Chapter 137: Taking the Initiative Against the Six Gates
Three days later, when Mo Lin found Zhu Dongfeng in the wilderness of Quankang County, the latter was overseeing his men as they cleaned up the battlefield.
From the ground littered with the broken remains of demonic beasts, it was obvious that the Six Gates had secured yet another great victory.
“Hahaha, refreshing! Now this is the kind of battle that feels satisfying!”
Unlike Zhu Dongfeng, who sat cross-legged with his eyes closed in meditation, a woman beside him laughed heartily while brandishing a massive axe.
The axe was so large that Zhu Dongfeng couldn’t even see her face past its blade.
Not that he cared about her looks anyway—not because she wasn’t pleasing to the eye, but because she was a comrade who had worked with him for years.
Who would be interested in a brother’s looks, after all?
Still, after enduring her laughter for a while, Zhu Dongfeng finally felt his eardrums ache.
“Lin Huai, this Master of the Gates really suspects that your parents must’ve shown you too many hatchets when you were a kid—how else could they have messed up your gender, temper, and name so completely!”
“Can’t you laugh a little quieter?”
The woman wearing the Six Gates combat uniform—Lin Huai, as Zhu Dongfeng called her—lowered the enormous axe from her shoulder and stomped her foot hard, launching herself skyward.
In the next instant, she appeared beside a demonic beast’s corpse and brought the axe down with a violent swing.
The beast, which had been pretending to be dead, suddenly jerked upright. The axe, cutting through the air, smashed down upon it, embedding half its blade deep into the earth.
“Screee!”
Cold sweat broke out all over the Possum Demon’s body. It had planned to fake death and wait for a chance to flee—but Lin Huai had seen right through it.
The Possum Demon leapt up and bolted away.
But Lin Huai gripped the axe handle with one slender arm and lifted it easily from the ground’s fissure, as if she were pulling it out of tofu instead of solid rock.
“Hmph!”
With a snort, she flicked her wrist, and the massive axe, howling through the air, hurtled toward the fleeing possum.
With a sharp whoosh, the Possum Demon’s lower body kept running, but its upper half froze in place and fell limply to the ground.
Its legs staggered a few more dozen meters before kneeling down lifelessly.
The axe, as large as a person, continued flying even after cleaving the demon in two—slicing through two trees before embedding itself deep into a third.
Lin Huai stepped across the wreckage, pulled the axe from the trunk, and returned to Zhu Dongfeng’s side.
“Gate Master, do you have any opinions about me?”
Zhu Dongfeng’s eyelids twitched as he looked at the scene—the axe, nearly as large as Lin Huai herself and sharp enough to cut through both demon and tree, dangling casually from her delicate arm.
“No, none at all. This Master has absolutely no opinions.”
Though Zhu Dongfeng was the Gate Master of the Yongzhou Six Gates, his strength lay more in administration and strategy—it didn’t mean he was the strongest fighter among them.
For instance, the woman before him wasn’t much weaker than he was.
If the two ever fought, regardless of who won, that heavy axe forged from Deep-Silver Profound Iron would be enough to give him a headache.
So, Zhu Dongfeng wisely shut his eyes again and didn’t provoke Lin Huai further.
The other members of the Six Gates, still busy cleaning up, covered their mouths to stifle their laughter.
“The Gate Master’s getting schooled by Lady Lin Huai again.”
High above, nearly a kilometer in the sky, Mo Lin flapped his wings, taking in everything below.
Although he couldn’t sense Lin Huai’s aura from such a distance, judging by her performance, her strength was formidable.
If he wanted to extract the information he needed from Zhu Dongfeng, he would first have to find a way to draw Lin Huai and the others away. Otherwise, it would be difficult.
But difficult or not, he had to try.
If he could get what he needed from Zhu Dongfeng’s mouth, he wouldn’t have to join that so-called “Falcon Beak” organization just to gather intelligence.
What’s that?
Someone might say Mo Lin was being unfaithful to his commitments?
Please—he was a Anaconda, not a contract-bound mercenary.
Everything he did was guided purely by self-interest.
Even if he broke an agreement, it only meant he wouldn’t participate in Falcon Beak’s operations. They wouldn’t miss one snake.
Clearing his mind of distractions, Mo Lin looked down at the Six Gates members below. A plan began to take shape in his heart—it might not work, but it was worth trying.
Fang Yu was a member of the Six Gates, at the mid-tier of the Profound Rank.
Just moments ago, under the wise and heroic command of their brilliant Gate Master Zhu Dongfeng, they had completed a flawless demon-slaying operation.
Using their knowledge of the demonic beasts in Quankang County, the Six Gates had set up a deadly ambush.
When the beasts realized they were trapped, they had tried to band together and counterattack.
The result, unsurprisingly, was another decisive victory for the Six Gates.
As one of the participants in this perfect operation, Fang Yu had joined forces with his comrades to slay two low-tier Profound Rank demonic beasts. Even now, his excitement hadn’t faded.
Though he was supposed to be cleaning the battlefield, his hands still trembled violently. His eyes roamed over the corpses of demons, unable to focus.
He slapped himself twice to regain focus and threw himself back into work.
“Hm?”
Then, Fang Yu noticed a massive Anaconda Demon’s corpse ahead.
It was over ten meters long—not unusual for a low-tier Profound Rank beast, and he had just helped kill two of those.
What startled him was how intact this corpse was. At a glance, there were barely any visible sword or blade marks.
Everyone knew that after cleanup, the Six Gates would sell the corpses of slain demons for profit.
After all, the organization’s operations required compensation and bonuses—significant expenses that the sale of demon remains helped to offset.
Intact bodies fetched the highest prices.
By Fang Yu’s estimate, the Anaconda Demon’s body before him could sell for at least the price of a high-tier Yellow Rank artifact.
The more the Six Gates earned, the greater his potential reward.
Excitement clouded his reason. Fang Yu momentarily forgot the rule requiring a “post-battle strike” to ensure demons weren’t feigning death.
He reached out and touched the serpent’s body.
At that moment, a shout rang out—
“Be careful!”
But it was too late.
A flash of light blazed. Fang Yu felt a searing pain in his right arm. When he looked down, his forearm had been sheared clean off.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”