Demon Spirit Thirteen shot up to his feet, but he still kept his back bent, his head lowered a full head below Tang Chonglou’s.
Tang Chonglou raised his slender, elegant hand and swept it swiftly through the air. A dark, profound rune materialized and drifted toward Demon Spirit Thirteen.
Demon Spirit Thirteen did not dare to dodge in the slightest. He watched respectfully as the rune sank into his brow, and in that instant, a master-servant contract took root in his sea of consciousness.
He also realized that his cultivation had directly jumped from level sixty to level eighty—far surpassing those demon generals.
Thud! —
Demon Spirit Thirteen couldn’t help himself—he dropped to his knees once more. Raising three fingers, he swore with utter loyalty: “Demon Lord above, I, Demon Spirit Thirteen, swear to serve you for all eternity. If I break this oath, may I be struck by heavenly lightning and scattered to ashes.”
A wisp of black mist drifted out from between Demon Spirit Thirteen’s brows.
The mist settled into Tang Chonglou’s palm. With a flick of his wrist, the black mist vanished, and the oath was sealed.
“Get up. You won’t lose your sanity anymore from now on. Once spiritual energy enters your body, it will automatically convert into demonic energy,” Tang Chonglou said in a low voice.
“Thank you, Demon Lord. There’s one more thing—it’s unrelated to the demon race, but I’m not sure whether I should bring it up,” Demon Spirit Thirteen said hesitantly. He could tell that the Demon Lord was entirely on the side of the humans.
“Speak.”
Demon Spirit Thirteen didn’t stand up right away—after all, talking while bent over was too tiring, so he might as well stay kneeling.
He said respectfully, “I’ve discovered that the situation inside the Bai Li family is incredibly complicated. They divide their people into three categories: Deathsoil, Loyalsoil, and Puppetsoil.”
“Deathsoil members are required to commit suicide after completing a single mission. Loyalsoil members generally serve as the leaders of the Deathsoil. As for Puppetsoil, they’re similar to puppets, but they’re different from ordinary puppets—puppets aren’t really human.”
“Yet these Puppetsoil have the full range of human emotions and desires, just like real people. From what I can tell, they seem to be selected from the Spirit Battle Tournament, and they have no blood ties to the Bai Li family whatsoever.”
“The Demon Lord should know that your subordinate here has always been rather fortunate—I was born with a pair of Heavenly Eyes. When I went to probe the dantian regions of those Puppetsoil, what I saw sent chills down my spine!”
Demon Spirit Thirteen paused briefly before continuing: “No matter how high their cultivation, every single one of those Puppetsoil still has a dantian, and those dantians are completely covered in densely packed worms!”
“Your subordinate also tried to possess a Puppetsoil, only to discover that they are actually parasitized hosts. What’s more, Demon General Five found a secret chamber in the Bai Li residence filled with many cocoons. And inside those cocoons… were identical copies of the same person…”
“Demon General Five nearly got caught by the Bai Li family in that secret room. Thankfully, he managed to escape using a death-decoy technique at the critical moment—otherwise, he said he definitely would have been trapped there. He sent word that we must be extremely cautious of everyone in the Bai Li family.”
After laying out everything he knew, Demon Spirit Thirteen finally rose to his feet.
Tang Chonglou pressed his thin lips together and said nothing. Demon General Five was roughly equivalent to a cultivator at the Integration stage. And as far as he knew, there was not a single Integration-stage venerable anywhere in the Nine Provinces at present.
How exactly had the Bai Li family managed to detect Demon General Five’s presence?
And what was the purpose of using those cocoons to replicate identical copies of a person?
Tang Chonglou was intensely curious about who that person was!
“Did Demon General Five send over a portrait of that person?” Tang Chonglou asked, his black eyes cold and sharp.
“Reporting to the Demon Lord, no. He was in such a panic to flee that he didn’t have time to record anything more,” Demon Spirit Thirteen replied with due deference.
Tang Chonglou issued his orders: “Find a way to gather all the demon generals and demon spirits as soon as possible.”
“Demon Lord, should I tell them about your existence?” Demon Spirit Thirteen asked.
“No need. Among them, there are definitely some who are already completely loyal to the Ten Great Demon Emperors. If you tell them, word of my resurrection will inevitably leak out.” Tang Chonglou wasn’t afraid of facing the Ten Great Demon Emperors head-on.
It was just that, for the time being, his current strength wasn’t enough to protect the Nine Provinces from collateral damage in the middle of a battle.
If the Ten Great Demon Emperors learned of his return, they would stop at nothing to come to the Nine Provinces and kill him immediately.
“Yes,” Demon Spirit Thirteen acknowledged.
“Tell the demon spirit investigating the Bai Li family that their main branch isn’t in the Imperial Spirit Province—it’s in the Fire Spirit Province.”
The branch of the Bai Li family in the Fire Spirit Province was actually their true main household—something Tang Chonglou had learned from Su Yanran in his previous life.
Demon Spirit Thirteen’s eyes lit up with sudden understanding. “No wonder the intelligence we gathered in the Imperial Spirit Province was far less than what we found in the Fire Spirit Province.”
Tang Chonglou glanced at the several stalls behind Demon Spirit Thirteen and frowned slightly. “Are all these people your puppets?”
“Yes. Sometimes I have to leave the black market for a while, so I need someone to watch over the meat and keep it fresh,” Demon Spirit Thirteen said, lowering his head even further.
“Bury them all somewhere. I don’t want to see these things anymore.” Tang Chonglou’s gaze was icy cold. The demon race had no fear of their souls leaving their bodies.
The rules of the black market were as good as nonexistent to them.
The Bai Li family would never have guessed that the demon race they had been searching for so desperately was hiding right under their noses in the black market.
Tang Chonglou’s gaze flickered slightly. “One more thing—the demon king of the demon race, Wenren Jiuxiao, has appeared in the Fire Spirit Province. Notify the other demon generals and demon spirits to proceed with caution.”
“Thank you for the warning, Demon Lord. Your subordinate will keep it in mind.”
Tang Chonglou nodded. The red light on his token began to flash.
Not wanting to arouse the suspicions of Feng Qingran and the others, Tang Chonglou left the dark street and found a suitable spot to depart.
The moment he returned to his body, he found himself face-to-face with a face as handsome and ethereal as an immortal descended from the heavens.
Tang Chonglou’s instinctive reaction was to attack the person before him.
