"Sister, are you... here to capture the Dragon King too?"
"The Dragon King?" Jiang Yuechu repeated, glancing at the smashed shrine. "The one worshipped here is the Dragon King you mentioned?"
A Shui nodded, then quickly shook her head, her eyes reddening at once.
"It used to be... but the Dragon King isn't here anymore."
"Then where is it?"
"I don't know either..."
"What exactly happened? Tell us carefully."
Zhao Hu could no longer hold himself back and moved closer.
But his anxious manner, combined with the saber at his waist, made A Shui instinctively shrink behind Jiang Yuechu.
Old Wang clicked his tongue. "Don't scare the child."
Zhao Hu: "..."
Jiang Yuechu was somewhat helpless and could only continue asking, "A Shui, take your time. Don't be afraid."
With her reassurance, A Shui finally calmed down somewhat. Sniffling, she told them the whole story from beginning to end, without leaving out a single detail.
"The nearby villages had worshipped the Dragon King generation after generation, praying for favorable winds and timely rains."
"The old Dragon King wasn't the current one."
Everyone was stunned for a moment, then immediately understood.
To demons, the Incense-Fire Power offered by humans was a great tonic.
Any place that enjoyed abundant Incense-Fire Power naturally became a prized morsel in the eyes of demons. It was perfectly normal for them to fight over it.
After all, to ordinary people, it made no difference who became the Dragon King. As long as it could bless them with favorable winds and timely rains, who they worshipped was all the same.
"Several decades ago, the current Dragon King came, drove away the old one, and became our Dragon King."
Zhao Hu could not help cutting in. "Aren't they birds of a feather? What's the difference?"
"There is!" A Shui immediately retorted, her voice rising. "The current Dragon King is much better than the old one! That old one demanded that the villages send a boy and a girl as sacrifices every year. Since the current Dragon King came, it never asked for them again!"
Everyone exchanged looks.
By that account, this new demon had a bit of demonic virtue after all?
"What happened afterward?" Jiang Yuechu asked.
At the mention of what came after, A Shui's mood sank again. "The Dragon King... the Dragon King was good in every way, except... except it was too lonely. It wanted... wanted a child."
It wanted a child?
The expressions of the roomful of rough men instantly turned strange.
Demons having offspring was nothing unusual, but from the way this girl put it, this matter was probably not so simple.
"Then... then one time, Sister Xing'er from the village chief's family went to bathe in the river. When she came back, her belly... her belly grew."
"..."
Even the seasoned members of the Demon Suppression Office were stunned by this method.
They had heard of taking things through the air—planting seeds through water...
What kind of damn divine power was that?!
"No one in the village knew what had happened. They thought Sister Xing'er had been with someone... with someone... outside..."
She was too young to say the words, but the meaning was already clear enough.
"The village chief was furious and wanted to break Sister Xing'er's legs. Later, it was the chief's wife who pitied her daughter and secretly went into town to hire a wandering Daoist priest to examine her."
"The Daoist took one look and said that what Sister Xing'er carried in her womb was not human... it was a Demon Embryo!"
"The village chief was so furious that he fainted on the spot. When he woke up, he brought people to the Dragon King Temple, saying that they worshipped it out of respect, but it could not ruin the people of their village like this!"
Everyone listening could only sigh.
Anyone would bristle if this happened to them.
"What happened afterward? That girl..."
Liu Chen could not help asking.
A Shui shook her head. "No one knew what happened to Sister Xing'er. She became like a madwoman and insisted on keeping the child in her belly. No matter who tried to persuade her, she refused to listen."
"The villagers all cursed her, saying demons had bewitched her heart, that she was a shameless filthy thing. Even the village chief said... he no longer had a daughter like her."
"In the end... several village elders made the decision. They said Sister Xing'er carried a monster, had disgraced the village, and if she remained, she would bring calamity upon them."
"They put Sister Xing'er... put Sister Xing'er into a pig cage and sank her in the Black River..."
By the end, no one knew what to say.
The demons were certainly at fault.
But the villagers...
Alas.
After a long while.
Liu Chen finally spoke in a hoarse voice. "So after that, the Black River became what it is now?"
A Shui nodded. "The day after Sister Xing'er died, the Dragon King flew into a rage. The river began flowing backward. Three days later, it became what it is now—fishy and foul, and all the fish died..."
Jiang Yuechu looked at the smashed shrine, her heart filled with a jumble of emotions.
She suddenly asked, "What about you? Who are you? Why are you here?"
A Shui wiped her tears. "I... I have no father or mother. I begged for food in the village ever since I was little. The Dragon King was kind. It would not eat the offerings the villagers brought, and would let me take them to eat."
"The Dragon King isn't a bad demon. It just... just wanted to be a father too badly."
"Sister Xing'er died, and its child was gone too. It was hurting inside, so that was why it lost its temper."
She raised her head and looked at them with reddened eyes, her gaze full of pleading.
"Officials, Sister... can you... can you spare the Dragon King?"
"It is already so pitiful..."
"..."
Spare it?
Everyone exchanged looks.
The duty of the Demon Suppression Office was to slay demons and eliminate devils.
Now that a demon was causing trouble, the waterway had been cut off, and the people along the riverbanks could barely survive. They had come under orders—how could they possibly let it go?
Zhao Hu was the first to break the silence. "Pitiful? Are the people who can't get water, who can only drink this foul water and wait to die, not pitiful?"
"Are those brothers from the Yellow Division, missing without a trace whether dead or alive, not pitiful?"
"One matter is one matter! A demon is a demon. If it harmed people, it should be killed!"
His words were rough, but they were also true.
Liu Chen sighed and said nothing, tacitly agreeing with Zhao Hu.
He turned to look at Jiang Yuechu.
Only to discover that, at some point, Jiang Yuechu had already risen to her feet and was silently looking outside the temple.
"What do you think?" Liu Chen asked.
For some reason, he instinctively wanted to hear this newcomer's opinion.
"It is our duty. Naturally, it should be killed."
The moment those words fell, the last trace of color drained entirely from A Shui's face.
She stared at Jiang Yuechu in disbelief.
"...Bad people."
"You are all bad people!"
The little girl let out a scream, scrambled up from the ground, and staggered toward the temple entrance.
Zhao Hu instinctively wanted to chase after her, but Liu Chen raised a hand to stop him.
"Let her go."
Liu Chen sighed and gave Jiang Yuechu a complicated look.
He had thought that, as a woman herself, Jiang Yuechu might feel a little more for this matter. He had not expected her to be so decisive.
But...
Perhaps that was for the best.
Everyone stood in a different position, and naturally handled matters differently.
Since they were already people of the Demon Suppression Office, they naturally had to think as people of the Demon Suppression Office should.
The villagers were certainly wrong to take justice into their own hands, but that was a matter for the imperial court to handle.
The Demon Suppression Office had always followed only one principle.
Slay demons, eliminate devils.
Before you continue