Chapter 199: Trouble
Maiden Thirteen looked down at her long, fair, slender legs, and her gorgeous figure, and a confident smile appeared on her face.
She put on a new white robe embroidered with blue flowers, then reapplied her makeup in front of the mirror to further enhance her already seductive features. In particular, her eyes shimmered like alluring pools of water.
Back in the East Sea Province, those eyes had been the object of obsession for countless men.
Back then, a single seductive look from her was enough to make countless powerful and heroic figures willing to lay down their lives for her.
Her unmatched beauty had been a major factor in the Huang Clan's rise to prominence in the East Sea Province. Unfortunately, that same beauty ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword that brought about the clan's downfall.
Maiden Thirteen had become one of the most sought-after beauties in the entire province, and she soon caught the attention of the province's grand abbot, the most powerful figure in the Heavenly Master Religion in the province.
With his immense power and connections, it didn't take the grand abbot long to drive the Huang Clan into a corner and expose them as fox fiends.
The Huang Clan was immediately besieged by Daoist priests from the Heavenly Master Religion and soldiers from the imperial court. They plundered the clan's wealth and began slaughtering all of the fox fiends in the manor.
In the end, Maiden Thirteen fled to the Spirit Province with the surviving members of her clan. Her original plan had been to defect to the Great Qian Empire, but along the way, she encountered Hidden Fiend Village.
***
After getting dressed, Maiden Thirteen stepped out of the courtyard with her clansmen. A large monkey and a gray wolf were already waiting for them outside.
A hint of disgust flashed through Maiden Thirteen's eyes at the sight of the gray wolf's filthy paws and the monkey's matted fur, but she hid it very well.
"Did you hear, Maiden Thirteen? Master Omniscient is back," the gray wolf said.
"Rest assured, I'll speak to him and make him see reason," Maiden Thirteen replied. "Why is it that outsider fiends like us receive less food than the local fiends of the village? They even get priority over us when it comes to using the living corpses. How is that fair?"
"Exactly!" the monkey fiend agreed. "They think they can oppress us just because we're outsiders, but we're not going to stand for this anymore! We demand half of the food and living corpses, and we won't settle for anything less!"
Under Maiden Thirteen's instructions, the two fiends gathered all the outsider fiends, planning to confront Master Omniscient together.
"I heard from the fiends in the village that Master Omniscient is an incredibly powerful cultivator, and that he once even killed a thousand-man commander of the Demon Vanquishing Department. Are we really going to be able to stand up to him?" the monkey fiend asked with concern.
"What a load of nonsense!" Maiden Thirteen scoffed. "The thousand-man commander they're referring to is a man named Li Changqing, who fled the Great Han Empire after being found guilty of collusion with fiends. Those fiends must've picked up his identity badge somewhere, and now they're using it to claim that they killed Li Changqing.
"The hillbillies in this village don't know any better, but surely you're aware of how fearsome the Demon Vanquishing Department is. Don't tell me you've been fooled by their lies! All we need to do is make Master Omniscient submit to us, and this entire village will be ours! This is not the time to back down!"
A hint of greed appeared in both the monkey and the gray wolf's eyes upon hearing this, while Maiden Thirteen observed them with thinly veiled disdain.
She was already thinking about how to use the two of them as cannon fodder. Ideally, a battle would break out, and both of them would die alongside Qiao Zhi and Master Omniscient. That way, she would gain sole control of Hidden Fiend Village.
***
At this point, the fiend population of Hidden Fiend Village had already exceeded one hundred and fifty, with nearly half of them coming from outside of Azure Sun County.
After learning the location of the courtyard where Master Omniscient was staying, Maiden Thirteen instructed a few of her clansmen to cause trouble in the village in order to draw all of the fiends to the scene. After that, she instructed the monkey fiend and the wolf fiend to surround Master Omniscient's courtyard with over seventy other outsider fiends.
Both the monkey fiend and the wolf fiend were fourth-state martial artists, and four of the fiends with them were also fourth-state martial artists. In addition, there were also over twenty third and second-state martial artists among the rest of the fiends, while most of the remaining were also first-state martial artists.
These fiends were all battle-hardened veterans who had fled to Azure Sun County. They were used to getting what they wanted through force, so they were deeply dissatisfied with the rules of the village.
The monkey fiend and the wolf fiend had even wiped out entire human clans before. Their vicious nature, combined with their advanced cultivation bases, made them the unofficial leaders of the outsider fiends.
They rushed into the courtyard and saw a man wearing a copper mask sitting on a chair, with an orange cat resting on his lap.
The orange cat was none other than Qiao Zhi, and he was furious to see the two intruding fiends.
"Hou Liu! Lang Yue! What is the meaning of this?!"
The wolf fiend was named Lang Yue, and he fixed his gaze on the masked Chu Qiguang as he asked, "You must be Master Omniscient, right? Are you aware that the cat fiend sitting on your lap has been discriminating against all of us outsiders? We came to this village for a brighter future, not to be oppressed and treated like second-class citizens!"
Qiao Zhi was furious.
"What the hell are you talking about?! I took you into the village out of the kindness of my heart! When did I ever oppress you?"
"How much food have you assigned to the local fiends of the village?" Hou Liu asked. "How many chickens? How many living corpses? All of us work all day long just like they do, yet we don't even get a third of what they receive, and you still say you haven't oppressed us?"
"That's bullshit!" Qiao Zhi yelled, his hackles rising in fury. "None of you are willing to do any work, so you've been deprived of resources as punishment! You only have yourselves to blame!"
"Who says we haven't been working?" Lang Yue scoffed. "You're the one who gets to decide that, while we can only suffer in silence! Isn't that right, brothers?"
The seventy or so fiends surrounding the courtyard immediately began shouting in agreement.
"We're not going to stand for this any longer! You're going to give us the food and the living corpses whether you like it or not, and half of the newly constructed houses must be assigned to us as well!"
Qiao Zhi was so enraged that he had temporarily been rendered speechless, and even his claws had involuntarily extended from his paws.
With things about to come to a head, Maiden Thirteen finally strolled into the courtyard. She quickly managed to console all of the outsider fiends before instructing them to wait outside the courtyard.
She then turned to Qiao Zhi with a concerned expression and asked, "Are you alright, Master Qiao?"
"If you hadn't arrived in time, a fight would've surely broken out," Qiao Zhi said as he turned to her with a grateful expression. "Any casualties would've been a loss for the village."
Maiden Thirteen immediately sided with Qiao Zhi, denouncing Hou Liu and Lang Yue for their ingratitude, and she quickly had him wrapped around her finger.
"I thought you must've been the one who instigated all of this, but I should've known better to doubt you," Qiao Zhi said with a guilty expression.
Maiden Thirteen was full of disdain at Qiao Zhi's naivete, but at the same time, she couldn't help feeling a little unsettled by the presence of the masked man in the courtyard, who had remained silent the entire time.
He was watching her with a cold, derisive gaze, as if he were watching a jester perform, and she couldn't help but feel perturbed.
"Looks like we have no choice but to give them some food to defuse the situation for now," Qiao Zhi conceded.
This was exactly what Maiden Thirteen wanted to hear, and she turned to Chu Qiguang and asked, "What do you think, Master Omniscient?"
"Sure," Chu Qiguang agreed with a nod.
The unease in Maiden Thirteen's heart instantly turned into disdain. Sure enough, manipulating these hillbillies was child's play.
"In that case, I'll send some people to open the granary and—"
"Why open the granary?" Chu Qiguang interrupted, cutting her off mid-sentence. "If it's food they want, there's plenty of it outside."
Looking into the eyes beneath the mask, Maiden Thirteen felt an involuntary chill run down her spine.