The Dragon King Wants a Son

"Big sister, are you... here to capture the Dragon King too?"

"The Dragon King?" Jiang Yuechu repeated, glancing at the smashed shrine. "The one enshrined here is the Dragon King you mentioned?"

A Shui nodded, then quickly shook her head, her eyes turning red at once.

"It used to be... but now, 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 back and stepped forward.

But his anxious manner, coupled 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."

Under her soothing words, A Shui finally calmed down somewhat. Between sobs, she told them the whole story from beginning to end, without leaving out a single detail.

"The nearby villages have worshipped the Dragon King generation after generation, praying for favorable weather and timely rains."

"The Dragon King from before wasn't the current one."

Everyone froze for a moment, then quickly understood.

To demons, the incense and worship offered by humans were immensely nourishing things.

Any place that received abundant worship naturally became a sweet pastry in the eyes of demons. Fighting over it was perfectly normal.

After all, to the common people, it made no difference who served as the Dragon King. So long as they could bless them with favorable weather and timely rains, who they worshipped was all the same.

"Several decades ago, the current Dragon King came, drove away the previous one, and became our Dragon King."

Zhao Hu could not help interjecting, "Aren't they birds of a feather? What difference is there?"

"There is!" A Shui immediately retorted, her voice rising several degrees. "The current Dragon King is much better than the last one! The old one demanded that the village send it a boy and a girl as sacrifices every year. After the current Dragon King arrived, it never asked for that again!"

The others looked at one another.

By the sound of it, this new demon had at least a bit of demonic virtue?

"And what happened afterward?" Jiang Yuechu asked.

At the mention of what came later, A Shui's spirits 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 entire roomful of rough men instantly became strange.

Demons having children was no unusual matter, but from the sound of it, this affair was probably not so simple.

"Then... then one day, Sister Xing'er, the village chief's daughter, went to bathe in the river. When she came back, her belly... her belly got bigger."

"..."

Even the well-traveled members of the Demon Suppression Office were stunned by such a method.

They had heard of taking things from afar, but planting seeds across water...

What the hell kind of divine power was that?!

"No one in the village knew what had happened. They thought Sister Xing'er had been with someone outside... with someone..."

She was too young to say such words aloud, but her meaning was already clear enough.

"The village chief was furious and wanted to break Sister Xing'er's legs. Later, it was only because the chief's wife pitied her daughter that she secretly went to town and hired a wandering Daoist priest to examine her."

"The Daoist took one look and said that what Sister Xing'er carried in her belly was not human... it was a demon fetus!"

"The village chief was so furious that he fainted on the spot. After waking, he led people to the Dragon King Temple, saying that they worshipped it out of respect, but it could not defile the people of their village like this!"

The others could only sigh at the tale.

Anyone would have their fur standing on end if this happened to them.

"And then? That girl..."

Liu Chen could not help asking.

A Shui shook her head. "No one knew what was wrong with Sister Xing'er. She was like she had gone mad and insisted on keeping the child in her belly, no matter what. No one could persuade her."

"The villagers all cursed her, saying she had been bewitched by demons and was a shameless, filthy thing. Even the village chief said... he no longer had such a daughter."

"In the end... in the end, several village elders made the decision. They said Sister Xing'er was carrying a fiend, that she had ruined the village's reputation, and that keeping her would bring disaster upon the village."

"So they... they 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...

Ah.

After a long while.

Only then did Liu Chen speak hoarsely. "So from then on, the Black River became like this?"

A Shui nodded. "On the second day after Sister Xing'er died, the Dragon King flew into a rage. The river started flowing backward, and three days later, it became what it is now—fishy and foul, with all the fish dead..."

Jiang Yuechu looked at the smashed shrine, her heart filled with a tangled mix of emotions.

She suddenly asked, "What about you? Who are you? Why are you here?"

A Shui wiped away her tears. "I... I have no father or mother. I begged for food in the village since I was little. The Dragon King was kind. It never ate the offerings the villagers sent over, 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, looking at them with bloodshot eyes full of pleading.

"Lord officers, big sister... can you... can you spare the Dragon King?"

"It's already so pitiful..."

"..."

Spare it?

Everyone exchanged looks.

The duty of the Demon Suppression Office was to slay demons and eliminate evil.

Now that this demon was wreaking havoc, the waterways had been cut off, and the people along the banks could barely survive. They had come under orders—how could they possibly spare it?

Zhao Hu was the first to break the silence. "Pitiful? Aren't the people who can't drink water and can only drink this stinking water while waiting to die pitiful?"

"And those brothers from the Yellow Division—neither seen alive nor found dead—aren't they pitiful?"

"One thing is one thing! A demon is a demon. If it harms people, it should be killed!"

Though his words were rough, they were the truth.

Liu Chen sighed but 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 the opinion of this newcomer.

"Duty demands it. It should naturally be killed."

The moment those words fell, the last trace of color drained completely from A Shui's face.

She looked at Jiang Yuechu in disbelief.

"...Bad people."

"You're all bad people!"

With a scream, the little girl 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, giving Jiang Yuechu a complicated look.

He had thought that, as a woman, Jiang Yuechu might feel somewhat more deeply about this matter. He had not expected her to be so decisive.

But...

That was fine too.

Everyone stood in a different position, and naturally handled matters differently.

Since they had become people of the Demon Suppression Office, they naturally had to think as the Demon Suppression Office did.

The villagers were indeed wrong to resort to private punishment, but that was a matter for the imperial court to handle.

The Demon Suppression Office had always followed only one rule.

Slay demons, eliminate evil.