I Am Your Natural Enemy

Wen Yan brought back the newly delivered Stone Eye from Wei Jing and returned home. He checked the time; he had actually wanted to bring Zhang Xuewen along.

By his estimate, Zhang Xuewen himself would probably have been quite willing, but the General Director was almost certainly not going to let him go.

The appearance of the Tuoba Martial God in Nanyang, in the eyes of the people over there, was probably no different from someone directly launching an intercontinental missile.

Better to wait a bit. Zhang Xuewen’s advancement had already hit a bottleneck; before he could control that overly immense Power, it would be very hard for him to advance.

At the same time, this also meant that the moment he showed up, hiding became absolutely impossible.

That Yang Energy radiating out for dozens of li— even a blind person might not see it, but could definitely sense it.

Wen Yan thought it over and still decided to set out from Southern Sea County and take a boat across. Flying straight over made him feel a bit unsafe, in a lack‑of‑security sense.

It just so happened he also wanted to go check out the situation over at the Southern Sea. He’d painted a big pie for the Water Ghosts there before; he had to show his face at least once. Last time he’d heard that the Ghosts’ sunken‑ship operations over there had already gone through two or three ships.

The Minister of Southern Sea County had even managed, at year’s end, to scrape some money out of the already‑planned budget and turn it into a special fund for Southern Sea Ghosts.

After waiting another two days, Feng Yao sent over the documents, and also had Wen Yan’s passport and other IDs all taken care of.

Several numbers were added to his contacts as well. If Wen Yan had anything come up, he could call any of these; they covered people all the way from Southern Sea County to the Southern Sea and then to multiple places in the Nanyang Union.

If you asked these people to go brawl with Sorcerers, maybe they wouldn’t be up to it, but aside from fighting— including things like wrangling with local authorities— they could help Wen Yan settle everything.

Feng Yao had arranged everything; Wen Yan only had to go.

"That’s good. What about the other one? Didn’t you say the current down‑the‑mountain representative from Mount Laojun is going too?

How did you convince him?

Given Mount Laojun’s usual temperament, and the fact that this involves leaving the Divine Land, they’d probably be too lazy to even bother, right?"

"I took the intel you gave, added the intel we collected, and gave a very objective and slightly filtered summary.

Then a certain elder from Mount Laojun personally assigned a mission to the current down‑the‑mountain representative.

They called it ’cutting down the unrighteous.’"

Feng Yao smiled in a way that looked very bashful, at first glance like some decent fellow.

Wen Yan was a bit speechless.

From what Wen Yan had learned before, among the branches descended from the Witches, the ones who hit the hardest at the later continuations were precisely Mount Laojun, with their "don’t disturb the Taoist Masters’ ascension."

You’d gone and poked all this directly in front of the elders of Mount Laojun— the fact that those elders didn’t personally descend the mountain and use an anti‑aircraft gun to shoot mosquitoes already counted as restraint.

The Taoist Masters actually had pretty good tempers. Back in the day, Wang Jianjun’s grandpa, Old Master Wang, had studied under Mount Laojun, and those elders weren’t the type to act rashly just based on someone’s background.

Strictly speaking, Witch Priests are Witch Priests, Witchcraft Gu is Witchcraft Gu; they’re basically two different things.

But now that Mount Laojun had actually uttered those three words, "cut down the unrighteous," Wen Yan felt that whether he went or not wouldn’t change much.

The people of Mount Laojun were just lazy and only wanted to quietly mind their own business; it wasn’t that their hands were soft or that they couldn’t lift a blade.

He hadn’t met the current down‑the‑mountain representative, but from the scattered information he’d gotten, this was another typical Taoist Master of Mount Laojun.

If there’s nothing, don’t come to me. If there’s truly no way around it and I must act, then I’ll rush over, kill cleanly and decisively, then turn around and leave, and go back to being hopelessly addicted to cultivation.

This time sending someone abroad directly meant they were truly angry.

"Alright then, just have him take the normal route. While we still have a few days, I’ll make a trip to Southern Sea County first. When the time comes I’ll head over by boat; I’ll just paddle along and play support."

"Suit yourself."

"And that conference or whatever— I’m not actually going to have to attend it for real, am I?"

"We’ll see. If everything’s been resolved by then, you can show your face, put on a bit of a show; no one will dare say anything.

After all, we still need a justification that looks good on the surface.

When we do things, it’s always about having a Just Cause.

You all just happened to do some good while attending an academic conference, that’s all."

"Alright, got it."

"By the way, how’s that little girl doing?"

"Pretty good. She’s living next door. When she’s sick, she sees a doctor; just needs to properly recuperate."

Feng Yao wanted to go take a look. Before he even entered the yard, he saw through the window that the little girl was sitting by it, holding a fried chicken drumstick in her hand, eating until she was sweating all over yet still reluctant to put it down.

Feng Yao’s footsteps paused. All the lines he’d prepared in his belly suddenly vanished; he couldn’t for the life of him think what he was supposed to say in a situation like this.

He looked from afar, and the little girl did look a bit disheveled— with cola and fried chicken— but her complexion had clearly improved a lot, and her whole spirit had risen noticeably by a large margin.

Feng Yao opened his mouth and only after a long while squeezed out one sentence.

"This is... treating an illness, right?"

"No, this is eating fried chicken and drinking cola."

"You think I’m an idiot? Eating this stuff can make someone this happy?"

"Are you stupid? When you drink Happy Water and eat fried chicken, aren’t you happy?"

"..."

Feng Yao was choked speechless and couldn’t think of a rebuttal.

It sounded awfully reasonable.

He still wanted to ask what exactly was going on with this little girl, but having been choked by Wen Yan, he couldn’t bring himself to ask and could only leave in dejection.

Wen Yan watched Feng Yao stomp on the gas and roar off, and gave a distant wave.

He of course knew what Feng Yao wanted to ask.

If the Scorching Sun Department wanted to investigate, they could definitely find out. It’s just that Wen Yan’s clearance wasn’t low anymore; what he usually did, unless he was on a mission, the Scorching Sun Department would only sync things like his location.