Time flowed like sand through an hourglass, and the night deepened into silence. By early the next morning, Li Meng and Yao Ning had checked out of the inn.

The authorities had completely sealed off the West City District. Soldiers stood guard at every intersection leading into the quarantined zone, their expressions grim.

The pair arrived at a stone bridge spanning a modest city waterway, perhaps ten zhang wide. This bridge marked the dividing line between life and death.

To the east, the streets were bustling with traffic. Pedestrians shouldered past one another, and the noise of daily life filled the air. To the west, across the bridge, the world fell into a desolate, uninhabited silence.

Soldiers manned a checkpoint at the bridgehead, barring entry.

“Demon Suppression Office on official business!” Yao Ning announced, unhooking the jade plaque from her waist.

Upon seeing the token, the soldiers’ demeanor shifted instantly to respect, and they stepped aside to clear the path.

Li Meng and Yao Ning crossed the bridge, leaving the noise of the living behind. The streets of the West City District were a chaotic mess of debris and dust, devoid of human presence.

As they walked, Li Meng abruptly turned into a narrow, filthy alleyway.

“Senior, where are we going?” Yao Ning asked, confused. “There is a main road right there. Why take this dirty alley?”

Even with the pestilence, some residents remained deep within the district. The living still had to survive, after all.

“Just walking around. Observing,” Li Meng replied calmly.

He tilted his head back, his gaze fixing on a small bronze bell hanging under the eaves of a roadside house.

Since entering the district, he had noticed a pattern. At regular intervals, these identical bronze bells hung from the roofs. They looked like mere decorations to the untrained eye.

As they ventured deeper, a woman carrying a water bucket emerged from around a corner. Her forehead was darkened with a sickly pallor, and her eyes were dull and lifeless.

Every step she took seemed to require a Herculean effort. Her body was emaciated, her vitality decayed to the absolute limit.

She kept her head down, shuffling in silence. The bucket she carried was barely a third full, yet she strained as if she were hauling a boulder.

“Senior, it’s the pestilence!” Yao Ning’s face paled.

She stepped forward and grabbed Li Meng’s arm, pulling him aside to give the woman a wide berth.

Li Meng narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the woman as she passed. This was no disease.

Clearly, a formation covered the West City District, slowly siphoning the spiritual essence—the life force—from these mortals.

They waited until the woman disappeared around the bend before continuing. For the rest of the day, they wandered aimlessly through the dead streets.

As evening approached, the sky darkened, and a light drizzle began to fall over Lijiang City. The drizzle soon intensified into a torrential downpour, washing the grime from the gray stones.

Amidst the curtain of rain, the massive Welcome Guest Inn stood tall.

Since the lockdown, business at the West City District’s largest tavern had plummeted. However, recently, a few groups of free-spending martial artists had taken up residence, keeping the establishment afloat.

With a loud creak, the tavern’s main doors were pushed open.

A gust of cold wind howled into the hall, causing the oil lamps to flicker wildly. Two figures stepped in from the storm.

One was a youth in black brocade robes, a Demon-Slaying Blade at her waist. The other wore yellow robes, his hair white as snow but his face possessed of a youthful, sage-like vitality.

“Two guests, please come in! Please!” The waiter greeted them with a beaming smile, hurriedly wrestling the door shut against the wind.

“Yao Ning!”

Yao Ning scanned the hall and immediately spotted two familiar faces. They were dressed in the same black brocade uniform as her, sitting at a table and waving.

She walked over to them. “Zhang Shan, Li Kui? Why are you two here?”

Yao Ning sat naturally at their table, while Li Meng took a seat at an adjacent empty table nearby.

Zhang Shan glanced at the man in the yellow robes. He wanted to call him an “old man,” but the description didn’t fit.

The man had white hair and a long beard, yes. But his skin was smooth, ruddy, and tight—glowing with health that no elderly mortal possessed. He exuded an extraordinary aura, distinct to those from the “mountains.”

“Yao Ning, why are you with that person?” Li Kui whispered, eyeing Li Meng warily.

“First, tell me about yourselves,” she deflected.

The two men withdrew their gaze from Li Meng. Zhang Shan took a depressed sip of his wine.

“The Rat Demons in this district are numerous and incredibly slippery,” Zhang Shan complained. “Li Kui and I chased them for days. We lost their trail near here, so we decided to use this tavern as a temporary base.”

Yao Ning scanned the first floor. It was surprisingly occupied.

Apart from them, there were two other distinct groups. To the left sat three men in cyan Daoist robes. They didn’t look like mortals—likely cultivators, like the Senior.

At another table sat five men in black martial gear. They looked like jianghu wandering artists, but something was off.

They were grotesque-looking. Their features were misshapen, their limbs robust but awkward. They were undeniably ugly, radiating a strange, uncomfortable energy.

After a brief glance, Yao Ning turned back to her colleagues. “That Senior is my life-saving benefactor. He is a person from the mountains.”

Zhang Shan and Li Kui nodded in understanding. The man certainly didn’t look like a commoner.

Yao Ning stood up and moved to the neighboring table, sitting across from Li Meng.

“Senior,” she whispered, “are those three also people from the mountains?”

Li Meng glanced at the three men in cyan robes. They were looking right at him. One of them nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

Li Meng chuckled softly and nodded back.

“Sit still. Don’t move,” Li Meng commanded gently.

He stood up and began walking toward the three Daoists. Yao Ning watched him with curiosity.

As Li Meng approached, the expressions of the three men shifted. A trace of nervousness, barely perceptible, flickered in their eyes.

Li Meng smiled warmly and cupped his hands in a formal salute. “Are you three Senior Brothers from the Qingxu Sect?”

The three exchanged glances, relieved by the polite address. They hastily stood and returned the salute.

“That is correct,” one replied. “Junior Brother, are you from the Hehuan…”

The cultivator never finished his sentence. His face drained of color.

Li Meng was still smiling, but a terrifying cold light had erupted in his eyes.

He flicked his sleeve.

Whoosh.

Three golden talismans shot out from his cuff. The distance was point-blank; the cultivators had zero time to react. They never expected a friendly “Junior Brother” to launch a sudden, lethal ambush.

The Soul-Fixing Talismans slapped onto their foreheads instantly.

The three men froze, their eyes glazing over. They stood like statues, locked in their bowing posture.

Li Meng’s sudden aggression terrified Yao Ning. At her table, Zhang Shan and Li Kui instinctively gripped the hilts of their blades, muscles tense.

Right now, good and evil were unclear. Or perhaps, in the world of cultivation, such concepts didn’t matter—this was simply a conflict between mountain people.

Yao Ning shook her head at her companions, signaling them to stand down. Although she didn’t know why the Senior was attacking fellow cultivators, she trusted him implicitly.

If he were evil, he wouldn’t have saved her life.

Li Meng formed a hand seal with one hand. A low-grade flying sword shot out from the storage bag at his waist.

A cold flash of sword light illuminated the dim tavern.

The blade swept past the necks of the three immobilized Daoists in a single, fluid motion.

Three heads soared high into the air. They thudded to the floor, rolling alongside the headless corpses that collapsed a moment later.