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

Ji Zuodao felt incredibly happy, like drinking a bucket of ice-cold plum juice on a sweltering summer day, feeling comfortable all the way from his throat to his heels.

Tsk tsk, these monsters really know how to chat.

What did people call him before?

Bad luck, evil thing, living Yama, jinx... What kind of rubbish are these? They have no culture at all.

Now listen to it again—

Ji Qingtian!

Gee...

Wow, those three words just sound so uplifting and cheerful.

Awesome! That's fucking awesome!

Han Jiang, who was slumped over nearby, seized the opportunity, carefully got up, turned off his live-streaming phone, and bowed and scraped, "Section Chief Ji, I won't interfere with you officials' law enforcement any longer. I'll get out of here now, right away..."

As he spoke, he tried to slip away.

"Um?"

Ji Zuodao raised his eyelids and glanced at him sideways, his gaze as if he were looking at a little mouse trying to slip away from under a cat's paws.

"In the bureau, you call me Section Chief Ji, that's the rule, I won't argue with you."

Ji Zuodao spoke slowly, brushing non-existent dust off his uniform cuff with his finger. "But what should you call me outside?"

Han Jiang felt a chill run down his spine from his gaze. He swallowed hard and tentatively called out weakly:

"Uh... Ji... Ji Qingtian?"

"ah--!"

Ji Zuodao suddenly clutched his chest, his expression incredibly exaggerated. With his eyes closed and head tilted back, he let out a long, satisfying moan from the depths of his throat.

"That's it! That's the feeling! It feels great!"

He opened his eyes, feeling refreshed and invigorated. He felt his back and legs were no longer sore, and he could raid three more buildings!

Han Jiang's lips twitched, and his initial awe of the "official" was immediately mixed with a lot of speechlessness.

This guy... he seems a bit unreliable?

"So, Ji Qingtian, am I really going to leave?" Han Jiang asked with a forced smile, slowly moving backward.

"Yes, you may leave."

Ji Zuodao waved his hand with great style, his posture and demeanor perfectly captured.

Han Jiang felt as if he had been granted a pardon, and he turned and ran away. He was faster than when he was chased and beaten back then when he secretly filmed a demon king's concubine meeting her lover.

He ran quite a distance before daring to look back, and the little unease that had been nagging at him finally surfaced:

"This Ji Qingtian, you say he's a good person? Not really. You say he's a bad person? Not entirely either. Tsk, he seems to be somewhere between a good person and a bad person, that kind of inhuman feeling."

Han Jiang clicked his tongue and made his final conclusion.

"But judging by his manners and methods, he's definitely better than that bastard surnamed Wei, isn't he?"

He shook his head, banishing the jumbled thoughts, and his figure gradually blended into the environment and disappeared.

……

Here, the sound of "Ji Qingtian" made Ji Zuodao feel very comfortable. He took the house raiding to a new level and was full of energy. He wanted to dig up the foundation of the villa to see what else was buried underneath.

You know what, this Monster Protection Association truly lives up to its reputation as a local power that has been entrenched in Jinghai for many years; its resources are truly substantial.

Jin Xiaoman's passive skill for the Golden Toad clan—"Bringing in wealth and warding off misfortune"—is simply outrageous.

He didn't even need to look for it; he just moved a small stool, sat down in the center of the villa's living room, crossed his legs, and casually tossed his lucky coin around.

Then, something amazing happened.

"Click..."

A replica of the "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" painting on the study wall suddenly fell down on its own, revealing a safe embedded in the wall behind it.

"Boom..."

In the basement wine cellar, a wine rack inexplicably collapsed, revealing a hidden door disguised by bricks.

"Squeak..."

Suddenly, half of the bed frame of the luxurious king-size bed in the master bedroom collapsed, revealing a layer of neatly stacked gold bricks underneath the mattress.

Good heavens, these hidden compartments and mechanisms for concealing treasures are like they're lining up and eagerly offering themselves to Jin Xiaoman.

"Awesome! That's fucking awesome!"

Ji Zuodao's eyes lit up as he patted Jin Xiaoman on the shoulder, "From now on, when our bureau raids... no, when we legally investigate assets involved in cases, you must be present!"

Jin Xiaoman chuckled, raising her chin even higher.

"Load everything! Load everything! Take whatever you see, don't be shy!" Ji Zuodao waved his hand and gave orders.

"Those things that look valuable, pocket them first! If you don't take anything during a raid... cough, I mean, if you don't carefully check for potential risks, isn't that a waste of time?"

He was giving his orders with great enthusiasm when his gaze swept over the large, antique-looking wooden crates that had just been moved from the underground chamber in the courtyard. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he turned to a deserted corner and shouted:

"Come on, Dog King! See that pile of boxes? They're made of sandalwood, old stuff, there's bound to be some good stuff inside! You keep them in your stomach for now, and that pile of big stuff over there too. It's rare to bring this back to our house so fat, we should grab as much as we can..."

Ji Zuodao stopped midway through his sentence.

The courtyard suddenly fell silent.

The only sound was the rustling of leaves in the wind.

Ao Yan, Ni Yu, and Jin Xiaoman, the three demons, all stopped what they were doing, turned their heads, and looked at Ji Zuodao with blank expressions.

Ao Yan cautiously looked around, then exchanged a questioning glance with Ni Yu before scratching his head and speaking:

"Uh... Brother Dao, who are you talking to?"

Ni Yu frowned slightly, her cool voice tinged with confusion: "Dog Master? Do we have such a monster in our department?"

Ji Zuodao's smile froze.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, his brows furrowing little by little.

Dog Lord?

Yeah...who is Dog Master?

Why did I suddenly call out that name?

It seems only natural that there should be someone there who can help him hide things, and who is also very reliable...

Ji Zuodao subconsciously raised his hand and rubbed his temples hard.

In that instant, something seemed to flash through his mind—

A blurry, flickering fragment of light and shadow.

It looks like... a very large, dark, furry shadow?

Its outline is somewhat like a dog, but much larger than a regular dog, and it's crouching there.

Its fur was glossy, and it sat there squatting, its eyes looking somewhat weary and mischievous.

But the shadow flashed by too quickly, and by the time he tried to think about it again, he couldn't grasp anything.

All that remained was emptiness, and a strange, faint sense of unease, as if something important had been lost.

"hiss--"

Ji Zuodao gasped and clutched his forehead.

A slight, sharp pain came from the depths of his mind; it wasn't intense, but it made him very uncomfortable.

"Are you alright?" Ni Yu noticed that his expression was off and took a step forward.

"fine……"

Ji Zuodao waved his hand, his brows furrowing even more. He looked at Ao Yan, his tone carrying an urgency he himself didn't realize.

"Ao Yan, think about it carefully. Back when we were messing around in the Ailao Mountains, were there any black dog demons or anything related to dogs among the monsters we were on good terms with?"

Ao Yan was a little confused by his question. He tilted his head back and thought about it seriously for a long time:

"Besides the fox from the Empress's house, the only other dogs are the wolf cubs from the Great Sage Howling Moon's family, but they're all white! None of them are black!"

Ni Yu nodded slightly, confirming Ao Yan's statement.

"Is that so..."

Ji Zuodao lowered his hand, but his eyes were somewhat unfocused, and he felt a strange emptiness in his heart.

An indescribable sense of unease, like cold, damp vines, quietly crept up on me.

Something seems off.

It seems like I've forgotten something very important.

No matter how he thought about it, all that remained in his mind about "Dog Master" was a vague, elusive image and that casual, taken-for-granted title.