Mysterious World: I Have a Lost Heavenly Court

Qingfeng Temple, Danfang (Alchemy Room).

Qin Yuan sat on the futon, with the dark pink natal jade pendant in front of him floating in mid-air.

The points of light on the jade pendant are fading away one by one at a speed visible to the naked eye.

It's not the slow, incremental decay that happened before, where one or two beads decayed at a time.

Instead, they extinguished one by one!

Each of those points of light represents a person marked by it with a talisman.

Each time a light dims, it means that person has escaped its control.

And the locations where the lights were extinguished most densely all pointed in the same direction.

The official road outside the city.

Its warm smile could no longer be maintained.

The corners of his mouth still held that habitual curve, but there was no trace of a smile in his eyes.

All that remained was a layer of cold, ever-accumulating anger.

The puppets lying in ambush along the official road were the last batch of puppets under its command that it could actually use.

It was the elite force that it had spent half a year using talismans to screen and repeatedly reinforce its control over!

Thirty-odd warriors at the third realm or above, placed in a place like Black Mountain County, are enough to wage a small-scale siege.

It sent out all these puppets with only one purpose.

Intercept and kill the formation master who came from the prefectural city.

Array Master.

Willow green fish.

It didn't know the person's name, but it knew that Lu Yue had invited him from the prefectural city through the Qingfeng Temple's channels.

Once the people from the prefectural city get involved, its scheme will no longer be a problem within Heishan County, but will be reported to the level of the Demon Suppression Division.

Therefore, this person must die on the road.

But now, the light spots on the jade tablet tell it that the ambush on the official road has completely failed.

More than just failure!

All thirty-odd puppets lost their ability to react at the same time and were all eliminated in a very short period of time!

More than thirty third-realm puppets were slaughtered!

A moment later, another trusted confidant came and told Qin Yuan the whole story.

For a moment, the alchemy room fell into a deathly silence.

After a long while, he finally came to his senses and asked a cold question.

"With so many people, how come they couldn't take down Zhou Wu and his group?"

The confidant didn't dare to raise his head, but in the end he gritted his teeth and told Qin Yuan the reason for the failure.

"..."

"..."

"In the end, Lu Changqing killed all our men!" The confidant said, then buried his head even deeper.

"Lu Changqing—" Qin Yuan squeezed out the name through clenched teeth, his voice low and hoarse.

This isn't the first time!

It started with that unauthorized undercover agent.

His most skilled and capable confidant, without asking for permission, led a group to intercept and kill Lu Changqing. As a result, he failed to kill Lu Changqing and lost his own life!

It also resulted in the loss of two hidden agents at the Liquid Condensation Realm!

Although it wasn't happy at the time, it didn't take it too seriously, after all, it was just a hidden stake.

If someone dies, they die; we can just train another one.

Then there's the Blood Zombie Hall.

The entire sect was uprooted, the sect leader died at Lu Changqing's hands, and neither of the two protectors escaped.

Although the Blood Zombie Hall was not under its jurisdiction, the two halls were coordinated in their layout in Heishan County.

Blood Zombie Hall was responsible for weakening the county's high-end combat forces, while Joy Hall was responsible for infiltrating and controlling the people.

Now that Blood Zombie Hall is gone, all the pressure is on him alone.

Then there's the county government.

Zhou Wu became suspicious and began investigating the matter of the spirit talisman. He ordered the county magistrate to suppress the matter, which temporarily stabilized the situation.

But it knew that Zhou Wu's suspicion stemmed from Lu Changqing.

Zhou Wu and Lu Changqing became too close, so close that the old constable began to trust the judgment of a lazy young master rather than the authority of the senior disciple of Qingfeng Temple.

Now it's another ambush on the official road.

Thirty-odd elite soldiers were wiped out by Lu Changqing alone!!

The array master from the prefectural city entered the city unharmed. The news of locating and suppressing the bandits will soon reach the prefectural city. Once the Demon Suppression Division smells blood, they will never let their guard down!

Every single time, every single time, it was a perfectly planned scheme.

This guy is the one who caused all the trouble!

"Damn it—"

Qin Yuan forcefully slammed the teacup in his hand onto the ground, making a crisp sound that startled his confidants behind him, causing their hearts to pound.

"We can't wait any longer!"

"I was originally planning to take action during the Spring Festival."

Qin Yuan held the jade pendant in his hand, his five fingers slowly tightening.

"It looks like we have to move it up!"

"Otherwise, all the plans that have been in the works for so many years will be ruined."

He put the jade pendant into his bosom, turned around, and pushed open the door to the alchemy room.

Outside the door, several bodyguards were waiting with their hands at their sides. When they saw it come out, they all knelt down on one knee.

Qin Yuan glanced at them, and his usual warm smile returned to his face.

But this time, there was no warmth in that smile.

"Go, mobilize everyone you can from the county government."

"There's no need to hide anything anymore. Let's start tonight and get the whole city mobilized."

"No need to draw blood anymore, just start controlling the heart."

...

The county government office, the back hall.

Liu Qingyu sat in the guest seat, with a topographical map of Heishan County hastily drawn in charcoal in front of her.

The drawing was found by Zhou Wu on the spot; the lines were rough and the proportions were inaccurate, but it was barely usable.

He circled the location of the Lost Forest on the map and marked several official roads leading to the prefectural city. His lips under his white beard kept moving, as if he were talking to himself.

Zhou Wu and Li Chun sat on either side of each other, their wounds already bandaged, but neither of them looked well.

Li Chun, in particular, lost more than half of his troops on the official road, although Lu Changqing arrived in time to salvage the situation.

But those soldiers who couldn't be saved were the ones he had personally trained from raw recruits to their current status.

Lu Changqing sat opposite Liu Qingyu, with Qingyun beside him.

The county magistrate sat in the main seat, holding a cup of tea in his hand. The lid of the teacup tapped gently on the rim of the bowl, producing a very subtle clinking sound.

Liu Qingyu pointed to a location on the map that he had circled with a vermilion pen, and was about to say something.

Suddenly, a great commotion arose outside the yamen.

A chaotic, out-of-control wave of screams and cries surged toward them from the end of the street.

Zhou Wuteng stood up abruptly, his hand already on the hilt of his knife.

A constable rushed in from the yamen gate, his face pale and his voice trembling: "Captain! Something's happened on the street!"

"Many people suddenly went mad! They bit anyone they saw! It was like, it was like—"

"Like what?"

"They look exactly like those sorcerers on the official road!"

Lu Changqing's eyes narrowed.

Talisman.

Qin Yuan has made his move!?

Liu Qingyu rolled up the map and stuffed it into her sleeve before standing up.

His complexion wasn't good either, but his eyes remained clear.

He glanced at Lu Changqing, then at Zhou Wu, and finally fixed his gaze on the county magistrate.

"It seems we'll have to put the formation on hold for now." His voice wasn't loud, but it was steady. "Let's stabilize the situation inside the county first."

"Otherwise, we simply won't have enough manpower to break the formation."

Zhou Wu looked at the county magistrate, who immediately gave the order.

The county government office was immediately bustling with activity.

Seeing this, Lu Changqing felt disappointed, but he also knew that it was unrealistic to ask them to focus on the formation right now.

So he didn't linger at the county government office. He quickly left the office with Qingyun and headed towards the Lu family along the long street.

The streets were in complete chaos.

Several men dressed in coarse cloth and short turbans were frantically tearing at a peddler who had fallen to the ground, emitting inhuman howls.

A woman carrying a child screamed as she rushed out of the alleyway, followed by her husband, whose eyes gleamed with a dark pink light and whose mouth stretched to his ears.

In the distance, thick smoke rose from the rooftops of several houses, indicating that one of them was on fire.

Qingyun summoned her natal spirit sword, its blade gleaming with a cold light, and stood guard beside Lu Changqing.

These people are controlled by the talisman, not the demons themselves. Killing them is easy, but every one killed is one less. Qin Yuan would love for them to kill all the people in the city.

His most important thing right now is to go home.

Of the dozens of people in the Lu family, did anyone put up a talisman?

Lu Ri's injuries had not fully healed, and Lu Yue was at Qingfeng Temple, where only some retainers and servants lived.

Fortunately, when he rushed into the Lu family mansion, everything was as usual.

The servants were all busy with their own tasks, and none of them showed any abnormal excitement.

After he stepped down from the award platform, he immediately ordered his entire family not to display Qin Yuan's talismans.

Several servants verbally agreed but didn't really care, thinking that since the talismans were given away for free, they might as well put them up. He even had Lu Erwa go door to door to collect them back.

"Third Young Master!" Lu Erwa trotted up to him, clutching a staff that reached his eyebrows. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but his eyes remained calm. "Everything's fine at home. Not a single one of them has gone mad!"

"I have already ordered the brothers to guard both the front and back gates, and I have also sent people to patrol along the courtyard wall."

"There was a big disturbance in the street, and a few crazy people tried to climb over the wall to get in, but we chased them away."

"Well done." Lu Changqing patted him on the shoulder. "Keep guarding."

"No matter who knocks on the door, no matter who it is, you must not open it."

Lu Erwa nodded vigorously and turned to arrange manpower.

...

Lu Changqing returned to the courtyard and sat down on the stone bench.

Qingyun poured him a cup of cold tea, which he took, gulped down, and then placed on the stone table without speaking immediately.

The courtyard was quiet, with only occasional screams and chaotic collisions coming from outside the courtyard wall.

This quiet gave him the space to go over everything that had happened that day from beginning to end.

How did Qin Yuan know that a formation master had come from the prefectural city?

Lu Yue contacted Liu Qingyu through her master's connections. The messenger was a trusted fellow disciple of Lu Yue, and the recipient was Liu Qingyu herself.

If the letter was intercepted en route, then Liu Qingyu would never have been able to appear in Heishan County.

Therefore, Qin Yuan must have received the news after the letter was delivered and before Liu Qingyu arrived.

In other words, Qin Yuan has another intelligence source within Heishan County who can access Lu Yue's movements and whose speed of action is fast enough.

This is not an internal problem of Qingfeng Temple.

Lu Yue sent the letter without Qin Yuan's knowledge. If Qin Yuan had found out through Qingfeng Temple's channels, there would have been no need for Lu Yue to send people to intercept and kill him on the official road.

It would be simpler to control Lu Yue directly in Qingfeng Temple, or to prevent the junior brother who was delivering the message from leaving the temple, than to intercept him on the official road.

Its choice to intercept and kill indicates that it knew Liu Qingyu was coming, but it did not know exactly when Liu Qingyu would arrive, which route he would take, or how many people he would bring.

Otherwise, given Qin Yuan's caution, he wouldn't have just sent puppets to intercept and kill them; he would have also set up traps, obstacles, and backup manpower along the official road.

Therefore, the person who informed Qin Yuan could access the information that "a formation master is coming to the prefectural city," but could not access the details of the delivery.

This person was not inside Qingfeng Temple, but in the county government office.

The image of the county magistrate's thin face instinctively appeared in Lu Changqing's mind.

In the back hall of the yamen, while everyone was furious about the ambush on the official road, he sat in the main seat, holding a cup of tea.

His expression was so calm that he didn't seem like a local official who had just heard that an imperial official had been intercepted and killed in his jurisdiction.

He would occasionally chime in with a few words, but his expression never truly betrayed his anger.

He squinted.

Could this be the giant ghost from the city?

But he had no way to verify it.

The cheat code can label him as [Remains Species], [Mutant Species], and [Obsession Species], and can also label Qin Yuan as a Joyful Buddha Demon and the left and right guardians as Blood Zombies.

But when looking at the county magistrate, the cheat code didn't react at all.

The county magistrate was a living person.

If a living person is bribed, threatened, or bound by interests, the Golden Finger won't label them.

This means that he could be certain that Qin Yuan had a problem, but not that the county magistrate had a problem.

He could strike Qin Yuan down with a single sword strike when Qin Yuan reveals his true form.

However, one cannot barge into the county government office and drag an official from his seat without evidence.

He needs evidence.

Or perhaps he needs strength.

When one is strong enough, the county magistrate will be forced to reveal his true colors.

But now, Qin Yuan has activated all the spirit talismans in the city at the same time.

The mad crowds in the streets are not the end, but only the beginning.

Given Qin Yuan's cautious nature, since it decided to act ahead of schedule, it must have a backup plan.

Tonight's chaos is just the first wave; the second and third waves will soon follow.

Liu Qingyu couldn't worry about breaking the formation for the time being; the formation master had to save the living people first before he could turn around and rescue those trapped inside.

He took a deep breath, stood up from the stone bench, and drank the remaining cold tea in his teacup in one gulp.

"The world is too chaotic, or perhaps we're just not strong enough," he muttered to himself. "Only when we become stronger can we have a say."

"Condensed Qi Realm".

"Once we've condensed the Qi and refined the pills, we'll kill Qin Yuan first, drag out our parents, and ensure our family is safe before considering anything else!"