Fanning the Flames

The discussion in the conference room continued, but outside it, Qiongfang City was in a sorry state.

As more and more guests and tourists poured into Qiongfang City, the entire city began operating beyond capacity.

Even so, the Demon Race's upper echelon had no intention of restricting the influx.

The peaceful atmosphere of the past had suffered blow after blow and all but vanished.

With the number of people coming and going on the rise, even the usually leisurely night patrols had been called in to help. It was easy to imagine how chaotic the city had become.

Clearly, Qiongfang City could not handle so many people at once.

Strangely, though, even with everything on the brink of collapse, Qiongfang City had managed to maintain order.

Shisui stood on the roof of a house halfway up the mountain, looking down at the restless ants below.

He judged that the current chaos was nothing more than a smokescreen the Demon Race's upper echelon was using to conceal other preparations.

The Demon Race's noble lords sat high atop the mountain, still retaining absolute control over the city.

In that case, he would add a little more weight to the side of disorder!

The Ghoul stood in the shadows of the overlapping rooftops and pulled back his hood. Koukaku grew over his face.

His white hair, now slightly longer, was revealed, forming a stark contrast with the dark Kagune mask.

Behind him, his eerie, crimson-purple Radiant Feathers suddenly unfurled. With a powerful thrust, he became a black blade piercing the daylight.

It was time to fire the first shot of the upheaval.

"Boom!"

A tremendous explosion rolled outward with thick clouds of smoke, shaking every house in the area.

Flames rose with bared fangs and claws, and then explosions rang out one after another from different directions.

Like a stock market crash, all the forces opposed to the Demon Race's upper echelon that had been lying low added fuel to the fire, rushing in to dump their shares.

The carefully maintained order was pushed over the cliff, and Qiongfang City descended into complete chaos.

After the explosions, the fire grew ever larger, swallowing one intact building after another nearby before the fire brigade finally arrived.

The firefighters who jumped out of the trucks were all as black as charcoal, their clothes covered in soot.

Clearly, they had just finished fighting another fire and rushed straight over.

"Hiss—"

A long time passed before the blaze was finally extinguished, revealing the charred buildings within.

The fire brigade had come in a hurry and left just as quickly.

They still had to follow Shisui and the many forces trying to fish in troubled waters to the next explosion site.

Meanwhile, the city defense forces were searching everywhere for the instigators of the bombings.

But they were destined to find nothing. That was without mentioning that some members of the city defense forces were already human-skin puppets.

Shisui could change his appearance by controlling the Rc Cells in his body.

So after blowing up a building, he had no reason to panic. He simply swaggered away from the scene along with the fleeing civilians.

Then he changed his appearance in the shadows of distant buildings and headed for his next target.

The crackle of burning flames, the sirens of fire engines, and the clamor of shouting filled the air above the city.

Together, they formed a chaotic symphony that lingered around Shisui.

He took a deep breath, sensed the familiar smell of smoke and fire, and recalled a few memories from his previous life.

The first time he had played with explosives had been in the sewers of Tokyo Metropolis. They formed a complicated maze, making them a good place for Ghouls to hide their tracks.

But they were sewers, after all, full of filth and grime. The complex odors stirred up by the blast had left him with a terrible first impression of gunpowder.

He had come to love such brilliant fireworks when he temporarily escaped Japan and went to the center of a war fought with modern weapons.

The wide-area, indiscriminate attacks of modern weapons had given him the thrill of playing a hack-and-slash game.

Thanks to his obsession with all kinds of weapons during that period, he could make bombs by hand using materials from the Youhe Trading Company's warehouse.

Sure enough, learning more was always useful.

Shisui tossed the small bomb in his hand and headed for the next target he wanted to blow up, in quite a good mood.

Blowing up residential buildings was no fun. Military bases, underground intelligence stations, and the like were much more entertaining.

"Report, there have been eight explosions in the city. Some suspects have been arrested."

"Catch all the culprits as quickly as possible. Orders have come down from above. This can't be allowed to continue."

"Yes, sir!"

At the temporary station of the city defense forces, a commander rubbed his brow with a headache and ordered a thorough investigation.

Not long ago, the city defense forces' original station had been attacked.

It was unclear whether the attackers had feared the Demon Race or the explosives had simply been of limited power.

The explosion had done little damage to the city defense troops, whose cultivation levels were fairly high, and they had suffered no casualties.

But while the damage was slight, the insult was immense.

One of their city defense stations had been blown up, leaving half its members to pitch tents and sleep on the streets that night.

When the great nobles of the Demon Race's upper echelon who commanded the troops heard about it, they saw it as a slap in the face!

They immediately flew into a rage and ordered their subordinates, who still had to sleep by the roadside, to find the culprit at once, with no regard for their lives.

"Sigh!"

The commander felt that his future was bleak.

He had noble superiors and noble subordinates, while he alone came from a commoner family. Was that right?

Just as he was still lamenting his lot, another urgent report came from outside the door.

"Report! Five more explosion sites have been found. One is a suspected spy hideout."

"Huh?"

The commander froze for quite a while, his mind racing.

Logically speaking, the mastermind behind this large-scale upheaval was most likely a spy from another race.

So what was this? Dogs biting dogs, or sacrificing a pawn to save the king?

Forget it. He wasn't going to figure anything out sitting here.

"Gather a squad of soldiers. Come with me to take a look at that spy hideout."

"Yes, sir!"

"Boss, urgent news from the south of the city! One of our bases near the city defense forces was bombed!"

In a secluded house in the lower city, a young man of the Human Race rushed in to report to the team leader responsible for intelligence in Qiongfang City.

"Jiarong, calm down first. Tell me what the situation is over there."

"All right." An Jiarong caught his breath and continued, "Zhai Simiao, one of the city defense commanders, is on the way to that base."

"We've lost contact with all our people there. The scene probably hasn't been cleaned up yet."

"Take some people there immediately and erase the traces. I'll create as much chaos as I can to buy you time."

The team leader paused, a trace of reluctance showing in his eyes. "If necessary... you may have to sacrifice yourself."

"It's all right, team leader. From the moment I joined the intelligence team, I knew this day would come for me eventually."

With that, An Jiarong ran out of the dilapidated little house without looking back. Every second counted now, and he had no time to lament his fate.

Shortly after he ran out, a drab gray carrier pigeon was brought before the team leader.

The team leader ignored the message on the pigeon's leg and met its bright red eyes instead.

The next instant, the pigeon actually spoke.

"The Demon Race rebel organization Red Crane Orchid has discovered the base. Please evacuate immediately."

The team leader's face darkened. Something was wrong. It seemed someone was deliberately fanning the flames.