"Okay, okay."
The two demons nodded vigorously.
The next second, they suddenly woke up, looked at each other, and their pupils contracted sharply.
Why is there a third person's voice?
"Damn it! That martial artist wasn't poisoned by the Soul-Draining Powder!"
The boy on the bed sat up, his eyes clear and lucid, showing no trace of the confusion that comes with being drugged.
The two demons reacted swiftly, determined to strike first, and pounced on the bed together.
Two against one, the advantage is in my hands!
Upon seeing this, Lu Guan's eyes brightened, and the corners of his mouth slightly turned up, showing not a trace of panic.
He didn't even get out of bed; the thought just crossed his mind.
Thump.
As a surge of powerful Gang Qi filled the room, the two demons knelt down without hesitation, shouting:
"My lord, spare our lives! We two demons have never intended to harm anyone; we merely run an inn in town to make a living."
"Absolutely right, absolutely right! We have never had any intention of harming anyone. We are good demons!"
Hearing the two demons spouting nonsense, Lu Guan immediately burst into laughter.
Whether you are good demons or not is not for you to decide.
Lu Guan got up from the bed and walked to the two demons.
He crouched down and lightly tapped the shopkeeper's forehead with his fingertip, startling the fat man so much that he slumped his head.
"Who can tell me, who is the strongest demon in this place?"
"Let me speak! Let me speak!" the shopkeeper immediately declared.
"The master of the Old Dragon River is called the [ Blackwater King ], a large black-backed fish that has cultivated for over a thousand years and has occupied this great river for hundreds of years."
The waiter cursed his innkeeper inwardly for his lack of integrity, having so quickly leaked all the information about his master. He quickly added:
"Not only that, Your Majesty commands a vast army, and many water demons within the Old Dragon River have been subdued by Your Majesty and brought into your underwater palace to serve as soldiers!"
Just as the waiter was feeling smug, the shopkeeper was cursing inwardly.
'That foolish demon, you sold out the king, fine, but why did you sell yourself out of the blue?'
The waiter belatedly realized what had happened, opened his mouth, and his face turned deathly pale.
Upon hearing this, Lu Guan nodded in satisfaction after obtaining the information he wanted.
"I see, thank you both."
The words had barely left their mouths when the two demons, about to say something more, saw a flash of silver light, abruptly stopping them from uttering their thoughts.
Two large, fleshy heads slid off the shoulders and fell to the floor.
[A black fish demon at the Early True Qi Realm, with 320 years of cultivation, but low aptitude; 100 years of effective Cultivation extracted.]
[A crab demon in the Mid True Qi Realm, having cultivated for four hundred years, but with low aptitude, has had one hundred and twenty years of effective Cultivation extracted.]
[Remaining Cultivation: 779 years]
After being killed by Lu Guan, the two demons could no longer maintain their human form and revealed their demonic bodies.
A salty, fishy smell wafted over, and two fish and crabs, each a meter long, instantly filled the room.
Lu Guan frowned, waved his waist token, and captured a wisp of the two demons' remnant souls inside.
It is both Cultivation and merit; a demon with two uses.
Within the waist token, there already exists a remnant soul of the Inner Landscape Realm.
This was something Chen Jingchou had prepared for him that night.
"I wonder how many remnant souls are needed to exchange for martial arts techniques at the Inner Landscape Realm, but with this ape demon's, it should be enough."
After all, if the requirements were higher than this, wouldn't that be creating a monopoly and completely cutting off the path for Demon-Slaying Envoys at the Gang Condensation Realm to advance?
The path to the Inner Landscape is now within reach.
What he needs to do now is to accumulate enough Cultivation to open the Inner Landscape gate.
Lu Guan had a premonition that breaking through to the Inner Landscape would require an unusually large amount of Cultivation.
Because the old ape called itself a "spiritual practitioner".
Lu Guan was also unsure whether this "cultivator" was the same as the "cultivator" he understood.
If so, that would be incredible...
This means that the Gang Condensation Realm is just the threshold, and the Inner Landscape Realm is just the starting point.
'This world is full of unfathomable depths!'
After carefully putting away his waist token, Lu Guan pushed open the door and slowly went downstairs.
To his surprise, it wasn't pitch black outside; the town was actually quite bright.
Almost every household had an oil lamp lit inside.
Light leaked through the doors and windows, casting warm yellow beams of light onto the street.
The entire Five Li Town seemed to be strung together by these beams of light, the dim yellow light giving off an indescribable eeriness.
He frowned. Candles were quite precious; ordinary families wouldn't dare to let them burn all night.
Moreover, the people of Five Li Town are all fishermen, who work hard and should be working from sunrise to sunset. Why would they do something so unusual?
After thinking for a moment, Lu Guan randomly found a house and poked a small hole in the window paper.
Looking inside, one could see a wooden table in the narrow room, upon which was placed a stone statue.
The stone statue is about a foot tall, depicting a middle-aged man around forty years old with a solemn and dignified face, three long wisps of beard under his chin, covered in scales, and holding a trident.
Of course, the most eye-catching part is the lower half of the statue, which is not two human legs, but a huge fish tail.
The light inside the room was not the oil lamp that Lu Guan thought it was, but rather the light emanating from the stone statue.
The stone statue was bathed in a warm yellow glow, exuding a sense of sacred Daoist charm.
There were three people inside the house: a simple, middle-aged couple, and a little boy with rosy lips and white teeth.
The boy, who looked about five or six years old, was wearing a red bib and was fast asleep.
"I kneel before the River God, beseeching you to bless me with a safe journey and a bountiful harvest."
The middle-aged man, with a devout expression, knelt and kowtowed repeatedly, his head hitting the muddy ground with a loud thud.
After the ceremony, three sticks of incense were lit.
The three incense sticks were placed in the incense burner in front of the stone statue. The smoke curled up and drifted above the statue, where it was absorbed by the warm yellow light.
The stone statue's light shone for a moment, as if it had eaten its fill.
On the other side, a middle-aged woman held a sleeping child in her arms, looking haggard.
Her eyes were sunken, as if she hadn't slept for days and nights.
"Stop worshiping your lousy river god! What kind of god is that? It's clearly a demon! A river demon!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a look of panic flashed across the middle-aged man's face, and he quickly retorted angrily, "What do you, a woman, know?"
"Whether the River God is a demon or a god, if he can protect our Five Li Town and ensure our peaceful and prosperous lives, then he is a good god!"
Upon hearing this, the middle-aged woman could no longer contain her grief, and two streams of tears flowed down her cheeks.
"But the river god you speak of wants your son sent into the river to be a servant!"
"Wake up! If we send our children in there, how can they possibly survive?"
The middle-aged man stammered, "It's not like we're the only ones delivering... it just happens to be our turn this year..."
He lowered his head, rubbing his rough fingers, not daring to look at his wife or his child.
" Xiuqin... if it really doesn't work out, we can have another one later..."
"Waaah--"
A woman's sobs could be heard, mixed with the cries of a few children.
Lu Guan withdrew his gaze, his eyes filled with an unfathomable darkness.
River God? Child?
This is clearly the work of a river demon; the residents of Five Li Town are sacrificing their own children as human sacrifices.
Moreover, judging from this situation, it's not something that happened in just one or two years, but rather something that has been going on for many years and has become a common practice in Five Li Town.
He proclaimed himself a god, but refused to be called a demon.
'Perhaps this is the reason why the river demon was acting strangely, as mentioned in the message sent by the Demon-Slaying Envoys.'
Looking at the windows lit up in every house, Lu Guan understood that these people were all doing the same thing—
Offering incense and prayers to a river demon.
'Could it be that in this world, there is such a thing as attaining enlightenment through offerings of incense?'