Chapter 129 - 128: A Mix of Light and Dark Is Reality; Emperor’s Guard Hall
In an instant, the sky darkened. Ominous clouds gathered, and a thousand bolts of lightning flashed!
A ferocious Demon Qi, terrifying beyond imagination, spread out in all directions like a tidal wave!
"Damn it!"
"You’ve gone too far!"
Facing the brawny man’s palm strike, the Golden Robe youth roared. His robes suddenly exploded, and his body overflowed with a brilliant golden light!
The two children watched in shock as the Golden Robe youth before them transformed into a Golden Flood Dragon!
It was ninety feet long, breathing clouds and mist!
Its five claws gleamed, and it roared incessantly!
It broke free from the brawny man’s oppressive aura!
"A True Dragon’s Body? How laughable."
But even though the Golden Robe youth had revealed his Dragon Race True Body, the brawny man’s expression remained unchanged. He just spoke coldly.
The next moment, their figures vanished from where they stood and clashed in the sky!
The world itself seemed to grow dim.
Amidst the apocalyptic scene, the faint sounds of heart-wrenching dragon roars and the cracking of blood and bone could be heard!
This scene lasted for about the time it takes an incense stick to burn.
After the time it takes an incense stick to burn, a blood-soaked Golden Flood Dragon in the sky transformed into a brilliant rainbow streak and vanished into the distance.
By the lakeside, two figures slowly emerged.
"Go on home!"
The red-eyed woman offered a faint smile as she patted the heads of the two children, who were drenched in blood and completely stunned with fear. She spoke softly.
Before the two children could react, a black, demonic wind swept them up and carried them into the city.
It wasn’t that she had a kind heart.
She simply found their dazed and stupefied expressions amusing and had acted on a whim.
In reality, countless people had died by her hand.
Then, the brawny man walking in front casually tossed a golden, antler-like object to the ground.
His movement was completely casual, as if he were just discarding unwanted scrap.
The red-eyed woman following beside him watched him with an almost fanatical gaze.
Then she asked, "Big Brother! Where are we going next?"
The powerfully built man narrowed his dark eyes, then looked toward a certain direction, his voice deepening.
"Xia Imperial City!"
"No matter what, Old Jiu and Fifth Brother were Great Demons under me, the Qishan Demon Lord. They can’t just die for no reason."
"If I don’t come to collect some interest, others might think that Qishan has fallen so far that it’s at their mercy!"
...
As usual, Su Bai was busy for a while in the morning escorting a few criminals in. In the afternoon, there wasn’t much to do. His main task was to patrol.
Whenever he had free time, he would run to the mysterious cave entrance to farm a wave of Experience Points for free!
An hour passed, and with twenty thousand Experience Points in hand, it was another great day!
Just as he finished farming his free Experience Points, Su Bai saw Zhang Wei in the corridor, escorting several people toward him.
"More people from the Holy Robe Sect?"
Su Bai glanced at them, noting their strange clothes and bizarre attire!
He immediately guessed their identity and asked.
"Yes!"
Zhang Wei’s expression was grim.
"Yesterday was my day off, but I didn’t get any rest. I spent the whole time on a stakeout just to catch these three damn members of the Holy Robe Sect!"
As he said this, he couldn’t help but reach out and squeeze the shoulder of a thin criminal next to him!
The man grimaced in pain but didn’t dare to show his anger!
He squeezed until the shoulder was bruised, until it bled!
Only then did he let go.
Then, as if recalling some horrific scene, Zhang Wei’s expression turned solemn and pained. He continued in a low voice:
"These three bastards are all members of the recently resurfaced Holy Robe Sect. Not long ago, they brainwashed another group of commoners in a remote alley in the city!"
"Sigh! Brother Su Bai!"
"You didn’t see it. You don’t know how vicious these people are!"
At this point, Zhang Wei looked like he wanted to tear the criminals beside him to shreds. He said, word by word:
"Those poor children!"
"They’re only three or four years old, and these animals skinned them with sharp blades, drained their blood, and removed their bones, then threw them into the sacrificial Black Tripod!"
"The blood was overflowing from the tripod’s rim!"
"Some of the commoners who blindly believe in the Holy Robe Sect even do it themselves—taking a Bone-Cutting Saber to their own children, skinning them and carving out their bones with their own hands, and then using a torch to set themselves on fire!"
"They call it ’returning to the embrace of the Holy Ancestor’!"
"No amount of persuasion works..."
"We managed to rescue a mother and child before, but the fierce, hateful look in that woman’s eyes!"
"I’ll never forget it..."
As he spoke, Zhang Wei’s body was visibly trembling.
"I heard that not long after we left, the woman set herself on fire, taking her five or six-year-old daughter with her..."
After hearing this, Su Bai also fell silent.
He walked over and patted Zhang Wei on the shoulder, signaling for him not to dwell on it.
"Come on. Let’s lock these people up first."
Su Bai suggested.
With a heavy heart, Zhang Wei nodded.
After locking the group in a cell, Zhang Wei and Su Bai walked silently down the corridor.
Light and shadow mingled on the floor.
Suddenly, Zhang Wei spoke.
"Brother Su Bai! Sometimes, I really can’t tell the difference between good and evil."
"Was that woman who set herself on fire evil? Or just ignorant?"
"Perhaps, when the woman took out the torch,"
"the little girl, not even five years old, thought her mother was just playing a game with her..."
Zhang Wei stopped, his expression downcast as he spoke.
Su Bai also stopped, composing himself.
He then said, "In this world, good and evil are two sides of the same coin, like light and shadow. Where there is a side of light, there must be a side of darkness. That is the real world."
"And human nature is the most complex thing of all; it’s usually hard to define."
After speaking, he patted Zhang Wei’s shoulder again. "All we can do is our best to capture criminals."
"As for the right and wrong, the good and evil of it all—that’s not for us to judge. We just need to keep moving forward."
With that, Su Bai walked ahead.
He left Zhang Wei standing alone in the corridor, lost in a daze.
...
Yan Qingyue, dressed in white robes, walked silently through a quiet corridor.
The space was dim, with almost no light to be seen.
Yan Qingyue walked all the way to the end before she saw a sliver of light.
It came from a few burning candles.
The candlelight was a ghostly blue!
By the candlelight, Yan Qingyue looked up and saw a plaque hanging above.
The characters on it were pure gold!
It was... the Emperor’s Guard Hall!
Yan Qingyue paused for a moment, then walked inside.
The hall was cold, silent, and solemn, exuding an aura of decay.
The iron statues and tools placed around had been corroded by time, covered in mottled rust.
Oil lamps lined the walls of the great hall. A rough count revealed over a hundred of them.
Among them, not many were lit—only about thirty or so.
And for those that were still burning, their wicks were almost completely gone.
Only a pea-sized flame remained!
Yan Qingyue searched among the burning oil lamps for a long while.
Her gaze finally landed on a lamp that was burning brightly.
Beneath the lamp, two words were engraved—Yan Qingyue!
It was her.