"My lord, an official from the county yamen has come to visit you," the old steward said through the door.
At first, no sound came from inside. Only when everyone began to feel that something was amiss did a hoarse voice suddenly speak.
"May I ask which official has come? I'm ill and truly unable to get up to receive you. I hope you'll forgive me."
The old steward hurriedly said to Ning Xiu, "My lord, I expect our master has only just arrived in Wendeng County from another region. He must have fallen ill because he isn't used to the local climate. Please forgive him."
"Open the door. Let me see just how ill County Magistrate Lu is," Ning Xiu said calmly.
"This..." The old steward was taken aback.
Normally, when things had reached this point, one was supposed to take the hint and say that since the master of the house was gravely ill, he should rest and they could call again another day.
Why was this man still insisting on going inside to look?
"Open the door," Ning Xiu ordered.
Fang Ping, standing nearby, immediately obeyed and shoved the door open with one hand. Ning Xiu stepped inside.
Though it was broad daylight, the room was strangely dim. Ning Xiu immediately spotted a figure sitting beside the tea table.
The person sat completely still. Ning Xiu couldn't tell what was going on.
The old steward followed Ning Xiu inside and quickly lit the candles. By their light, everyone could finally make out the figure sitting beside the tea table.
It was a pale-faced man.
"Young master, you're here too," the old steward said.
Something about the man seemed strange, so Ning Xiu used the Spiritual Eye Qi Observation Technique to look him over. Evil Qi clung to him.
Ning Xiu's gaze sharpened. It seemed there really was something wrong with County Magistrate Lu's residence.
"There's no water in the room. I'll go fetch some." Lu Chuan got to his feet and headed for the door.
Ning Xiu left him alone for the moment and walked straight to the bed. A haggard-looking man was lying on it.
A quilt covered most of his body, leaving only his head exposed. This was Lu Dengke.
"County Magistrate Lu, what kind of illness do you have that's kept you from taking up your post at the yamen for half a month? You shouldn't let an illness linger. Have you had a doctor in town examine you?" Ning Xiu stopped beside the bed and asked, looking down at him.
"You look unfamiliar, my lord. I don't remember seeing you the first time I went to the yamen. But I'm sorry for the trouble. I've only caught a chill; I just need to rest properly. It's a minor illness, nothing more."
The old steward hurried over with the candleholder and chimed in, "My lord, when our master served as an official in other counties, he was just like this—frail and often ill. Please tell County Magistrate Dong when you return to the yamen that our master certainly hasn't been deliberately shirking his post."
"Mm, of course," Ning Xiu said with a smile.
Suddenly, his expression changed. He reached out and grabbed Lu Dengke by the shoulder.
Ning Xiu's right palm turned crimson in an instant. Pain twisted Lu Dengke's face, and his whole appearance changed.
"Roar!"
His skin visibly withered, until he had become a dried-out corpse.
In pain, Lu Dengke's mouth gaped open far beyond what was normal, his jaw nearly dislocating.
He snapped his teeth at Ning Xiu's arm.
"My lord, look out!" Fang Ping cried at the sudden turn of events.
But it was too late. Lu Dengke's teeth had already clamped hard onto Ning Xiu's arm.
The next moment, what happened left him dumbfounded. Ning Xiu's arm was as hard as an iron rod.
His bite had no effect at all. He couldn't break the arm—or even pierce Ning Xiu's skin.
"Done pretending?" Ning Xiu seized Lu Dengke by the throat and lifted him straight off the bed.
When Ning Xiu dragged out the body hidden beneath the quilt from the neck down and exposed it to everyone,
Fang Ping and the old steward were both stunned. Neither could imagine what they were looking at.
Lu Dengke's body below the neck had already become a skeleton with only a few scraps of flesh clinging to it.
A one-foot-tall dwarf, with limbs but neither hands nor feet, was curled inside Lu Dengke's rib cage. Its brain had fused with Lu Dengke's heart.
What sent a chill down everyone's spines was that the dwarf's face looked exactly like Lu Dengke's. It was utterly inconceivable.
"My lord!" the old steward cried. He was so frightened that he dropped heavily onto his backside.
Fang Ping felt a chill run down his back too. He had never seen anything so bizarre.
Although this creature was very adept at concealing its Evil Qi, Ning Xiu's Spiritual Eye Qi Observation Technique had reached the fifth layer, and he could still detect traces of it.
Looking at the thing wedged inside the skeleton's rib cage, something that was neither human nor nonhuman, neither Evil Spirit nor not, Ning Xiu asked, "Can you speak?"
"So you're still alive. That means Du Luo must have fallen into your hands," the Demon Person rasped.
"So you're the Demon Person who uses puppet doubles to go out and act."
Ning Xiu had only suspected Lu Dengke and come to investigate. Even if he'd come up empty-handed, it wouldn't have been a wasted trip.
He hadn't expected Lu Dengke to be the very big fish he'd been hoping to catch.
But from the looks of things, Lu Dengke had fallen victim to the Demon Person and had been dead for some time.
And now this Demon Person was using his body to do who knew what.
If Ning Xiu hadn't found out, no one would ever have realized what had happened.
"Don't celebrate too soon. Even if you catch us, Wendeng County won't return to peace. In the half month since Lu Dengke arrived here, I've been doing plenty behind the scenes," the Demon Person cackled.
Ning Xiu frowned. The Demon Person's words gave him a very bad feeling.
At the same time, all across Wendeng County—
A vegetable peddler, carrying baskets through the streets and alleys, loudly hawked his cheap produce. A few women nearby walked over to buy some.
Just then, the peddler's expression suddenly went blank. He dropped his shoulder pole, pulled a cleaver from one of his baskets, and charged straight at the women, hacking wildly.
At a private school, an old teacher who had been reading aloud abruptly stopped. Moving stiffly, he went to the door and locked it.
As the young scholars inside stared at him in confusion, the old teacher took off his belt and began a merciless slaughter.
One by one, the children were strangled to death by his hands, unable to fight back at all.
The school that had once been filled with voices had become a place of utter silence.
Whenever someone died, a green shadow abruptly flew out of their body and streaked toward the Lu residence from every direction.
In the end, they all entered the Lu residence and vanished from sight.
Screams, wails, and cries of grief spread throughout Wendeng County.
The county yamen was thrown into utter chaos not long after the unrest began.
When Dong Fu learned from his subordinates what was happening outside, he was completely dumbfounded.
What was going on? How many county magistrates ever saw something like this in their lifetimes?
Ning Xiu knew nothing about what was happening outside. According to the Demon Subduing Bureau's rules, if a Demon Subduing Captain could capture a Demon Person alive,
then it was best to take the Demon Person back to the Demon Subduing Bureau and lock them in the Demon Subduing Prison for specialized interrogation.
That way, they could learn what methods the Demon Person possessed, and uncover everything they knew about the outside world.
Ning Xiu hadn't been able to keep the Scaled Demon alive. This time, though, he could bring the Demon Person back to Chaotian Capital, which would give Su Qianqian an answer.
Ning Xiu sent Fang Ping to find some rope, then wrapped the Demon Person and Lu Dengke's corpse tightly in the quilt and bound the bundle.
All the while, the old steward sat trembling on the floor, unable to come to terms with the truth that Lu Dengke had been dead for some time.
"My lord, isn't it dangerous to handle the Demon Person like that?" Fang Ping couldn't help asking as Ning Xiu hoisted Lu Dengke's corpse onto his shoulder.
"It's fine. I'm heading back to the capital today. I can deal with it on the way." Ning Xiu carried Lu Dengke over his shoulder and headed for the door.
But the moment he stepped outside, Ning Xiu saw countless green shadows howling across the sky from every direction and flying into the Lu residence, all vanishing at the same spot inside.
"Hm?"
The sight struck Ning Xiu as strange. He hurriedly led Fang Ping in that direction.
Inside the woodshed, Lu Chuan opened the trapdoor leading to the cellar and descended the rickety wooden ladder.
As he went down, he muttered to himself without pause. "A Demon Subduing Captain slipped into Wendeng County without my noticing at all. Luckily, I laid a killing trap ahead of time. I can collect plenty of vital essence today before leaving. Otherwise, relying on that useless Du Luo, I'd be scolded by the steward when I got back."
At the bottom of the cellar, where no sunlight ever reached, a white banner as tall as a person stood planted in the ground, glowing softly.
Countless green shadows pierced through the floor and plunged into the banner all at once.
Up close, one could see countless tiny faces, each no bigger than a peach pit, covering the entire surface of the banner.
A massive Runic Diagram had been drawn on the floor where the banner stood. If Ning Xiu had been there, he would have recognized it at once as the same kind he had found on the Corpse Fiends.
'Lu Chuan' nodded with satisfaction as the banner filled with more and more faces. He walked over, pulled it out of the ground, and prepared to carry it away.
But the moment he stepped out of the woodshed, he spotted Ning Xiu and Fang Ping approaching him.
"Hm?!" Ning Xiu was startled. Wasn't this the man who had been in Lu Dengke's room just now?
And the old steward had called him young master. Thinking of the Demon Person's puppet-double ability, Ning Xiu immediately understood.
One had slipped through the net.
"How is this possible?!"
'Lu Chuan' looked utterly grim. When Ning Xiu entered the room, he had already realized something was wrong.
That was why he'd made Lu Chuan, who had already become his double, leave the room at once and head to the woodshed to retrieve the Spirit Gathering Banner hidden there in advance to collect vital essence.
As long as the Demon Subduing Captain didn't discover it, his mission wouldn't be a failure.
But somehow, Ning Xiu had found this place. Normally, even the servants of the Lu residence rarely came near it.
The Demon Person hadn't realized Ning Xiu cultivated the Spiritual Eye Qi Observation Technique, a Pupil Technique that let him see all kinds of "Qi."
Ning Xiu had happened to notice the vital essence of the townsfolk flying into the Lu residence. That was how he'd caught him in the act, with the evidence right there.
"Put that thing down. Don't make me take action," Ning Xiu said calmly.
From their first encounter and his conversation with the Demon Person just now, Ning Xiu had roughly figured out what the Demon Person could do.
His opponent probably wasn't good at fighting. Combat wasn't this Demon Person's specialty. But his ability to create puppet doubles was formidable. Give him room to work,
and the harm this Demon Person could cause would be utterly terrifying.
'Lu Chuan' clenched his fists. In an instant, he decided to risk his life fighting Ning Xiu.
He forcefully planted the Spirit Gathering Banner in the ground and began rapidly chanting a complex, obscure incantation.
Ghost Summoning!
"Wooooo!"
A chorus of mournful cries suddenly rang out from inside the Spirit Gathering Banner, as if a hundred people were wailing before Ning Xiu.
The sound was piercing, making his head swim.
Though there was no wind, the banner began to flutter. A gigantic ghost claw slowly emerged from its surface, followed by a massive Two-Horned Evil Spirit crawling free of the banner.
Only its upper body had emerged, but the Evil Spirit was already half the size of a room.
In Ning Xiu's eyes, the Evil Qi radiating from the Two-Horned Evil Spirit was so dense it rivaled that of the Evil Spirits locked away in the Xuan Zone of the Demon Subduing Prison.
"Stand back," Ning Xiu said to Fang Ping.
Fang Ping was only an ordinary man. Just a trace of Evil Qi from an Evil Spirit of this level would leave him with a chronic illness for the rest of his life.
Ning Xiu dropped Lu Dengke's corpse at his feet and immediately began circulating the Great Sun Profound Scripture at full force.
This was the first time he had encountered such a powerful Evil Spirit since leaving the Demon Subduing Prison. He couldn't afford to be careless.
The ninth layer of the Great Sun Profound Scripture surged into motion, and his mighty Internal Energy flowed through every part of his body. As 'Lu Chuan' activated the Spirit Gathering Banner,
the Two-Horned Evil Spirit raised its enormous ghost claw and slammed it down toward Ning Xiu.
The claw was as large as two door panels, its crushing weight oppressive. Ning Xiu had no chance to dodge. He immediately brought both fists up, using the Pure Yang Extreme Fist to meet the Evil Spirit's claws head-on.
Boom!!!
In an instant, dust billowed and the ground shook.
Ning Xiu's feet sank several inches into the earth. The courtyard's mud swallowed his ankles.
His clothes tore with a sharp rip, unable to withstand the tremendous force of the descending ghost claw.
But Ning Xiu remained expressionless. With nothing but his fists, he had stopped the Two-Horned Evil Spirit's strike, despite its body being more than ten times his size, and showed no sign of losing.
The sight left Fang Ping and 'Lu Chuan' utterly dumbstruck, speechless.
Was this damn thing even human? Could a person really have that kind of brute strength? Was he some Evil Spirit wearing human skin?
Ning Xiu had his back to Fang Ping. When his clothes tore, Fang Ping saw—
A Great Sun Golden Mark appeared across Ning Xiu's muscular back, red at its core and gold along the edges!
As Ning Xiu circulated the Great Sun Profound Scripture with all his might, the Great Sun Golden Mark grew brighter and brighter.
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