Chapter 40: The Times Have Changed

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Chapter 40: Times Have Changed

“Young Master Pan, we found it!”

After nearly ten minutes, Hao Liang received the files sent over by the Luocheng Branch.

Pan Shuai immediately leaned over the laptop to examine them.

Great Locust Village was located in a village far from the city—far even from the county seat.

Luocheng was surrounded by mountains on nearly every side. Great Locust Village lay at the foot of Mount Mang and bordered the Luo River.

There was nothing particularly mysterious about the village, except for an ancient locust tree standing more than a hundred meters tall.

According to legend, that old tree had stood there for over a thousand years.

Beyond that, there was nothing especially unusual.

Pan Shuai immediately gave his orders. “Liangzi, send the field team members closest to the village ahead to investigate. We’ll follow at once. Luo Hao, contact White Horse Temple, Shaolin Temple, and Laojun Temple. Have them send people to Great Locust Village as well. Then contact the court and ask them to send over a mage.”

He also called out to Xingtian and the others. “Let’s go. More than fifty urban legends have now become bound to Lu Li. We have to bring him back.”

Xingtian nodded silently.

He said nothing about Lu Li, nor did he mention the clues they possessed.

As far as he was concerned, Lu Li would be perfectly fine.

Or rather, he actually hoped that whatever was behind this could finish Lu Li off.

No, that would not do either. It would mean that the other side was even more powerful than Lu Li.

The best outcome would be for both sides to suffer mutual destruction. Then their mission could be completed without them lifting a finger.

And they would not have to face any other danger.

To obtain information, Xingtian rode in the same car as Pan Shuai and the other three.

The other four Descenders drove their SUV behind them.

Inside Pan Shuai’s car, none of the four spoke. Only the roar of the engine and the humming of wind and road noise filled the air.

About ten minutes later, Pan Shuai’s phone rang.

He drove with one hand and pressed the Bluetooth earpiece against his ear with the other. “This is Pan Shuai. Go ahead.”

“What?! All right, I understand. Do not act yet. Wait until we arrive.”

After hanging up, Pan Shuai explained the situation. “Two members of the field team that arrived first went inside. We’ve lost contact with them.”

Hao Liang and Luo Hao’s expressions turned grim.

From the corner of his eye, Xingtian glanced at the passenger seat. The upper half of Pan Shuai’s face was hidden in shadow, while the lower half was intermittently stained a hazy yellow by the streetlights flashing past.

“Xingtian, you know Old Lu, don’t you?”

Xingtian was startled, but quickly recovered.

His reaction when he saw Lu Li earlier must have been noticed, and Lu Li himself had acted as though he recognized Xingtian.

So he did not bother denying it. “I know him, but we’re not very close.”

Pan Shuai nodded, then asked, “Then you must know about Great Locust Village too. I noticed that all five of you reacted when the Pen Spirit and the others wrote down the name.”

Seeing that he had been exposed, Xingtian decided not to conceal anything. He had even prepared an explanation long ago.

“We know about it. Apart from supporting your operation, our mission this time is to investigate Great Locust Village.

“According to reliable intelligence, the reason urban legends came into existence may lie within that village. At the very least, there should be clues related to the source of the urban legends.”

Hao Liang frowned from the back seat. “But urban legends like the Pen Spirit were first recorded in historical texts in the year 192. That was more than eighteen hundred years ago.”

Xingtian said nothing. Pan Shuai answered in his place. “The ancient locust tree in Great Locust Village is also more than a thousand years old.”

They traveled in silence after that, but Xingtian still did not receive any notification that the mission had been completed.

It seemed that Pan Shuai had to confirm that Great Locust Village truly contained clues related to the source of the urban legends. Perhaps the mission would only count as complete once he personally obtained those clues.

In the end, they still had to go to Great Locust Village.

But the thought that Lu Li was there—and that whoever had managed to take him away was almost certainly there as well—made Xingtian’s heart sink into his stomach.

Nearly an hour later, they finally reached their destination.

At some point, a torrential downpour had begun.

Even so, the five of them were utterly stunned.

The area outside the village, which had originally seemed rather desolate, was now bustling with activity.

Countless tents had been erected across the cleared ground, and people streamed back and forth without pause.

Some were setting up machinery and equipment. Others were workers in safety helmets. There were even excavators and heavy trucks.

Countless searchlights illuminated the night sky.

The scene was somewhat different from what Xingtian and the others had imagined.

Shouldn’t it have been a matter of a few people venturing deep into the village, solving one dangerous mystery after another, and rescuing Lu Li?

But Pan Shuai’s actions told him that Lu Li certainly was going to be rescued—but only through overwhelming force.

When they followed Pan Shuai into the largest tent, they were even more dumbfounded.

The tent appeared to be a battlefield command center.

A vast sand table occupied the middle, complete with a collection of architectural models.

Then they saw a group of Taoist priests and Buddhist monks gesturing over blueprints. Nearby, a middle-aged man in a suit—with a beer belly and a balding crown—stood smoking as he cast a spell, shaving the logs piled on the ground into wooden strips and assembling them into models, which he placed wherever the monks and priests directed.

When Pan Shuai and the others entered, a middle-aged Taoist priest, two middle-aged monks—one fat and one thin—and the mage walked over.

The mage also stopped casting and wandered over.

“Captain Pan, I hear this mission is quite troublesome?”

“It is. That’s why I summoned you all in the middle of the night.”

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Pan Shuai turned and introduced the five members of Xingtian’s group.

“This is Grandmaster Yuansheng, the leader sent by White Horse Temple.”

“Amitabha. This humble monk greets all of you, benefactors.”

The thin, middle-aged monk pressed his palms together and bowed slightly.

“This is Grandmaster Shiyongfa, the leader of Shaolin Temple’s warrior-monk task force for this operation.”

The somewhat portly monk nodded with a genial smile.

“And finally, this is Daoist Shanxin, the leader sent by Laojun Temple.”

“Greetings.”

Daoist Shanxin, whose hair was half white and whose bearing was that of an immortal, flicked his horsetail whisk and raised one hand before his chest in salute.

Pan Shuai’s final introduction was the balding, middle-aged mage in the suit.

“This is Teacher Dai Zongli, a mage from the Luocheng Intermediate People’s Court.”

Teacher Dai pushed up his glasses. He then adjusted a particularly unruly strand of hair floating above his bald crown before smiling broadly.

“Miss Fang should have come, but she’s still away on business and hasn’t returned. So I had to come instead.”

“Greetings, Masters.”

Xingtian shook hands with them one by one.

How should he put it?

Apart from the court mage, whose style seemed somewhat out of place, the monks and Taoists at least fit his understanding of what monks and Taoists ought to be.

They even gave him a faint sense of familiarity and security.

As expected, people preferred encountering things that matched their understanding of the world.

But that understanding soon collapsed.

The one who shattered it was Grandmaster Shiyongfa.

He reached into his wide sleeve and pulled out a Type 95 assault rifle. Then he asked, “Benefactor Pan, the way we handle Great Locust Village depends entirely on your word! If you order an attack, this humble monk can lead our people to seize the place in less than half an hour!”

He patted the assault rifle in his hands.

“This weapon has been consecrated by three hundred eminent monks from our temple. Its lethality against spirits is more than sufficient.”

“Amitabha.”

Before Pan Shuai could say anything, the thin Grandmaster Yuansheng pressed his palms together and recited a Buddhist invocation. Then he pulled out a Gatling gun.

“This machine gun of mine has been empowered by the Forty-Two Sections Sutra. Ordinary spirits cannot even approach it. Even if every ghost on Mount Mang emerged at once, this humble monk could still deliver each of them to the next world—by purely physical means.”

The five members of Xingtian’s group were completely stupefied.

But the greatest shock was yet to come.

Pan Shuai waved his hand. “There’s no need for either of you to get excited, Masters. If the situation becomes uncontrollable, it won’t be too late for you and your disciples to act.”

“Indeed.”

The handsome old Taoist, Shanxin, stroked his goatee with an air of profound composure.

“Besides, with the swarm of ghost-hunting drones jointly developed by Laojun Temple and Northern Industries, along with the Type 90 wheeled rocket launcher equipped with forty 122-millimeter talisman rockets, there will be no need for either of you to take the field.”

Xingtian: “…”

What the hell were all these things?

End of Chapter