Chapter 166: Among Demons (Patreon)

“Your drink, old man.”

The innkeeper put down a cup and a clear bottle before Liu Wei. Without words, he grabbed the bottle, filled the cup and emptied it in a single gulp. The burning taste of cheap, strong alcohol passed through his mouth. It was the sort of drink one would expect to receive in a place like this, though not the sort one would usually pay two taels of silver for. Naturally, Liu Wei couldn’t care less. He wasn’t here to drink.

“Finally, some good stuff!”, he exclaimed.

“Please do enjoy your drink.”, the innkeeper said, before heading off into the room to some other guests and then returning downstairs.

Liu Wei refilled his drink and took another gulp of the swill before inspecting the guests filling this room again. There were about a hundred of them, about half of whom were close enough to let Liu Wei make out their cultivation. If the ration between was constant across the room, there were roughly eighty demonic cultivators present here.

Most of those he could sense were not particularly advanced, but there were some exceptions; only two of them, one being the innkeeper, were of the caliber that had attempted to assassinate Lixian Shen. Taken as a whole, however, the cultivators in this room were strong enough to easily overwhelm the core forces of even large noble families like the Li Family.

Most noticeably, however, the demonic cultivators and the unaffiliated were completely intermixed – there wasn’t a single group here that had not at least one demonic member. That, to Liu Wei, could only mean one thing: The cult wasn’t just using this place as a hideout, it was also using it to network.

This kind of thing wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare. Most cults, including all that Liu Wei had dealt with so far, either had their hideout somewhere in the wilderness or were migratory. They gathered resources by raiding villages and occasionally small towns and recruited new members from those they kidnapped on those occasions.

Demonic cults that instead intermingled with a city’s population, recruiting their members and growing through networking were known to be the most problematic to deal with. In cases like this, it wasn’t so much the extermination of the cult proper, that was the problem, but the permanent purging of its influence from the place it had made its nest in. Members would be hidden among the town’s population and could easily slip away and start anew somewhere else.

In this case, considering that most of those present here certainly didn’t look like they lived in the outer ring, it seemed that the cult had already successfully integrated itself with the city’s elite – which wasn’t even that surprising, considering they had also allied with an elder of the sect that controlled the town itself.

From a position like this, the cult was well positioned to quickly expand, before fully taking over the town and spreading to the surrounding settlements as well; at least it would be, if it hadn’t been so unfortunate as to draw the attention of someone who was capable of cutting that development short. Still, even after the cult was destroyed and the immediate danger eliminated, the Burning Thorns Sect would certainly have its hands full dealing with this mess for a while.

As he absentmindedly did his best to empty the awfully large bottle of terrible liquor he had been served, a man dressed in black robes, his face hidden underneath a hood, came up the stairs from the first floor and, after exchanging a hushed word with the broad-shouldered guard, made his way up to the thirds.

It wasn’t so much his presence, as the utter lack of it that caught Liu Wei’s attention. Had he not caught him in the corner of his eyes, he would have missed him entirely, as his soul sense simply didn’t detect him at all. The formation that suppressed his it had surely done its part, but whoever that was certainly wasn’t a demonic cultivator, as they had no way of hiding their presence like this. In other words: this was a fellow soul cultivator.

Liu Wei’s instincts told him that this man was important to his investigation. He’d been playing with the idea of leaving this place, catching Tang Luli on the way back and, after a proper bit of questioning, returning here with a proper force from the Burning Thorns Sect to root out the cult as thoroughly as possible. Just now, that idea had been thrown out. If this man, as he suspected, belonged to the Lunar Peaks Sect, he had no way of guaranteeing he’d still be here when he returned. Perfect or not, he’d have to act right here, today.

Liu Wei could still sense Tang Luli’s presence above him, along with one other. First, he needed to find a way to get up there – preferably without having the whole room of demonic cultivators try to stop him. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to fight them, but that he feared that his real targets may manage to disappear in the chaos that would undoubtedly follow.

For a while, Liu Wei was out of ideas. Then, just as the innkeeper was passing by him once more, one struck him. It was somewhat risky, but he also didn’t have any better options, so he held out his hand to stop the lanky man with his crooked grin.

“I need… another bottle.”, Liu Wei said, after he had caught his attention, making sure to slightly slur his words.

“That is another tael of silver then.”

“Another? But I already paid…”

“You’re also paying for the continued permission to drink on this floor. So. Would you like another bottle?”

“Yes.”

Liu Wei fumbled around with his pouch for a while before pulling out the silver and putting it on the table.

“Thank you.”

“And… can I ask… ask who that man was? The one who just… went up there?”

The innkeeper’s grin flickered ever so briefly before returning.

“I’ll see about that, but… I’m sure you can guess what I’m about to say.”

“Another tael?”

“Three this time.”

“Oh, you damn… here.”

“Thank you for your patronage.”

He turned and left, though it didn’t escape Liu Wei’s attention that he headed upstairs instead of back down this time.

The plan he had come up with was simple: they certainly wouldn’t let him go to the third floor if he asked them to, but they might just bring him there on their own, if he implanted just the right thoughts about him in them.

It didn’t take long for the innkeeper to return from upstairs, another bottle in hand.

“Your drink.”, he stated, handing the bottle to Liu Wei, who promptly filled his cup and emptied it, not surprised to feel the spread of poison through his body the moment he had done so.

Unfortunately, his natural response had neutralized it before he could even discern his effect, to he took another gulp, this one directly from the bottle, making sure to suppress his response long enough to examine the poison’s workings for a moment. From what he could tell, it was supposed to disperse his Qi – an admittedly quite effective way of incapacitating a cultivator, and the effect was potent enough to show a significant effect against someone as high as the Dao Attunement Realm, which was as good as all but the best poisons could do.

He hadn’t had the time to examine it himself, but Lixian Shen too had told him of the potency of the poison they had used against her. Demonic cults were often known to utilize poison, but the quality certainly pointed to an external source.

“Good ssstuff!”, Liu Wei exclaimed, as if he hadn’t noticed anything.

“About your other request…”, the innkeeper began.

“What… issit?”, Liu Wei slurred.

“The good sir you’ve asked about has allowed you to head up and meet with him yourself.”

“Ahh… I didn’t want to…”, Liu Wei began, pretending to have been caught off guard.

“Or…”, he let a knife drop out of his sleeve and pulled it up to press against Liu Wei’s throat in a smooth, practiced motion. In the very same moment, several of the nearby patrons jumped out of their seats and drew weapons

“We can handle this right here.”

Liu Wei could not remember an instance in his life where he had felt less threatened by a knife held to his throat, but he played along, flinching back and letting his eyes snap wide open with the slight delay of a drunkard being pulled out of his haze by an unexpected threat. The innkeeper’s grin had not changed at all during the entire sequence.

“Did you think we just let you snoop around here? Or that we wouldn’t notice?”

“I’m… not sure what you…”

“Quit playing dumb.”

The knife pressed tighter against his throat.

“You are going to have a nice chat with our guest… and if you want to get out of here alive, you will be honest with him.”

Hearing that sentence from a demonic cultivator was a laughable thing to anyone even remotely familiar with them. They would never even consider letting him go and the man’s eyes said as much. Still, Liu Wei played along.

“I…please… just… yes. Alright.”

“Stand up. Slowly.”

Liu Wei did as instructed, grabbing his cane and pretending to support himself with it.

“Now follow me.”

The innkeeper, keeping the knife at his throat, led him towards the stairway to the third floor. Two other demonic cultivators followed behind him. The broad-shouldered guard stepped aside to let the four of them through without question.

Liu Wei had just about expected this from a group of demonic cultivators – they tended to be hopefully overconfident – but he still couldn’t help but be slightly aghast at just how bad they were handling the situation. They had figured out that he was here to gather information about them, yet they hadn’t questioned whether he truly was an old man walking with a cane, or even thought to check under his cloak – where they would have found a full set of armor.

He couldn’t imagine how they would ever have been able to set a trap that cost a Dao Contemplation Cultivator his life. The only good explanation was that whomever from his sect they were in league with had handled that part on their own.

And his suspicions as to who that was were beginning to more and more solidify. There was, after all, only one family among the initial suspects they had made out, that specialized in operations of subterfuge and deception. A family whose members were well-versed in the usage of poison and could certainly be thought capable of assassinating someone in the lower stages of the Dao Contemplation Realm. And a family whose members were famous for the way they could mask their presence so far it one would tend to look past them even when they were in clear sight.

Having arrived on the third floor, the innkeeper guided him through a short corridor before they arrived at a door behind which Liu Wei sensed the presence of Tang Luli and one more person. He knocked using his free hand, to which a low, rumbling voice replied.

“Get him in here.”

The innkeeper pushed open the door, letting Liu Wei finally look inside. Tang Luli was seated at a table alongside the source of the other presence Liu Wei had sensed: A man, muscular but lean, with wild mane of grey hair and a face littered with scars, wearing a blood-red robe with black and golden embroideries. Besides his eye-catching appearance, he was also the most advanced demonic cultivator Liu Wei had ever seen.

Despite that, however, almost none of Liu Wei’s attention was focused on either of the two. Because, beside them, there were five more figures standing around in various places across the room – two men and three women, all dressed entirely in black.

Three of them, Liu Wei recognized with certainty: They were indeed members of the Lunar Peaks Sect; More specifically, they were senior cultivators of the Zhong Family.