Lord of the night.

Chapter 1474 Yan Nan: Getting Old! [Two-in-One]

After sending it, he immediately changed his mind: "Wait a moment, I'll call Vice Chief Master Bi over. You can send it when I tell you to."

Yan Nan wasn't doing this to laugh at his old brother, but rather because he was thinking about Bi Changhong's fiery temper.

It also has the problem of splitting the soul.

This is likely to drive Bi Changhong crazy.

To prevent the old man from suddenly going mad and doing something terrible, Yan Nan felt it was best to keep an eye on things from the sidelines.

He sent a message to Bi Changhong: "Where are you?"

"It's nothing, I'm catching a snake."

Bi Changhong excitedly said, "Out here in the mountains, I can grab a whole mountain at a time, tumbling and rolling, millions of them at once, all falling to their deaths, it's so exhilarating. Fifth Brother, let me tell you, if you weren't specifically catching snakes, you'd never know how many snakes there are in this world! There are so many!"

Why didn't you catch it in your own home?

"The ones at home have all been arrested."

Bi Changhong felt very wronged.

Although the family's territory is large, it can't withstand the capture of so many Holy Lords and Holy Venerables, can it? There isn't a single snake left under the entire Bi family now.

"Many members of the family roast snakes and eat them... They say it's quite delicious."

Bi Changhong asked, "Would you like me to bring you back a few of the really poisonous ones to try? They say the more poisonous they are, the tastier they are."

Yan Nan chuckled: "Stop catching snakes for now. Come to my study, I have a super big snake here to broaden your horizons!"

Bi Changhong laughed loudly: "Your study? A giant snake? You're kidding me."

You'll see when you get here!

"immediately!"

Bi Changhong excitedly tore through space and arrived.

Fifth Brother hasn't been this enthusiastic in a long time; he actually asked me to come see the giant snake, hehehe...

Bi Changhong was overjoyed: What kind of snake haven't I seen before?

With a whoosh, Bi Changhong darted through the window into Yan Nan's study, her eyes sparkling: "Where's the snake? Did you put it into your domain?"

Yan Nan rolled her eyes: "Want to see a snake? Wait, I'll send it to you right away."

Then he sent a message to Fang Che: "Send it."

Just then, Feng Nuan's second wave of messages arrived, and Fang Che simply sent both the first and second waves to Bi Yunyan verbatim.

"Forward this to Vice Chief Master Bi."

Over there, Bi Yunyan sent a weak "...ah."

Fang Che asked, "You haven't gone home yet?"

“I’m holed up in a cave outside…” Bi Yunyan said mournfully, “I can’t go back now.”

"We can't go back?!"

Fang Che was stunned.

"You still have the nerve to ask?"

Bi Yunyan said in grief and indignation, "I can't even walk now!"

Fang Che burst out laughing, but was immediately tempted: "Come back and I'll treat you."

"Hehe... Patriarch, keep those words to fool Xiao Han. This concubine is extremely clever and quick-witted; I won't fall for your tricks!" Bi Yunyan said smugly, "Do you think I would willingly walk into your trap?"

Oh, this girl has learned her lesson.

Fang Che threatened, "If you don't listen, you'll be bedridden for seven days next time!"

"Come on, come on! Stop bragging!"

With the distance between them, Bi Yunyan became even more arrogant, exuding a haughty air: "Do you think I'm afraid of you?!"

Fang Che gritted his teeth: "Just you wait!"

"Fine, I'll wait! Pshaw!"

After Bi Yunyan had finished her self-destructive act, she leisurely sent the message to Bi Changhong.

She didn't even glance at what the message was.

"Flirting with the head of the family is still more interesting..."

Bi Yunyan lay half-reclined on the bed, her pretty face contorted in pain as she rubbed her thighs and buttocks, pouting, "Ouch... I feel like my whole body is being smashed apart..."

In the study.

Bi Changhong was getting a little anxious: "Didn't you tell me to come and see the giant snake?"

Yan Nan said slowly and deliberately, her face dark, "What's your hurry? Sit down properly."

Bi Changhong sensed something was wrong and became cautious: "What... have I done wrong this time?"

Yan Nan asked, "Did you give the Night Demon the treasures you promised him?"

Bi Changhong's face twisted: "Why do you have to bring up the sore spot! Those things were stolen a long time ago... Damn it! I'm currently stalling with Chen Gu, trying to get something out of him to make up for this promise. That old bastard Chen Gu told me he's taking stock of his inventory, haha, he's clearly just deliberately stalling me, not wanting to lend it to me."

"How dare you say that! When have you ever returned anything you've borrowed over the years?"

Yan Nan roared, "You've ransacked our warehouses so many times, and now you're the one who got robbed! Tell me how despicable you are!"

Bi Changhong: "Stop cursing, stop cursing... Who would have thought..."

Enraged by Yan Nan's actions, Bi Changhong shrank smaller and smaller inside the chair.

at last.

The Five Spirit Gu has given a heads-up: News has arrived.

Bi Changhong felt as if he had been granted a pardon and quickly took out his communication jade: "Fifth Brother, I have news from my side... I'll go first..."

"This is the news I've been waiting for."

Yan Nan said with a stern face, "You can just watch from here!"

Bi Changhong's hand, holding the communication jade, froze in mid-air: "...This information was all within your calculations?"

"Let's take a look first."

Yan Nan's face darkened.

With a nervous heart, Bi Changhong opened the communication jade and stared intently at it.

Then I saw a bunch of billing information.

Then comes the following.

Visibly, Bi Changhong's face changed from fair and composed to bright red, then to purple, and finally to pitch black.

His hand holding the communication jade immediately began to tremble.

"This...this damn...Black Pine Manor...whose is it?" Bi Changhong asked, clinging to a sliver of hope.

"Bi Family's First Mountain Villa".

Yan Nan looked at him with her eyes completely white, saying, "Is there anything else you've forgotten? I'll remind you all at once."

Bi Changhong's eyes changed, one side turning blue and the other green. With a bang, his hair broke free from its restraints and stood up in the sky, unleashing a surging, demonic aura!
He finally snapped and yelled, "I f***ing..."

Five colors flashed.

The terrifying palm struck Bi Changhong's shoulder at just the right moment: "Sit down!"

Bi Changhong's body flickered with blue and green light, and his mind was in complete chaos. He snarled, "Don't stop me!"

However, he was so enraged that his split soul flared up to its extreme!
"You want to silence me!?"

Yan Nan's words were enough to calm Bi Changhong down, whose soul was already on the verge of collapse.

That's right. If you rush over and kill someone in a fit of anger now, what's the difference between that and silencing them?
"These bastards!"

Bi Changhong let out a long breath, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, and pointed his finger at the communication jade: "...How dare you!? How dare you?"

"The actual income was twenty! The combined income of the main sect and the family was less than one? The whereabouts of the other nineteen are unknown??"

Such a huge deficit, such an enormous number, was completely unacceptable to Bi Changhong: "Damn it! Where's the money? Where's the stuff? For God's sake! Even a bunch of gluttons would have been stuffed to death by now!"

Yan Nan sighed, "Try to think more positively... We also need to realize that Black Pine Manor is by no means an isolated case!"

Bi Changhong's eyes were vacant. He slumped into a chair with a thud, spreading his long legs out. He felt weak all over and completely dazed.

He murmured as if in a dream, "Fifth Brother... When did our righteous sect become like this?"

This is exactly the question that Yan Nan is thinking about and wants to ask.

Hearing this, he gave a bitter smile, pondered for a moment, and said with deep sorrow, "Yes, when did the Righteous Sect become like this?"

The two brothers looked at each other, both seeing confusion, bewilderment, and anger in each other's eyes.

It must be said that there is also an indescribable sense of helplessness and powerlessness!
"We're getting old!"

Yan Nan walked to the window with his hands behind his back, looked at the sky outside, and said softly, "Sixth Brother, we... are getting old."

Bi Changhong kept his head down and remained silent.

"For so many years... our righteous sect has suppressed everything with force, and what we value most is force! We have never cared much about money, resources, treasures, gold and silver. But we have overlooked one point, which is that these things are the foundation of the entire human world!"

"These are the things that everyone in this world is chasing after!"

"And human nature... has always been selfish! Everyone is!"

Yan Nan said with deep sorrow, "Over the years, our righteous sect has never lacked money or resources. This has made us overlook the most important issue: we could have had even more resources!"

"Because so many resources are obtained through plunder, their own output has been neglected."

"And its own output... also flowed to other channels under these circumstances."

"Given the opportunity, everyone will desperately try to collect as much as they can into their own homes! They'll collect as much as there is! They'll collect what they can't collect, and they'll collect what they shouldn't collect! You're collecting, he's collecting, everyone's collecting, so I'm collecting too! — Everyone has this mentality."

"Perhaps at the beginning it was just for their own collection. But starting three thousand years ago, or even earlier, it began to be for collection in other places!..."

Yan Nan pointed to the communication jade: "This is what we see in the end!"

"Our management methods have too many loopholes. We can use force to suppress everything, but we can't suppress people's hearts! I know you want to kill, to slaughter; but if you kill this batch, the next batch will rise up soon! Killing batch after batch, unless you kill the entire Sovereign Cult until only ten of us brothers are left! Otherwise... this kind of thing will still happen, and it will be no less than what you see today."

"It will always be so filthy!"

"This world is too big! And there are too many human hearts!"

Yan Nan sighed deeply: "Sixth brother!...We...are getting old."

Bi Changhong hung his head, staring blankly at the ground, and murmured, "Am I old? Am I old?"

Suddenly, a fierce aura surged within him once more, and he muttered, enunciating each word clearly: "Can't...kill...anyone...anymore!?"

“Killing is useless in this matter.”

Yan Nan saw it clearly: "You told Ye Mo that you needed to know every step of the investigation into the Bi family. Now that the first step has been completed, that's why I called you here."

"Because right now... the last thing we can do is kill people."

"It's the channels through which those things flow! Once people are killed, the channels disappear."

"With such a massive amount of financial resources, it's inevitable that a portion of it ended up in the pockets of many people. But, a large portion of it must have flowed away somewhere unknown." To save face for Bi Changhong, Yan Nan didn't explicitly mention the "Divine Weasel Cult."

But Bi Changhong knew the truth in his heart, and his face darkened even more.

"Just wait, this is only the first step."

Yan Nan said calmly, "You also need to make a show of it. Send a few trusted confidants from your family to Black Pine Manor to cooperate with the presiding judge. This is very important. Make sure they don't go there to cause trouble. You know exactly how to do it, right?"

He paused for a moment, then said, "Oh, I almost forgot to ask you... do you still have any trusted confidants?"

Bi Changhong's face was almost red with rage, and he roared, "Yan Nan! How long are you going to humiliate me! I've lived my whole life, do you think I don't even have a few trusted confidants left?"

Yan Nan looked doubtful: "Not necessarily."

Bi Changhong was so angry that she refused to speak.

After a long silence, he said defiantly, "I'll send Mad Evil!"

Yan Nan was startled: "Bi Xie, Bi E, Bi Feng, Bi Kuang?? Bi Changhong! You're not telling me that besides these four people, you really don't have any other trusted confidants?"

Bi Changhong's face darkened, unable to speak, and he muttered, "These four are reliable..."

Yan Nan sighed deeply: "...What can I say to you! Of course these four are reliable, if these four aren't reliable, then no one is!"

Crazy and evil, these four people are equivalent to Bai Jing's four cardinal directions.

And it's even stronger.

Because madness and evil are a legacy.

Bi Changhong was one of the four most loyal henchmen of Bi Tu, the greatest villain in the land. After Bi Tu's death, Bi Changhong emerged and befriended Yan Nan and other brothers. Together, they roamed the martial world.

However, Bi Changhong suffers from a split personality and has an eccentric and unpredictable temperament.

The brothers all speculated that Bi Changhong was the reincarnation of Bi Tu.

For some reason, it still carries some of its memories...

This is not without basis. Bi Changhong not only practiced Bi Tu's original techniques, but also went a step further. What's even more impressive is that after Bi Tu's death, Bi Feng, Bi Kuang, Bi Xie, and Bi E, who were seriously injured and escaped without a trace, actually followed Bi Changhong.

This cemented Bi Changhong's infamous reputation.

It can be said that Bi Changhong perfectly inherited all of Bi Tu's legacy!
The four mad and evil individuals have rarely appeared in recent years, focusing on their secluded cultivation in an attempt to break through to the next level. Yan Nan hasn't seen them for over a thousand years.

However, the fact that Bi Changhong sent out these four people proved that his Bi family had no one left who could be trusted.

Just like Yan Nan said: You don't have a single confidant left?
Bi Changhong muttered, "We can't send Bi Yunyan, can we..."

Yan Nan covered her forehead.

He looked at Bi Changhong across from him with a pained expression, and after a long while, he sighed weakly, "...How did you manage to get by?"

Bi Changhong was utterly ashamed: "I...I..."

I stood there for a long time, speechless.

Finally, he lowered his head.

Sigh.

Yan Nan stared blankly at his sixth brother. For the first time in his life, he saw a hint of old age in his vigorous sixth brother!
A sense of desolation welled up within me.

Throughout his life, Yan Nan had weathered countless storms and never felt overwhelmed; but in the past two weeks alone, with the Divine Weasel Sect incident, the accounting audit, and the grave investigation...

This was the first time Yan Nan had ever felt 'old'.

That feeling of 'being powerless' rose up so uncontrollably!

When did this situation begin?

Yan Nan asked himself honestly, and it must have started a few years ago when he first heard about the Divine Weasel Cult!
It's unbelievable that a religious sect could hide right under our noses for three thousand years or even longer!

But that time, because Dongfang San San didn't know either, Yan Nan's feelings weren't very obvious.

But now, seeing the clearly corrupt Sovereign Church and its even more corrupt finances, Yan Nan's mindset has truly changed.

He watched the white clouds drift lazily across the sky outside the window, disappearing into the horizon...

He remained silent for a long while.

"Five brothers!"

Bi Changhong was the first to come to his senses. His voice was somewhat tired and dejected, but it also carried an inexhaustible killing intent like the clanging of metal: "We may be old... but when we are about to leave this world, we can still fight our way through it!"

"So what if the sect is corrupt? At worst, we can just smash it and rebuild the kingdom!"

"Back then, we brothers started from scratch, with nothing to our name. Things are much better now than they were then, aren't they?"

Bi Changhong said.

Yan Nan raised an eyebrow, a cruel smile appearing on his lips: "Sixth brother, you're right!"

"This time, my sword is drawn..."

Yan Nan slowly closed her eyes, and calmly and quietly said, "...I don't plan to sheath myself!"

"If... the Sovereign Cult has truly degenerated to the extreme, then I will... wipe out the entire Sovereign Cult!"

He stood with his hands behind his back, facing the wind, his gray hair at his temples fluttering in the breeze, and said calmly, "Let your madness and evil be unleashed. Remember, their mission is to cooperate! Understand how to cooperate."

"Bai Jing's four directions also joined in."

"Investigate thoroughly!"

He then took out his communication jade and sent a message to Fang Che: "Investigate thoroughly!! Investigate to the end! No matter who tries to stop you, just tell me!"

"I will pave the way for you, even if it means I have to do it!"

Fang Che respectfully replied, "Yes!"

Yan Nan then asked, "Is Feng Yun going to your place this afternoon?"

"Yes."

Fang Che's heart skipped a beat.

I never expected that Yan Nan would remember the matter I made with Feng Yun yesterday.

"When Feng Yun arrives, you and he can come to my place together."

Yan Nan said, "I'll treat you two to drinks."

Fang Che was startled: "Yes. Young Master Yun might not arrive until it's almost dark this afternoon, then I'll go with him."

Yan Nan: "Okay."

Fang Che put down the communication jade, his heart pounding.

Yan Nan wants to invite me and Feng Yun for drinks? What... what's going on?
This sudden turn of events startled Fang Che.

If it were Fang Che and Feng Yun coming to report on their work, that wouldn't be surprising at all, but inviting them for drinks...

Fang Che was uneasy, but... of course he wouldn't remind Feng Yun.

I have to see this guy's frightened expression in person before I can judge!
Bi Changhong immediately took action.

Yan Nan also kept issuing orders.

The personnel from the Finance Department and the Law Enforcement Office rushed to Black Pine Manor. At the same time, personnel from other departments also took action, and the prison was also in operation, thoroughly emptying the cells.

Numerous prisons have begun submitting lists of prisoners to be executed immediately.

The thick stacks of documents were quickly approved. Then, preparations for the execution ground and execution platform were swiftly begun.

Even ordinary people could sense the difference: this time it wasn't ordinary people organizing things, but rather a group of high-level martial artists!
Ordinary innate martial artists are not qualified to participate in the operation, as they find the movements too slow.

All executioners were reassigned and ready for duty, and recruitment was being expanded.

On the Guardian Continent...

A sudden snake infestation has broken out!

Snake infestations have appeared in cities, rural areas, and forests, with one python disaster after another.

The problem is that those who weren't bitten died inexplicably. Those who got close to the snake died, and their bodies were covered in sores.

Large families are dying, and clusters of people are festering; this has happened in many cities.

The news spread like wildfire, and in an instant, people were filled with panic.

Not only ordinary people, but also many martial artists were not spared.

Panic quickly gripped the mainland.

The Guardians investigated with all their might, and it is said that after paying the price of many heroes' lives, they discovered the truth: due to the actions of certain sects, they created countless batches of venomous snakes that flowed into the continent.

This type of venomous snake can quickly infect other snakes, regardless of whether they are venomous or not, as long as it gets close to them.

Moreover, this toxin is indiscriminate in its transmission to any species, leading to human-to-human transmission.

Anyone who gets close to these contaminated snakes will die.

Therefore, in order to avoid an even greater disaster, the entire continent mobilized to begin killing snakes!
The guardians issued a strict order: at the very least, all venomous or non-venomous snakes in the area where your residence is located must be completely cleared out! To prevent any potential contamination!
If you kill the snakes now, it's fine; they're dead, that's all. But if too much time passes and the snakes become contaminated by that aura... then it will be too late to kill them!

Each household should clean their own property, paying particular attention to their yards, fields, under their houses, and deep within the soil...

If you are not capable of doing something yourself, you can ask someone else to do it.

But it must be cleaned up no matter what.

Under this explicit order, if any household experiences a snake infestation in the future, they will bear the consequences themselves!
Outside the city, guardians and protectors will go to clean up.

Suddenly!

The boundless panic across the entire continent has been transformed into boundless motivation!

In every city, among every person, a massive snake-killing campaign began.

All the snakes that were killed were centrally disposed of. Each city had numerous snake carcass disposal sites, with thick smoke billowing into the sky.

It was this wave that made people realize one thing: there are far more snakes in this world than anyone imagined.

Every day, mountains of waste are continuously burned, and even more waste is piling up every day, waiting to be destroyed.

This is still in the city.

As for the countryside and mountains... there are even more!

The guardians' experts conducted a thorough search of each mountain, treating this operation as a trial to hone their divine senses.

With a sweep of his divine sense, he could find traces of snakes on half or even the entire mountain.

A violent tremor.

That would kill about 99% of the snakes.

The remaining snakes, which were stronger and already considered demonic beasts, began a fierce battle.

Meanwhile, rumors are circulating across the continent that someone in a certain place, on a certain mountain, is fighting a giant snake that is several stories tall... and so on...

This further fueled the panic.

After dealing with the area around their own homes, countless people spontaneously organized teams to search everywhere!

This is a matter of life and death. If even one snake slips in, the whole family will die. Who would dare to be negligent?

(End of this chapter)