Although the visitor's intentions were far from friendly, the butler still followed the general's instructions and first invited Qibao and Yin Mo into the main hall.
Yin Mo had at least once owned a villa, but Qibao was seeing what a villa actually was for the first time. Seeing that General Tu's living room was even more spacious, grand, and luxurious than the lobby of a high-end mercenary hotel, with fresh air that carried neither the sweat of passing mercenaries nor any strange fragrances, Qibao immediately fell in love with… villas as a type of house.
Yin Mo could build one for 500,000 credits, and she now had ten million.
Perhaps, after she captured all seven Great Demons, she could pick her favorite city to settle down in. If the Great Demons all behaved as obediently and honestly as Yin Mo currently did, Qibao could let them roam freely in the villa and the city. Those who didn't behave would stay locked in the pagoda.
Sitting on the cream-colored leather sofa, watching the butler set down a cup of tea that gave off a fragrant aroma, Qibao thought calmly.
Beside her, Yin Mo tried to pry information out of the butler: "Is Song Chao really your general's boyfriend? He's only A-rank. Your general can actually stand to look at him?"
With the general as his backing, the butler was quite rude to Yin Mo, whose eyes and tone were both unpleasant: "Are you really a friend of Mr. Song's? I get the feeling you can't stand to see Mr. Song doing well?"
Yin Mo: "…"
Qibao glanced at Yin Mo. This Snake Demon was respectful enough toward her, but the tone she used to mention the Carp Demon was indeed full of contempt and jealousy.
The butler didn't want to talk to Yin Mo, so he stepped back a distance. Rather than being at the ready to serve the guests at any moment, he seemed more like he was supervising the two of them.
From General Tu's perspective, the butler's behavior was a very loyal display.
Qibao thought that the Ox Demon, Cheng Qingfeng, would be better suited to be her villa butler. Yin Mo was moody and liked to speak in a sarcastic, sneering manner—she wasn't suitable for receiving guests.
After waiting a few minutes, footsteps came from upstairs.
Qibao looked up and saw S-rank Fire-element General Tu Jian, wearing black trousers and a white shirt, her shoulder-length hair casually tied into a ponytail, her expression calm. The Carp Demon Song Chao followed behind her, dressed similarly, except his short hair was a bit messy, as if he'd just run his hand through it on the way out. His scholarly, handsome face was slightly flushed, his peach-blossom eyes round and bright. At first glance, he looked far more upright than Yin Mo.
She looked up, and Song Chao was also looking down. The first one he recognized was the Snake Demon Yin Mo. As for the woman beside her…
Song Chao didn't recognize her. He'd never seen her on the Cultivation Continent, and he'd definitely never seen her here.
Seeing the unfamiliarity and confusion in his eyes, Qibao opened her right hand palm-up, and a golden pagoda twenty or thirty centimeters tall materialized out of thin air. At the same time, she sent a telepathic message to Song Chao: "My name is Qibao. I am the Tower Spirit of the Seven Treasures Pagoda, and I've come to capture you and bring you back to the pagoda."
Song Chao's pupils contracted, his legs went weak, and he missed his footing on the stairs, pitching forward.
Tu Jian, a special police officer before the apocalypse, reacted extremely quickly. Her feet, which had been split across two different steps, shifted slightly. Her right hand caught him and her left arm wrapped around him, steadily holding the slender Song Chao in her embrace. Meeting Song Chao's panicked eyes—and seeing that this panic was clearly triggered by the handsome man and beautiful woman in the living room, which happened to puncture his confident words from just moments ago—Tu Jian casually straightened him up and continued walking down.
Song Chao didn't miss the coldness in his girlfriend's eyes. He reached out and grabbed Tu Jian's wrist tightly, half-hiding behind her as he spoke quickly in a low voice to stop her: "Don't go. The pagoda in that woman's hand is an extremely powerful Spiritual Entity that can imprison and suppress living people. The man is called Yin Mo. Both of us were once locked inside that pagoda. We barely escaped five years ago. Yin Mo must have been caught by her again—either forced to work for her, or willingly pledging allegiance and helping the villain, coming along to help capture me!"
Tu Jian stared at the pagoda in the woman's hand and asked Song Chao in return: "Why does she want to capture you?"
Song Chao's mind turned quickly, and lies came easily to his lips: "Don't let her young looks fool you. She's actually decades old—a real pervert. She's captured seven handsome men and beautiful women including me over the years. She doesn't make us do anything, she just won't let us leave, like keeping seven pets. Five years ago, she got her retribution—struck unconscious by lightning—and temporarily lost control of the pagoda. That's the only reason we managed to escape."
Tu Jian seized on the loophole in his story: "If she treated you like that, why didn't you kill her for revenge while she was unconscious?"
The first time she'd met Song Chao, he'd been killing someone. She knew he only looked gentle and bookish—he wasn't the type to be so kind-hearted that he'd spare even his enemies.
Song Chao: "You don't understand. Her Spiritual Entity automatically protects its master, and its defenses are especially strong. Never mind you—even if all the generals in Jiangcheng joined forces, they couldn't break through the pagoda's defenses."
Tu Jian indeed had never heard of a defense-type powerhouse of that level, but the apocalypse had awakened all sorts of bizarre Spiritual Entities in humanity, so there were always a few special ones.
As for Song Chao's words, Tu Jian only believed half of them, because the young woman downstairs, who looked only seventeen or eighteen, had pure, clear eyes with not a trace of "pervert" about her. She seemed more like a naive high schooler or a lower-year college student.
Therefore, Tu Jian held Song Chao's hand in return and led him downward despite his resistance.
Qibao stood up—a courtesy she had learned from movies.
"Hello, I'm Qibao, and I'm also Song Chao's supervisor. I happened to pass by and noticed him here, so I came to check. I hope I'm not disturbing your rest?"
Supervisor?
Tu Jian politely shook hands with Qibao, also without beating around the bush, and asked curiously, "A supervisor in the legal sense?"
Before the apocalypse, governments and statutory bodies had the authority to supervise, manage, and regulate certain fields or industries, and some enterprises also set up related supervisory positions. However, those who supervised and protected minors or adults without full civil capacity were called guardians.
Qibao thought for a moment and said, "Something like that. Song Chao has done many bad things, and it's my responsibility to ensure he doesn't continue to do evil."
The moment she finished speaking, Song Chao grew furious and hid behind Tu Jian to defend himself: "What bad things have I done? Someone was hunting my friends and family as food, and I stopped them to protect them—how is that a bad thing?"
He was indeed a Millennial Great Demon, but he had never proactively left his territory to harm the nearby common folk. On the contrary, those common folk often rowed boats into the lake to hunt his kin—the various fish, shrimp, crabs, and so on that lived in the water. So what? Humans could catch them and take them home to boil and cook, but when he overturned those boats and let the fishermen fall into the water to fend for themselves, that became a crime?
Even after being imprisoned for three thousand years, Song Chao was afraid, yes, but he refused to accept it!
Afraid Tu Jian wouldn't believe him, Song Chao pointed at Yin Mo: "You tell her—were we really imprisoned by her because we did something wrong?"
Yin Mo didn't actually think he had done anything wrong either. When powerful human cultivators fought, they would wisely avoid cities and head to desolate mountains, unintentionally killing many innocent wild beasts and demonic beasts. So when he fought other Great Demons, chasing and battling fiercely, his attention was on his opponent—how could he notice where the battlefield had shifted?
But in the eyes of a Female Cultivator who upheld the human race, whether it was him or Song Chao, they were both demonic beasts causing harm to the world and deserved to be captured!
Both sides had their reasons—it was simply a matter of victors and losers.
Meeting Qibao's scrutinizing gaze, Yin Mo said with a look of remorse, "Given our current status, we are indeed both guilty."
From a human perspective, he had committed the crime of seriously threatening public safety, and Song Chao had committed… excessive self-defense resulting in multiple deaths?
Song Chao stared at Yin Mo in disbelief. This was a disgrace to the demon race—how could there be such a shameless, cowardly Snake Demon who feared death so much!
Tu Jian was confused by the three people's words. Song Chao seemed to have truly suffered a great injustice and grievance, while Qibao radiated righteousness.
After having the butler leave, Tu Jian invited Qibao and Yin Mo to sit back down on the sofa and demanded, "I need to know the specific details of what happened. If someone is killing people to satisfy their hunger, I'll go kill them with my own hands."
Before the apocalypse, no matter how deserving of death a criminal was, she had to follow the law and procedure. Now, she preferred to settle scores swiftly—some people simply deserved to die.
Since it concerned the origins of her and the seven Great Demons, Qibao fell silent. It was at that moment that she received telepathic messages from both Yin Mo and Song Chao almost simultaneously.
Yin Mo: "Don't tell the truth. If you do, Song Chao and I can always flee back into the mountains and live as Aberrant Beasts—after all, weak demonic beasts and Aberrant Beasts are no different in the eyes of the local humans. But if they find out you're a Magic Treasure pagoda, given human greed, they'll try every means to contract you. You can protect yourself, but from then on, wherever you go, you'll be watched by a group of scheming people who might even launch sneak attacks—one careless moment and this body of yours could be harmed."
Song Chao: "Please, don't tell her I'm a demonic beast. I love her, and I don't want her to see me as some kind of freak. Besides, I've already turned over a new leaf. Even if you told me to kill an innocent person, I wouldn't do it, because if I actually did that, Tu Jian would be the first to refuse to accept me."
Qibao took in Yin Mo's reasoning for stopping her from telling the truth, because humans were indeed greedy. Even a Female Cultivator who had cultivated to the Great Completion Stage and supposedly transcended worldly desires still wanted her because she was an Innate Magic Treasure. In the apocalyptic environment, humans' craving for absolute defense would only be even stronger.
She looked at Song Chao, who stood beside Tu Jian with a pleading expression, and asked via telepathy, "You're a demonic beast—can you even love someone?"
She suspected this was just Song Chao's tactic to win her sympathy.
Song Chao: "Demonic beasts are made of flesh and blood too. Just as I could hate the fishermen for hunting fish and shrimp, I can love Tu Jian because she's good to me."
Qibao lowered her gaze, pretending to be deep in thought, while actually communicating with Song Chao via telepathy: "How has she been good to you?"
Song Chao recounted, as concisely as possible, the process of how he had fallen in love with Tu Jian.
Five years ago, after a brief stay in Tan City to familiarize himself with the various aspects of the new world, Song Chao and the other four Great Demons decided to leave and seek a longer period of freedom—except for the Snake Demon Yin Mo, who refused to come out of seclusion, and the Ox Demon Cheng Qingfeng, who obediently remained at the Tan City base awaiting the pagoda to suppress him. However, these five demons were not familiar with one another, and they feared the pagoda would capture them all in one sweep, so they decided to split up and act independently—no one asking where the others were headed or where they would ultimately settle.
Song Chao was a Carp Demon, so of course he took to the waterways.
He traveled through connected streams and great rivers, enduring countless hardships and dodging various A-class aquatic Aberrant Beasts that wanted to eat him, as well as S-class ones that looked dangerous but had no interest in the small carp he deliberately transformed into. Finally, he arrived at Jiang City. In truth, Song Chao had wanted to follow the great river that ran east-west all the way to the distant Sea City, but the high-level Aberrant Beasts along the way had frightened him. Rather than die halfway in some beast's mouth, it was better to seek refuge in Jiang City.
Upon reaching Jiang City, Song Chao followed Cheng Qingfeng's advice and joined a mercenary squad that seemed fairly reliable, planning to earn enough for room and board and then enjoy himself in the city.
To his surprise, the squad leader's wife took a liking to him. She frequently found excuses to get close to him, and even touched him when he wasn't paying attention!
Regardless of who she was, Song Chao had no interest. He had already planned to quit and find another squad, but on the final mission outside the city, the squad leader—an A-class Blade Spiritual Entity—actually tried to kill him!
Fortunately, the squad leader didn't want his other teammates to know that Song Chao had cuckolded him, so he chose to make his move when the two of them were alone. Song Chao was, after all, a Millennial Great Demon, and with his extensive experience escaping from the jaws of A-class aquatic Aberrant Beasts, he not only slipped past the squad leader's killing blow but also took the opportunity to counter-kill him.
Having narrowly escaped death, Song Chao lay wounded on the ground, gasping for breath, when he noticed a woman in the sky above him, standing on a white crane in Beast Form. She wore a black combat suit and looked down at him with a very stern expression.
That person was Tu Jian.
After landing on the ground, Tu Jian interrogated him like a criminal, demanding to know why he had killed someone.
At the same time, Song Chao heard the footsteps of his other teammates approaching. They were all the squad leader's close brothers and wouldn't necessarily believe he was innocent.
His survival instinct drove Song Chao to tears. Pitifully and delicately, he poured out his grievances to this stranger—who was certainly powerful—and begged, "Please take me away, or they'll definitely kill me."
Tu Jian waited a moment, then questioned those teammates on the spot about whether the conflict between Song Chao and the squad leader was true.
The teammates recognized General Tu Jian, and since it was something she could verify as soon as she returned to the city, they all admitted the truth.
Only then did Tu Jian take Song Chao away, dropping him off in the city and washing her hands of him.
Song Chao still feared that someone from the squad leader's side might come to retaliate against him, so no sooner had he entered the city than he ran back out. He went to a place with no one around, transformed into a carp, and leaped into the river, planning to drift eastward with the current.
He didn't know how far he had swum when three A-class Mutant Sturgeons set their sights on him. Song Chao used every trick he had but couldn't shake off their encirclement. Just as he thought he would die that day, a ring of blazing fire descended from the sky, like a Water-Suppressing Magic Treasure from the Cultivation Continent, isolating the three Mutant Sturgeons from the pocket of water he was swimming in.
Song Chao surfaced and saw Tu Jian standing on her white crane at an angle above him.
It turned out that Tu Jian hadn't fully believed even the teammates' testimonies. After returning to base, she had sent people to keep an eye on Song Chao, and dispatched another to interrogate the squad leader's wife. Her people were highly efficient. Just as Tu Jian received the wife's testimony and was about to recall the person tailing Song Chao, word came that Song Chao had leaped into the river, transformed into a golden carp in Beast Form, and was swimming eastward.
Purely out of curiosity, Tu Jian had followed him.
Knowing what Song Chao was afraid of, Tu Jian spoke to the strikingly beautiful golden carp in the river: "If you're willing, you can stay by my side and work for me. I promise no one will be able to hurt you."
Song Chao in the water looked at the ring of golden-red flames that could cut off the river itself, then looked at this powerful, confident woman—the first person in either world to want to protect him—and his heart stirred.