When Qi Wu had first found the old hunter, there had been several other households nearby. They had seemed perfectly normal, but they were all tigers' thralls in disguise.
After the tiger demon was brought to justice, the thralls were at a loss and fell into disarray. Some said they should go down the mountain, while others wanted to keep hiding in the forest. They couldn't agree on what to do.
While they were arguing, the three of them appeared and captured every last one. Meng Jingzhou let out a trace of pure Yang energy, and the thralls writhed on the ground, howling in pain.
"We don't need to keep so many. Two will be enough to pass for demonic cultivators," Lu Yang said coldly. There was no need to pity these thralls who had helped the tiger demon commit its crimes.
If they hadn't agreed to the tiger demon's demands, they couldn't have become thralls.
They deserved to die.
Lu Yang tried, but he still couldn't take in ghost servants. He could only send his own spirit out of his body.
"Man Gu, it's up to you."
Man Gu said nothing. He spared the two thralls who had been travelers and wiped out all the rest, swiftly and cleanly.
Hunter thralls would be easy for the demonic cult to recognize, and they might guess that the three had obtained them by killing the tiger demon. Traveler thralls would pose far less risk.
"Absorb." Man Gu drew the two traveler thralls, a man and a woman, into his body.
This, too, was part of the art of exorcism: taking ghosts into one's body and summoning them to fight when needed.
On their way to Yanjiang Commandery, the three came across Qi Wu and the others, who were still wandering in