“Hey, wait—” The hand Ye Yang instinctively reached out froze mid-air.
Too late.
Those two were far more ruthless than Chi Lian. Xing Tian knocked over the offering table. Wu Jie smashed countless small Buddha statues. Offerings, fruits, and lanterns rolled all over the floor. The donation box cracked. The ceiling was nearly completely destroyed. There wasn’t even a clean spot left to stand on.
Afraid of getting caught in the crossfire, Ye Yang dodged left and right, retreating further and further back. Eventually, he was huddled in a corner, limbs tucked in, not daring to move. A furious Xing Tian and Wu Jie were just too… something. How were they going to clean this up?
But Wu Jie, Xing Tian, and Chi Lian were all thinking the same thing: “What’s there to clean up? We made a mess on purpose. Our mission was just the statue.”
Chi Lian, with the most serious face, spouted complete nonsense: “This statue was extremely difficult to deal with. We barely managed to subdue this demonic object. Who knew it would cause such destruction? So sorry—we’ll have to trouble YCG to cover the compensation.”
The offering tables and such weren’t a big deal. But each of those small Buddha statues had cost a fortune just for the coloring, let alone the sculpting. And the auspicious patterned ceiling tiles they’d smashed were listed on the donation stele at the entrance—each tile cost a thousand yuan.
Before leaving, Wu Jie even took the trouble to break several windows and wooden doors of the side hall. All of them were clearly priced on the donation stele, ranging from several thousand to over ten thousand yuan. Let Can Mountain YCG pay for that.
·
As Ye Yang had feared, Can Mountain YCG was extremely dissatisfied with their mission report.
“What did you say?!”
Ren Yecheng, the head of the operations department, shot to his feet, unable to believe his ears. He was a cultivator with mediocre abilities, but he came from a long-established cultivation family. With his family’s backing, he’d managed to reach the Golden Core stage. Now over 120 years old, he had wrinkled skin, a short stature, and small, beady eyes nearly squeezed shut by wrinkles—quite a sleazy look.
Xing Tian patiently repeated himself: “The thing causing all the trouble has been completely destroyed by me. This mission was completed beyond expectations. You need to double our compensation.”
Chi Lian chimed in to help: “Considering we’re practically neighbors, we’ll give you a discounted rate. You should know that people of our level rarely make moves.”
Ren Yecheng wasn’t angry at all, because he thought he must still be asleep.
He rubbed his eyes, discreetly pinched his thigh, then jolted awake. He flipped through the documents—yes, it was them, the worst-performing action team under the Dongzhou branch.
At the time, Ren Yecheng had privately complained that Dongzhou was being stingy, not even sending one or two elites their way. But since Can Mountain was slightly inferior to Dongzhou across the board, he’d only dared to grumble to himself.
Who would have guessed that these average team members would have such audacity?!
And how had this statue mission ended up in their hands?
Ren Yecheng was speechless for a long moment. Wu Jie impatiently tapped the table. “What are you thinking about? Can you hurry up?”
Ren Yecheng straightened up, nearly choking on his own anger. These four people—one sat in the guest chair like a mighty general, another was fiddling with the collectibles on his curio shelf, and the most outrageous one, the all-in-black figure whose gender he couldn’t even tell, had actually sat down in Ren Yecheng’s own director’s chair while he was looking for documents—two legs propped up on the desk!
Only one young man looked relatively well-behaved, standing there obediently.
Ren Yecheng slammed the documents down and pointed at the “obedient, well-behaved young man,” Ye Yang, as he launched into his tirade: “You people from Dongzhou—how dare you be so disrespectful?! Look at yourselves! Not only did you botch the mission, but you have the nerve to ask for more compensation? Are you crazy for money?”
Ye Yang had been thinking about asking about the casualties at the bombed factory after the debrief. He wasn’t expecting the fire to suddenly turn on him, and he didn’t react in time.
But the others were not about to stand by and watch him get bullied. Chi Lian immediately jumped in: “Who’s the one crazy for money, exactly? You old geezer still have the nerve to talk. Don’t think we don’t know—you’re in cahoots with Qin Ruhai, aren’t you? How much did he pay you to smooth things over with the statue?”
Ren Yecheng was at a loss for words. He stared at them in shock—how could these low-level team members possibly know about that?
Not knowing what to say, he immediately changed the subject, bringing up the failed mission to shift the blame. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me ask you—how did you fail the chemical plant mission? The factory blew up, and you hadn’t even arrived!”
Chi Lian couldn’t tolerate that either. His enormous, thick snake tail suddenly appeared. With a bang—barely grazing the top of Ren Yecheng’s head—it shattered the wall behind him.
“I should be asking you! Do you even know how to assign missions? Do you even know how to handle intelligence? How many chemical plants are there in Can Mountain? That kind of critical information—something only locals would know—your intelligence department didn’t mention a single word!”
Ye Yang finally snapped out of it and immediately added, “The mission you assigned didn’t meet the standard specifications in the first place.”
“You—all of you! Are you trying to start a rebellion?!” Ren Yecheng didn’t even know who to point at anymore. His arm trembling, he nearly collapsed.
Ye Yang instinctively stepped forward to catch him—not because he was particularly kind, but mainly because Ren Yecheng was so old and frail he might actually keel over from the shock.
But just as he took half a step, another person suddenly appeared in the office.
“…Brother Fu?”
It was Fu Ye.
Fu Ye seemed to be in a hurry. He only had time to smile at Ye Yang before immediately turning to Ren Yecheng.
He wasn’t polite with Ren Yecheng either. He directly grabbed the tottering old man by the collar. “Found them. Come with me. Now.”
Ren Yecheng only had time to toss out one last line: “You—get the hell back to Dongzhou…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Fu Ye had already dragged him far away, disappearing beyond the door.
Ye Yang, Xing Tian, and the others looked at each other in bewilderment. After a long pause, Xing Tian finally spoke first: “Fu Ye is a rogue cultivator nemesis. I guess Can Mountain brought him in to help. With him around, they probably don’t need us anymore.”
Ye Yang asked, “So we just go back now? Don’t we need some kind of sign-off for an out-of-town assignment…”
Chi Lian had just memorized this section: “We need the stamps of both the Operations Department and the External Liaison Department here in Can Mountain.”
Wu Jie complained, “This is the worst thing about YCG—copying humans with all this bureaucratic nonsense.”
The Operations Department stamp was easy. They were already in the Operations Department office. With Ren Yecheng gone, Wu Jie simply found his stamp and, under Ye Yang’s hesitant gaze, stamped the document without hesitation.
“There. Off to the External Liaison Department.”
The External Liaison Department was empty, and they couldn’t find their stamp anywhere. Wu Jie went out for a look around: “That’s strange. For such a large Can Mountain headquarters, why can’t we find a single living soul besides us?”
·
“Congratulations, Master, on achieving mastery of the forbidden art!”
If any mid-to-high-level executives of Yang Xie Group were here, they would surely recognize that the person speaking with Fu Ye was none other than Secretary Lin, Fu Ye’s trusted right-hand man.
At that moment, Fu Ye and Secretary Lin were deep underground in the center of Can Mountain, inside a secret realm. Before them lay a deep abyss.
Fu Ye stood ramrod straight, facing the chasm below. He looked no different from usual, but upon closer inspection, one would notice several dark, ominous red glints lurking in his eyes.
More terrifying still, beneath the abyss, countless piled corpses also glowed with the same red light.
These corpses included humans, demons, and even animals. A vast number of juvenile remains—some intact, some fragmented—lay haphazardly stacked together.
“How is the situation with the Vermilion Bird?”
Secretary Lin bowed respectfully and answered, “Yingzhao’s Luoyang City has seized several surrounding cities. Just moments ago, Siyang City and Ye City were also taken. According to their original plan, the ritual for the Vermilion Bird’s resurrection is scheduled for tonight.”
Fu Ye nodded, then asked, “Is everything prepared?”
“Rest assured, Master. Everything has been ready for a long time. We only need to wait for Yingzhao’s ritual to begin. Then our great formation will activate immediately, harnessing the power of the Vermilion Bird’s resurrection to complete the final step.”
After saying this, Secretary Lin opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated. Fu Ye, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, said, “Speak your mind.”
Secretary Lin steadied himself and said, “Master, this subordinate has a question. We are borrowing the Vermilion Bird’s power to slay a god. The Vermilion Bird’s resurrection will only be affected, not interrupted. But once the Vermilion Bird truly resurrects, our forbidden art will no longer be usable. At that time…” At that time, the Vermilion Bird will squash us like ants.
“Hahahaha. Don’t worry.” Fu Ye laughed heartily. “Do you really think the Vermilion Bird can actually resurrect?”
Under Secretary Lin’s horrified gaze, the corners of Fu Ye’s mouth slowly curled upward. “Where do you think the method for resurrecting the Vermilion Bird came from?”
Fu Ye had been preparing for this revenge for many years. To cultivate the forbidden art of god-slaying, he had woven a vast web of conspiracy that spanned both the human and demon realms.
From the moment he learned that the Vermilion Bird intended to resurrect in the human realm, he had laid trap upon trap. And now, finally, the moment to close the net had arrived. He only needed his enemy to step right in.
At the thought of his enemy, Fu Ye’s train of thought suddenly paused. He turned his head and asked, “What about the little rabbit?”
Secretary Lin quickly suppressed his visible shock and replied, “They are going through the procedures and will leave Can Mountain soon. I have already arranged for a teleportation array to be opened. Once they teleport away, the teleportation arrays in Can Mountain will automatically shut down.”
Fu Ye nodded. “Good. It’s best that he leaves.”
The little rabbit was, after all, his friend. He didn’t want to drag him into this god-slaying revenge.
As for the Buddha statue mission—it was indeed as Xing Tian had suspected, in that Can Mountain simply wanted to pass it off to out-of-town action team members. But it was Fu Ye who had deliberately arranged for Ye Yang’s team to be assigned to it.
Taking advantage of the chaos in Can Mountain, he had his people, long embedded in Can Mountain YCG, muddy the waters. His original plan was to use this mission to send Ye Yang to Dongru Temple, far from the central secret realm. He hadn’t expected the group to take such an unconventional approach and finish off the statue in record time.
Fortunately, Ren Yecheng had driven them away.
Fu Ye felt a slight sense of relief. This was for the best. The farther Ye Yang was from Can Mountain, the better. That little rabbit always managed to spring surprises—keeping him in Can Mountain might have introduced an unpredictable variable.
Secretary Lin finished his report and turned to leave. Fu Ye remained alone in the secret realm, sinking into a silent wait. For the sake of today’s plan, he had waited far too long. Far, far too long.
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