Dai Shoushan ushered He Yu into his home. A large building, at least by the standards of the village. He was fed and given what he suspected was Dai Shoushan’s own room to spend the night.

Accepting the meal with as much grace as he could, he ate. It caused him another small twinge of homesickness to sup on such simple fare. The meals he’d been eating since joining the inner sect a year ago had been positively decadent compared to what he’d eaten back home in Shulin. The meal Dai Shoushan served him reminded him of evenings eating simple meals with his father.

Since advancing to Golden Core, he hardly needed to eat anything at all—a stark contrast to the massive quantities of food he’d inhaled during his time at Body Refining. Of course he still ate, it was just that each meal was now like an elixir unto itself.

The dishes he bought were prepared by other members of the inner sect. Made with meat cut from spirit beasts and vegetables grown in the sect’s gardens. Seasoned with medicinal herbs and qi-infused spices. They fortified his body beyond what he’d forged himself into during his time in the Third Realm, and went a long way to restoring his qi reserves after a long day of training. Some of the higher quality meals were enough to cause a backlash in a First or Second Realm cultivator.

After thanking Dai Shoushan for his hospitality, He Yu retired to his provided room. There was a bed, but he hardly needed the sleep. Instead, he sat on the floor and cultivated. The first thing that struck him was the utter lack of natural qi here. Relatively speaking.

He’d always sort of known that the southern forest was an area with a particular lack of potency in its natural qi. It was why Shulin had so few cultivators, and also why Dong Wei had only advanced to Foundation. Of course, it also explained why Shulin was relatively safe, too. Less potent qi meant awakened beasts and true spirits couldn’t grow very powerful, and relatively simple formations were enough to keep them at bay. It also meant that if anything stronger wandered in from other nearby areas, the settlements in the Dragon Empire’s south were particularly vulnerable.

That was the most pressing thought on He Yu’s mind as he begrudgingly opened his storage treasure. Anything that could cause real problems for a town with halfway decent formation stones would be stronger than what was normal for the area. He didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks with mortal lives at stake, so he took one of his more potent elixirs. Although he had far more resources than when he’d been an outer sect disciple, he still felt the sting of the expense, even as he felt the elixir course through his meridians.

As He Yu cultivated, he turned the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment to what he knew. The village hadn’t suffered an attack. That was good. There had, however, been disappearances.

Whatever was causing them could either disable or bypass the formation script the village relied on for its day-to-day protection. From what He Yu could discern based on what little information he had, the culprit was likely more advanced than was typical for the area, but the lack of an outright attack placed an upper limit on their strength. He would, of course, have to check the formation for himself in the morning.

After accepting tea from Dai Shoushan shortly after sunrise, He Yu walked the village perimeter, examining the formation stones. While he wasn’t even half the talent with formations that someone like Chen Fei was, he wasn’t wholly ignorant, either. He knew enough to easily discern that the formation was intact and functional. So whatever the culprit, it was strong enough to bypass the formation without setting off any of its defensive measure, or breaking the script entirely. All that did was confirm what he already knew.

When he reported these initial findings to Dai Shoushan, the elder did not take the news well.

“What ever could cause such a thing, Lord He?” the elder asked, trying—and failing—to keep the worry from his words.

He Yu found himself at a loss for an answer. It wasn’t a spirit, as such things were particularly susceptible to formation scripts. At least according to everything he knew. It was also unlikely to be a spirit beast, too. Any beast strong enough to bypass the formation wouldn’t be able to do so without first activating it. More importantly, if it were the sort of beast to do so, it would have likely attacked the village, rather than simply absconding with some livestock before doing the same with the inhabitants.

Bandits? He Yu didn’t like that answer, but he didn’t know if it was likely either. He was, admittedly, rather unexperienced with how bandits operated, after all. A formation barrier meant to protect against spirits or beasts wouldn’t affect humans, of course. But if most bandits were anything like King Hao and his followers, there wouldn’t be a village left to send for aid once they’d selected their target.

For a moment, He Yu considered how best to answer. He didn’t want to lie and claim he had an answer, but neither did he want to worry Dai Shoushan further by admitting he didn’t know.

Eventually, he settled on simply saying, “That’s what I am here to find out, Uncle Dai.”

That seemed to work. Dai Shoushan visibly relaxed, and He Yu asked the elder to point him in the direction from where the disappearances would have first come from, based on the missing livestock.

“Wait within the formation boundary,” He Yu said before heading into the forest that hugged the south of the village. “I will return shortly.”

Once out of sight of the village itself, He Yu took a moment to let himself feel the nostalgia. While not exactly like the forest around Shulin, this was closer than he’d been ever since he’d left.

It was all the familiar mix of southern cork oak and laurel trees, forming a canopy thick enough for decent shade, but with enough light filtering through to be pleasant and easy to see. Familiar bird songs floated through the trees, and the ground cover was all the same kind that grew around Shulin. The air was cool, given the season, but noticeably more mild and comfortable than the Shrouded Peaks.

A brief look around on the forest floor turned up no signs of what might have been causing the troubles for the village. Not that He Yu was much of a tracker, having spent most of his younger years inside because of his then-poor health. He did, however, have a fantastic perception technique at his disposal.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Looking at his surroundings with the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, he began to piece together the truth of things. He saw signs of passage, and recently. The most recent disappearance happened just several days prior to his arrival and marked the fifth villager to go missing. Someone had dragged another person deeper into the woods, judging by the faint scuffs in the rich silty soil. At least five sets of other tracks accompanied the scuffs.

He Yu frowned. Whoever, or whatever, had taken the villager certainly weren’t beasts. They looked human, but didn’t appear to be wearing shoes? He couldn’t be certain. As much information as the Peerless Judgment was giving him, he simply didn’t have the expertise or experience to properly use it. The best he supposed he could do was follow the trail. That, at least, proved relatively easy.

As he pushed deeper into the forest, he moved cautiously. So far as he could tell, he was the most powerful thing for miles around, but that was no reason he ought to be reckless. Soon, the pleasant scent of earth and trees gave way to something that made his stomach turn. Blood, decay, and something he’d never truly forget from his time tracking King Hao—the scent of burnt human flesh.

It didn’t take him long to find the source.

A small clearing was ringed by a makeshift wall, fashioned of woven tree-branches. The smell of violence and death hung heavy in the air, and overpowered what he should have smelled, given the still smoldering cook-fire and racks of cured meat. It took him a moment to realize it was human flesh, and he gagged.

That was when he finally noticed the bodies. The clearing had been the site of a slaughter—both in the literal and figurative sense. At the opposite end, he saw the villagers, or at least what remained of them. They’d been killed and butchered. At least he now knew where the flesh on the drying racks had come from.

The rest of the bodies were strewn about the camp. None moved. Many had makeshift weapons laying on the cleared ground nearby. There was no sign of the attackers, and he had to assume that whatever had occurred here in the time since the abduction had been terribly one-sided. He approached the closest of the camp’s former occupants to get a closer look.

At first he thought them human. They looked human enough, after all. Drawing closer to the first one, he realized its gray, pallid complexion wasn’t from rot setting in. He summoned his guandao from his storage treasure and used it to lever the body onto its back. The thing’s face was twisted and animalistic, with fierce-looking features. It had once born horns atop its forehead, and he assumed fangs in its maw. The horns and teeth had both been cut, and were now mere stumps protruding from its gray flesh. He Yu checked the other bodies. Each of them was similar. Gray flesh, with shorn-off horns and cut-down teeth. Demons.

That at least explained what had happened to the villagers. Since they were all dead, He Yu couldn’t determine what their advancement would have been, but he’d put them in at least the Third Realm. If they’d been equivalent to Foundation, they likely wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the village’s formation barrier without activating or destroying it.

He decided to take a closer look, since he couldn’t figure out why a demon, let alone an entire group, would cut their horns and fangs. Kneeling down, he discovered its torso had been cut open, too. A brief check showed that its core had been removed, along with most of its internal organs. He suspected he wouldn’t need to check the others, but he did anyway.

They had all been stripped of anything that could have been of any conceivable use. Horns, fangs, organs and bones—not to mention their cores—all cut out. Ripped, in some cases. Whoever had done this had been thorough, ensuring they left nothing of value behind. That suggested to He Yu it had most likely been a cultivator.

Alchemists, artificers, refiners—all could find some use for demon parts. Use, and value. Even a cultivator with no real specialization in creating pills or treasures could identify anything worth taking if they had a bit of knowledge. He Yu had certainly harvested beasts often enough himself.

He poked around the camp for a bit, looking for signs of a fight, but found shockingly little. The sort of obvious destruction that came with fights between peer adversaries was wholly absent. No evidence of powerful techniques. No signs that the demons had put up much of a struggle, either. It had taken a bit of looking, but he managed to identify clear wounds on some of the corpses.

His initial assessment that this had been a wholly one-sided affair seemed accurate. This wasn’t what he’d expected to find at all. Had the sect sent someone else? That wasn’t something that typically happened, though. He’d been the one to take the job, after all. But he couldn’t figure out how else this would have happened. Whoever had done this had to have been at least his own level of advancement—it was the only way they could have defeated the two dozen demons with so little evidence of a struggle, and without the use of more powerful techniques.

With little other choice, he returned to the village.

“The issue is resolved. You won’t be troubled further,” was all he said.

“And the missing villagers?” Dai Shoushan asked, his voice hopeful.

“They won’t be returning.” As He Yu left, a chorus of grieving wails rose behind him.

He had a lot to think about on his return trip. Would he have saved that last villager had he not stayed the night first? He didn’t think so, but he wondered regardless. What about the demons themselves? Would he have arrived in time to learn who this mysterious cultivator was who’d killed them and ripped out anything of value? Likely not. By appearances, the demons had been dead for about a day. They’d likely been attacked the same day he’d taken the job, and probably would have already been dead by the time he arrived at the village.

It was strange that whoever had done this hadn’t revealed themselves. If there was one thing he’d learned about cultivators in his time at the sect, was that they were a proud and entitled bunch. Why hadn’t they demanded at least some sort of acknowledgment, then? He tried not to think too much about what would have been different if the mysterious expert had shown up a day or two sooner. At the very least, there would have been one less grieving family left behind.

Upon returning to the sect, he arrived at the assignment hall just before they closed down for the evening. Placing the notice for his job in front of the clerk, he announced that he’d completed it.

“Cores?” the clerk asked.

He Yu blinked, looked down at the job description, and sighed. “I don’t have any.”

The clerk tapped the sheet with one finger. “The job clearly states recompense depends on retrieved cores or other evidence from any defeated spirits or awakened beasts responsible. You can’t expect me to believe you’ve completed the job without evidence, can you?”

“The villagers were abducted by demons. The demons were dead when I arrived. Most likely killed by a wandering expert.”

He Yu glared at the clerk, and the clerk glared back.

“A wandering expert finished your job for you,” he said flatly. “If these demons are dead, where are their cores?”

“Whoever killed the demons took them. And before you ask, they also took everything else that might be of value.” Or serve as proof, he realized.

The clerk sniffed. “Well,” he said. “I suppose I can mark it as complete. No contribution points, though.” He took the job posting, stamped it with a jade seal, and filed it away. Then, he added, “Mind you, if we get word the village is still suffering, you’ll be docked contribution points. Now come back when you actually have something to turn in.”

With a wave, He Yu turned and left the assignment hall. At least he’d gotten some exercise out of the trip.