Su Bai lay motionless on the expensive rug. Internally, he let out a long, heavy sigh.

He had expected mortals to sell each other out for a scrap of profit, but he hadn’t fully anticipated that the Righteous Sects, the supposed pillars of morality in this world, would be just as rotten.

It seemed that outside the protective bubble of the Radiant Sky Sect, everyone simply worked for their own self-interest.

Good and evil were incredibly difficult to distinguish when everyone wore a polite smile.

While keeping his breathing shallow to feign unconsciousness, Su Bai continuously used the Forest Canopy Breath. The highly concentrated, sedative-laced toxic fog flooding the room was being rapidly absorbed by his Reversal Body.

His corporate mind was running a mile a minute.

He was now certain this bureau was corrupt, but he needed to know exactly how deep the rot went.

Was the entire Righteous Sect colluding with the Demonic factions, or was this an isolated incident? If he simply broke out and ran, these corrupt officials would panic, destroy the ledgers, and relocate their supply chain.

The Demonic Cultivator’s diary never named their righteous collaborators.

He had to see this audit through to the end. He needed names.

...

An hour later, the heavy mechanical locks on the door clicked.

The pungent fog was quickly vented out of the room. Inspector Zhao stepped inside, accompanied by the two Qi Refining guards from the entrance.

Seeing Su Bai sprawled face-down on the floor, Zhao sneered, then dropped his warm, grandfatherly facade entirely.

"Search him," Zhao ordered coldly. "Find whatever ’evidence’ this idiot claimed to have."

The two guards immediately knelt beside Su Bai, roughly patting down his robes. It didn’t take long for them to locate the heavy storage ring belonging to the gaunt demonic cultivator.

One of the guards poured a sliver of Qi into the ring to check its contents. He gasped, then breathed a massive sigh of relief.

"Inspector, I think we overreacted," the guard said, handing the ring to Zhao. "There are Blood Pills and ledgers in here, but nothing that links back to our bureau. It’s just a rogue idiot who got lucky and looted a dead branch manager."

Zhao inspected the ring himself, and a dark, greedy glint appeared in his eyes.

"Excellent," Zhao chuckled. "For a moment, I feared the southern caravan had been compromised. If Elder Han found out about our little ’collaboration,’ it would be the end of us."

"Are you sure we are safe, Inspector?" the second guard asked nervously. "The Elder is notoriously strict about demonic activity."

"Elder Han was currently in a closed-door cultivation," Zhao scoffed dismissively. "As long as our sector remains ’peaceful’ on paper, he doesn’t look at the ledgers. We simply tell the Elder that we heroically apprehended a vile demonic spy. We will pin all the local missing persons on this clueless fool, execute him publicly, and collect our 30% cut from the next demonic shipment in peace."

The two guards laughed and their tension evaporated.

Face-planted on the rug, Su Bai allowed a small, cold grin to form on his face.

’So, the corruption doesn’t go all the way to the top,’ Su Bai concluded. ’The Elder is completely ignorant. This is just a rogue middle-management operation skimming off the top.’

Knowing this, Su Bai’s audit was complete. He finally stopped acting.

His speed was terrifyingly unmatched. One second, he was a paralyzed victim on the floor. The next, he was standing upright.

His hands moved in a blur.

Swish! Swish!

Two highly condensed needles of extreme Yin Qi flashed through the air. They pierced directly through the bottom of the guards’ jaws, traveling upward and instantly scrambling their brains.

The two guards didn’t even have time to widen their eyes. They dropped dead on the spot.

Inspector Zhao flinched. He stepped backward in sheer shock. "You—!"

Before Zhao could even draw his weapon, Su Bai’s hands danced. Invisible, razor-sharp strings of Yin Qi shot out from his fingertips, plunging directly into the freshly deceased guards.

Nether-Thread Puppetry.

With a flick of his wrists, Su Bai casually retrieved the stolen storage ring, as well as the rings of the two guards, tucking them into his robes. Then, he twitched his fingers.

The two dead guards violently sprang back to their feet. Their eyes were rolled back in their heads, but their swords were drawn, aimed directly at their former boss.

Inspector Zhao’s face twisted into a mask of absolute fury. "A puppeteer! You actually are a demonic rat! Do you think two Qi Refining corpses can stop a 9th Stage Foundation Establishment cultivator?!"

Zhao surged forward. His hands ignited with a blazing, righteous golden light.

He thought it would be an easy execution. He was gravely mistaken.

Su Bai stood in the back of the cramped VIP room, using both hands to control the two puppets like a master conductor. He wasn’t just moving their limbs. He was flooding their dead meridians with his own heavy, Stage 2 Foundation Establishment Qi.

Because they were dead, the puppets ignored all defensive instincts. They didn’t feel pain. They didn’t care if their bones broke. They threw themselves at Zhao with terrifying, suicidal ferocity. It forced the Inspector into a desperate, claustrophobic melee defense.

"Azure Heavenly Palm!" Zhao roared. He attempted to channel his ultimate technique to blast the puppets away.

But Su Bai didn’t give him a single second to breathe.

Standing safely behind the meat shields, Su Bai rapidly condensed microscopic needles of Yin Qi inside his mouth. He spat them out like silent, deadly darts.

Pfft!

A needle struck Zhao directly in the wrist acupoint just as he formed his hand seal. The golden light violently short-circuited, sending a painful backlash of Qi up Zhao’s arm.

Every time the Inspector tried to channel a technique, Su Bai would spit a needle. He precisely strike a nerve cluster or a meridian pathway to break his concentration.

Zhao was being relentlessly harassed, unable to utilize his massive cultivation advantage in the cramped space.

With two undying guards besieging him and Su Bai acting as a flawless sniper, Zhao quickly accumulated injuries. His pristine robes were slashed to ribbons.

"Damn you!" Zhao roared. His concentration broke for a fraction of a second.

It was a fatal error.

Su Bai twitched his left pinky finger. One of the puppet guards lunged. Its sword flashed in the confined space.

Schwing.

Zhao shrieked in agony as his left index finger, the one wearing his spatial storage ring, was cleanly severed. Su Bai twitched his other hand, and the severed finger flew across the room. Su Bai casually caught it, slid the ring off, and tossed the bloody digit aside.

He had secured the company assets.

Driven to the absolute brink of panic and madness, Zhao realized he was going to be bled to death in his own interrogation room. He had no other options.

"I’ll kill you!" Zhao howled, his eyes bloodshot. He violently detonated the latent Qi within his own Dantian, creating a massive, indiscriminate shockwave of golden light.

BOOM!

The sheer force of the 9th Stage explosion tore through the VIP room. It shattered the expensive furniture and violently blew the two puppet guards into unrecognizable pieces of meat.

Su Bai simply crossed his arms, using the bodies of the guards to completely shield himself from the blast.

As the dust settled, Zhao dropped to one knee, coughing up a mouthful of blood. His Qi was dangerously depleted, his hand was maimed, and he was staring at Su Bai with absolute terror.

Su Bai stepped out from behind the ruined puppets, then raised his hand. A single, lethal needle formed at his fingertip. He was preparing to execute the corrupt Branch Manager and finalize the liquidation.

But just then...

The temperature in the entire pagoda plummeted. The air grew so heavy it felt like the gravity in the room had increased tenfold.

A massive, terrifying pressure descended from the upper floors of the pagoda, crashing through the ceiling. It was the overwhelming, suffocating aura of a Golden Core cultivator.

Su Bai froze. His hand halted mid-air. The pressure was immense, instantly locking his muscles in place.

The heavy door was violently blown off its hinges. An elderly man with a long white beard and furious, blazing eyes hovered in the doorway.

It was Elder Han. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The Elder looked at the destroyed room. He saw Inspector Zhao, bleeding and maimed on the floor. He saw the mutilated, exploded remains of the two righteous guards.

And finally, he looked at Su Bai, whose fingers were still radiating the pitch-black Yin Qi strings used for Nether-Thread Puppetry.

"Elder! Save me!" Zhao spat blood, pointing a trembling finger at Su Bai. "He is a demonic spy! He infiltrated our bureau and murdered our men!"

From the Elder’s point of view, the scene was damning. A man in a dark cloak was standing over a wounded Righteous Inspector, surrounded by the horrific aftermath of corpse manipulation.

"You vile, demonic scum," Elder Han’s voice boomed like thunder. "You dare use your wicked puppetry to defile the bodies of Righteous Cultivators in my own halls?!"

Su Bai almost cursed. Zhao didn’t give him a single chance to explain. The corrupt inspector had already framed him.

Then, Su Bai’s eyes widened slightly as he realized another blunder.

In his pursuit of ultimate corporate efficiency, he had completely ignored PR. Corpse Puppetry was universally recognized as an evil, demonic technique.

Even if he wanted to explain the supply chain logistics... this Golden Core Elder was absolutely not going to listen.