Fan Daoyi leaned back in his chair with his arms folded, perfectly relaxed. "Aren't you bothered by all those little bugs buzzing around your room? Get rid of them all, and we'll call the price paid. How about it?"
Wang Haotian simply couldn't tell what trick the man before him was playing.
The Azure Dragon Guards were members of [Four Symbols]. If he actually attacked them, wouldn't that be openly opposing the authorities? Wait, no.
Wang Haotian realized something.
If he agreed, wouldn't that give them grounds to convict him? Damn it, were the authorities really this cunning? They had no grounds, so they wanted him to hand them some himself.
A smile appeared on Wang Haotian's face. He was just about to refuse when he heard several coughs.
He swallowed his words and took another look. That verdant bamboo staff was impossible to miss. He had seen it somewhere before. Where? Where exactly?
At last, he seized on a fragment of memory. During the twenty-four hours he had been detained, he had seen the video used to convict him. In it, an inconspicuous figure walked with a bamboo staff—the one who had forced his son into making a deal with the boss behind the scenes!
What he had held was identical to this one!
He clenched his back teeth, anger surging through him.
Damn it, the man just wanted to trick him into saying something that would convict him, didn't he? Then he would give him what he wanted.
The source of fear cut off, and beneath his mask, Fan Daoyi's lips curled upward.
He finally noticed. This father's powers of observation are far worse than his son's. The bamboo staff was so obvious, sitting right there.
"I don't know what a sacrificial artifact is, and I don't know what deal I made with you." Having confirmed his answer, Wang Haotian felt more confident, and his voice took on a touch of authority. "If you keep this up, I'll have to call someone in."
Fan Daoyi spread his hands. "Ha, I see what's going on. You suspect me, don't you?"
"You suspect I'm not from Guixu, and you doubt the truth of my words."
As soon as he finished speaking, a cyan entrance appeared before Wang Haotian's eyes. Sensing the energy fluctuations from the entrance, Wang Haotian was stunned.
Is this a real entrance to Guixu?
Impossible. Have the authorities already found a way to open Guixu at will? That can't be right either. Even if they had, why would they entrust it to a greenhorn?
Wang Haotian was dumbfounded. The idea he had just settled on crumbled in an instant.
He was certain he hadn't mistaken the man's identity. It would be hard to find a second bamboo staff exactly like that one.
In the end, he decided to play along and admitted it. "The flood has truly washed into the Dragon King's temple. My lord, these are unusual times, so I had no choice but to take precautions."
"Taking precautions is good." Fan Daoyi voiced his approval.
"We have enough sacrificial artifacts. There's no need for substitutes. Please, come with me."
Fan Daoyi stood and followed him without any guard, under Wang Haotian's gaze.
The Wang Family had a secret chamber, which was precisely why the last search had turned up nothing useful.
Inside the secret chamber was an ancestral hall. Various memorial tablets stood there, with sacrificial offerings placed before them.
Fan Daoyi stepped forward and saw the tablet at the very top.
The Blood Doctor Descends.
In an instant, an invisible gravity pressed down. A mysterious cloaked figure emerged from behind the ancestral hall. His voice was aged and raspy, leaving no room for refusal. "One who stands before a god ought to kneel."
Fan Daoyi rapped his bamboo staff against the ground, and the situation reversed in an instant. The gravity bearing down on him fell on Wang Haotian and the old man instead, pressing down on them so hard they couldn't breathe.
"A god?"
At his words, the tablets enshrined above seemed to suffer some invisible impact. They all shattered at once, fragments scattering everywhere. Only the Blood Doctor Descends tablet at the top held firmest, gaining just a few cracks.
"You don't do a proper thing all day, just play at gods and ghosts here. You've really grown capable." Fan Daoyi sounded somewhat displeased.
Fan Daoyi went around to the back of the ancestral hall, where talismans had been laid out in a formation and an operating table stood in the middle. Bloodstains of all kinds formed runes on the mottled walls, while the light of two candles flickered in and out, wavering unsteadily.
Farther in were countless vessels. Inside the pungent formalin floated all sorts of bizarre tissue and body parts, such as a heart still beating without a body and a shriveled skin sack that remained alive after losing all its other tissue.
At last, he reached the deepest part. Before him lay a bloated monster stitched together from all sorts of parts.
The skins of human faces, each with a different appearance, made up the monster's belly. All kinds of organs were jumbled together without rhyme or reason, and intestines spilled freely from its mouth, nose, and eyes. A dozen or so arms and thighs had been haphazardly joined to form a discordant, eerie beauty.
Well, only to Fan Daoyi. He thought a monster like this ought to work quite well on Guixu.
The monster was still asleep, with several thick tubes inserted into its back to keep it alive.
"Wake up."
At those two words, the monster actually opened its eyes. It shifted its body, snapping the tubes behind it, and liquid burst out, carrying a foul stench.
The intestines blocking its mouth made its voice muffled and indistinct, but one word could vaguely be made out.
Hungry.
It took a step, and the ground underground shook several times along with it. It casually smashed a vessel containing formalin, grabbed the organs inside, tore open its own belly, and stuffed them in.
After they went in, the wound in its belly quickly healed. The various organs inside had come together to form this bloated body.
"Hungry, hungry..." It still wasn't satisfied, but its greedy gaze never lingered on Fan Daoyi.
Soon, it came to the ancestral hall where the tablets had originally been enshrined.
Wang Haotian and the old man were still kneeling there. They heard the rumble of the shaking earth, and the gravity binding them was broken by it.
"It actually woke up!" The old man struggled to raise his head and look at the enormous figure. In disbelief, he said, "This must be Lord Blood Doctor's punishment for that disrespectful man, awakening it early!"
"Hungry, hungry!" The monster seized the old man, preparing to eat him through its mouth this time.
"Wait, I'm Lord Blood Doctor's most faithful believer, not the disrespectful one!" the old man shouted.
The monster's movements visibly paused. It turned its huge body around in the cramped space. The old man turned with it in its hand and looked down to see Fan Daoyi standing below, completely unharmed.
The monster's tone softened, sounding somewhat aggrieved. "Hungry..."
Fan Daoyi nodded. "Mm, you can eat him."
Hearing this, the monster pried open its own jaw with one hand, straining to make an opening, and swallowed the old man whole.
Then its gaze fell on Wang Haotian.
"Leave this one alone for now. There's plenty of food in the villa. Go eat it yourself. Oh, and don't go eating the people outside indiscriminately either."
The monster rubbed its belly and laboriously climbed the stairs. Once upstairs, it followed Fan Daoyi's orders, taking a little child in each hand and eating each one in a single crunchy bite.
"Wouldn't it have been better if you'd honestly admitted whether the video was real? You even made me come here in person." Fan Daoyi picked up the only tablet that hadn't completely shattered and stood before the offering table.
"My lord, my lord." Wang Haotian prostrated himself at Fan Daoyi's feet. "My heart is devoted solely to Guixu. I harbor no other loyalties!"