Where Immortals Once Walked

Chapter 465: Shuanglu Town

“Oh?” He Lingchuan clapped his hands and laughed. “Well now, so there is something going on behind the scenes. I quite like ‘behind the scenes.’ Come on, then. Tell me, how exactly is it of no benefit to me to pursue this any further?”

“This was assigned to me by someone above!”

“Above, huh?” He Lingchuan tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Above where? And who’s above?”

Patriarch Wan still refused to answer.

Jiao Yu suddenly leaned in and asked, sharp as a blade, “Was the Lingxu City courier killed by you?”

Patriarch Wan nearly jumped out of his skin. He waved his hands in denial so hard that they blurred. “No, no! That wasn’t me! I don’t even know anything about any courier!”

He Lingchuan smoothly pulled the conversation back where he wanted it. “There were over a hundred porcupines in that territory. How did your nephew kill them all?”

Patriarch Wan shut his mouth again.

He Lingchuan’s expression did not change. Without warning, he pinched Patriarch Wan’s jaw open and shoved a pill into his mouth.

The medicine dissolved into saliva and slid down his throat before he could spit it out.

“This will keep you awake for the next four hours. No matter what you endure, you won’t pass out.” He Lingchuan then added flatly, “Your secret’s already blown. Either way, you’re dead. The only question is whether you want your grandsons and granddaughters, even those who are still little children, to be buried along with you.”

Patriarch Wan’s face crumpled. “If I confess, then they’ll definitely die.”

“You’re saying even the Crown Prince couldn’t protect them?”

Patriarch Wan dropped his gaze and said nothing.

Jiao Yu licked its paw slowly, as if considering the taste. “I’ll go fetch one of his grandkids and eat them right here.”

Patriarch Wan went pale with horror. “Don’t!”

He swallowed hard once, then twice, and then finally, in a shaking voice, he blurted, “Lord Envoy, if you can guarantee my grandchildren’s safety, then even if I am to be skinned alive, then I’ll tell you everything!”

“I’ll give that promise on the Crown Prince’s behalf,” He Lingchuan said without the slightest burden of conscience. After all, the one who would have to honor the promise would be the State of Chiyan’s Crown Prince, not him.

Wan Xianneng’s eyes were downcast, and his shoulders drooped. “My nephew, Wan Song, was extremely gifted. He trained in a Daoist sect, but he was expelled after accidentally killing a fellow disciple. For years, he was bitter and aimless, and I supported him the whole time. Later, he went off on his own. For years, we heard nothing. I thought he’d died somewhere out there. But the year before last, he suddenly returned, and not only was he alive, but he even appeared to be thriving. He had high spirits, he was full of confidence, and he had even built up quite a solid fortune.”

Wan Xianneng let out a shaky breath.

“You also know that by then, my business had already gone downhill. My household was struggling. I even had to secretly sell off family possessions just to keep this large family fed. Wan Song heard about it and came to me, insisting I join him in a venture.”

He Lingchuan arched an eyebrow. “A business of killing people and monsters?”

“Y-yes, but mainly killing monsters,” Wan Xianneng said with difficulty. “Most of my contracts are for cutting roads through the deep mountains, building bridges, digging, and quarrying, and we run into wild monsters and beasts all the time. Even though this is a monster state, most of those creatures are born in the mountains and die in the mountains. They fend for themselves. Zhitian Township rarely interferes, and even if it wanted to, it can’t manage them. Wan Song said there was a noble patron in Lingxu City who needed a kind of blood bead, ones that are specially condensed from a monster’s blood essence, refined from its entire body. And since no one cares about the monsters out in the wild, we used them to make blood beads. The money came in far faster than breaking our backs carving roads through rock.”

Jiao Yu cut in, cold and blunt. “How many monsters have you killed?”

Wan Xianneng hesitated, then counted in his head. “Not including the porcupine nest... maybe sixty or seventy. If it’s something small like a bat monster, then five of them count as one.”

Scrape, scrape.

Jiao Yu, who was still in tiger form, raked its claws against the ground without thinking, the sound sharp and ugly. Sixty or seventy in under two years? In other words, the official records really are only the tip of the iceberg.

Wan Xianneng saw the tiger’s gaze and shuddered violently.

He Lingchuan gave a short, humorless laugh. “Don’t scare him. He’s only responsible for finding the monsters.” Then, he turned to Wan Xianneng and said, “Go on. At first, you only targeted lone monsters, right?”

“Y-yes, yes.” Wan Xianneng nodded rapidly. “To avoid suspicion. Besides, monsters kill each other sometimes. They die all the time. No one really investigates it.”

And it was not just monsters. Humans, too, sometimes brawled over nothing and slaughtered their own kind. A few dozen monsters dying in the wild each year was completely within expectations.

“Then why did you wipe out an entire nest of over a hundred porcupine monsters last year? Weren’t you trying not to attract attention?”

Wan Xianneng could not help but sigh. “Part of it was because we wanted the stone blood, but the main reason was that our blood bead quota was short, so at the end of the year, we had to rush.”

“How many blood beads do you have to deliver in a year? Do you have any on you? Let me see.”

“At least ten.” Wan Xianneng then pointed weakly toward the study desk. “They said to avoid trouble, never exceed twenty.”

He Lingchuan walked over to the desk, opened the hidden compartment exactly where Wan Xianneng indicated, and pulled out a brocade pouch.

Inside was only a single red bead.

Just as Steward Lu had described, it was round, smooth, and about the size of a small pellet.

He Lingchuan rolled it between his fingers. To his surprise, it had a strange elasticity, almost like flesh.

Whenever he obtained something unusual, his first instinct now was to bring it close to the divine bone amulet and see whether it reacted.

This time, the divine bone remained completely quiet, clearly unimpressed.

“How many blood beads you can refine depends on the monster’s size and cultivation,” Wan Xianneng said quickly, eager to be helpful now. “It takes several porcupines to make one bead.”

“Can you refine this from humans?” He Lingchuan brought the red bead up to his nose for a sniff, finding it to have a delicate, pleasant fragrance

“No.” Wan Xianneng gave a bitter laugh. “If we could, would we bother hunting monsters? Beijia fights a single war, and they have countless living prisoners.”

“Then why have humans been dying or going missing repeatedly?”

“I don’t know.” At this point, Wan Xianneng no longer tried to hide anything. “Maybe they were used as bait?”

He Lingchuan’s brow furrowed. “Bait?”

“The new monsters that appear after an imperial nectar eruption are often half-witted and bloodthirsty. Using a living person as bait works better.” Wan Xianneng spoke cautiously, as if afraid of the words themselves, “That’s what my nephew said. I never saw it with my own eyes.”

So they’re practically fishing for mountain monsters, only instead of worms or dough, the bait is living human beings.

He Lingchuan’s gaze slid to General Ling. His voice turned icy as he said, “Then why did you kill drillwind beasts? They have backing. They’re not nameless wild monsters.”

Wan Xianneng’s face twisted in helpless misery. “Because the one above placed a temporary order. They said blood beads were in short supply. And in the last six months, there were two imperial nectar eruptions, so many new monsters were born.”

“And then the one above demanded we increase output.” Wan Xianneng’s lips trembled. “Those new monsters appear in large numbers in a short time, and they fight and kill each other. No one can accurately count how many live or die. For us, it was... it was harvest season!”

He Lingchuan remembered the chaos the last time imperial nectar erupted, how monsters fought and slaughtered one another on the shores of Three-Heart Lake over nothing more than a piece of imperial nectar paste. Wan Xianneng was right: their deaths went unrecorded, uncounted, and unnoticed even in a monster state.

“We captured many new monsters, but the number of blood beads we could refine still wasn’t enough.” Wan Xianneng continued, voice low. “The deadline for delivery was coming, so we had no choice but to... capture other targets.”

He knew the danger of hunting monsters that were registered and part of the system, but at the time, profit and pressure left no room for caution.

“Wan Song was confident,” Wan Xianneng added, tears spilling down his cheeks. “He said we would never be exposed.”

Up to this point, General Ling had stood beside them like a cold statue, saying nothing. Now it finally spoke, each word heavy and sharp, “Impressive, truly impressive. So the lives of us monsters become money in your hands.”

Wan Xianneng caught the scent of danger and hurriedly shook his head. “I, I only collected and delivered the beads! The hunting was done by my nephew and his men!”

General Ling’s eyes did not move. “So you’re saying my children were killed by them.”

“...Yes.”

General Ling said “Good” again and again, so softly it chilled the bones.

Then Wan Xianneng blurted out one more piece of information, almost as if he hoped it might buy mercy, “The original hunting leader died last year in the porcupine nest. After that, the one in charge became my nephew.”

Risky work on the edge of a blade came with risks of its own.

“Where is your buyer?” He Lingchuan raised a second finger. “And where is your nephew?”

“At every delivery deadline, someone from above comes to collect.” Wan Xianneng’s head drooped. “A few days ago, we already delivered in Shuanglu Town. I don’t know if that man is still there.”

“What’s his name?”

“His surname is Mai. He’s tall and thin, and he looked like a scholar. We don’t know his given name. We all call him Mr. Mai.” He swallowed and added, “The delivery location is the third residence on Water Buffalo Alley, at the east end of Shuanglu Town.”

General Ling pressed relentlessly, voice rough with restrained violence, “And the murderer... your nephew?”

“I, I can’t find him.” Wan Xianneng gave a strained smile. “He always comes to me. I don’t know where he stays.”

General Ling lifted a hoof as if to kick him. Wan Xianneng threw up his arms to shield his head. “I swear it! I’m telling the truth! I wouldn’t gamble with my grandchildren’s lives!”

A nephew was a nephew, blood descendants were another matter entirely.

“It seems your nephew doesn’t trust you.”

“He... he...”

Seeing his expression, He Lingchuan almost laughed. “You’re afraid of him?”

Wan Xianneng’s shoulders caved in. “Yes... Even if he’s my nephew, he’s an outlaw. He’s been fierce since he was young. Who wouldn’t fear him?”

“If that’s the case, then you should’ve known he’d drag you down sooner or later.”

Wan Xianneng could not answer.

Walk the night road long enough, and you will eventually meet ghosts. That was something he understood, but the money came too fast and too easy. Once he had stepped onto that boat, he no longer knew how to get off.

He Lingchuan stopped wasting words on him and turned to General Ling. “If you have no other lead, then come with me for now.”

Their goals were, in truth, not perfectly aligned.

He Lingchuan needed to fulfill Fushan Yue’s request, so he had to trace the chain upward, find the buyer behind this operation, namely Mr. Mai.

General Ling, on the other hand, wanted only vengeance. It meant to kill Wan Song with its own hands.

General Ling snorted but did not object. Even so, it still kicked Wan hard once, so hard that the other party spat blood from his nose and mouth, and three teeth clattered to the ground.

“Stay here and watch him,” General Ling ordered one drillwind beast guard. “If he moves, then... beat him half to death.”

It had meant to say “kill him,” but it had glanced at Jiao Yu nearby and remembered that they needed a live captive for the county magistrate, thereby swallowing the words at the last second.

* * *

He Lingchuan sped toward Shuanglu Town. At his side were creatures built to run and fly, so he truly traveled like a gust-driven arrow, moving at full speed without restraint.

The journey of several tens of kilometers took only a little over half an hour.

Even the tiger, Jiao Yu, was panting with its tongue lolling. The drillwind beasts, by contrast, moved as if strolling through a garden, their chests barely heaving.

Different gifts, different physiques. Drillwind beasts were born for running long distances or short.

The house on Water Buffalo Alley was easy to find. It looked plain and unremarkable, the very picture of a modest residence. The entrance was tidy enough to be suspicious, with only a few fallen leaves scattered near the entryway.