Becoming a Lieutenant

"Impossible! You... you're a ghost! Why would you have a letter from the Demon-Slaying Division?"

The old man surnamed Tea was first shocked, then said in a low voice, "Could it be that you, you evil ghost, killed Zhang Miaoji and stole the letter to deceive me...?"

"All right, all right. Don't get worked up, old man."

Li Hai shook his head and transformed back into a living person right in front of the old man, leaving him utterly dumbfounded.

"You... how did you turn back into a person?!"

Clearly bewildered by what he was seeing, the old man began to babble incoherently. "I'm on the verge of death, so... so I must be hallucinating."

"No, this isn't a hallucination."

Li Hai made up a story on the spot. "I really am human. I just have a Bloodline Divine Ability that lets me temporarily turn into a ghost."

Then he briefly recounted how he had slaughtered evil ghosts in the Evil Spirit Land at Guo Family Fort, and how he had encountered Zhang Miaoji, among other things.

"All right, I understand."

Too weak to spend much effort sorting out which parts of Li Hai's story were true and which were false, the old man only gasped, "In short, you're human, not a ghost. That's all I need to know."

Then, gritting his teeth, he laboriously reached behind himself and took out a jade box barely half the size of his palm, with a strange talisman pasted on it. He spoke haltingly:

"This is a Soul-Binding Cocoon, a rare and wondrous device. An hour ago, I sealed the ghost that was running rampant here inside it."

As he spoke, he handed the jade box to Li Hai, then laboriously reached out and passed him an old book as well.

"The calamity at the Ox-Horn Town outpost was no coincidence. Someone must have been maliciously pulling strings behind the scenes. Otherwise, such a vast Evil Spirit Land couldn't have appeared out of nowhere without the slightest warning. But I no longer have the strength to investigate."

His face deathly pale, he looked at Li Hai. "Take this Soul-Binding Cocoon. To be safe, lie low for now and don't show yourself. Headquarters will send someone to survey this place. They'll arrive in a few days. When they do, hand it over to the Demon-Slaying Captain they send.

"And this book is the roster of personnel at this Demon-Slaying Division outpost. Find any blank page and carve your name into it. Use your finger."

"Carve it with my finger? All right."

Li Hai took the book and flipped through it. He found that its pages were made of something neither metal nor jade, and were quite hard. An ordinary person probably couldn't carve a complete name into them even with a chisel, let alone with a finger.

But for Li Hai, this was child's play. In fact, for any martial artist at the Force-Body Circulation level, it was as easy as turning over a hand.

In the blink of an eye, Li Hai carved his name into one of the pages of the roster with his finger.

Strangely, as soon as he carved his name, the roster immediately began to shine, as if it had been activated.

Seeing this, the dying old man spoke again:

"Congratulations. You're now officially a member of the Demon-Slaying Division of Great Jing. Somewhere on this training ground is a device. It should have already cast and printed your Lieutenant Token. Go find it yourself later."

After saying all that in one breath, the old man was utterly exhausted. He leaned back against the wall again and murmured, "I've told you everything. Don't worry about me. There's no saving me. Hurry and go. Turn into a ghost and get out of here. Let me... let me sleep a little while longer."

With that, he closed his eyes and gradually lost all signs of life.

Seeing this, Li Hai could only sigh and turn to leave.

But just then, the old man's eyes suddenly flew open, as if with a last burst of life. His voice rang out, strong and clear, as he spoke to Li Hai:

"Young man, remember this well... There are no gods, no immortal arts, no Buddhas or sages in this world. Only we Demon-Slaying Captains lay down our lives to protect the countless common folk. From now on, you are the shield of all under heaven. Others may retreat, but you must not. Others may flee, but you must not. If night blankets the sky, then you... are the one and only sun!"

After shouting those words, the old man's life abruptly left him, and he died on the spot.

"Even at the very end, I never found out whether you were Master Tea."

With a complicated sigh, Li Hai immediately turned from human into ghost. His form grew indistinct as he passed through one obstacle after another and emerged outside.

He didn't immediately leave, as the old man had asked. Instead, he began wandering around the quiet, shadowy training ground.

"If this is an organization's outpost, it ought to have a storeroom or something, right?"

Muttering to himself, Li Hai scanned his surroundings, trying to find anything valuable.

Perhaps thanks to his Wildness instinct, he soon spotted a place in one corner of the broad training ground that might have been the outpost's storeroom.

Inside, several rows of metal cabinets stood neatly arranged.

Since most of the storeroom had collapsed, most of the cabinets had been crushed into scrap metal, and their contents were broken and mangled beyond recognition.

But a few cabinets had survived, and the items inside had been spared.

When he opened one, Li Hai found it packed with thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of Yellow Talismans stacked in neat rows.

"Good stuff."

He nodded. The word Naihe glowed in his palm, and in an instant he stored the cabinet in the Guiyou Grotto-Heaven.

He opened the second cabinet. It contained all sorts of files and documents. After flipping through them at random, Li Hai tossed them into the grotto-heaven too.

The third cabinet held several sets of neatly folded black uniforms: the double-breasted leather outfits worn by the Demon-Slaying Captains he'd seen earlier.

"Honestly, these clothes look pretty good."

With a thought, Li Hai stored this cabinet in the grotto-heaven as well.

The fourth cabinet held pairs of black boots that matched the captains' uniforms.

No need to think twice. Since they were part of the same set, Li Hai took the whole cabinet too.

The remaining fifth, sixth, and seventh cabinets held, respectively, silver notes in small and medium denominations, a considerable number of medicine bottles, seven or eight rare devices with unknown functions, and a pair of Bamboo-Joint Steel Whips gleaming with a dark red light.

He took every last thing.

No, the pair of Bamboo-Joint Steel Whips, which were clearly extraordinary, he hung from his waist, one on either side.

All in all, he had a blast looting the place.

At the same time, Li Hai noticed that in the corner of the collapsed storeroom stood the device the old Demon-Slaying Division man had mentioned—the so-called Token Printing Device.

"So the old man wanted me to find this storeroom and take everything in it?"

Thinking this over, Li Hai walked up to the device and saw a token, still warm, sitting in its tray.

He picked it up and saw the following written on it:

[Name: Li Hai]

[Number: 3527]

[Title: Wood-Rank Lieutenant]