Meathead

Even in the declining industry of "civil engineering," Hu Mang had managed to reach Foundation Establishment Great Perfection as an outside hire.

His talent was undeniably good.

As his counselor had said, he was a truly gifted concrete jockey, a talent who had come within a hair's breadth of breaking through to the "innate civil engineering holy physique."

If he hadn't shown that talent, why would his old buddy Tiezhu, the project manager, have taken him along to steal Spiritual Qi every few days? Wasn't it because Tiezhu saw promise in him?

If he had wanted a permanent position, he would have gotten one long ago.

The major state-owned sect he worked for wouldn't even have minded providing resources to a talent like him, who had a chance of breaking through to the Golden Core realm.

Then his mother had landed him in trouble.

He hadn't been without anger after falling from heaven to earth.

But that resentment could never turn into blame for his mother.

He had been raised by a fox demon, but what he had learned were the proper principles of being a person.

So he had buried that anger in his heart and never let it out.

But now he had discovered that there was actually a chance for his grievously damaged foundation to heal here!

For a moment, as this special Spiritual Power poured into him, his essence, Qi, and spirit entered a state of exhilaration.

Then he saw Zhou Yu come hurtling straight toward him, along with the number one bootlicker he had seen earlier.

You Lin'er ducked into the Demon-Subduing Well, his face dark and gloomy.

As an inheritor of Xuanyin and a disciple of the demonic path, being forced to hide in a "Demon-Subduing Well" was indeed a thoroughly sorry state of affairs.

And he really was in a miserable state.

The Bone Devil Seeds he had painstakingly refined had all been chopped to pieces, one stroke at a time, by that saber-wielding madman.

Blood was still seeping from his abdomen. If he hadn't used the Mysterious Yin Rebirth Technique to escape at the last moment, that slash would have cut him in two.

Even so, the slash had damaged his internal organs, forcing him to hide and circulate his cultivation to heal as quickly as possible.

But unexpectedly, there were living people in this "Demon-Subduing Well."

One of them even seemed to be among those who had pursued him earlier.

Fortunately, his cultivation had suffered little loss, and the Mysterious Yin Great Grappling, refined from the Flower of Essence among the Three Flowers, had grievously wounded his opponent almost instantly.

Then he saw the figure formed of "lightning."

And the spear in the figure's hand, which looked extremely dangerous.

"Within striking range."

The figure opposite him suddenly spoke, his tone as flat as if he were stating a fact.

The next moment, his voice rang out like a dragon's roar, making the light and shadows on the walls tremble wildly. His foot came down like a dragon's claw, striking the ground with a boom. The entire underground passage seemed to turn instantly into raging ocean waves, and even the air seemed to warp.

You Lin'er felt a tightness in his chest as the circulation of his Mysterious Yin Spiritual Power was disrupted. His expression changed drastically. Knowing that ordinary defense would be futile, he hurriedly unleashed the Mysterious Yin Great Grappling.

Icy force gathered before her into an impenetrable net, made of Mysterious Yin Corpse Qi cold enough to crack metal and stone.

Yet this spear thrust in "Unity of Heaven and Man" was too terrifying.

It ignored the frigid net's defense and followed a near-perfect trajectory, catching the sole opening in the process by which his essence and Qi transformed.

The instant the divine spear pierced his opponent's grappling technique, it turned hardness into softness, transforming Unity of Heaven and Man into Flying Goose Pecks Mud.

So fast!

That was the last thought in You Lin'er's mind.

It's no slower than that saber!

Then a Flying Goose Pecks Mud from the Xie Household's Cold River Severed Goose Spear Instruction opened a small bloody hole in his forehead.

A sinister wind howled, but the inside of his head had already been churned to mush. He couldn't even release his Yin Spirit, much less turn into a ghost.

"What a fine spear."

Hu Mang withdrew the spear with a sigh, stroking the shaft with the web of his hand as though petting a ferocious beast's head.

The nine Innate Thunder Patterns that had lit up on the shaft dimmed one by one. There were thirty-six such patterns on the spear in all.

After executing that thrust, he had automatically learned the Immortal Weapon's name-

The Immortal Spear, Shattering Thunder!

He also learned the tier of a so-called "Immortal Weapon."

Above a Spirit Artifact, below a Law Treasure.

It corresponded precisely to a Treasure Artifact in the Heavenly Gate.

But compared with the Artificial Lightning Tribulation Tower, which stood three stories tall and had a wide variety of functions,

this Immortal Weapon had only one purpose-slaying devils!

In the Heavenly Gate, it would be a textbook example of a lethal weapon, the kind that would never make it through security onto a spaceship.

The Tiered Tower was the throat, and the Heavenly Frog was the abdomen, so Divine Fate actually corresponded to the Dantian.

He had just used Shattering Thunder's activation to execute that spear thrust in Unity of Heaven and Man.

But Hu Mang knew that to repeat that thrust, he would probably have to wait until the foundation of his lower Dantian had completely healed.

And after killing that "demonic-path bootlicker," he seemed to have sensed something, however faintly.

This so-called Good and Evil Mechanism seemed to have changes at a deeper level.

"So, Fellow Daoist Zhou, is there nothing you want to tell me?"

Hu Mang looked at Zhou Yu, who was half leaning against the wall, and the corner of his mouth curled up.

"You were trying to kill me just now, weren't you?"

Zhou Yu gave a bitter laugh and opened his mouth, only to see his flying sword, whose spirituality had been grievously damaged by the Mysterious Yin Great Grappling. He gave another bitter laugh.

"I was catching meatheads."

"In fact, you were the third one I caught."

"I just didn't expect your abilities, 'Master,' to be so far beyond what I anticipated."

"Why?" Hu Mang asked calmly.

"It's not just those experts of the unorthodox paths trying to manipulate Demon-Subduing City's mechanism. We're taking advantage of it too."

"The good are granted protection; the wicked deserve death."

"Protect the lives of the good, earn merit from the wicked."

Zhou Yu coughed drily and spat out a mouthful of bloody fluid.

"That's what we do."

Hu Mang wasn't surprised in the least. It was a scam compound, after all; he was very familiar with those.

"So you're saying the Thunder God's Shrine you mentioned has turned into a scam operation, right?"

Although the term "scam operation" sounded a little strange, it wasn't hard to understand.

Zhou Yu nodded silently.

"Mm."

To Zhou Yu's surprise, Hu Mang neither killed him and looted whatever treasures he might have on him, nor forced him to do anything.

The look Hu Mang gave him was still dangerous.

After studying him for a moment, Hu Mang put away his spear and left.

"Why?!" Zhou Yu couldn't help asking.

Without looking back, Hu Mang said,

"You've already paid for your life."

That thunder crystal?

Zhou Yu had considered many possibilities, but the one thing he had never imagined was that Hu Mang had spared him because of that largely useless thunder crystal!

The thought struck him as absurd.

Seeing that Hu Mang had already reached the corner, Zhou Yu hurriedly shouted,

"Then isn't there anything you want to say to me? I had my reasons!"

"I don't want to hear them. I can smell the melodrama, and I don't like men who twist themselves into knots."

The footsteps gradually faded.

A flash of inspiration struck Zhou Yu, and he called out again,

"You were drawing a formation diagram earlier, weren't you? I know where one of Demon-Subduing City's formation eyes is!"

The footsteps vanished completely.

Zhou Yu fell into utter despair.

But the next moment, a shout came from the mouth of the well.

"Then what are you standing around for? What, do you want me to help you up?"

Zhou Yu's story was indeed somewhat melodramatic, because he had a younger sister.

As everyone knew, siscons were a troublesome species in any world.

So he hadn't come on this expedition alone. He had come treasure hunting with his younger sister, Zhou Tong.

After that, the story was even simpler. To resist the second wave of wicked cultivators from the unorthodox paths, the Rogue Cultivators had banded together.

Then, after discovering a loophole in the Good and Evil Mechanism, they had gone from a reserve force for the righteous path to a gang running a scam compound.

Someone like Zhou Yu, who had a vulnerable spot, was naturally a prime candidate for recruitment into their ranks.

But after Zhou Yu finished his story, his eyes faintly red, he discovered that Hu Mang was staring intently at his "survey map," leaving him somewhat speechless.

"..."

Hu Mang looked up and asked in surprise, "What? Do you want me to share your feelings, or give you some basic sympathy?"

"How do you know the meatheads you roped in didn't have sisters of their own?"

"..."

Hu Mang went back to writing and drawing on the paper with his charcoal pencil. Besides the formation eye he had already located, he had marked seven or eight "special coordinates" in the surrounding area.

Using methods from Advanced Spiritual Power Surveying and Mapping, the Spirit Vein Measurement Treasure Scripture, and the Heaven and Earth Geomancy Method, which he had studied at the academy, he had already calculated the coordinates of several Spiritual Power nodes.

Or, to put it another way, the Demon-Subduing Mechanism!

As for Zhou Yu's story about his sister, Hu Mang only needed to listen casually. When he watched period idol dramas with his mother, he played on his phone while watching anyway.

It didn't stop him from getting on with his real work.

"Let's go." Hu Mang rose and picked up the Immortal Weapon he couldn't bear to put in his Storage Bag.

"Where to?" Zhou Yu asked.

"You can't be the only one in your gang recruiting people. Take me to find the others."

In an area in the east of the city,

chilling Yin Qi rose ceaselessly from underground. As far as the eye could see, more than a hundred Demon-Subduing Wells stood densely packed together.

"Fellow Daoist Xuanyin, what is it?"

Beside him, an old woman covered from head to toe in the five poisonous creatures suddenly looked at "Ancestor Xuanyin," or rather, Daoist Xuanyin.

The dove-faced old man's expression was grim. He slammed his dove-headed staff hard against the ground, shattering the blue flagstones on the spot.

"My disciple You Lin'er has been killed."

"Who did it?"

"Though your young disciple's cultivation wasn't sufficient and he had only refined one of the Three Flowers, there are so many Devil Creature corpses in the city. Didn't you leave him a few things to save his life? Or did you not pass your Mysterious Yin Corpse Refining Method on to him? You're a bit too stingy, old man."

Another figure, wreathed in rolling waves of putrid Qi, spoke in surprise.

"That's not it. I left him more than twenty Bone Devil Seeds. The Rogue Cultivators in the city could never have been his match."

"Unless-"

"Unless what?" asked the old woman covered in the five poisonous creatures, otherwise known as Old Woman Thousand Poisons.

"There's more than one Thunder God in the city. As we've explored, some things left behind by the divine dynasty back then have gradually begun to awaken. If someone got hold of them-"

The Mysterious Yin Old Daoist paused, clearly wary of the "divine dynasty."

He quickly changed the subject.

"A dead disciple is a dead disciple. I can simply get another. But why hasn't the fake monk come yet? Didn't you tell him we found Zhen'ezi's hiding place?"

"The fake monk said he found a temple guardian monk who cultivates the Hungry Ghost Path and is trying to seize the Netherworld Temple's inheritance from him. He told us to wait a while, and if he couldn't make it in time, we should act first."

"Let's act first. If we wait any longer, I'm afraid Zhen'ezi will run!!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the three great cultivators of the unorthodox paths, whose Three Flowers and Five Qi were close to perfection, turned into thick smoke and black mist and plunged into one of the Demon-Subduing Wells.