Chapter 96: The Proprietress

With a hiss of air from the brakes, a heavy truck loaded with steel rebar came to a steady stop beside a residential compound. This was the stockyard for a construction site.

It had come to unload.

The driver opened the door and jumped down. He was a somewhat overweight man with a pronounced beer belly. He fished a few delivery slips out of his bag and went to hand them over to the site manager. Then he bought a chilled bottle of soda from the little shop nearby and gulped it down in several big swallows, the faint lethargy in his body washing clean away from the inside out.

But the chubby driver was really Wei Cheng.

This was the role the authorities had arranged for him. Since unloading a truck would take time, and there would be delays on top of that, he would be staying here for twenty-four hours.

Six hours later, however, would mark the moment when City S launched its assault on the demon and its followers.

If everything went smoothly, this place would soon become the most important battlefield of all.

But Wei Cheng would not be one of the main combatants. He was merely a suspicious figure, a decoy with some chance of becoming bait.

One had to admit the authorities had truly thought of everything, even this tiny detail.

After that, Wei Cheng picked up a pry bar and a set of screw wrenches. With a cigarette clenched in his mouth, he began inspecting the tires of his own truck one by one, walking from front to back, from left to right.

He looked at them with the care of a man examining each tire as though it were his own son.

Nothing escaped his notice.

Any bulge on the sidewall?

Any serious scrape or gouge?

Even a pebble lodged in the tread had to be carefully picked out.

When that was done, he even gave the fasteners on the tires a full going-over. There he was by himself, swinging on the pry bar like a monkey on a vine, afraid the bolts might loosen, a fat old gibbon putting on a ridiculous show.

By the time he had finished all this, more than half an hour had passed. Wei Cheng was panting and drenched in sweat, looking no different from a real long-haul truck driver.

Then he locked the cab, went out to find a small restaurant, ordered two dishes and a case of chilled beer, and given the speed at which those people unloaded freight, there was no need to worry about drunk driving.

That was the entire script Zhang Ji had designed for Wei Cheng. End of story.

As for whether the demon would come, whether it would take an interest in him, the supposed instigator, everything remained unknown.

But if a fight really did break out, Wei Cheng guaranteed he would not lift a finger. If one could sit and watch the show, why go onstage and perform it oneself?

His vanity was not that strong.

Still, even watching the show required a price.

At that moment, the whole of East Peace Residential Compound had been sealed off by an enormous green net, towering more than thirty meters high. All one could see inside were several derricks lazily groaning away.

The exact situation could not be seen with the naked eye.

While drinking chilled beer and playing some little same-city dating game on his phone, Wei Cheng was also observing his surroundings with practiced ease, not even missing the plump, fair-skinned shopkeeper behind the counter.

Ah, sorry. I didn’t realize you were some ageless enchantress.

After receiving a sharp glare, Wei Cheng behaved himself.

His spiritual power spread out soundlessly, giving him the sense of standing upon the highest peak and looking down on every mountain below.

It could not be helped. He was just this formidable.

A spiritual power level approaching 6.9, more than twice that of level 5.5 by a hair.

Fine, no point pretending.

That was his advantage. He had spent too long in the sixth poison-ring zone, had been bathed in a far higher-quality divine radiance, and had even formed a spiritual seed.

Even with the national elite gathered all around him, he had nothing to fear in this respect.

At the very least, no one had noticed his spiritual power yet.

So there probably were no key members of the P Legion here?

He refused to believe the other side lacked anyone capable of condensing a spiritual seed.

Extend, extend, keep extending.

About a three-hundred-meter radius.

That was his limit.

Within this area, every detail of all things came vividly into his mind. To view mountains, to view water, to view people—nothing could escape him.

But after only three seconds, Wei Cheng could not hold it any longer. A faint headache surged up, as though his skull were splitting apart, the result of his spiritual power being consumed too heavily.

He took a big gulp of beer, let out a burp, and instantly looked a little drunk.

A few minutes later, he recovered somewhat and reviewed the gains from his spiritual sweep.

From the boss lady’s figure to the number of allied forces, their occupational makeup, their positions—everything was clear at a glance. As expected, they were all elite, and as expected, one could rest easy.

Just then, he suddenly sensed a faint, eerie chill of death.

Wei Cheng’s nerves snapped taut, nearly disrupting the role he was playing at the moment.

Because that strange, frigid deathly aura was actually about seventy percent similar to the fourth wave of the shadow curse.

More than that, this bizarre death aura felt even stronger than the fourth-wave shadow curse had been.

Could the demon be here?

Wei Cheng’s thoughts shifted as he glanced at the boss lady. She was still lazily tallying the账账 and scrolling on her phone, showing no sign of having noticed anything at all.

Including the burly cook in the back kitchen, still concentrating on slicing pork into shreds. He was also one of the mountain-bearers of level nine.

No, that was wrong. Very wrong.

“Boss, time to pay up.”

Wei Cheng swayed to his feet. At his words, the boss lady shot him a lightning-fast look. Her gaze was sharp as a knife, but in the next second she had already turned into a blossom of smiles, all alluring charm.

“You’ve finished, sir? Shall I pack up the rest of the dishes for you?”

“Yes.”

“Please wait a moment! Oh dear, I’ve run out of takeaway containers. I’ll go next door and get you two.”

The boss lady left with graceful poise. Wei Cheng wore a drunken look on his face, his eyes seeming to follow that perfect curve, but in truth his inner alarm was clanging furiously.

Because at that moment his spiritual power was already locking onto that faint, elusive trace of eerie deathly aura, and to his surprise, he discovered it was drifting outward.

Yes, drifting outward without a sound.

Its source lay beneath East Peace Residential Compound, and its destination was to the southeast, where a highway ran.

In a flash of insight, Wei Cheng understood what was happening.

The authorities’ strategic response could not be called inelegant, but the enemy was one step ahead in method.

Indeed, the dark runes beneath East Peace Residential Compound were the true treasure left behind by the demon Wei Cheng had slain.

The authorities’ judgment that other demons would come to plunder them was correct.

The unrest among the demon followers in City S was also a feint, a diversion to draw the tiger away from the mountain.

The trap the authorities had set was indeed flawless.

And yet, who could have imagined that these dark runes could be transferred through some special frequency, right out of thin air?

It was precisely because Wei Cheng had condensed a spiritual seed, and because his spiritual level had long since surpassed the highest rating the authorities had established, that he was able to sense it.

Perhaps this had been going on for quite some time already.

By the time the battle in City S began, the dark runes here might already have been quietly moved away.

Worse still, Wei Cheng’s prediction had been wrong. Although this place was packed with national elite and core members of the P Legion, their spiritual power had somehow failed to detect the situation.

That made no sense.

No, that was not the point.

The point was, what was he supposed to do now?

Should he alert the authorities and call in the cops?

Unwise. That would only startle the snake.

Most likely, every arrangement here had long since been seen through by the enemy. The moment there was any movement, that demon would slip away.

Only Wei Cheng, this newly arrived driver, would not be under close scrutiny.

And in fact, by now it had been thoroughly proven that the demon simply did not care who scored the first kill.

Truly.

Finished.