A world in turmoil

Cultivation as a demon soul belonged to the unorthodox Ghost Dao.

According to Fahai, those who followed unorthodox paths found it difficult to break through to the first rank.

The ultimate goal of Ghost Dao cultivation was to return a yin spirit to the living world and become a ghost immortal.

Once a ghost immortal gained a physical body, they could switch to another cultivation path and potentially break through that realm.

So saying that cultivating an unorthodox path cut off all prospects was not entirely accurate.

Paths were fixed, but people were flexible. It was just a matter of keeping a foot in several boats.

Zhou Yi, for example, recited the Yellow Court Dao Scripture day and night, practicing a cultivation method that could not have been more orthodox within the Mystic Sect. Yet he also knew some Divine Dao spells and could chant a few Buddhist School mantras.

Devotion to purity and refinement was a Dao; drawing on the strengths of many schools was also a Dao.

After eight years of slaying demons and monsters, he had begun to discern a faint pattern in the Demon and Monster Compendium's rewards.

Slaying monsters mostly yielded physical items, while killing demonic cultivators mostly yielded techniques. There were exceptions-for instance, rewards grew more random the higher the creature's rank-but overall, they rarely strayed far from the slain foe's attributes.

The low-ranked members of the demon race Zhou Yi had killed covered almost every variety, and their rewards had all become years of cultivation.

The rewards for eliminating demonic fiends, however, had continued to take other forms. Humans were favored by heaven and earth, and even the Demon and Monster Compendium treated them differently. At the very least, it assigned each person an individual entry.

How could a private burial plot be the same as a communal cemetery?

That day, he carried out his routine monster-slaying duties.

Yip!

Yip!

Feng Ling'er circled the Wolf Demon, giving cheerful cries, seemingly quite pleased with her dinner.

"Little fox, hurry up and release me! I'm a commander of Black Wind Mountain. I'll take you to feast on fine food and drink!"

"Ever eaten human flesh? Crunchy as can be!"

Seeing a fox spirit in the Demon-Slaying Bureau kindled hope in the half-human, half-wolf Wolf Demon's despairing heart.

The Demon-Slaying Bureau was infamous among demons and monsters. Once someone entered, death was certain. Still, a few occasionally escaped each year and spread information about the prison.

The Punishment Office, the A-, B-, and Heaven-Class Prisons, the executioners...

The Wolf Demon was quite powerful and served as a monster general under a greater monster. He was widely experienced and had long since heard of the Demon-Slaying Bureau.

"Tell me about Black Wind Mountain, and I'll give you a quick death later."

Zhou Yi was sharpening his instruments. The blade for slaying monsters could not be blunt; if it did not slice cleanly through flesh, his thoughts would not flow freely either.

The Wolf Demon was the third demon or monster he had killed that day. Ever since he had overstepped the rules to rescue the fox spirit's soul, Zhou Yi had grown a little bolder.

Each day, he randomly selected two executioners, sometimes from other sections. Their assigned demons and monsters had to come from at least the Earth-Class Prison, preferably ones already recorded in the Demon and Monster Compendium, so killing them would yield cultivation rewards.

In a little over a year, his cultivation had increased by more than two thousand years. His Small Goal of ten thousand years of cultivation was no longer far off.

The number of demons and monsters Zhou Yi killed grew by the day. He might well have become the cultivator who had slain the most demons and monsters in the world.

After so much slaughter, he had developed many insights of his own into the Dao of killing. His technique, for example, had become increasingly refined. Without using the Spirit Eye Technique, he could clearly discern a demon or monster's meridians and bones at a glance.

This state resembled Cook Ding carving an ox: skill bordering on the Dao.

If Zhou Yi recorded his methods, they would surely become a martial art devoted specifically to slaying and dissecting monsters.

This was a skill he had comprehended himself, independent of the Demon and Monster Compendium, and it delighted him immensely.

"You despicable human! If you hadn't lured me with living prey, how could I have fallen into an ambush? Release me if you have the guts! Believe it or not, Grandpa Wolf will swallow you whole!"

Listening to the rasp of instruments being sharpened, the Wolf Demon felt a chill down his spine and his eyelids twitched, yet he kept shouting threats.

"What a shame. Why couldn't you just cooperate? It would have spared you the agony of a soul search!"

Having finished sharpening his instruments, Zhou Yi flicked his wrist, stripping off the wolf's hide in an instant.

Little on the Wolf Demon was valuable. The hide could be made into a Refined Dharma Robe, the claws and teeth into Dharma Artifacts, and the tail into a talisman brush. The remaining flesh and blood would all be thrown into the Demon Refining Cavern.

Soul search!

Scenes from the monster's memories appeared before his eyes. Zhou Yi reviewed them and discovered plenty of useful information.

Qi Prefecture, a greater monster, Black Wind Mountain...

Without ever leaving home, Zhou Yi had already assembled a map of the entire Great Qian Dynasty in his mind through demons' and monsters' memories.

"So the Demon-Slaying Bureau uses entrapment too. They drove bandits and brigands into Black Wind Mountain to cause trouble, baited the Wolf Demon commander into slaughtering and devouring them, then sprang out to subdue him."

Zhou Yi pondered for a moment, his brows drawing together slightly. The Demon-Slaying Bureau had clearly overstepped its authority.

The Great Qian Code imposed various restrictions on immortal masters. Eliminating bandits and brigands was a local military matter, falling under secular jurisdiction. Intervening without authorization was a serious crime.

Besides, the Wolf Demon remembered eating bandits and brigands, but who could say they had not been ordinary people dressed up as such?

"This world is growing more chaotic by the day..."

A spirit flame rose from Zhou Yi's hand as he refined the Wolf Demon's soul.

A short while later, the wailing ceased, leaving only a gray Soul Pearl condensed from pure soul power.

Reward: 3 years of cultivation!

With a flick of his finger, the Soul Pearl landed in Feng Ling'er's mouth.

Yip! Yip!

Feng Ling'er knew no Ghost Dao cultivation methods. She swallowed the Soul Pearl and simply waited for it to merge with her on its own, inadvertently aligning herself with the cultivation principle of letting nature take its course.

The Wolf Demon was only a minor interlude. Afterward, however, Zhou Yi noticed a substantial increase in the number of demons and monsters compared with the same period before.

Only five or six executioners currently in the Punishment Office had survived more than a year. They spent every day terrified of dying; how could they spare any attention for the number of demons and monsters?

Zhou Yi had long possessed a photographic memory. He could clearly recall every demon and monster he had killed each day over the past eight years.

Counting backward in thirty-day months, the monthly number of demons and monsters slain had fluctuated little throughout those eight years, until a sharp increase over the past two months.

"Natural disasters, man-made calamities... troubled times are coming to Great Qian. Who knows how it will all end!"

Tales of the Executioner, which Zhou Yi had not updated in a long time, gained new chapters.

One new piece recounted the Wolf Demon's experience. Rather than describe it directly, he titled it "Two Executioners Debate the Law."

Through a conversation between two executioners, the author incorporated the tale into the book. At the end, he lamented the hardships of the times, obliquely conveying how the Demon-Slaying Bureau had exceeded its authority in enforcing the law.

The second story came from a demonic woman of the Bare Body Sect.

The rebellion in Flying Cloud Province had already lasted more than a year. Far from being suppressed, the Naked Demon Cult had conquered three more commanderies, becoming another major threat after the Yaksha Demon Venerable.

This female fiend had originally been a woman from a respectable family. Her husband had been conscripted and died on the battlefield while fighting the rebels.

In a year of great disaster, her household was left with only an elderly person and a widow. Their hardships were easy to imagine. To keep herself fed and alive, she relied on her considerable beauty and became a clandestine prostitute in the village.

Many of the village's men had slept with her, arousing resentment among their wives. Then famine spread, and the men could no longer afford even a handful of rice.

So, during a rain-praying ceremony, they tied the woman to a stone and sank her into the river as a blood sacrifice to the water god.

A passing Wind Patrol Envoy of the Naked Demon Cult rescued her from the brink of death. Discovering that she had a good aptitude for cultivation, the envoy recruited her as an undercover agent for the cult.

After cultivating demonic arts, the woman became strikingly beautiful and alluring in every gesture. She became the favored concubine of Yangqing Commandery's governor and seized the opportunity to steal maps of the city's defenses and troop deployments.

When the Naked Demon Cult captured Yangqing Commandery's capital, the governor, who escaped through a secret passage, seized the woman and brought her to the imperial capital, hoping the court would lessen his punishment.

-Executioners have put many demonic cultivators to death and found that most merely drifted with the current, driven by worldly circumstances into the demonic path. Perhaps, if certain causes were changed, the number of demonic cultivators might decrease. Considering this case alone...

Zhou Yi added a few comments at the end, touching on the matter without delving deeper.

In his previous life, he had been born beneath the red flag and grown up in the spring breeze, barely encountering the world's darker side. The Punishment Office Prison was too dark and oppressive; he needed to vent a little through his book.

The latest stories in Tales of the Executioner had taken on an unmistakably satirical tone.

Several came close to pointing straight at the Demon-Slaying Bureau's nose and cursing it, so he kept them at the bottom of his chest rather than circulating them. At least while he remained in the Punishment Office, they could not be shared.

"Why does this feel a little like... picking up the bowl to eat, then putting it down to curse the cook?"

Zhou Yi muttered to himself, "No wonder nobody likes novelists!"

In his ninth year in the Punishment Office, Zhou Yi encountered an old acquaintance.

Immortal Master Fahai.