An Unprovokable Adversary

When his beloved son was attacked and left in a coma, He Chunhua had sent urgent messages to the West Mountain Leopard Demon, yet he received no reply.

He sighed. "Furthermore, urgent reports from the interior have been cut off for over ten days. The Pingning region was occupied by rebel forces, and then floods struck; the post stations along the route are unusable, and all communications are severed. Blackwater City has been busy reorganizing its troops these past few days."

He Lingchuan was slightly stunned. "Are we going to war, too?"

He had heard rumors of unusual movements in the military camp recently, but he hadn't taken them to heart. Qiansong Prefecture hadn't seen a major battle in a long time, but sporadic skirmishes around Blackwater City were common occurrences. Most were just government troops out suppressing bandits or dealing with petty thieves, and both soldiers and civilians were accustomed to it.

"It's hard to say." He Chunhua's expression was heavy.

Forget it. Looking at his father's slightly haggard face, He Lingchuan didn't truly blame this convenient father of his. The prefecture's affairs were heavy—grain production, trade, border threats, defense, and natural disasters—none could be neglected, all while guarding against the rebels from the interior. He Chunhua rose earlier than the roosters and slept later than the dogs; he was a diligent official.

Even though he exhausted himself for Qiansong Prefecture, the worst news often came from the heart of the Yuan Kingdom!

This country was trapped in internal strife.

"Why did you call me here? What exactly do you want me to see?"

"This." He Chunhua pried open the leopard's massive jaws.

The mouth full of sharp teeth was chilling, but He Lingchuan immediately noticed something different. "The canines are gone?"

All four canines had been forcibly extracted, leaving only bloody pits.

"The leopard demon that attacked you also used its canines to store items. Furthermore, the internal injuries of that leopard are very similar to this Leopard King." He mused, "Where did you put the things from its canines? Bring them to me."

When the He family found He Lingchuan under the cliff, he was unconscious and covered in blood, while the leopard was already dead.

The He family brought both back; the living were rushed to treatment, while the dead leopard was sent for dissection. He Lingchuan had only gone out to hunt mountain sheep, but he had brought back a leopard demon, so it was considered his kill. After He Chunhua had examined the collection inside the leopard's teeth, he had given the items to his eldest son as a souvenir.

Monsters also had a need for storage, but since they rarely wore clothes, where could they hide things? The common practice was to refine a part of their own body into a storage space. Of course, this required innate talent; for instance, crocodile demons liked to use their stomachs as treasure bags, while tigers, leopards, wolves, and jackals usually refined their canines to hide their belongings.

Humans who understood this trait would, upon killing a leopard demon, gouge out their canines as trophies.

Opening a storage space required spiritual energy, and He Lingchuan, who had just transmigrated at the time, didn't know the trick and assumed the leopard teeth were empty.

"I left them in my room. I'll go get them right away." Now it was He Lingchuan's turn to talk business. "Father, there is one more thing I must report to you."

He then recounted the entire story of the Donglai Manor guards tracking the Sand Leopard.

The more He Chunhua heard, the tighter his brow furrowed. When he heard the words "Donglai Manor," he stood up abruptly. "What did you say?"

His expression changed drastically, and he swung his hand, slapping toward him.

He Lingchuan subconsciously stepped back half a step.

However, He Chunhua's slap stopped in mid-air and didn't actually land.

After a few seconds, his palm curled into a fist, and he slammed it onto the table with a "bang":

"Conducting private interrogations? This is sheer madness!"

He knew his son was accustomed to acting recklessly and never learned from his mistakes, and that he would hit a wall sooner or later. But he hadn't expected the wall to appear so quickly and so accurately.

The Grand Marshal!

How could he have offended the Grand Marshal?

He Chunhua had always been described as "steady" in his official career, but in He Lingchuan's memory, he was often scolded by his father. He wasn't particularly afraid, instead arguing back: "Those two were asking around everywhere, and the city is full of loose-lipped scum. I was afraid they would track us down soon."

At this moment, he felt some admiration for He Chunhua's caution. Regarding the leopard demon, Governor He had not only kept it quiet but had demanded that everyone in the know keep their mouths shut. Otherwise, the news of the "Young Tyrant of Blackwater City" killing a leopard demon alone would have spread throughout the city, and those two wouldn't even have needed to ask around.

Of course, there were no airtight walls in this world.

"The Zhang Hongbin Case, initiated by the Grand Marshal six years ago, involved one Duke, two Marquises, and seven Counts, implicating over two thousand six hundred people. How many survivors do you think there were?"

His father's face looked like dark clouds pressing down. He Lingchuan said cautiously, "It seems... not many?"

"Seventy-three!" He Chunhua said each word clearly. "How many women and children were among them? Hah, in the end, only seventy-three survived!"

A chill rose from the depths of He Lingchuan's heart.

Not to mention commoners, even the lives of dukes and ministers were like cheap grass—to be cut down whenever desired.

"By comparison, our family's encounter wasn't the worst..." He Chunhua sighed, then returned to the topic. "When you received the message from the Red and White Path, why didn't you report it directly?"

"I wanted to find out what the items were before reporting." He Lingchuan's expression hardened, his eyes glinting with ruthlessness. "If these two had no background, it would be best if I took my revenge on the spot; if they had a powerful backer, then it was even more important that they didn't know the escaped Sand Leopard was in our hands."

He Chunhua had been full of anger, but as he carefully pondered his son's words, his expression slowly calmed, and in the end, he even showed two parts of approval. "That is not without reason."

Whether or not to capture those two wasn't the point; the root of the trouble was that what the Grand Marshal wanted might be in their hands.

He looked at He Lingchuan. "You've learned to use your brain to think about things."

Meeting his father's gratified gaze, He Lingchuan grinned to avoid the moment. "I'll go get the items."

A quarter of an hour later.

He Lingchuan returned with the leopard teeth and dumped the stored items onto the small table.

"That's all of it."

The belongings of the Sand Leopard that had attacked He Lingchuan included several demon cores of varying sizes and colors, a set of daggers sharp enough to cut hair, a few pieces of mutton-fat white jade, a string of pearl necklaces, some miscellaneous items of unknown use, and even over a dozen gold and silver ingots!

Monsters weren't just purely ferocious; they also traded with humans. It was no surprise to the He father and son that gold and silver appeared as hard currency.

"The Grand Marshal couldn't possibly want this string of beads, could he?" He Lingchuan picked up the necklace and held it to the light.

The luster of the pearls was warm and charming, each slightly larger than a melon seed, faintly emitting a blue glow in the sunlight. Just by taking them out, a light mist began to condense around the string. Being near it made one feel cool, and even breathing became much easier, as if one had arrived at a breezy seashore.

"It has a slight effect of condensing water, nothing special." Every living thing needed water; in the dry desert, this string of beads could make the Sand Leopard feel comfortable, but the Grand Marshal shouldn't have any interest in it.

He Chunhua's gaze rested on the pile of miscellaneous items. During the last inventory, he had pushed these aside, but now he needed to take a good look.

But these things were fragmented and trivial: withered flowers and plants, half a piece of black musk, half-gnawed bones, bloody rings likely taken from human victims, broken hairpins, a few packets of spices, a dozen feathers, half a comb, and...

A large pile of dried insects, dried snakes, and dried lizards.