Gloomy.
Black mist often filled the sky.
The surroundings were shrouded in darkness, and the daylight was dim and murky.
Now and then, a cold wind swept through.
It stirred the withered yellow leaves that had fallen to the ground after late autumn arrived.
The leaves were dry, yellow, and brittle. At the touch of the cold wind, a series of crisp crackling sounds rang out.
Though it was still daytime, Jinyang Prefecture possessed none of the radiant warmth implied by its name.
Only gray, mist-shrouded mountains loomed indistinctly in the distance, their presence made all the more chilling by the threads of autumn wind.
Jinyang Prefecture.
A mortal city-prefecture under the Heavenly Merchant Dynasty.
Yet today, every household had long since barred its doors.
No one dared step outside.
The streets were utterly empty of people.
There was not a trace of human life.
Only the occasional sound came from a few dilapidated little houses.
At the very center.
A grand residence sprawled there.
Two stone lions stood at its entrance, unlike the beasts that guarded ordinary homes.
The eyes of these two stone lions were not carved from stone.
Instead, each held a pool of congealed blood, which flowed and churned within their eye sockets.
Yet not a single drop spilled.
It was as though a river of blood flowed within them.
They gave off faint wisps of bloody aura.
Making no one dare approach.
The bronze gates stood wide open.
The plaque bore three large words: "Demon-Slaying Bureau." The strokes were drawn with icy sharpness, as though they contained a flash of blade-light capable of suppressing all evil beneath heaven and slaying the endlessly emerging demons.
Inside the main hall.
Today, everyone from the Demon-Slaying Bureau had gathered in the square before the hall.
They wore black