When his beloved son had been attacked and lay unconscious, He Chunhua had also sent a message to the West Mountain Leopard Demon, but received no reply.
He sighed. "Also, urgent reports from the heartland stopped coming about ten days ago. The rebels occupied the Pingning region, then the floods hit. All the relay stations along the route became unusable, and communications were completely cut off. Blackwater City has been busy reorganizing its troops these past few days."
He Lingchuan froze. "Are we going to war too?"
He had heard there'd been some unusual activity at the military camp lately, but hadn't paid it much mind. There hadn't been a major battle in Qiansong Prefecture for a long time, but skirmishes around Blackwater City happened every few days. Most were government troops heading out to suppress bandits, fighting a few small-time crooks. Both civilians and soldiers were used to it.
"Hard to say." He Chunhua's expression was grave.
"Forget it." Looking at his father's somewhat haggard face, He Lingchuan didn't really blame the man. Prefectural affairs were burdensome—grain production, trade, border troubles, defense, natural disasters. Not one could be neglected, and they still had to guard against the rebels in the heartland marching in. He Chunhua rose earlier than a chicken and went to bed later than a dog. He was a diligent public servant.
Even though he devoted every ounce of energy to Qiansong Prefecture, the worst news so often came from the very heart of the Yuan Kingdom!
This country was trapped in civil strife.
"You called me here. What exactly did you want me to see?"
"This." He Chunhua pried open the leopard's jaws.
Its mouthful of sharp teeth sent a chill through anyone who saw them, but He Lingchuan immediately noticed something was off. "The fangs are all gone?"
All four canine teeth had been forcibly pulled out, leaving only bloody holes.
"The Leopard Demon that attacked you also used its canine teeth to hide things. And the injuries to this Leopard King's internal organs are much like the other leopard's." He Chunhua fell into thought. "What did you do with the things in its fangs? Bring them to me."
When the He family found He Lingchuan at the bottom of the cliff, he'd been unconscious and covered in blood, while the leopard was already long dead.
So the He family brought them both back. They hurried to treat the living man, while the dead leopard was sent for dissection. He Lingchuan had gone out to hunt rock sheep, but returned with a Leopard Demon, so it counted as his prey too. After He Chunhua examined the items hidden in its fangs, he gave them to his eldest son as a keepsake.
Demons needed places to store things too, but most of them didn't wear clothes. Where could they hide their belongings? The common solution was to refine some part of their own bodies into a storage space. Of course, that required a natural talent. Crocodile demons, for instance, liked to use their stomachs as treasure pouches, while demons of the tiger, leopard, wolf, and jackal kind usually refined their own canine teeth to conceal things.
Humans who knew about this habit would, after killing a Leopard Demon, naturally pry out its canine teeth as spoils of war.
But opening a storage space required spiritual power. When He Lingchuan had first crossed over, he hadn't known that, and assumed the leopard's fangs were truly empty.
"I left them in my room. I'll go get them in a moment." At last, it was He Lingchuan's turn to get down to business. "Father, there's something else I need to report."
Then he recounted the whole story of the Donglai Manor guards investigating Sand Leopard's whereabouts.
The more He Chunhua heard, the tighter his brows drew. When he heard the words "Donglai Manor," he shot to his feet. "What did you say?"
His face darkened with fury, and he swung a hand to slap him.
He Lingchuan instinctively stepped back.
But He Chunhua's slap stopped in midair. He didn't actually hit him.
A few seconds later, his hand curled into a fist and slammed onto the tabletop.
"Private torture? Utter nonsense!"
He knew his son had always been reckless and never learned his lesson. Sooner or later, he'd kick an iron wall. He just hadn't expected that wall to appear so soon—or to hit so squarely.
The Grand Marshal!
How had he managed to offend the Grand Marshal!
"Steady" was the word people in official circles often used to describe He Chunhua, but in He Lingchuan's memories, his father had often flown into a rage at him. He wasn't particularly afraid, and argued back. "Those two were asking around everywhere. The city's crawling with gossipy busybodies. I was afraid they'd soon trace the matter back to us."
At that moment, he was somewhat impressed by He Chunhua's caution. With the Leopard Demon affair, Governor He hadn't just kept quiet; he'd also ordered everyone who knew about it to keep their mouths shut. Otherwise, word of Blackwater City's young tyrant killing a Leopard Demon alone would've spread through the whole city by now, and those two wouldn't have needed to ask around at all.
Of course, there were no walls without ears.
"Six years ago, the Zhang Hongbin Case, initiated by the Grand Marshal, implicated one duke, two marquises, and seven earls, and dragged in more than 2,600 people. How many survivors do you think were left in the end?"
His father's face was like a storm cloud pressing down. He Lingchuan ventured a careful answer. "Probably... not many?"
"Seventy-three!" He Chunhua enunciated each word. "How many women, children, and infants were among them? Hah. In the end, only seventy-three survived!"
A chill rose from the depths of He Lingchuan's heart.
Forget ordinary folk—even the lives of dukes and nobles were cheap as weeds, cut down whenever someone pleased.
"Compared to that, what happened to our family doesn't even count as the worst..." He Chunhua sighed, then returned to the matter at hand. "When you received word from the Red and White Path, why didn't you come report it to me straightaway?"
"I wanted to find out what was going on before reporting back." He Lingchuan's expression turned grave, his eyes glinting with a hard edge. "If those two didn't have any powerful backing, then it'd be best if I could get my revenge while I was at it. If their backer was too formidable, then all the more reason not to let them know that the escaped Sand Leopard was in our hands."
He Chunhua had been seething with anger, but as he considered his son's words, his expression gradually softened. In the end, he even showed a hint of agreement. "That's not unreasonable."
Whether to arrest those two wasn't the main issue. The trouble was that the thing the Grand Marshal wanted might be in the hands of He and his son.
He looked at He Lingchuan. "You've learned to use your head."
Meeting his father's approving gaze, He Lingchuan grinned to deflect it. "I'll go get the things."
A quarter of an hour later.
He Lingchuan returned with the leopard's fangs and tipped everything they'd been storing onto a small table.
"That's all of it."
The Sand Leopard that had attacked He Lingchuan had left behind several demon cores of varying sizes and colors, a set of daggers sharp enough to shave hair and slice through it, several pieces of mutton-fat white jade, a string of pearls, assorted odds and ends whose uses were unclear, and even more than a dozen gold and silver ingots!
Demons weren't all ferocious beasts; they did business with humans too. The He father and son weren't surprised to see gold and silver, the universal currency.
"What the Grand Marshal wants can't possibly be this string of pearls, can it?" He Lingchuan lifted the strand and held it up to the light.
The pearls had a warm, captivating luster. Each was a little larger than a melon seed, and in the sunlight they gave off a faint blue glow. In the short time they'd been out, a light mist had begun to gather around them. The air felt cool and refreshing, and even breathing became easier, as though they'd arrived on a breezy shore.
"They have a slight ability to condense water. Nothing special." Every living thing needed water. In the dry desert, this string could make the Sand Leopard feel more comfortable, but the Grand Marshal probably wouldn't be interested.
He Chunhua's gaze rested on the pile of odds and ends. Last time he'd checked, he'd pushed them all to one side. Now he needed to examine them properly.
But the things were all small and miscellaneous: withered flowers and grasses, half a lump of black musk, bones with the meat gnawed off, a bloodstained ring that looked as if it had come from a human victim, a broken hairpin, a few packets of incense, more than a dozen feathers, half a comb, and...
A whole pile of dried insects, dried snakes, and dried lizards.
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