While Chen Miao observed the standoff between the Corpse Lord and the Starveling Lord, Yan Nangui, head of the Demon-Suppression Department, who had already arrived in secret and prepared to intervene, remained in hiding.
The Demon-Suppressing Bureau's Six Departments had lost two department heads. Now, only the heads of the Demon-Suppression Department, Law-Enforcement Department, Prison Suppression Department, and Equipment Department remained.
Originally, the Demon-Suppressing Bureau had not planned to intervene here. Between the Banner Commanders and Banner Assistants serving under the department heads, Paper-Offering Kong, Corpse-Driving Wang, the Feng Family, and the Grandmasters of all the other clans, large and small, they had seventy or eighty Grandmasters, if not a hundred.
Even without mobilizing everyone, sending ten or twenty Grandmasters should have been enough to settle the situation here.
But no one had expected a surprise attack to release the Corpse Lord, who should have been successfully sealed away. Nor had anyone expected the Mountain-Bound Starveling Lord to be so troublesome.
The two Blood Fiends presented different problems.
Before the Corpse Lord emerged from the Bronze Coffin, Grandmasters could still withstand the black mist after entering it. That was why three Grandmaster-level Corpse Bearers and the Wang Family's three Flying Jiangshi elders had been able to join forces.
But the Mountain-Bound Starveling Lord was different.
The Mountain-Bound Starveling Lord paid no attention to anyone below the Grandmaster level who entered the Desolate Domain. The Ghosts spawned within that domain attacked them instead.
Unfortunately, those Ghosts were stronger than ordinary Netherworld Realm Yin Cultivation practitioners, yet weaker than Grandmasters.
Anyone sent inside either died at the hands of those Ghosts or, if they were a little stronger, could only keep themselves alive. They could accomplish nothing at all.
But whenever a Grandmaster entered, the gaunt Starveling Lord would follow, drawing closer