Su Yu drew back the solid wooden door bolt with one hand.
Tang Shan stood below the steps, drenched in sweat.
His right hand clamped over his broken ribs, his features twisting slightly with pain and fear.
"Word just came from the infirmary!"
"Old Zhou, who guarded the morgue last night, is dead! Someone ripped his heart out while he was still alive and hung his body upside down from a roof beam!"
"All those half-yao corpses brought back from Blackwater Village have been stolen from the morgue!"
Tang Shan spoke extremely quickly.
"Commander Lin ordered everyone to assemble immediately and investigate through the night!"
Hearing this, Su Yu reached back for the black-gold saber on the stone table and strode over the threshold.
Cold wind swept into his face, laden with heavy moisture.
"The Liu Family's doing?"
Su Yu rapidly sifted through the current situation in his mind.
If the Liu Family wanted revenge, their best option was to hire killers for a nighttime assault and wipe him out with overwhelming force.
Sending someone into the Demon Suppression Bureau to steal a few worthless half-yao remains, then ripping out a low-ranking night watchman's heart and hanging him upside down-
That was equivalent to trampling the Demon Suppression Bureau's dignity into a cesspit.
It would inevitably provoke Lin Xiao into a frenzied, relentless attack that would not stop until one side was dead.
The Liu Family's patriarch was a calculating merchant. He would never do something so foolish, with such meager returns and explosive risks.
It was not the Liu Family.
A third faction had entered the game.
"Go."
Su Yu tossed out the word and headed straight for the front courtyard.
Torches blazed in the Demon Suppression Bureau's front courtyard. Dozens of Demon Suppression Guards stood solemnly in formation, their armor gleaming coldly.
Lin Xiao stood on the steps, his hand on his saber hilt, his expression grim.
"East, south, and north of the city. Groups of three. Spread out and search."
"Anyone with blood on them, Yao Qi, or suspicious movements-execute first, report afterward."
Lin Xiao's gaze swept across everyone like a blade before settling on Su Yu.
"Su Yu."
"You and Tang Shan will take the old alleys in the west."
The old alleys in the west.
Nanhe County's most notorious lawless quarter.
Gangs, refugees, and illicit prostitutes mingled there. Even the sewers were crammed with rotting flesh and bleached bones.
If someone truly wanted to conceal corpses reeking of blood and decay, that den for fencing stolen goods was the only place where they could escape notice.
"Yes."
Su Yu accepted the order, and the two turned and disappeared into the deep night.
The night was late and the dew heavy. The stone-paved road gave off the dim sheen of moss.
Tang Shan drew his sword, his nerves stretched to their limit.
Su Yu walked ahead at an even pace, without making the slightest sound.
The savage spiritual power of the seventh level of the Mortal Realm surged steadily through his body, his senses pushed to their current limit.
The pungent odors of swill, night soil, and cheap face powder mingled in the air, with an extremely faint trace of sour decay among them.
Su Yu stopped abruptly and raised his left index finger.
Tang Shan immediately clamped his mouth shut and pressed his back against a ruined wall.
From the corner ahead came a spine-chilling chewing sound as bones were forcibly crushed between jaws of immense strength.
Thick blood dripped into a filthy puddle.
Su Yu pressed his right hand against his saber guard and glided forward along the foot of the wall like a ghost.
Beyond the crumbling mud wall, a massive black shape crouched deep in the deathly silent alley.
It was not human.
It was a mutated Corpse-Eating Hound as large as a full-grown water buffalo.
Sores covered its body, great patches of dark-red flesh turned outward, with writhing white maggots faintly visible within.
Its bloody maw was tearing at an incomplete half-yao corpse-one of those missing from the morgue.
Sensing a living creature approach, the Corpse-Eating Hound abruptly flung aside the shredded flesh and turned, its scarlet slit pupils locking onto Su Yu.
Foul-smelling saliva dripped from its fangs, corroding charred holes into the blue stone beneath it.
Several extremely fine red threads could faintly be seen embedded in the flesh along its spine, connected to the churning darkness behind it.
Hiss!
The Corpse-Eating Hound drove off with all four limbs. Its massive body raised a gust of choking, foul-smelling wind as it shot straight at Su Yu's face like a cannonball leaving the barrel.
Combat strength at the sixth level of the Mortal Realm.
Tang Shan's view was blocked from behind. He only heard that terrifying rush of wind, and his body involuntarily retreated several steps.
Rather than retreat, Su Yu advanced. His right thumb pushed against the guard, and half the black-gold saber flashed out of its sheath.
Driven by the terrifying blood and Qi within him, his pinnacle-level Gale Saber Technique erupted instantly. The blade split the air with a piercing shriek.
From above.
A single cleaving slash.
Squelch.
The supposedly indestructible canine skull split cleanly down the middle. Red-and-white pulp sprayed in a fan across the mud walls on either side.
The massive hound's corpse was neatly bisected and crashed into the muck. It twitched twice, then became a heap of dead flesh.
An instant kill.
Tang Shan's pupils contracted as he caught up. He could clearly sense that Su Yu was several times stronger than before, if not more.
That was a mutated yao beast with a physique far beyond a martial artist of the same realm!
And it had been sliced into two chunks of rotten flesh with one stroke!
Just what secrets was this squad leader, who had only taken office a day ago, hiding?
Following a madman like this meant either dying a violent death in the streets or soaring into the heavens atop countless bones.
[Killed a sixth-level Mortal Realm Corpse-Eating Hound. Gained 60 Slaughter Points.] [Current Slaughter Points: 60]
He flicked his wrist, shaking the remaining blood from the black-gold blade along its blood groove.
Before he could sheathe his saber, an extremely hoarse, cold laugh came from the darkness deep in the alley.
"What a fierce saber."
"To think a backwater like Nanhe County could nurture such a promising seedling."
Fluctuations of cold spiritual power erupted abruptly, and the temperature around them plummeted.
A layer of white frost instantly formed over the muddy water. A gaunt black figure floated down from a rooftop, touching the ground silently on his toes.
The newcomer wore a loose gray robe, half his face concealed in the shadow of his hood.
The spiritual power surging around him was thick as water, far beyond that of any Mortal Realm martial artist Su Yu had seen.
The eighth level of the Mortal Realm.
Su Yu tightened his right hand around his saber hilt again.
The supreme-grade Suppressing Prisons and Subduing Demons cultivation technique, which he had brought to major mastery, thundered into motion within him. Dull peals of thunder exploded one after another deep in his marrow.
The old man's previously casual posture instantly stiffened.
The seventh level of the Mortal Realm?
No!
Even those body-tempering maniacs at the eighth level of the Mortal Realm couldn't match the density of this brat's blood and Qi!
Where had this freak crawled out from?
The old man raised his withered right hand. All five fingernails instantly lengthened by over an inch, their surfaces steeped in the eerie green gleam of deadly poison.
"You cannot be allowed to live!"
Before his words had faded-
The old man blurred into a gray afterimage. His five claws tore through the air, plunging straight toward Su Yu's heart.
Heart-Ripping Claw.
The Ghost Shadow Sect's signature supreme art.
Su Yu completed his tactical assessment in an instant.
I can't dodge it.
His movement technique is of an extremely high grade, and his speed completely overwhelms mine. Then I'll meet him head-on.
The blue flagstones beneath Su Yu's feet collapsed with a crash. He neither retreated nor dodged.
Drawing his left fist to his waist, he unleashed his pinnacle-level Vajra Fist and punched.
The savage force smashed the air apart, and a visible ring of white air exploded around his fist.
His fist collided thunderously with the eerie green claws.
Boom!
A savage shock wave surged outward from the two of them.
The already crumbling mud walls on either side of the alley collapsed in great sections.
Su Yu stood firmly in place, without retreating half a step.
The old man, however, seemed to have been struck by lightning. His entire body flew backward like a kite with its string cut.
He skidded more than a dozen meters before barely managing to stop, his legs plowing two deep furrows through the muck.
Hidden beneath his sleeve, the old man's right hand spasmed uncontrollably. All five poisoned nails had snapped off at the roots.
Fine cracks spread extensively through the finger and wrist bones of his entire right arm.
He raised his head in utter horror and stared fixedly at Su Yu.
His poisoned claws, powerful enough to crush refined steel, had failed to pierce even this brat's skin!
Su Yu slowly withdrew his left fist. Five faint white marks remained on the back of his hand.
A trace of green venom tried to seep into his pores.
But the scorching, overbearing blood and Qi beneath his skin instantly vaporized it, turning it into a wisp of foul-smelling white smoke that dispersed.
With the flesh unbroken, no poison could invade.
Suppressing Prisons and Subduing Demons had once again revealed its might.
The old man panicked completely. This fucking thing was no martial artist-it was a humanoid tyrannosaur wearing human skin!
If they kept fighting, once his opponent pinned him down and the Demon Suppression Bureau's forces arrived to surround and annihilate him, he would certainly die.
"The Ghost Shadow Sect will remember this debt!"