Wind-Calling and Rain-Summoning

The Demon-Slaying Bureau.

Zhou Yi strolled leisurely to the entrance of Cell B-13.

More than a dozen demon-slaying officers stood guard outside the cell. When they saw Zhou Yi approach, the young man in silver armor leading them shouted a challenge.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Reporting to you, Captain, this lowly one is Zhou Yi, an executioner from Section A of the execution chambers. Here is my identification token."

Zhou Yi displayed his token. "Captain Xu assigned me to deal with the demon in Cell B-13 today."

"Xu Yun?"

"Yes."

"Cell B-13 is temporarily closed. Take the day off."

"Thank you, Captain."

With a pleased expression, Zhou Yi turned and left.

He overheard voices inside the cell discussing how the Blackwater Mystic Serpent's soul had been utterly destroyed, how it had probably died at the hands of the escaping demon, and so on.

Earlier, upon discovering that experts from the Demon-Slaying Bureau were approaching, he had killed the snake demon in the cell outright. He had still been wondering how to bluff his way through when the three of them went straight off in pursuit of the dragon soul.

The Demon-Slaying Commandants who arrived afterward were far weaker than Zhou Yi, allowing him to slip silently out of the cell.

Now that he was handling demons in his capacity as an executioner, there should be no major holes in his cover.

The Demon-Slaying Bureau was Zhou Yi's treasure trove. Unless he had absolutely no other choice, he would never leave.

For the next three days, the Demon-Slaying Bureau's dungeon was turned upside down, and every executioner was screened with the Demon-Revealing Mirror.

Zhou Yi was also summoned for questioning several times, though his interrogators were all Demon-Slaying Commandants.

Executioners held a position akin to menial servants within the Demon-Slaying Bureau-and servants who had signed away their freedom at that. They underwent several rounds of testing before entering the bureau, so no one suspected them.

In the end, nothing unusual was discovered. Apart from the escaped dragon soul, the Demon-Slaying Bureau had suffered no losses, and the matter was dropped.

"Old Zhou, get up. There's roll call today."

Hearing the voice, Zhou Yi roused himself from his feigned sleep.

The Punishment Office remained a place where daylight never penetrated, but Zhou Yi could now see in the dark.

He was the longest-surviving executioner in the Punishment Office. Everyone else had arrived after him, so they all called him Old Zhou.

During roll call, the count showed that Section A now had more than eighty men.

The rate at which executioners died could not remotely keep pace with the rate at which replacements arrived.

"Today's main assignment is to deal with a group of water demons. The most important among them is... Cell A-35."

Captain Xu glanced at the executioner roster. "Zhou Yi, you're a veteran executioner. This one's a big fellow. You have three days. Make certain every cut is precise, and don't waste even the slightest scrap."

"Understood."

Zhou Yi felt a stirring of intuition. Perhaps a pleasant surprise awaited him.

When he opened Cell A-35, he saw the flood dragon pinned to the wall by a long spear. Sure enough, it was an old acquaintance.

The Azure Wave Dragon King's soul and magical power had both been sealed. Even after several days, he could barely open his eyes.

The instant Zhou Yi entered the cell, the Azure Wave Dragon King's eyes turned blood-red.

Had his mouth and nose not been sealed, he would have hurled every vicious curse he had accumulated over a thousand years at Zhou Yi.

"To think we're so fated to meet. It's only been a few days, and here we are again."

Zhou Yi was not one to waste words. Every part of the flood dragon was a treasure, and there was surely a captain watching in secret.

Even the execution tools in Cell A-35 were specially made. Ordinary ones would not have cut through dragon hide.

Two days later, amid unbearable indignation, the Azure Wave Dragon King's soul scattered into oblivion, leaving behind dragon scales, dragon hide, dragon claws, dragon teeth, dragon eyes, dragon gall...

Each time Zhou Yi removed a part, he made a trip to the Ministry of Works to ensure its freshness, drawing gasps from the crowd.

They marveled that the flood dragon was a treasure from head to tail, unlike the Black Baleful Demon Venerable last time, from whom they could not squeeze even a few ounces of profit.

They marveled at Zhou Yi's seasoned skill. He truly deserved his reputation as the Punishment Office's finest blade. Just look at those dragon scales—not a bit of further processing was needed before they could be forged into treasured dragon-scale armor.

The flood dragon appeared beyond the thousandth page of the Demon and Monster Compendium, considerably below the Black Baleful Demon Venerable.

Reward obtained: Wind-Calling and Rain-Summoning!

One of the thirty-six Heavenly Gang arts, it could summon fierce winds and torrential rain, or disperse clouds and halt the rain. Blizzards, hailstorms, typhoons, and the like all fell within its power to command clouds and rain.

Compared with the art of commanding clouds and rain itself, the accompanying improvements to his mastery of water and wind techniques were hardly worth mentioning.

An art of the Heavenly Gang. A pity it isn't one of those mighty divine abilities that reverse yin and yang or shift the stars and constellations. Still, controlling wind, rain, and the weather certainly counts as an immortal's magic!

The cultivation methods and divine abilities awarded by the Demon and Monster Compendium came with more than just manuals. They also included insights into cultivation.

With some time spent on them, Zhou Yi could reach full mastery.

The flood dragon had trespassed into the dungeon and then escaped. Even though he had ultimately been brought to justice and executed, the incident served as a warning to the Demon-Slaying Bureau, which had cowed demons, monsters, ghosts, and fiends throughout the realm for a century and grown lax, proud, and complacent.

Furthermore, the person who had fought the flood dragon inside the dungeon had never been caught, so the Demon-Slaying Bureau increased its patrols of the Punishment Office.

Daoist immortal masters laid down a Magnetism Formation outside the five elements, while Buddhist meditation masters blessed inscriptions that suppressed demons. Unfortunately, even after more than a year, they still had not found the expert hidden in their midst.

None of this affected Zhou Yi.

Every day, he slew demons and fiends and received rewards, with years of cultivation accounting for an ever-growing share.

The pages of the Demon and Monster Compendium were beyond counting, but common members of the demon race belonged to only a few hundred kinds. Supposedly, demons with certain special innate gifts were not sent to the Demon-Slaying Bureau, but dealt with elsewhere.

During that time, Zhou Yi killed a lizard demon in an Earth-Class Prison and obtained a shapeshifting art that allowed him to assume the appearance of anyone he had seen. It reminded him of Mystique from a film in his previous life.

If Mystique came to Great Qian, she would surely die a miserable death. Demons, monsters, ghosts, and fiends possessed far too many shapeshifting arts, and cultivators distinguished the genuine from the false by the aura of the soul.

After learning to shapeshift, Zhou Yi used an illusion to deceive an executioner, killed the demon in the cell himself, collected the reward, and then released the executioner from the illusion.

Within the illusion, the executioner had killed the demon himself-and the real demon was indeed dead.

There was only a brief sensation of dizziness, which aroused no suspicion in the Punishment Office Prison, filled with countless demons, monsters, ghosts, and fiends.

In this way, the rewards from the Demon and Monster Compendium doubled.

By helping kill the demons, Zhou Yi also removed dangers for his fellow executioners.

Almost every day, executioners died at the hands of demons. On several occasions, demons with desperate, life-sacrificing secret arts tried to drag Zhou Yi down with them, only to be mercilessly crushed beneath thousands of years of cultivation.

After nearly two years of accumulation, Zhou Yi's cultivation surpassed five thousand years, barely meeting the minimum requirement to cast the Heavenly Gang Daoist art, Wind-Calling and Rain-Summoning.

Wind-Calling and Rain-Summoning ranked in the lower-middle range of the thirty-six Heavenly Gang arts, yet still required five thousand years of cultivation. World-remaking divine abilities such as Creation-Reversing and Heaven-Mending and Sun-Bathing would require at least a hundred thousand years.

Zhou Yi could scarcely imagine what realm he would reach after circulating and cultivating the Yellow Court Dao Scripture for a hundred thousand years.

Zhou Yi killed the snake demon before him and obtained one year of cultivation. Ever since his cultivation reached a thousand years, the rewards from Heaven-Class Prisons had grown increasingly poor.

His spiritual sense swept through the cell and found no hidden surveillance. It was the perfect opportunity to test the Heavenly Gang art.

Zhou Yi stepped through the Heavenly Gang pattern, formed hand seals, and murmured an incantation.

"Wind-Calling and Rain-Summoning!"

The forty-sixth year of Jingtai's reign.

Summer.

Of Great Qian's sixteen provinces and one hundred and twenty-three commanderies, more than half had not seen a single drop of rain.

In a year of great drought, wicked forces were bound to seize the chance to sow chaos.

The Naked Demon Cult in Flying Cloud Prefecture and the White Lotus Heretical Dao in Jingchang Province used evil arts to bewitch the common people, sweeping displaced refugees into rebellion.

Wei Province suffered the worst. The unorthodox expert Yaksha Demon Venerable raised the banner of revolt, with his disciples styling themselves the Eight Heavenly Kings. In a short time, they swept through five commanderies.

The Immortal-Service Bureau, Dragon-Guarding Bureau, Palace Attendants Bureau, and Demon-Slaying Bureau all dispatched immortal masters to suppress the rebels and slay demons and fiends.

The scourge of demons was easy to eradicate; the demons in human hearts were not.

With no relief from the drought and not a single grain harvested from the fields, the common people had no path left but rebellion.

Land gods, City Gods, mountain gods, and water gods could expend the divine power of incense offerings to bring rain. However, when they first received their investiture from Great Qian, all manner of rules had been laid down. Without an order in the court's yellow register, any deity who privately brought rain committed high treason and was suspected of illicitly gathering incense offerings. Their sacred mountains would be razed and their temples destroyed.

A month earlier, the land god of Jiangning Commandery took pity on the people within his domain and brought rain without authorization, secretly redirecting underground rivers to irrigate the fields.

An immortal master serving as an Attendant of the Immortal-Service Bureau descended the following day, subdued Jiangning Commandery's land god, and shattered his soul on the spot. The Land God Temple was utterly destroyed.

For a time, deities throughout Great Qian were shaken. None dared respond to their worshippers' rain-seeking rites again.

Cultivation on the divine path placed little importance on innate talent and progressed swiftly, but depended heavily on incense offerings and faith.

At the beginning of the drought, worshippers everywhere offered sacrifices and prayed for rain, causing the power of incense offerings to soar.

The court issued no yellow registers authorizing rain, the deities dared not respond, and their worshippers steadily dwindled.

As their incense offerings continued to wither, every one of them burned with anxiety.