0121 Everyone is!

On the morning of the sixteenth day after the Demon Cave appeared, Taicang City, the riverside city, had become a place of utter terror.

As the Demon Cave expanded, one-third of the city was completely consumed by a bottomless abyss. Countless demons emerged from its depths and pounced upon the humans like ravenous wolves and tigers.

The city defenders’ line had retreated again and again, until it now ran deep through the neighborhoods, intermingled with the homes of ordinary civilians.

Most civilians had already been evacuated beyond the city. Since the Demon Cave had spread throughout Taicang and demons rampaged everywhere, the process had been agonizingly slow, but at last it was complete. Some civilians, however, insisted on remaining behind. Some took charge of logistics, while others even joined the fighting.

Perhaps because they had relied on defensible terrain from the very beginning, they were particularly skilled at using the environment to harry the demons. When they acted in numbers, they often managed to achieve genuine victories.

At first, the city defenders had been somewhat concerned for them. But as time passed, they gradually acknowledged the civilians’ combat prowess, and eventually even began learning from their methods.

An unspoken understanding took shape between the two sides. The names of the brothers Wu San and Wu Qi also began to spread among more and more martial cultivators. Brave and clever, they had been the first to lead the civilians in rebellion.

The most eye-catching fighting was taking place in the north of the city.

Northern Taicang was the city’s poorest and most backward district. Taicang Backstreet, in particular, was notorious as a slum where prostitutes, thugs, and thieves ran rampant. Ordinary people were unwilling to go anywhere near it.

Yet before long, a group of newcomers joined the fighting there. Their strength and identities left the local hundred-household chief utterly dumbfounded.

They were precisely the so-called “lower-class people” of Taicang Backstreet!

Among them were fat, grotesquely ugly brothel keepers, loafers who wandered the streets all day, drunkards who never let go of their bottles, and gamblers who spent every day shouting orders in underground dens. Now, every one of them had taken up weapons and charged onto the battlefield!

Most astonishing of all, they were all martial cultivators—and extraordinarily powerful ones at that!

Their fighting methods were bizarre. They wielded every kind of weapon and used every imaginable tactic.

One drunkard carried a bottle made of ice, smashing it against every demon he encountered. The bottle shattered against a demon’s head or body, and a powerful chill immediately invaded the creature, freezing it solid. Then the thief would rush forward, twist his dagger, and gouge out the demon core.

There was also a butcher who wielded two enormous cleavers, hacking until he was drenched in demonic blood. At last, his blades became notched. When a demon charged him, he wrapped both arms around it and bit off its ear in one bite. After chewing a few times, he swallowed it!

Demons were not easy meat. Once their flesh was consumed, it immediately transformed into powerful demonic energy that swept through the body. Yet the butcher merely belched, expelled a puff of black vapor, and neutralized all the demonic energy. The strength of his luminous force was evident.

Even the oldest residents of Taicang had known nothing of this group’s existence. No—that was not quite right. They had known these people existed, but who could have imagined that they were so powerful?

“I’ve never offended them, have I?” an old Taicang resident muttered uneasily, touching his ear.

A fat woman passed behind him, seized a demon, and twisted its neck with a sharp crack before slamming it heavily into the ground.

A deep crater appeared at once. Grabbing the demon by one leg, the woman swung it down again and again, cursing as she did so.

“You bastard! How dare you smash up my home! I was living just fine, and then you lot had to come causing trouble!”

The Taicang market overseer stared in stunned silence. After a moment, he suddenly began to laugh.

Yes. Whatever they had been before, Taicang was their home now.

The home of all of them.

…

…

The sixteenth day since the Demon Cave opened was also the seventh day of the Yushui Province examination—the final day.

The grand examination would end that afternoon, but early that morning, the commanders of the various hundred-household offices summoned the examinees to their side.

They solemnly informed the examinees that the Demon Cave had advanced, and the danger of the fighting had increased more than twofold. The examinees were candidates, not genuine soldiers. They could withdraw from the battle at any time, and the commanders would not lower their evaluations for doing so.

The situation was plain to anyone with eyes. Some examinees had already gone pale with fear, and as soon as they heard this, they immediately announced their withdrawal. Others, however, declared without hesitation that they would remain, fight alongside the soldiers, and battle until the very last moment!

That same day, the soldiers no longer had the strength to protect the examinees. Serious injuries and deaths began to appear among them.

More examinees withdrew, but roughly a quarter of them still persisted.

The rankings on the Sky-Connecting List changed at astonishing speed. Some examinees participated in the killing of school-level demons, causing their scores to soar. Others withdrew from the competition, and their rankings steadily fell. Still others saw their names turn gray. Their souls and lives would remain forever in this city, upon this land.

…

…

The Demon Cave battle zone at Singing-Cui Lake in western Taicang.

There had once been a small lake of extraordinary beauty here. Now it had been completely replaced by a dark Demon Cave.

The city defenders stationed here had been reduced to one-tenth of their original number. Of the twenty-five examinees assigned to the area, fifteen had withdrawn and six had died. Only four remained, gritting their teeth and holding on.

After days of unbroken battle, their luminous force had long since been nearly exhausted. Their bodies were covered in wounds, and they could collapse at any moment.

Two examinees stood back to back, panting as they stared ahead.

“I—I can’t hold on much longer,” one of them said. “What about you?”

“Heh. Same as you. I’ve killed three hundred and twenty-seven demons in total today. What about you?”

The man in front laughed. “I’ve killed one more than you. Three hundred and twenty-eight!”

The two exchanged a glance, drew several deep breaths, and charged forward once more.

“I can’t lose to you!”

Both of them were at the end of their strength, but a final breath still sustained them. They knew that they could withdraw at any time if they asked to do so, yet from beginning to end, neither had mentioned it even once.

At that moment, a demon with the head and body of a hound suddenly rushed in front of them and reared upright.

It growled viciously, baring its teeth at them.

By now, the two men had become skilled at judging the ranks of these demons. They exchanged a glance and gave a bitter smile at the same time.

“A lieutenant-level demon… So this is where it ends!”

“Come on! Let’s fight it to the death!”

They rallied their spirits once more and raised the long blades in their hands. With a roar, the hound demon shot toward them like lightning.

Its two pitch-black claws rose high, the spaces between them filled with flesh and blood. Its eyes gleamed with greed. To it, these two young humans were nothing more than a fresh feast.

Its claws blurred with afterimages as they descended heavily toward the two men’s chests.

The examinees believed they were certain to die, yet there was not a trace of fear in their eyes. They swung their blades, thinking only of injuring the demon.

One blade sank into the demon’s shoulder. The other struck its neck.

But the demon’s claws stopped in midair, utterly motionless.

A moment later, its head and arm fell simultaneously, and its body toppled to the ground.

What had happened?

The two examinees stared in astonishment and delight.

Had they killed a lieutenant-level demon?

Both were only at the Dawn Realm. In terms of strength, they should not even have been capable of filling the demon’s teeth. Now that they were exhausted to the point of collapse, how could they possibly have accomplished such a feat?

“Good work, boys!” a voice praised from nearby.

The two men looked up together and saw a stooped figure slowly walking away. It was a man in his sixties, his hair already streaked with white. He held an iron tobacco pipe in one hand. His pace appeared slow and unhurried, yet in truth he moved with astonishing speed.

With a single step, he reached a demon. His tobacco pipe came down with a bang, smashing the lieutenant-level demon’s head to pieces.

Another lieutenant-level demon charged at him from the side. With a casual sweep of his arm, he sent the pipe cutting through the air in a line of fire, cleaving the demon in half across the chest.

Only then did the two examinees notice the hole in the chest of the demon they had just struck. It was almost exactly the size of the pipe’s tip.

Amazed yet disappointed, they exchanged a glance and murmured, “So it was him who saved us…”

“Who exactly is he?”

The old man wore coarse linen garments of the plainest kind. He moved freely across the battlefield, and with every step he took, another demon fell. His motions flowed like drifting clouds and running water, graceful beyond description.

After fighting for a while, he shouted, “What are you standing there like fools for? Get over here and help!”

“Coming!”

A deep voice answered. Then a huge man descended from the sky and slammed into the ground with a boom. He stamped one enormous foot, instantly crushing a demon’s bones and snapping its tendons. Then he reached out, seized another demon beside him, and tore it cleanly in two!

The two men were not only immensely powerful; they also possessed extraordinarily rich combat experience. The moment they appeared, they helped stabilize the Singing-Cui Lake battle zone, which had been on the verge of collapse.

The old man turned his head and shouted, “Move it!”

His voice exploded above the hundred-household chief’s head like thunder. The commander had been staring in stunned disbelief, but now he came to his senses and immediately organized the remaining personnel, rearranging the battle formation.

He ran to the old man and bowed.

“Sir, you are…”

A dark shape flew from the old man’s hand. The commander hurriedly caught it. It was an iron insignia. The moment he saw it, his eyes widened.

“Th-the Imperial Demon Suppression Army?!”

The old man struck down three approaching demons in rapid succession with three loud blows and reminded him, “Retired.”

Sure enough, a ring of lines ran along the edge of the insignia, its surface smooth. Under normal circumstances, there would have been a ring of thorns there, signifying an active member of the Imperial Demon Suppression Army. The smooth lines indicated that the bearer had retired and returned to his homeland to live out the rest of his life.

The commander’s gaze shifted to the giant.

“And this gentleman is also…”

The giant tore another demon apart. Black blood splashed across his face as he threw back his head and laughed.

“That’s right. We all are!”

All of them!

The commander suddenly seemed to realize something. His entire face filled with ecstatic joy.