The Old Devil Subjugation Project

Hu Mang silently accepted one of the Storage Bags and fiddled with it for a moment before suddenly saying:

"You could tell too, couldn't you? I'm not really a monk, am I?"

Zhou Yu was startled at first, then said with a look of understanding:

"We're all just people who wandered in here by mistake, trying to stay alive. What does it matter whether we follow Buddhism or Daoism, whether we're good or evil?"

Then he pointed at the corpse whose upper body had been blasted to pieces by lightning and said:

"This fellow knew a few Buddhist Great Mudra techniques. He might even have been a lay Buddhist disciple, but once he was labeled 'evil,' didn't he still suffer a lightning tribulation?"

Hu Mang laughed. Looking at the little bag in his hand, he suddenly asked:

"What is this?"

Zhou Yu asked in bewilderment, "Fellow Daoist, you don't recognize it? This is a middle-grade Storage Bag. It stores objects, with the ability to contain Mount Sumeru in a mustard seed."

"Generally speaking, a low-grade Storage Bag is about the size of a water vat, while a middle-grade one is the size of a woodshed. I've never seen a higher-grade one, but I imagine they're larger."

"No, I meant, how was this thing refined?" Hu Mang asked without a change in expression.

Zhou Yu understood.

"So that's what you were asking, fellow Daoist. To make one, a cultivator must have cultivated at least the three flowers and five Qi, ascend above the nine heavens, withstand the Gang Sha baleful winds and atmospheric spiritual explosions, and gather and condense Qi of the Void."

"Although it sounds extremely difficult, just a wisp of Qi of the Void is enough to make a high-grade Storage Bag. A great cultivator can often gather enough in a single trip to make tens of thousands. Over time, these things became widespread."

Hu Mang nodded silently.

He had no idea what this "Qi of the Void" actually was.

But something that could "open up a small space," "preserve objects in their original state," and "store and retrieve them at will" had to be highly advanced technology, right?

This was the standard "Heavenly Gate approach": get to the bottom of how everything worked.

Things the cultivators of this world took for granted had an entirely different meaning from his perspective.

In terms of research value alone, this thing was probably worth more than some top-grade Law Artifacts, or even Spirit Artifacts.

Was its greatest use actually in "aerospace and space exploration"?

Seeing this strange "master"-no, fellow Daoist-sink into another bout of strange contemplation,

Zhou Yu couldn't help saying, "Fellow Daoist, since we were lucky enough to become 'good people,' let's take this opportunity to hurry to the nearest Thunder God's Shrine. Once inside, no one may fight, whether good or evil. Those are Lord Thunder God's rules. We can also take the chance to rest and recover."

Hu Mang said expressionlessly:

"The message I just received in my head said: slay evil and uphold good, and your goodness rises one level; use evil to fight evil, and the karma between them is settled; rely on evil to harm good, and your crime is unforgivable."

"In other words, I should be relatively safe right now, shouldn't I?"

"If that's the case, why hurry to a safe house?"

"Shouldn't we be sweeping the city, slaying evil and upholding good? How could we waste such a golden opportunity?"

At those words, the hairs on Zhou Yu's body instinctively stood on end.

After figuring out the rules of Demon-Subduing City, most people, like him, avoided fighting as much as possible and looked for a way out.

But a small number of cultivators seemed to become entirely different people, becoming obsessed with hunting cultivators, killing them, and stealing their treasures.

Most of those people died in all sorts of accidents, but the few who survived became quite dangerous.

Even more dangerous than the monsters and fiends who came in later.

Zhou Yu had already seen what Hu Mang could do and sensed something dangerous about him. He should have taken the chance to part ways.

But for some reason, as if compelled by a ghost, he said:

"Fellow Daoist, you said you were good with a spear, right?"

"What about it?"

"As it happens, I know of a divine spear in the city."

Beneath the dark clouds and thunder, the Bone Devil Seeds continued to whistle through the air, spewing and inhaling Profound Yin Devil Qi.

At You Lin'er's feet lay five cultivators whose arms and legs had been broken. Some were "good," and some were "evil."

But he hadn't escaped without losses. Three Bone Devil Seeds, for instance, had suddenly vanished.

From what he sensed through the Profound Yin Marks he had left, those three should have accidentally triggered the city's Devil Subjugation Restriction. But since they had been killed while chasing two Routou, both of those Routou owed him an explanation.

After settling the other "Routou," You Lin'er was just about to use the Profound Yin Secret Technique to track the pair when his brow furrowed.

The rumbling thunder overhead joined into a continuous roar, then abruptly became a massive bolt of lightning that struck down, lighting the surroundings as bright as day!

Amid the white light, a burly man with disheveled hair and a steel saber in his hand was walking toward him, his face twisted in a savage expression.

You Lin'er's expression turned cold. He pointed, and two Bone Devil Seeds spewed black smoke as they lunged straight at the man.

The man, however, burst out laughing. Instead of retreating, he counterattacked, slashing fiercely with his steel saber and cleaving the supposedly "impervious" Bone Devil Seeds in two on the spot.

You Lin'er's expression changed, and he blurted out:

"Are you good or evil?"

The burly man gave a savage grin and crouched before pouncing on him like a tiger or leopard.

"What good and evil? I'm a Devil Purging Officer of the Jade Firmament Divine Dynasty, and devil brats like you are my specialty!"

Several dozen li away, atop another Devil Suppression Tower, a fat man who resembled a mountain of flesh sat stuffing himself with a roast chicken.

His other hand pressed a seated seal against the Devil Tower.

Ring after ring of Buddhist light wrapped around the entire tower. From within the light came even harsher, grating sounds of chewing, as if a horde of reincarnated hungry ghosts were devouring the corpses of those Devil Creatures.

Suddenly, the fat man stopped eating his chicken and burst into wailing sobs.

"Little brother, my dear little brother, how could you die? Who killed you? Your big brother will avenge you!"

At the end of a long flight of bluestone steps stood the gate of the Thunder God's Shrine.

The vermilion-lacquered doors were mottled and ancient, engraved with lightning runes. High above them hung an old gilded plaque bearing the three vigorous characters "Thunder God's Shrine," with faint arcs of electricity flickering between the strokes.

At the other end of the steps, more than a dozen unorthodox Rogue Cultivators lingered without advancing, their faces frightened and tense.

On the first step, a slovenly Daoist was swigging wine from a fiery red gourd, his eyes bleary with drink.

Yet even so, no one dared take a single step forward to enter the universally acknowledged safe house.

In the dark channels beneath Demon-Subduing City, a thick black shadow swam through the black water, heading for the moat outside the city.

But the closer it came to the moat, the darker the water grew.

At last, a warning flashed through the shadow's mind, and it came to an abrupt stop.

The next moment, the black water vanished, replaced by a pool of black lightning.

"Marsh Water Divine Lightning!!"

The shadow leaped out, revealing the face of a beauty. Below the neck, however, was the body of a giant python covered in white scales.

It was a beauty python that had cultivated for many years.

As the beauty python leaped out of the water, all the black water in the channel transformed into Marsh Water Divine Lightning, which came crashing toward it, blotting out the sky.

The beauty python fled toward the city in panic.

Zhou Yu's understanding was correct.

Truly ambitious cultivators would never sit idle during the three-day "good-and-evil conversion period."

But this "fake monk" was behaving very strangely.

He didn't seem eager to "punish evil and uphold good," or to rob anyone of their treasures. He didn't even seem all that interested in the "divine spear" Zhou Yu had mentioned.

Instead, he had taken paper and a brush from his Storage Bag and was constantly writing and drawing, sketching out something or other.

He wasn't even hiding it from Zhou Yu, but when Zhou Yu leaned over to look, all he saw were strange lines and numbers.

The "detection Law Artifact" in Hu Mang's hand seemed capable of detecting levels of Spiritual Qi?

But what use was that?

If he were an array master, shouldn't he be using a compass?

Nor did it look as though he were working out the directions of heaven and earth.

But if a concrete worker had been there, they would have recognized what Hu Mang was doing at a glance.

Surveying and mapping!

More precisely, surveying and mapping spiritual power!!

Admittedly, Hu Mang was a concrete worker, but he was also a high-end civil engineering talent who had graduated from a prestigious university.

A specialized skill like this was naturally on his list of skills.

Back in his first class on spiritual power surveying and mapping, his instructor had told him that changes in Spiritual Qi, changes in arrays, and even celestial phenomena such as the evolution of the five elements and eight trigrams did not appear out of nowhere.

Take the Devil Subjugation Tribulation Cloud just now: it absolutely could not have appeared from nothing.

And according to what Zhou Yu had said earlier, the Jade Firmament Divine Dynasty was a thousand-year-old dynasty from the period when the High Pure Ones ruled the world.

Leaving aside whether those "thousand years" were real or not, this was undoubtedly an old engineering project.

And for an old project like this to function normally, there had to be a stable source of spiritual power operating behind it.

"Perhaps more than one."

Hu Mang looked down at the survey map that only a professional could understand.

Seven, or perhaps eight, "spiritual power sources" kept this old engineering project running normally.

"Then what form does this 'spiritual power source' take? The Thunder God's Shrines?"

"Probably not. According to Zhou Yu, more than a dozen Thunder God's Shrines have already been found in Demon-Subduing City. They might be switches, or Spiritual Qi outlets."

"If I find it, I can pinpoint the location more accurately."

"So are these cables above or below, or is there some more complicated arrangement, like Heavenly Gate's Spirit Network..."

"Brother Daoist, Brother Daoist-"

Zhou Yu's calls roused Hu Mang from his thoughts.

"Fellow Daoist, do me a favor." Hu Mang casually pointed to a charred pillar nearby.

"Cut it."

Zhou Yu was taken aback. He formed a sword seal, and the pillar was sliced in half. The next moment, a thick bolt of lightning descended from the sky.

"..."

Hu Mang nodded in satisfaction and continued writing and drawing.

Old city engineering was wild. They hadn't even put in any safety measures.

That made it even easier to map out.

Finally, just as Zhou Yu was about to lose his patience,

Hu Mang put away the drawings and said:

"All right, let's go see that divine spear you mentioned."

Zhou Yu immediately perked up.