The Hundred Faces of Life

At this moment, Song Yuan and Song Hui, father and son, hurriedly carried the child over to Lin Jun and dropped to their knees.

"Thank you, my lord!"

"Thank you, my lord!"

The two of them prostrated themselves before Lin Jun.

"It was my duty."

Lin Jun helped them up. This feudal dynasty's habit of kneeling at the drop of a hat truly made him uncomfortable.

"My lord, this old man dares to ask: do you have a lady you fancy?"

Song Yuan's sudden question left Lin Jun utterly baffled.

"Cough, cough. This old man only yesterday took a concubine. She is exceptionally graceful and beautiful. This old man is advanced in years and has no fortune to enjoy her. This old man heard that my lord favors married women..."

"Get lost, get lost, get lost!"

Lin Jun's face immediately fell.

He had nearly forgotten—the former owner of this body had harbored Cao Cao's ambitions.

In the end, after Lin Jun repeatedly refused, Song Yuan finally gave up on gifting him the concubine.

With no other choice, Song Yuan gave Lin Jun a stack of banknotes instead, which pleased Lin Jun somewhat.

The former owner had spent money like water, often visiting brothels and gambling dens whenever he had nothing better to do. Naturally, he had little money on him. If Chen Feng had not secretly hidden away some, Lin Jun feared he would not even have been able to pay the blacksmith.

This money was just what he needed in an emergency.

Once everything was settled, Lin Jun dragged the white snake out of the Song Family estate.

Its blood streaked a red line across the ground.

When the servants of the other households outside saw Lin Jun dragging out a white snake, every one of them ran back as though they had gone mad.

Before long, all the wealthy merchants in the southern part of the city learned one thing.

The Snake Demon that specialized in eating children was dead. It had died horribly, and even its head was gone.

That was not the most important part. The crucial thing was that the one who had killed the Snake Demon was Lin Jun—the very man they had stopped back then.

When the wealthy merchants whose children had died heard this news, they nearly failed to catch their breath.

In other words, if they had personally gone to ask him—or no, if they had merely let Lin Jun inside—their children would not have died.

The more they thought of it, the worse they felt.

It was practically the same as killing their own children with their own hands.

"You heartless bastard! You've done business until you've sold off even your conscience! You didn't even care whether your own son lived or died, did you?!"

"No, I didn't know! I truly didn't know Lin Jun was capable of this! If it were you, would you have believed it?!"

"Fine! You still dare to shout at me? I can't live like this anymore! I'm going back to my parents' home!"

"Hey, hey, hey..."

That night, the entire southern district of the city was far from peaceful. Quarrels, curses, roars, cries, and weeping—the hundred faces of life gathered into one corner.

Only the Song Family slept soundly.

When Lin Jun returned to the Demon Affairs Prefecture, Chen Feng rushed out.

"My lord, the southern district... have you taken care of it?"

Seeing the bloody snake body, Chen Feng silently lowered the sword in his hand and slowly sheathed it at his waist.

"Tonight, we're having snake soup. Wake Duan Yan and call her out to eat."

Chen Feng looked at Lin Jun, then looked behind him.

"What are you looking for?"

"My lord, doesn't this Snake Demon have any relatives? A son, parents, that sort of thing?"

How strange. This time, Lord Lin had not wiped out the Snake Demon's entire family?

That amused Lin Jun.

"This is the mother of the Snake Demon from last time. Now the family is all together."

Chen Feng broke out in goosebumps. Good lord, after all this time, Lin Jun was still thinking about that demon's whole family.

Before long, the white snake had turned into a pot of snake soup.

Naturally, Lin Jun's cooking skills were truly not worth praising. This entire pot of snake soup was Duan Yan's handiwork.

Lin Jun had not expected Duan Yan to know how to cook. Especially that little pouch of hers—it was not only stuffed full of snacks, but also packed with seasonings.

"An Origin Transformation demon... I never expected Green Forest County to have an Origin Transformation demon, one that even dared to enter the city and eat people."

Duan Yan's face was grave. Only now did she understand what Lin Jun had meant when he said the waters of Green Forest County ran deep.

Even in the places where demons ran most rampant, there had never been an incident of demons being so brazen as to enter a city openly and eat people.

Yet such a place had only been assigned Lin Jun, an unofficial demon exorcist.

"It hid itself too well. Even the Demon Exorcism Bureau was deceived."

Duan Yan took a sip of snake soup. Its delicious flavor made her unconsciously reveal a comfortable expression, but she quickly realized that such an expression seemed inappropriate during such a serious discussion and forced it down.

"Why didn't you notify the Demon Exorcism Bureau sooner?"

Lin Jun smiled helplessly.

"I told them. Who would have believed me? You?"

Duan Yan gave a dry cough. Given Lin Jun's record in the Demon Exorcism Bureau and the foolish things he had done, indeed, no one would have believed him.

Duan Yan turned her gaze to Chen Feng.

"I already withdrew from the Demon Exorcism Bureau, and you know about my relationship with his uncle."

Duan Yan instantly felt despair. No one would reply to either Lin Jun or Chen Feng.

"Fine. I'll do it."

Her internal injuries had yet to heal, so she could only send word through a Golden-Feather Eagle.

This place was too far from the Demon Exorcism Bureau. Golden-Feather Eagles were not suited for long-distance travel, but there was truly no other choice right now.

Very quickly, Duan Yan wrote down the information here on paper and summoned her personal Golden-Feather Eagle.

"Wait for now. Sigh, in a month, you'll be able to leave this place. At that time, you can report the information here to the people of the Demon Exorcism Bureau as well."

Lin Jun's circumstances were too unusual. In these three years, rather than saying he had been sent out to gild his credentials, from the Demon Exorcism Bureau's perspective, it was more like exile. Now that his sentence was nearly over, the Demon Exorcism Bureau could accept him again.

But the small place known as Green Forest County was exceedingly complicated.

A small temple bred fierce demon winds; shallow waters hid many turtles. A tiny Green Forest County had actually produced such powerful demons. Even the Tiger-Pattern Bureau might not necessarily be able to hold down the fort here.

Yet Lin Jun had carved out a bloody path through so many demons. Duan Yan once again marveled at how monstrous he was.

And that was with him alone.

She automatically ignored Chen Feng.

Soon, the three of them finished a bowl of snake soup, and Duan Yan hurried back to her room.

"I need to speed up my recovery. I keep feeling that the atmosphere in Azure Forest City has been strange lately. You two must not let down your guard either. A demon exorcist's intuition is very accurate."

Chen Feng nodded seriously. He too felt that something had seemed off about Green Forest County these past days.

It seemed that ever since Zhang He had died, the atmosphere of the entire Green Forest County had changed.

"My lord, I'm going to cultivate. Be careful."

"Mm."

Once he saw the two disappear, Lin Jun took the white fur from his bag.

Lin Jun's enhanced intuition had long sensed that something was wrong with Green Forest County, but he could not say exactly what was wrong.

In any case, it felt deeply unpleasant, like being trapped inside an airtight room.

Stifling. Suffocating.

"Fox Spirit? Zhang Ju?"

In truth, Lin Jun had never seen Zhang Ju. When he had first arrived in Green Forest County, Zhang Ju had not even come out to greet him.

A county magistrate who had not shown himself for three years was already strange in itself.

But Lin Jun could only wait passively now, and that made him feel extremely uncomfortable.

"I'll raise my own strength first."

Lin Jun went back into his room.

Fox Spirit or Leopard Spirit, whatever it was—so long as his own strength was hard enough, he could break through it all with brute force.

There was no helping it. Zhang Ju was in the shadows while Lin Jun stood in the light. He could only wait passively.

At the same time, the Golden-Feather Eagle had only just flown out of Green Forest County when it directly turned into a cloud of blood mist in the air.

The letter fell into someone's hand.

"Lin Jun? I never thought that while I was away, that wine sack and rice bag would have grown into something."

A person in white looked toward the bright moon and spoke slowly.