The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 96

The sight of two demon hides working together to make tofu left the onlookers vomiting all over the ground.

Seeming to feel that he had embarrassed himself, the bearded man retched twice, wiped his beard, and ran off to one side to continue vomiting.

Lu Jianxing glanced back at him and shook his head inwardly.

In the future, the Night Watch Bureau would face the bloodiest and strangest side of this world. The first thing its members needed was a strong stomach.

Lu Jianxing privately noted the man’s name, then cocked his head at his subordinates.

Several men moved forward to encircle the courtyard.

Making tofu was exhausting work.

Following the habits they had possessed before their unjust deaths, the two laboring demon hides had risen early to grind beans and boil soy milk.

They paid no attention to the men surrounding them.

Lu Jianxing slowly drew the long saber at his waist. Then he took a scrap of cloth soaked in chicken blood from a leather pouch and wiped it along the blade.

Not everyone’s saber had killed a man and tasted blood.

Zhao Li had therefore found another path, inventing this method of temporarily enchanting a weapon and adding to its damage.

As the dark red chicken blood smeared across the blade, the distinctive stink of poultry filled the air.

Sensing the powerful yang energy suppressing it, the demon hide pushing the millstone stopped.

It turned to look. The corpse wrapped inside it, mouth stretched wide, turned with it.

Lu Jianxing’s breathing grew heavier. He lunged forward and swung his Goose-Quill Saber.

The instant the rooster blood on its edge touched the demon hide’s neck, green smoke rose.

The creature screamed in a man’s voice.

The well-honed blade, sharpened every day, slowed only slightly as it passed through the hardest vertebra.

Thump.

The decapitated corpse fell to the ground in two pieces.

Only a little black-red blood seeped from the opening.

Lu Jianxing’s side had gone well. The other group’s work was much less presentable.

The demon hide beside the stove had been hacked into several pieces.

The corpse inside had died the night before. Its black-red organs were swollen and reeking, and fluids of black, red, and yellow had sprayed all over the ground.

The air had smelled of soy milk. Now it also reeked intensely of raw meat and entrails.

Nauseated, Lu Jianxing spat and cursed, “All you had to do was cut off its head. How did you make such a mess?”

The Jingning Guardsmen had never seen such a thing before. Their faces stiffened with embarrassment, and they awkwardly lowered their sabers.

They cupped their hands and were about to answer when a startled cry came from outside.

Lu Jianxing led the rush out.

They arrived just in time to see the bearded man who had been vomiting off to one side dragged toward the corner of the street by some tremendous force.

As he struggled, he scattered the dead moths covering the ground in every direction. His fingers clawed desperately at the earth.

He still possessed quick instincts. While fighting with all his strength, he shouted for help and reached for the water pouch hanging behind his waist.

The pouch contained Sichuan chinaberry fruit water. In an emergency, one only had to splash it over one’s body, and these creatures would naturally retreat.

After using it, however, the person would have to leave Jiahui Ward so the smell would not interfere with the search for the other demon hides.

The more desperately the bearded man reached, the harder the pouch was to grasp.

Just as terror overwhelmed him, the grip on his ankle suddenly loosened.

He raised his eyes, panting, and found a face pressed close to his own. Its features were crumpled together, its nose flattened and twisted to one side.

He also caught the nauseating stench of raw meat.

Before disgust could fully enter his mind, fear swept it away.

The skin spread both arms, wrapped itself tightly around him, and swallowed him whole.

The tough hide sealed over his face. The sensitive skin there could feel the cold, slick, fetid matter coating its inner surface.

The skin’s original owner had been much shorter than the bearded man, and tremendous pressure inevitably closed around his body.

His mouth and nose were completely sealed. No matter how fiercely he struggled, it did no good.

He could even hear his bones creaking under the pressure.

Scenes from his past flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. Just as he silently composed his final words, cool air suddenly touched his face.

Riiip.

A single saber stroke split the demon hide apart.

The bearded man sat on the ground.

The fierce and tangled emotions of escaping death battered his mind. He collapsed forward, gulping air, tears and mucus streaming down his face and mixing with the stinking black-red filth from inside the skin.

“Are you all right?”

He looked up.

The short young woman who had saved him was sheathing her saber. Apparently after seeing his filthy appearance, she took a step back.

“Thank you for saving my life, Thousand-Household Commander Zhao!”

The bearded man wiped his face with his sleeve, spreading the tears and snot more evenly across it.

Zhao Li hurriedly averted her eyes.

Lu Jianxing and the others caught up a moment later.

First, Lu Jianxing sighed in relief when he saw that the bearded man was safe. Then he walked over and gave him an exasperated kick.

He turned to Zhao Li.

“Thousand-Household Commander Zhao, why are you here?”

Zhao Li gently pressed a hand to the wound at her ribs, which had begun to pull painfully.

“I came to take a look.”

First, she wanted to observe how these men performed.

Second, after realizing that she had blown the budget, she had not quite dared face her superior, Shen Yan. She had decided it would be better to run over here and work.

Lu Jianxing frowned when he saw her movement.

“Thousand-Household Commander Zhao, you’re injured. You should rest properly.”

Zhao Li waved him off.

“It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

Lu Jianxing nudged the bearded man on the ground with his foot.

“Get up. Can you continue?”

The man spat on the ground and wiped his face again.

If he withdrew now, he would truly lose all dignity and never be able to face his comrades again.

“I can,” he said fiercely.

Several more emergencies of this kind occurred afterward.

These Jingning Guard elites had previously dealt with corrupt officials, thieves, and vicious bandits.

Now, for the first time in their lives, they faced uncanny things.

Every story they had heard as children claimed that ghosts and monsters only came out in the dead of night to harm people.

These things, scurrying about in broad daylight, overturned all their conventional understanding.

Zhao Li therefore did not look down on them or blame them for performing poorly.

She moved along the edge of the teams, carefully observing and assessing every man.

The Night Watch Bureau would have to confront supernatural threats across all of Great Jing.

Even if Zhao Li ran until her legs broke, she could never resolve every supernatural incident occurring across the empire.

She had already discussed the matter with Shen Yan. The Night Watch Bureau would become a dedicated department, established within Jingning Guard garrisons throughout the realm.

Like the Registry Office, it would extend all the way down to towns and villages.

This measure could greatly improve the central government’s response to supernatural incidents in the provinces.

But Zhao Li faced one problem: there were far too few people.

Therefore, while Shen Yan worked to overcome every form of resistance at court, Zhao Li needed to rapidly train a group of experts capable of operating independently.

Those experts would be selected from among these men.

Zhao Li calmly watched their performance as they hunted down the demon hides.

Whenever someone distinguished himself, she asked Lu Jianxing for his name.

She watched them kill every last demon hide. They truly followed her order to shake the yolks loose inside even the chicken eggs before smashing them on the ground.

Finally, they gathered together all the demon-hide remains, the corpses of Prince Rui’s guards, and the white moths covering the ground. They scattered a thin layer of cinnabar over the pile and set it alight.

A pillar of billowing smoke climbed into the sky.

Zhao Li leaned against the fire-watch tower with her saber in her arms. The beautiful creature beneath last night’s moon suddenly returned to her mind, and she sighed softly.