The deep winter snow, like white mourning silk torn to shreds by heaven, had fallen without pause for seven full days.
The land of Southern Qingzhou was frozen solid, and the biting wind cut like steel blades scraping bone.
In weather this brutal, even the tenacious low-tier demon beasts mostly huddled in their caves, unwilling to move.
Yet for Anping County, which had only just sworn its "oath to protect the Dao," the snow had not frozen the gears of its operations. Instead, it provided the perfect curtain to conceal the roar of its terrifying war machine.
Great Wall Prefecture's official [Conscription Order] was still on its way, but Chu Bai knew all too well that in the cultivation world's cruel game of chess, where lives were worth no more than grass, waiting for the court's decree before making preparations was no different from baring one's neck for the executioner.
Never fight an unprepared battle. That was the iron rule that had kept Chu Bai alive through mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
"His Majesty wants the most detailed maps of Lingchang Prefecture and the distribution of its demons! Dig three feet into the earth if you have to, but pry that intelligence out for me!"
At the Vanguard Camp's base in the Outer City, Pang Song, deputy director of the Demon-Suppression Office, roared like muffled thunder through the wind and snow.
Thousands of rogue cultivators bound by Divine Sense Restrictions were under tight watch by fully armed Black-Armored Guards in a cluster of crude stone huts. Pang Song and Hu Hao had joined forces to conduct a ruthless, exhaustive screening of these cultivators who had fled Lingchang Prefecture.
This screening required no torture. In Anping County, food was the finest truth serum.
A bowl of Golden Jade Blood-Rice