Turns Out I'm the Real Monster?!

"Bullshit!"

Zhang Xiaokui’s face flushed red as he trembled with rage. "The Hall Master and I risked our lives to kill those! Put them down!"

With that, he charged forward in a fury.

The other Demon Slayer Envoys from the Third Hall immediately reacted, joining the scramble to drag the more intact Snake Demon corpses over to their side.

"Get lost!"

Seeing Zhang Xiaokui step forward to stop them, one of the men shoved him away impatiently.

Zhang Xiaokui was already exhausted.

The shove sent him staggering back, and he collapsed into the muddy water.

"You’ve gone too far!"

He gritted his teeth, using his saber to shakily push himself to his feet. His eyes were bloodshot.

"It’s an ironclad rule of the Demon-slaying Bureau that you can’t just steal credit from other halls. Are you trying to break the rules?!"

At the mention of "rules," the men’s actions faltered for a moment.

But soon, the Demon Slayer Envoy who had spoken first stepped forward again and sneered,

"Rules? Zhang Xiaokui, you ought to take a piss and look at your own sorry reflection."

He kicked one of the Tier Two snake corpses on the ground.

"What’s your Cultivation Level? And what’s your Hall Master’s? There are more than twenty Tier Two Demons here! And you expect us to believe the two of you killed them all?"

He pointed at the honeycomb of burrows and shouted:

"All their escape burrows are right here. What does that tell you? It means they were already seriously wounded by our superiors down below!"

"And as for the masters down in the well right now, aside from your brother and Lord Ling Ye, the rest are all Demon Slayer Envoys from our Third Hall."

"The credit was ours to begin with! We’re just taking back what belongs to our Third Hall. How is that stealing?"

"If you don’t like it, go ahead and report us!"

"Have some damn shame, Zhang Xiaokui. If you’re going to scavenge, then just be a scavenger. Don’t start thinking you’re some kind of hero!"

When Jiang Mu returned, dragging a Snake Demon corpse with him, he found Zhang Xiaokui standing alone in the muddy water.

Only a few mangled Snake Demon carcasses remained around him.

Jiang Mu froze.

"Why are there so few? Where are the other Snake Demon corpses? Did you already pack them up?"

Zhang Xiaokui’s face flushed crimson, and he dropped to his knees with a thud.

"Sir, I was useless!"

"What happened?"

Realizing something was wrong, Jiang Mu’s expression darkened.

Zhang Xiaokui didn’t dare look up. His voice choked with sobs as he explained what had happened. He said in shame, "Sir, I was useless... I couldn’t protect our spoils of war. They..."

Jiang Mu had killed nearly all of these Snake Demons, only for someone else to swoop in and steal the prize.

And he, his subordinate, had been powerless to do a thing.

He had even been humiliated for trying to argue his case, which made Zhang Xiaokui feel utterly disgraced.

Jiang Mu listened to the end, his face expressionless.

He tossed the Demon corpse in his hand to the ground and patted Zhang Xiaokui’s shoulder.

"It’s fine."

"Since they took something they shouldn’t have..."

Jiang Mu turned and walked toward the village, his voice detached.

"...we’ll just take it back."

Zhang Xiaokui stared for a moment. He watched his Hall Master’s stark, lonely figure retreat into the rain, then hastily wiped his face, grabbed his saber from the ground, and gritted his teeth as he followed.

...

「Inside the village, by the ancient well.」

The dozen or so men from the Third Hall were gathered around the pile of stolen Snake Demon corpses, laughing and joking. The atmosphere was celebratory.

"Brother Zhang, we’ve really struck it rich this time!"

"Exactly! That Zhang Xiaokui must take us for idiots, trying to keep all the spoils for himself. Pfft! Like two people could kill this many Demons. Does he really think we were born yesterday?"

"This haul will be enough for us to live comfortably for quite some time."

The leader, the man they called "Brother Zhang," chuckled.

"Scavenging is a skill in itself. If they didn’t have the strength to protect their prize, who can they blame? In a moment, once the others from the well..."

Before he could finish his sentence, he suddenly felt the area grow quiet.

All eyes snapped in the same direction.

Through the curtain of rain, two figures appeared, one in front of the other, trudging toward them through the mud.

It was Jiang Mu and Zhang Xiaokui.

Jiang Mu walked up to the pile of corpses and absorbed all the Demonic Qi from them.

The expressions of the men from the Third Hall turned awkward upon seeing Jiang Mu.

Finally, their leader, Brother Zhang, cleared his throat and said with a laugh,

"Master Jiang, you’ve returned? Just now, that kid Zhang Xiaokui was insisting you two killed all these Snake Demons and was trying to take them all for himself."

"We all know full well how these Demons met their end, yet he turns around and accuses us of stealing credit. You tell me, is that right?"

Jiang Mu said,

"Zhang Xiaokui wasn’t lying. We killed these Demons. Please give them back."

Hearing this, the men couldn’t hold it in any longer and began to stifle their laughter.

Brother Zhang pointed at the pile of corpses.

"Master Jiang, between these and the ones you have, there are over fifty Snake Demons in total. More than twenty of them are Tier Two. And you claim you killed them all?

Sir, don’t take us for fools. We all understand the situation. This is clearly a case of us scavenging what the masters in the well left behind. Don’t you understand the principle of ’finders keepers’?"

Jiang Mu said coolly,

"I was originally planning to give you a share. After all, we’re colleagues, and everyone has worked hard. But now, I’m sorry, you won’t be getting a single one."

Brother Zhang’s face darkened. "Master Jiang," he said grimly,

"isn’t that going a bit too far? You say you killed all these Demons? Where’s your proof? How are you going to prove it?"

"How will I prove it?"

Jiang Mu slowly drew the saber at his waist. "It’s simple. I’ll beat every last one of you to the ground. That will be my proof."

?

The men stared, thinking they must have misheard.

Brother Zhang’s expression changed. Just as he reached for his saber, his vision blurred.

BAM!

A foot sent him flying, and he crashed hard against the lip of the well. He howled in pain, unable to get back up.

Only then were the other Demon Slayer Envoys from the Third Hall jolted from their shock.

Seeing Jiang Mu charge at them, they all drew their sabers.

Although drawing a blade on an officer was a grave act of insubordination for a common Bureau guard, the current situation left them no time for such considerations.

"Who dares touch my Hall Master!"

Seeing this, Zhang Xiaokui’s blood boiled. He let out a furious roar and charged forward, his eyes red.

CLANG!

Jiang Mu swept his saber sideways, unleashing a flash of light from the blade.

He hadn’t used the cutting edge, but had instead flipped his wrist to strike with the thick spine of the blade.

One Demon Slayer Envoy’s saber was sent flying from his grip.

Jiang Mu immediately followed with a backhanded strike from the spine of his blade, hitting the man on the shoulder blade. The man cried out and collapsed to the ground.

Jiang Mu continued to swing his blade.

The spine of his saber became a blur, cracking through the air like a whip.

With every step he took, another man fell.

Every time the spine of his blade fell, a new scream of pain erupted.

「In just a few short moments.」

The once-aggressive men of the Third Hall were all down on the ground, groaning in pain as they clutched their arms, legs, or chests.

They stared at Jiang Mu with expressions of deep fear and horror.

’This is supposed to be the Second Realm?’

’This is supposed to be some privileged fop?’

’What kind of privileged fop can take on more than ten of our elites single-handedly and come away without a scratch?!’

The rain began to weaken.

Zhang Xiaokui panted for breath, his face black and blue, yet he felt an unprecedented sense of exhilaration.

He stared at the back of Jiang Mu, who stood tall in the center of the clearing, slowly sheathing his saber.

There was a time when he had viewed his Hall Master as an incompetent fool who relied on his family background to get by, his heart filled with nothing but disdain and contempt.

Later, after they slayed the demon on Dragon Head Mountain, that feeling had turned to gratitude and admiration.

But now, that gratitude and admiration had transformed into a fiery reverence and the will to follow him anywhere!

In that moment, Jiang Mu’s figure seemed to grow infinitely tall in his eyes.

’As long as I follow this man,’ he thought, ’I’ll follow him even if he decides to tear a hole in the sky!’

Jiang Mu’s gaze swept over the men groaning in pain on the ground. His expression was indifferent as he said coolly,

"You can take what I give you."

"What I don’t give, you cannot take."