cities, one after another.
At the same time.
A divine spirit moved from county town to county town — demons caught eating, gambling, or sleeping in soft beds found their lives snuffed out in the blink of an eye, their corpses swept straight into the storage pouch.
One moment these demons had been swaggering and preening; the next they had simply, inexplicably, vanished from the spot, leaving nothing behind but the stunned, gaping people they’d left standing there.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the line, in the four prefectures still under the Demon Suppression Division’s control.
Zhang Xuan finally reached Song Prefecture City, the two demon-horses streaking down to land before the offices like twin bolts of light.
Before he’d even dismounted, he was already bellowing at the top of his lungs. “General!”
The voice rang through the offices like a great bell tolling.
Countless officers and Deputy Commanders froze where they stood, and it took them a long moment before it registered that this was General Zhang’s voice.
The man always looked so careworn — no one could recall the last time he’d shown this kind of agitation.
A gaunt old man in a long robe came striding quickly out of the offices.
Song Prefecture’s General, Yang Qianxiang.
“You’re back from the capital?” He came to a halt, looking in puzzlement at the demon-horse Zhang Xuan was riding.
Black-scaled flood dragon horses?
Yang Qianxiang closed his eyes, calling up memories. These mounts — he finally placed them, recalled whose they were.
Only the Demon Suppression Division’s Inspector could requisition these.
He opened his eyes again and looked at the empty saddle on the other horse. A faint tremor came into his voice. “Has Elder Chen returned to Great Qian?”
(End of Chapter)