Linjiang Prefecture. Shuiyun Township.

Fish for what the mountain gives you; fish for what the river gives you. Along the riverbank, the fish market was lively with noise and movement.

The carriage stopped. Little Er climbed down and led the horses toward the local yamen.

Shen Yi stood between two rows of fish baskets, breathing in the damp, metallic smell. Fishermen with their trousers rolled to the knee chatted and laughed around him, apparently unaware that several Demon Suppression Division Commanders existed.

Or perhaps not unaware — just indifferent. Occasional glances drifted their way, and underneath the casualness, something faintly hostile.

“Places like this are like this.” Liu Xiujie smiled. “Saves us the trouble of disguising ourselves. Anywhere else, the first thing people do when they encounter a demon is find the yamen. Here, they go straight to the river deity.”

“A deity?” Shen Yi’s mind went briefly to the crumbling, half-collapsed shrine at Liuli Temple village.

Li Muqing yawned. “Any demon that doesn’t want to end up on the Division’s wanted board, and doesn’t want to hide in the deep mountains, gives itself a proper name and a temple.”

“Four hundred years ago, Shuiyun Township was a fishing village,” Liu Xiujie continued, tone going slightly flat. “The river deity has been feeding them since before anyone here was born. Minor offerings every six months — livestock and fish and grain. A grand offering every three years — a boy and a girl. Four hundred years without interruption.”

Shen Yi’s hand closed slightly. “No one intervenes?”

The question came out quiet. Underneath the even expression, something shifted.

“What can you do? Say the wrong thing and these villagers will be outside Qingzhou’s gates with fishing spears by morning. You going to kill all of them?”

Liu Xiujie shrugged. “All we can do is send a few Commanders for the grand offerings — visible presence, message to the deity that the Division is still watching, don’t get too comfortable.”

“And even for that, they treat us like thieves.”

Led by Li Xinhan, the group left the fish market and reached the riverside settlement.

For a place this remote, it was more animated than the town they’d just passed through. Expensive silk had been cut into strips and hung from poles. River deity effigies woven from bamboo adorned every eave. Firecrackers went off somewhere in the distance — the sound of a festival.

They’d barely approached when an old man in a white jacket appeared at the village entrance, leaning on a staff, smiling in a way that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Come to observe the offerings, sirs?”

“The master of ceremonies for the grand offering,” Ma Tao murmured. “When he speaks, even the Shuiyun Township yamen pays attention.”

Li Xinhan scanned the village and brought his gaze back. “The Division personnel who arrived before us — where are they now?”

The old man looked surprised. “Aren’t you the observers for this year’s ceremony? I was wondering why you’d come so late.”

Li Muqing’s eyes cooled at that.

She stepped forward, still smiling. “I’ll remind you — worship whatever you like. But lay hands on Division Commanders, and I think you know what that means.”

“Sir, you flatter us.” The old man bowed his head over the staff and chuckled. “We wouldn’t dare. And besides — what would we do it with? A few fishing spears?”

She didn’t respond. She walked into the village.

On either side, young men gripping those fishing spears watched her with flat expressions and let their tongues run slowly over their lips.

“…”

Shen Yi took it in without visible reaction.

It was difficult to connect these people to the hollow-eyed villagers outside Baiyun County. At Liuli Temple, they’d crouched with their arms around themselves, not even trying to run, every shred of hope long since wrung out.

Here, ordinary people let their greed show openly to Division Commanders, without any attempt to conceal it.

The absurd contrast had a single source: the confidence a deity had given them.

It unsettled him more than he’d expected.

Could it be that to these people, a demon patron is genuinely preferable to the Demon Suppression Division?

The river deity’s shrine sat at the center of the village.

Inside the wide main hall, a gilt statue stood at the center — a woman of perhaps thirty-five or forty in bearing, expression gentle and beneficent, robes flowing like water around her, both palms raised and cupped at the heart.

Flanking her on each side: a boy and a girl, hair tied in the double-knot style of children, one holding a fish basket, one holding a flower basket, smiling with charming simplicity.

“The statue’s wrong.” Ma Tao shook his head.

At the others’ questioning looks, he made a cold sound and gestured. “One pair every three years. Four hundred years. There should be a line of those children stretching out to the village boundary. Why are there only two?”

“You think these people are actually naive enough to believe they’re sending their children off to serve a deity?” Li Xinhan looked away from the statue. “They understand perfectly. They just find it worth their while.”

Li Muqing crossed her legs on the floor and closed her eyes.

Shortly, Little Er returned from the yamen, face sour. “Nothing. Nobody saw them. And the token wasn’t delivered by anyone from Linjiang Prefecture — apparently it just appeared at the yamen entrance at dawn. They say they don’t know who left it.”

“That doesn’t mean a demon sent it as a provocation.” Li Xinhan’s brow was deeply furrowed. “A demon wouldn’t drop it off at the yamen door.”

Li Muqing opened one eye and glanced at Shen Yi, who had been standing in silence before the statue. “The Yangchun River is fast and deep,” she said quietly. “If you could gather the fish into one place from underneath, drop a net and you’d fill it. That’s enough for people to worship you as a god.”

“Some things are genuinely hard to do anything about.”

She’d caught the thin thread of something under the young man’s stillness. Not quite right for his usual look.

Just curious — hadn’t he grown up in poverty? He should have been accustomed to this kind of thing long before now.

Time moved. Dusk arrived.

The group had gone mostly quiet. By tradition, when Division observers came for the grand offering ceremony, the river deity would make an appearance.

It hadn’t shown itself.

“Could it have been killed by another demon?” Li Xinhan looked up.

Demons tended to be fiercely territorial. As long as the river deity didn’t want to appear on the wanted board, it kept the local balance — and the presence of an established deity here discouraged passing demons from acting out.

“If that happened, it would have moved on too.” Li Muqing smiled slightly. “Otherwise, would we still be sitting here comfortably?”

Records from three hundred years ago put the river deity at early Jade Liquid Realm. Given how slowly demons progressed compared to practitioners — it should be late Jade Liquid by now, at minimum. And it was a water demon, in a river this broad. If it dove in, even something above its cultivation level would struggle to reach it.

“Honored guests.” The village master appeared in the doorway, leaning on his staff. “We’ve been occupied with the ceremony preparations. I’m afraid there aren’t any free rooms — perhaps each of you might find a household that suits you and make do for the night?”

Liu Xiujie’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

Only in a place like this did anyone expect Division Commanders to bunk in with villagers.

Still, none of them were particularly attached to comfort. They filed out and divided up by pairs — Little Er with Li Xinhan, Liu Xiujie and Ma Tao together out of long habit.

Li Muqing was welcomed in by a village woman, and turned to wave. “No standing on ceremony out here — come on.”

“I’ll walk around for a while.”

Shen Yi deliberately let the others go ahead, moving through the village at an unhurried pace.

He wasn’t tired. There was just a low, ambient irritation sitting somewhere in his chest.

Not rage — not even close. He’d only heard a few words in passing, and his old life had furnished him with far more objectionable stories than this. In years of famine, people had done worse to survive. In a world overrun by demons, staying alive was its own full-time occupation. Holding ordinary people to impossible moral standards was a form of self-torment.

Then a sound cut through the ambient noise of the village.

“Where do you think you’re putting your hands — try that again and I’ll gut you.”

Shen Yi looked up with some curiosity.

(End of Chapter)