"Sister, are you... also here to catch the Dragon King Lord?"
"Dragon King Lord?" Jiang Yuechu repeated, her gaze sweeping towards the shattered shrine. "Is the one enshrined here the Dragon King Lord you mentioned?"
Water nodded, then quickly shook her head, her eyes immediately turning red."It used to be... but now, the Dragon King Lord isn't here anymore."
"Then where is it?"
"I don't know either..."
"What exactly happened? Tell us in detail." Tiger Zhao didn't care about much else and leaned forward. His anxious expression, coupled with the horizontal saber at his waist, made Water instinctively shrink behind Jiang Yuechu.
Old Wang curled his lips. "Don't scare the child."
Tiger Zhao: "..."
Jiang Yuechu felt a bit helpless and could only continue to ask, "Water, take your time, don't be afraid." Under her soothing words, Water's emotions finally stabilized a bit.
Sobbing, she recounted the whole story, from beginning to end.
"The nearby villages have worshipped the Dragon King Lord for generations, praying for favorable weather."
"The former Dragon King Lord was not the current one." Everyone was stunned, but then they understood. For a Demon, the incense offerings of the Human Race were a great tonic.
A place that could enjoy a large amount of incense naturally became a coveted prize in the eyes of Demons, and disputes between them were perfectly normal.
Anyway, for the common people, it didn't matter who was the Dragon King. As long as they could bless them with favorable weather, who wouldn't they worship?
"Decades ago, the current Dragon King Lord arrived, drove away the previous one, and became our Dragon King Lord."
Tiger Zhao couldn't help but interject, "Aren't they all from the same den? Is there a difference?"
"Yes!" Water immediately retorted, her voice rising a few decibels. "The current Dragon King Lord is much better than the previous one! The previous one demanded a pair of virgin boys and girls as sacrifices from the village every year, but after the current Dragon King Lord came, he never asked for them again!"
Everyone exchanged glances. So, this new Demon actually had some demonic virtue?
"What happened later?" Jiang Yuechu asked.When she mentioned later, Water's mood became low again. "The Dragon King Lord... the Dragon King Lord is good in every way, except... except he's too lonely, he wants... he wants a child."
Wants a child?
The expressions of the rough men in the room instantly became strange.It was common for Demons to have children, but judging by what this girl said, the matter was probably not that simple.
"Then... then Sister Xing'er from the village chief's family went to the river to bathe one time, and after she came back, her belly... her belly grew big."
"..."
Even the well-informed members of the Demon Suppression Division were shocked by this turn of events.They had heard of telekinesis, but impregnating across Water...
What kind of Divine Ability was this?!
"The villagers didn't know what was going on. They thought Sister Xing'er had... had been with someone outside..." She was too young to say some things, but the meaning was already clear.
"The village chief was furious and wanted to break Sister Xing'er's legs. Later, the village chief's wife, feeling sorry for her daughter, secretly went to town and invited a wandering Daoist priest to take a look. As soon as the Daoist priest saw her, he said that what Sister Xing'er was carrying in her belly was not human... it was a Demon fetus!"
Tiger Zhao tightened his fist and was ready to search and tear apart the temple further.
"The village chief fainted from anger on the spot. After he woke up, he took people to the Dragon King Temple, saying that they worshipped him out of respect, but he couldn't disgrace the people of their village like this!"
Everyone listened with a sigh of regret.Anyone in that situation would be furious.
"What happened then? That girl..." Liu Chen couldn't help but ask.
Water shook her head. "Sister Xing'er, for some reason, went mad. She insisted on keeping the child in her belly and wouldn't listen to anyone.The villagers all cursed her, saying she was possessed by a Demon, a shameless, dirty thing, and even the village chief said... he didn't have such a daughter."
"Finally... finally, several elders in the village decided that Sister Xing'er had conceived a Prodigy, tarnishing the village's reputation, and keeping her would bring disaster to the village."
"So they... they put Sister Xing'er in a pig cage and sank her into the Black River..."By the end of it, everyone didn't know what to say.
The Demon was certainly at fault.But the villagers... alas.
After a long while. Liu Chen finally spoke in a hoarse voice, "So, from then on, the Black River became like this?"
Water nodded. "The day after Sister Xing'er died, the Dragon King Lord was furious. The river Water started flowing backward, and three days later, it became like this, foul and smelly, and all the fish died..."
Jiang Yuechu looked at the shattered shrine, her heart filled with mixed emotions.She suddenly asked, "What about you? Who are you? Why are you here?" Water wiped away her tears and said, "I... I have no parents. I've been begging for food in the village since I was little. The Dragon King Lord was kind; he wouldn't eat the offerings from the villagers, so he would let me have them."
"The Dragon King Lord is not a bad Demon. He just... just really wanted to be a father. Sister Xing'er died, and his child was gone too. He was sad, which is why he lost his temper." She looked up, her red eyes pleading with everyone.
"Official Sirs, Sister... can you... can you spare the Dragon King Lord?He's already very pitiful..."
Spare it?
Everyone exchanged glances.The duty of the Demon Suppression Division was to slay Demons and eradicate evil.
Now that a Demon was causing trouble, the Water veins were cut off, and the people along the banks were suffering. They had come on orders, so how could they possibly spare it?
Tiger Zhao was the first to break the silence. "Pitiful? Aren't the common people who can't get Water and can only drink this foul Water while waiting to die pitiful? Aren't the brothers of the Yellow Character Battalion, who are now neither seen alive nor found dead, pitiful?"
"One thing at a time! A Demon is a Demon. If it harms people, it should be killed!" Though crude, his words were true. Liu Chen sighed and remained silent, implicitly agreeing with Tiger Zhao's statement.
He turned his head to look at Jiang Yuechu.
He found that Jiang Yuechu had stood up at some point and was silently looking outside the temple.
"What do you think?" Liu Chen asked.For some reason, he subconsciously wanted to hear the newcomer's opinion.
"It's our duty, so naturally, it should be killed." At these words, the last trace of color drained from Water's face.
She looked at Jiang Yuechu in disbelief. "...Bad person."
"You are all bad people!"T he young girl shrieked, scrambled to her feet, and stumbled out of the temple.Tiger Zhao instinctively wanted to chase after her but was stopped by Liu Chen's raised hand.
"Let her go." Liu Chen sighed, giving Jiang Yuechu a complicated look.He had thought that, being a woman herself, Jiang Yuechu might feel more empathy for the situation, but he hadn't expected her to be so decisive.
However... that was fine too.Everyone had different positions, so their ways of doing things were naturally different
.Since she was now a member of the Demon Suppression Division, she naturally had the way of thinking appropriate for the Demon Suppression Division. While the villagers were wrong to use private punishment, that was a matter for the imperial court to handle.
The Demon Suppression Division had always had only one principle.Slay Demons, eradicate evil.