A heretical cultivator in Bureau 749, I'm the fiercest at pulling out tendons and skinning peop

The heretical practitioners were having a great time smashing things and looting.

But soon, things started to go wrong.

"Holy crap! Old Liu, come quick! There's a hidden compartment under this study!"

A wicked cultivator kicked over a sandalwood desk and discovered a hidden entrance underneath, deep and extending downwards.

Several evil cultivators approached, probed with their spiritual energy, and their expressions changed.

"This aura...it's not right, it's very wrong."

Let's go down and take a look.

Good guy.

The basement level is a gambling den that is ten times more elaborately decorated than the study upstairs.

Spirit stones were piled up like a small mountain, and all kinds of illegal gambling equipment that only circulated on the black market were available.

Next, continue.

Two underground floors.

The warm pink light permeated the air with a sweet, cloying fragrance.

There were a dozen or so iron cages containing young men and women, their clothes disheveled and their eyes vacant. They all possessed some level of cultivation, but it was clear that their cultivation had been sealed by a special method.

On the wall hung some obscene "tools" and "clothing".

The heretical practitioners looked at each other in bewilderment.

"The Zhou family... they're really playing hard to get."

Continue.

Three underground floors.

The temperature on this floor is significantly lower.

Against the wall were rows of display shelves, but instead of ancient books and ritual implements, they held glass jars.

On the other side were several huge alchemy furnaces engraved with strange runes. The fires in the furnaces had long since died out, but the lingering aura made several evil cultivators who were proficient in this art frown.

"Is this... using living people to refine and test elixirs?"

"Damn, the smell is even stronger than what we corpse refiners use."

Several heretical cultivators with complicated expressions withdrew.

They then broke into several more similar hidden locations.

There is a special place called Warm Fragrance Pavilion for imprisoning and training low-level female cultivators, and for the enjoyment of certain distinguished guests.

There is a secret medicinal garden where large-scale cultivation and extraction of the illegal drug Xiaoyao San are carried out;

There was even an underground arena, stained with blood, where many tortured slaves were imprisoned, used by the core members of the Zhou family to hone their combat skills or for gambling and amusement.

"..."

The heretical practitioners fell silent.

The excitement from the earlier burning, killing, and looting had subsided considerably without me even realizing it.

A ruthless and vicious evil cultivator, his face covered in scars, weighed the packets of "Freedom Powder" in his hand, then glanced at the empty-eyed young cultivators in the cages beside him, and suddenly spat:

"Oh shit."

Compared to the Zhou family…

"We're just fucking greenhorns, doing this as a hobby."

A man standing nearby, who usually loved to eat human hearts raw, now wore a rare, complex expression as he pointed to the organs and limbs soaking in the jars:

"We kill for pleasure, or because it's necessary for cultivation."

"They're treating this like a business, like an industry."

"It's a family business, a chain operation."

"Prostitution, gambling, and drugs—a monopolistic operation, a one-stop service." As one person summarized, "We are bandits, they are a regular army."

The evil cultivators suddenly felt that the bulging storage bags at their waists, filled with the stolen spirit stones and magical artifacts, no longer seemed so appealing.

A subtle, complex emotion, which was hard to define as either shame or admiration, or both, permeated the air.

It turns out that evil also has different levels.

These wanted and reviled heretical cultivators, with their heinous deeds, are no match for a prestigious family like the Zhou family...

It seems, probably, maybe, possibly...

Is it really not good enough?

Ji Zuodao had wandered over at some point, casually snatched half a packet of Xiaoyao Powder from a rogue cultivator's waist, examined it between his fingertips, chuckled, and rubbed it between his fingers until it turned to ashes.

His gaze swept over the group of evil cultivators with complex expressions, his tone lazy yet barbed:

"Look at some people, wearing human skin, doing things that are ten times dirtier, a hundred times stinker, and a thousand times more disgusting than those of us heretics."

"And they're standing on their moral high ground, criticizing you for being unhygienic."

The heretical practitioners fell silent.

Then someone swore first:

"Fuck you hypocrite!"

"Smash it! Keep smashing it!"

"Expose all this filth to the ground! Let it bask in the sun!"

The chaos that had just begun to stagnate swept through the Zhou family once again with even greater ferocity.

Ji Zuodao looked at this group of evil cultivators who suddenly had a surge of righteousness, and a silent grin spread across his face.

Yes, that's it.

Anger burns brighter when compared to something else.

Shame needs a contrast to become motivation.

Inside the Caiyun 749 Bureau, the air was as still as a three-day-old, dried-out steamed bun.

The footage transmitted by the camera on Ji Zuodao's chest button was played silently on the giant screen.

The small mountain of spirit stones in the gambling den reflected a cold light.

The numb eyes inside the iron cage were empty and unfocused under the warm pink light.

Organ remains and limbs floated slowly in formalin inside a glass jar.

The dried blood stains on the walls of the alchemy furnace resembled some kind of eerie totem.

The air pressure in the conference room was so low it felt like you could wring water out of it.

The faces of all the investigators were as black as the bottom of a pot before a downpour.

Some people's knuckles turned white from clenching their fists, some people's jaws clenched so tightly they cracked, and some people's forehead veins throbbed.

He used all his self-cultivation to suppress the urge to rush out and desecrate the Zhou family's ancestral graves.

Director Lin sat in the main seat, his hands clenched into fists under the table, his nails digging deeply into his palms.

He felt his heart pounding like a drum.

No, even drums aren't that loud. It's like he has a mad rabbit in his chest, ready to kick him and break a few ribs.

Anger felt like a red-hot iron burning in my stomach.

Shame felt like a bucket of ice water being poured over the back of my head.

I was shocked, as if someone had hit me in the face with a stick.

Three emotions were vying for dominance in his stomach, locked in a fierce battle.

"Well done, well done, Zhou family!"

Director Lin squeezed out these words through gritted teeth, his voice hoarse like sandpaper rubbing against sheet metal.

He always knew that the aristocratic family was a deep pool, full of silt and sediment at the bottom.

He understood this principle: in a large forest, there are all kinds of birds; in a large family, all sorts of dirty things can happen.

But what's in front of us is hardly just "a little dirty"?

This is rotten to the core, oozing pus, and black water is gushing from its ancestral graves!

Even heretical practitioners would feel ashamed of their own abilities upon seeing this, and would exclaim that it's professional.

The entire Zhou family, from top to bottom, inside and out, is probably so dirty that even the leftover bones from the guard dog at the gate are not clean.

Even in the Jia family mansion in Dream of the Red Chamber, at least there were two stone lions at the gate, which was a sign of their innocence.

Zhou family?

Pooh.

Director Lin now suspects that the pair of stone lions in front of the Zhou family's gate are probably stuffed with Xiaoyao powder.

A chill crept up my spine.

Is the Zhou family an isolated case?

What about those other seemingly respectable and virtuous aristocratic families?

They're probably birds of a feather.

No, they're dens of wolves and tigers, each one dirtier than the last, each family more corrupt than the last.

"They all deserve to die..."

Director Lin closed his eyes, his temples throbbing.

"They all deserve to die."

At that moment, for no apparent reason, Zhang Yucheng's always smiling face, which made people feel uneasy, popped into his mind.

I recalled something that old fox once said at the dinner table, half-drunk and half-awake:

"Old Lin, to put it simply, our 749 is like a rope. We can't always think about using it as a dog leash to restrain those powerful families."

"Even if a vicious dog is on a leash, it will still pounce on you and bite when it wants to."

"We, 749, shouldn't be chains."

Zhang Yucheng was swirling his wine glass at the time, his eyes frighteningly clear:

"We need whips. Steel whips that are soaked in salt water, quenched in fire, and can tear off a piece of flesh when pulled out."

"We whip them until they dare not bare their teeth or sneer, until they tuck their tails between their legs and obediently lie down to guard our homes and property at the first sound of the whip."

At the time, Director Lin thought it was just drunken talk, the arrogant words of Zhang Yucheng who was used to being domineering in Jinghai.

Now look at the Zhou family's chaotic scene and the countless crimes they committed...

Screw the dog leash!

From today onwards, Caiyun749 will have to learn to be the whip that lashes the dog!

Let's first strangle this mad dog from the Zhou family and set a good example for the other restless dogs!