Like the vast majority of Heavenly Dragon Gate disciples, Yan Bai had originally been a Wilderness Rogue Cultivator. After joining the Centipede Daoist, he had been granted the title of city lord and stationed on the frontier.
As the saying went, whatever those above favored, those below pursued with even greater zeal. To maintain his rule, the Centipede Daoist deliberately indulged his followers, and they swiftly degenerated into savage, brutal tyrants.
Recently, Yan Bai had been letting his Human-Head Centipedes roam the wilderness on the Far East frontier, following the Heavenly Dragon Gate's secret methods for raising corpse ghouls: offering sacrifices of flesh and blood to increase their grade and fighting strength.
They had done this many times before. It was not, as Li Chen and the others had imagined, an unexpectedly early attack on their doorstep.
But this time, something had gone wrong. Of the dozen or so Human-Head Centipedes he had released, one had failed to return.
Yan Bai had initially assumed it had wandered too far by accident and needed some time to return to its nest. He had never expected it to remain missing for days and nights.
Under the Heavenly Dragon Gate's rules, every increase in the grade of a Human-Head Centipede earned its keeper a corresponding reward, as well as better chances of receiving lands and rewards at the following year's Assembly.
Yet rather than flying into a rage, he eagerly led the cultivators under his command and a contingent of Shaman Folk officers and soldiers out of the city, heading east.
Along the way, the cultivators rode their Mechanism Beast puppets and chattered among themselves. Far from being upset by the missing Human-Head Centipede, they seemed positively cheerful, as though setting out on a spring outing.
"It really has been ages since a