Way of the Devil

Many days later…

The Fei Family.

Occasionally, dark clouds would cover the crescent moon as thunder faintly boomed across the sky.

“Crack.”

Blue lightning flashed across the pitch-black room, the blue-white light dying everything in it with a deathly pale color.

Fei Bailing hugged her blanket and cowered on her bed, shaking violently.

She talked to her father about the disappearance of her sister, Qingqing. But then, on the next day, Fei Qingqing showed up again like nothing had happened, and continued to play with her.

Every time Fei Bailing asked her what happened, she acted like she didn’t know anything, which made Fei Bailing even more scared.

Meanwhile, her father also started to unendingly smile as if his face had been paralyzed.

Not only him, but everyone else in the Fei Family also wore the same nonchalant and strangely scary smile.

Fei Bailing tried to leave the family complex before, but her sister would always stop her.

Qingqing would suddenly appear behind her and ask her to play together with a delicate smile on her face.

And, every time, Fei Bailing would absentmindedly give up the thought of leaving, and come back. She would then play with her sister in a daze, and Qingqing would disappear to some other place after a while.

The most terrifying part was that every night, the Fei Family mansion would fall into a deathly silence. Everyone would gather in the banquet hall for a massive feast, seemingly bustling with energy.

But when Fei Bailing tried to approach them, she noticed that everyone on the table wore a stiff smile and was muttering something she couldn’t understand.

It was as if the talking was coming from a faraway place—she couldn’t hear anything clearly, nor understand them, despite being so close to them.

“Qingqing… Qingqing…” Fei Bailing hugged her knees and whispered her sister’s name under her breath as tears streamed down her face,.

“Sister… You are calling me again?” A tiny, turquoise-white shape slowly appeared in the darkness behind Fei Bailing.

“You wanna play together?” Qingqing’s voice came from behind her.

Fei Bai Ling’s body abruptly stiffened; she gradually turned her stiff neck.

“Wooh.”

There was nothing behind her. She let out a long sigh. Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer, and started to cry with her face buried in blankets. But she didn’t dare make any more noise, nor did she dare say anyone else’s name.

The hallucinations she suffered lately had made her anxious and exhausted.

All she wanted was a good night of sleep and some rest, and some hope that everything would be normal when she woke up tomorrow.

After she cried for a while, Fei Bailing slowly lay down, and covered her head in her blankets, curling her body into a ball. She didn’t dare go near the walls, nor the head or foot of the bed, afraid that something would suddenly come out at her.

Soon, she switched to another position. She tried to lay as flat as possible in the middle so that it would look like an unmade blanket instead of someone sleeping from the outside.

She didn’t want people to know that she slept there in that room. She felt safer that way.

She lay there as time slowly ticked by. Fei Bailing was finally getting sleepy. Her mind started to drift off, and she was about to fall asleep.

“Boom, boom, boom.”

A knock suddenly came from the door.

Fei Bai Ling’s whole body shook. Her drowsiness was now completely gone as she lay still in fear.

“Boom, boom, boom.”

The knock came again. This time, it was faster and louder, like there was truly something urgent.

Fei Bailing’s body shook as she closed her eyes and tried to pretend like there was no one in the room.

The knock came again and again, like it didn’t plan to stop any time soon.

‘ Maybe Mother is here to save me… ‘ An inexplicable thought suddenly appeared.

Finally, Fei Bailing mustered enough courage to come out from her blankets.

She took a deep breath, slowly getting off her bed, and walked in front of the door. Then, she quietly looked through the keyhole to see what was outside.

The keyhole that was as big as a grain of rice happened to have a hidden hole specifically for being able to see the people outside. Fei Bailing cautiously put her eye in front of it, and peered outside.

There were people outside. Not just one, but at least five or six of them covering the hall outside. They all wore clothes of different styles and colors, with the only common thing being all of them being that they were all slightly worn down.

Fei Bailing let out a sigh of relief. This encounter was normal, at least when compared to the other strange incidents. The few other times she heard knocks, no one was outside.

“Boom, boom, boom.”

Someone knocked again.

Fei Bailing raised her head, taking a deep breath, and was almost about to ask who they were.

Suddenly, she felt something was off.

Even ignoring the fact that they came to knock on her door so late into the night, why weren’t they talking at all? They weren’t even talking among themselves. They just stood there, all of them staring at the door.

But most importantly, their postures… were very stiff.

She lowered her head to peer outside through the peephole once more.

“Swish!”

All five people outside bent their backs and looked inside through the peephole, staring at Fei Bailing right in the eye.

“Aghhh!”

She let out a scream of terror and fell backward onto the floor, her body now drenched in cold sweat.

Then the empty room fell silent again.

Fei Bailing took a long time to calm herself down, and then finally popped herself back up, and carefully looked outside again.

No one was outside.

She let out a long sigh of relief.

“Boom, boom, boom!!”

Suddenly, someone urgently knocked on the window to the right.

The hair on her body stood on its ends, and she nearly let out another scream before turning around.

The five men stood neatly outside, their shadows from the moonlight clear on the window paper ¹ .

“Boom, boom, boom!”

“Boom, boom, boom!”

“Boom, boom, boom!”

“Boom, boom, boom!”

The knocking sound started to get louder and faster.

“Aghhh!!”

Fei Bailing abruptly let out a scream. She sat up, and jumped down from her bed.

Her body and undergarments were drenched in sweat.

“I… I…!?” Fei Bailing panted like she was out of breath. She stared around her bedroom. Not a single person was there besides herself.

“Another dream?” Right now, she couldn’t tell the difference between dream and reality.

She flipped out from her bed and, unconsciously stared outside the window. The shadows of the branches swayed lightly outside, visible through the window paper thanks to the moonlight. Everything was extraordinarily quiet.

“I can’t go on like this…” Fei Bailing now knew for sure that something evil had befallen her family. She couldn’t lie to herself anymore, and needed to find help!

After spending a while to calm herself, she stood up and walked to the door. As she was about to open the door, she heard faint footsteps from outside.

“Someone there?” She blanked for a moment. Who would come this late? She looked at the clock on her desk, and noticed it was already one in the morning. Everyone should be asleep by then, even the maids and guards. Why would there be footsteps outside?

She thought about it. Finally, she held her breath, and bent her back to peer outside through the peephole.

Five men in worn clothes appeared in her view. Fai Bailing nearly stopped breathing as her expression twisted in horror. She immediately thought about her dream.

‘ What do I do, what do I do, what do I do!?’ Her mind was bogged with anxiety and terror, and she couldn’t think straight at all.

“Bam!”

The door to the courtyard was abruptly pushed open.

Sima Xiu wore a heavy expression as he surveyed the courtyard with a short knife in his hand.

The anomalies at the Fei Family were something he noticed after he received a strange letter written in blood begging for help. But, the letter mysteriously disappeared just as it was about to enter into the Yin Yang Agency’s secret archive.

The person asking for help was a girl named Fei Bailing. According to her files, she was the third daughter of the Fei Family’s main branch, and was an ordinary human without any bloodline potential. She was neither noticeable at all among the family, nor had anything particularly interesting about her.

But, somehow, the third daughter’s blood letter still disappeared right under the eyes of the inspector of the Yin Yang Agency.

As an organization in charge of the safety of tens of millions of people in the county capital, at least several hundred inspectors, seperated into nine ranks, worked under it. Logically, as an ordinary inspector from a nearby area, there was no reason why he would receive the blood letter. It should have gone to the inspector in charge of the area the Fei Family was in.

But, to his big confusion, the blood letter still fell into his hands. The reaction of the head of the agency when he reported the incident was even stranger. He also agreed that this blood letter was important, and was going to send men to investigate. He left, and returned in only about half a hour.

When he went back to the head of the agency, it was as if he lost his memory and couldn’t remember anything.

Sima Xiu was scared every time he thought about it. What kind of man was the head? He was at the Earth Prime level, standing on top of countless powerful men!

But, somehow, even someone as powerful as him was affected, effectively showing how weird the blood letter incident was.

When his thoughts reached here, Sima Xiu looked behind him.

“Of course no one came.”

He stood alone outside of the side courtyard of the Fei Family’s mansion. Everyone else who was supposedly sent out to investigate was missing.

Even the few that were absolutely loyal to him didn’t show up. They probably forgot about this like the agency head had.

The strangeness of this situation had far surpassed Sima Xiu’s expectations. He tried to get the information to higher management to try to get the attention of someone powerful, but he also constantly heard Fei Bailing’s sorrowful cries.

After a few days like that, he finally decided to come to the Fei Family—alone.

Standing outside the courtyard gate, he saw that the courtyard was covered in mist. The outlines of the building loomed within. Everything was quiet—so quiet that it made him uncomfortable.

Sima Xiu took in a deep breath and gave up on the thought of reinforcements. The whole reason why he joined the Yin Yang Agency was so that the tragedy that had befallen him wouldn’t happen to anyone else.

“So… why are you hesitating?” He thought about his older sister. If he had reached her soon enough and charged in immediately, he could have prevented the tragedy.

But he hesitated. He was afraid.

“I have hesitated once before.” Sima Xiu thought back to the oath he had taken when joined the agency, and his face, which was as pretty as a girl’s, was instantly filled with determination.

He stepped forward, and abruptly crossed into the courtyard with his knife.

“Tap.” His black boots stomped on the ground. Fine gray dust dispersed around them.

His slim body gradually disappeared into the Fei Family’s mansion.

“Creak…”

A breeze blew past. The gate slowly closed, just as if it was blown shut by the wind.

***

“Hiss!”

At the center of his courtyard, Lu Sheng suddenly opened his eyes. Slivers of gold could be seen within them.

“There are impurities in the Essence Qi.” He frowned.

Even an ordinary high-level cultivator wouldn’t notice the change to the Essence Qi within the city. But he was different. Even though he was a Bind level direct disciple on the surface, his actual body at his upper limit was that of a Devil King that had finished the cultivation of Devil Qi techniques, and possessed extremely acute senses when it comes to changes in energy.

“The impurities came from a building behind me.” He soon found the source.

The mansion behind him belonged to a certain large Fei Family, he recalled.

Lu Sheng closed his eyes. “I’ll let it pass. I don’t care much about the environment, anyway.”

He took another deep breath, and took in another surge of Essence Qi. Immediately, he sensed the putrid and grainy texture.

Lu Sheng immediately stopped.

He reopened his eyes and stood back up.

“Alright, I’m clearing out everyone who lives within a two hundred meter radius. Whoever dares to live near here will die!”

“Bam!”

He turned and walked into his bedroom to sleep.