County constable.
The black-faced man turned solemn at once.
Under Great Liang's system, the county constable ranked below the county magistrate and stood on equal footing with the county assistant magistrate and registrar as an aide. He was charged with apprehending adulterers and thieves, investigating ghosts, and slaying demons.
In other words, the county constable was the head of a county's security forces, the county magistrate's foremost enforcer.
The number of county constables varied according to the size of the county.
Shanyin County was an upper county and, by custom, should have had two county constables, but both posts had stood vacant for a long time.
"This humble commoner, Zhou Si of Shanyin, pays respects to Lord County Constable."
The flames had returned to their original color, and warmth once more filled this remaining main hall. Yet the bookish servant and the other herb-gathering men by the fire still wore expressions of terror, not yet recovered.
"Until the seal credentials have been inspected before the yamen, it does not count as taking office. Brother Zhou need not bow."
Su Che waved a hand, his thoughts sinking into contemplation.
Before taking office, he had read through all the case files concerning Shanyin County in the Ministry of Justice archives.
The illicit salt and the vanished prisoner-escort convoy were merely the clues that could be found in the files.
Twenty hu of illicit salt amounted to twelve hundred jin. The court's convoy sent to escort a notorious criminal had included no shortage of skilled fighters.
The former was a resource people found hard to part with; the latter was a force with formidable combat strength.
Both incidents had occurred at Withered Forest Monastery. To say there was nothing wrong with this place was absolutely impossible.
That was why he had come here himself. But what, exactly, had that thing outside been?
Su Che gently set the Sword Case on the ground, then walked over to the bookish servant and reached into the bamboo case to search through it.
"Lord County Constable, these brothers of mine..."
"No harm done. They were merely oppressed by a nightmare. Wait a while, and they will be fine."
Su Che paused briefly before continuing, "The human body has three souls and seven spirits. The three souls are the gods of longevity, while the seven spirits are the muddied ghosts within the body. Ordinarily, the souls govern the spirits, allowing one to move nimbly and think clearly. When demons cause mischief, soul and spirit are overturned, and the muddied spirits instead ride above the divine souls. Naturally, the body cannot move and the mouth cannot speak."
Seeing the suspicion on the black-faced man's face, Su Che continued explaining.
"This is the doctrine of the Daoist Shangqing Lineage's Purple Script Scripture of the Numinous Book. I am merely speaking at random."
Su Che pulled out a book from the bamboo case and flipped through several more pages, his brows knitting slightly.
This Withered Forest Monastery truly was far from simple.
"My lord's divine might covers the world. You slew demons and expelled evil—perhaps even the Celestial Masters are no more than this."
The black-faced man praised him from the bottom of his heart.
Divine might covering the world?
Su Che knew his own affairs best.
He had merely borrowed a tiger's might to frighten a fox.
Within that Sword Case rested a sword once wielded by a swordsman of the previous generation. It had been extraordinary from the start, and after following that swordsman through years of demon-slaying and evil-exorcising, it had long nurtured a baleful majesty.
Ordinarily, the divine object concealed its own brilliance. Kept within its case, nothing unusual could be seen. But once it encountered demons, devils, ghosts, or specters, it would unsheathe itself and test the frost-bright edge.
Slaying demons and eradicating evil was almost an instinct for this sword.
Without this sword, he would never have come straight up to Withered Forest Monastery.
But there was no need to tell the black-faced man before him any of this.
"A hundred-year-old owl becomes a Wood Wraith; laughter and green flames rise within its nest."
Su Che slowly closed the booklet in his hand. He had not expected Withered Forest Chan Temple to have bred such a thing.
"What is Young Master reciting?"
The pretty bookish servant supported his forehead with one hand and slowly climbed up from the ground.
"Young Master, did you kill that demon? I wonder what sort of thing it was."
The servant muttered to himself.
"Sleep. It will not come again tonight."
Dead or not, what did he mean, it would not come again tonight? He made it sound as though it were a beautiful woman coming for a tryst.
The little servant looked at his young master, rubbed his temples, then turned over and lay down to sleep.
Su Che gazed at the clear radiance outside the window, somewhat dazed for a moment.
Three months.
Even today, he still felt as if it had all been a hazy dream.
In his previous life, he had been an honest office worker punching in from nine to five. Apart from reading and raising cats, he had no other hobbies.
Who could have known that after waking from a dream, he would arrive in another world?
A world that looked much like his former one, yet was utterly different.
It was similar because it resembled the era of the Northern and Southern Dynasties from his previous life. North and south faced one another across the divide, and the flames of war stretched without end.
It was utterly different because here, a hundred ghosts walked in broad daylight and demons ran rampant.
And he himself was the Third Young Master of the Duling Su Clan.
An unlucky fool who had been given a savage beating by righteous young wanderers for molesting women.
The first thing he saw after transmigrating was himself stripping the clothes from the half-aged wife of some Ministry of War assistant director inside her carriage.
According to his predecessor's memories, for every garment he removed, he had to make her drink a mouthful of wine.
Heaven have mercy—the wife of that certain Ministry of War assistant director was already forty-nine.
And if he remembered correctly, his present self was still a virgin.
What kind of damned fetish was that? Driving a big car meant skilled driving; driving an antique car was a special fetish.
Then he ran into a group of young heroes in bright clothes and gallant steeds, out dispensing justice.
His major tendons had been torn, and his meridians injured.
The currently most popular path of Confucian Martial Way was something he could forget about for the time being.
After bitter reflection, Third Young Master Su decided to have his family pull some strings and secure him an out-of-town post. It would let him build up his strength, while also allowing him to avoid trouble.
Before his family, this Third Young Master Su had left flaws everywhere.
Changes in his temper and personality, alterations in his eating habits, even the differences in every gesture, in the way he walked, sat, lay down, and rose—anyone could see them at a glance.
Rather than let others grow suspicious, he might as well leave far behind at once. If any habits failed to match in the future, he could blame it all on the results of training away from home.
This was the idea Su Che had come up with in his haste.
Fortunately, while the Duling Su Clan was not among Great Liang's most exalted noble houses, settling such matters was no problem for them.
Through the arrangements of that elder living in the palace, the Ministry of Personnel soon completed the paperwork. Through hereditary privilege, he was appointed county constable of Shanyin County, becoming a Subordinate Ninth Rank official of the Great Liang Dynasty.
Naturally, that elder had given him quite an earful, imparting certain lessons in life and bestowing several secret treasures upon him along the way.
The Sword Case was one of them.
The firelight still burned within the main hall. After what had just happened, even the men bold enough to venture deep into the mountains to gather herbs could no longer sleep.
The group sat around the fire, listening as Su Che spoke with the black-faced man leading them.
"That thing was injured but not dead. Sooner or later, it will cause trouble again. Mister Zhou, once dawn breaks tomorrow, we will depart. I will send official notices to the surrounding counties, telling them to be more cautious and forbidding anyone from approaching Withered Forest Monastery."
Under Liang's official system, the county magistrate headed a county, with the county assistant magistrate, registrar, and county constable beneath him. By convention, the county assistant magistrate and registrar were both local men, while the county magistrate and county constable were selected by the Ministry of Personnel and dispatched to their posts.
This was the principle of internal and external powers restraining one another.
Since county magistrates and county constables were appointed directly by the court, local powerful clans could be prevented from wreaking havoc and monopolizing a region. Since county assistant magistrates and registrars came from the locality, county magistrates could likewise be kept from draining the pond to catch the fish.
Of course, that was merely the beauty of theory. In reality, county magistrates simply colluded with county assistant magistrates.
As one of those being butchered like fish and meat, the black-faced man had initially held some expectations for this county constable carrying a Sword Case.
But hearing this, he could not help feeling disappointed.
What exactly had he been expecting?
The black-faced man looked at Su Che. This county constable already counted as dutiful merely for knowing to send official notices to the neighboring counties.
Could he possibly expect him to raid this place?
Break mountains and destroy temples, slaughtering every demon and evil spirit.
Those were things the court had once done. Now, no one did them anymore.
"Everyone, rest easy. That wheel of blue light just now should have been a Wood Wraith."
Plants and trees, touched by the essence of sun and moon, could also become spirits and monsters. An ancient text said, "A thousand-year tree's essence becomes a blue ram; a ten-thousand-year tree's essence becomes an Azure Ox."
Among the several treasures Su Che had brought from the capital this time was a secret record called Records of the Hidden Within, notes compiled by the Imperial Demon Hunters on the forms and characteristics of all strange demons and ghostly monsters. It described the matter in unmistakable terms.
"...Whenever plants and trees are touched by the six human desires and become spirits, they are called Wood Wraiths. Their color is blue, blazing bright like a wheel. They do not delight in blood-food and often possess the virtue of Lunar Essence. They are also called Azure Emperor Boys... Their nature does not fear fire but fears metal. Consider the transformations of the Five Elements: wood is fire's father, while metal is wood's thief. When the golden wind arrives, wood withers. Whenever one encounters a Wood Wraith, array weapons in formation, and one may avoid it..."
All in all, it was a demon that liked moonlight and had no fixed form. Nor did it crave blood-food—that was, the flesh and blood of living beings.
It should have been the sort of demon that wanted to live in peace.
Su Che looked around at the surrounding halls. "Once I take office and complete the handover, I will order this place torn down."