Pan Long put away the invitation card and returned to town.
He found a little shop selling all kinds of gossip and light reading, then bought a booklet titled Demonic Path of Yun Province.
The booklet had no author's name. It catalogued organizations large and small across Yun Province that bore the label "Demonic Path." Though it contained only public information, it was enough for a rough understanding of them.
Pan Long took the booklet back to his inn and lay on the bed to read it.
At the head of Yun Province's Demonic Path stood the "Great Righteousness Hall" of the Demon God Yiwu.
Strictly speaking, the Great Righteousness Hall was not a martial arts organization, but a mutual aid association of villagers. People in some particularly impoverished parts of southern Yun Province had joined together, sharing what they had and looking out for one another, and formed the organization.
Nor had the foremost Demon God of Yun Province founded it. It was simply that most of those who had led its founding owed Yiwu a debt of gratitude, so everyone honored him as the hall master of the Great Righteousness Hall.
In truth, that Demon God was rarely seen and never stayed in one place. How could he serve as the leader of some faction?
The Great Righteousness Hall had a vast membership spread across five or six commanderies and dozens of counties in southern Yun Province. Towns were one thing, but out in the countryside, the characters for "Great Righteousness" were written on nearly every household's door. At the entrances to village ancestral halls hung peachwood plaques painted with a divine bird sigil—the mark of the Great Righteousness Hall.
According to the booklet, at least nearly a million people across Yun Province had joined the Great Righteousness