# Chapter 365: The Victims

Unfortunately, Mo Fan and Tang Yue found themselves trapped inside Bai Town.

They had barely set foot in the place when the town went into full lockdown. No one was permitted to leave — every exit was sealed to prevent any carrier of the plague from spreading it further.

Their situation turned awkward in an instant. The plan had been simple: make a brief stop in Bai Town, then immediately take the Skyreach Serpent up to Bai Mountain. Whether or not the creature was the source of the plague, it could not remain inside a populated area. Getting it out was the only sensible move.

But now the town was sealed. A Barrier surrounded the perimeter, and any disturbance within it would be detected immediately by the Military Mages on patrol. Mo Fan and Tang Yue sank into a shared gloom.

"We'll have to force our way through," Tang Yue said, her voice decisive. "If that serpent of yours really is a plague god, every minute it spends here only makes things worse."

"Agreed. We move after dark." Mo Fan gave a slow nod. "Though that will almost certainly alert the Military Mages stationed here — and blow our cover."

"That doesn't matter. The big one can sense where the Palace Guards and Tribunal Agents are. They won't be able to catch us no matter what."

When night fell, they acted.

The town's defensive walls were layered with a Barrier. Any fluctuation in it would be detected instantly by the Military Mages on patrol.

Mo Fan didn't trouble himself with the details. He summoned the Swift Star Wolf, mounted it alongside Tang Yue, and simply crashed through the Barrier.

The moon hung clear in a sparse sky, and the streets of Bai Town were nearly empty — the plague had frightened everyone indoors. Hangzhou, meanwhile, had seemed perfectly calm through the day, yet erupted overnight: over a hundred new cases appeared all at once. News spread like wildfire, and panic gripped the city.

The plague was advancing far faster than anyone had anticipated. Apothecaries everywhere were left stunned — they had never encountered anything this ferocious. Healing Element magic did absolutely nothing against it, and worse, the standard antidotes used for mutative diseases actually accelerated the plague's takeover of the body.

Most plagues followed a predictable rhythm: an incubation period, then onset, then a slow deterioration and spread, ending in widespread death. This plague had none of that patience. There was no warning, no latency — one moment a person was healthy, the next they were sick.

Fast-spreading plagues usually progressed slowly, giving humanity enough time to find a cure. Not this one. It spread fast and worsened fast. Patients who had fallen ill just a week ago were now covered head to toe in dense clusters of blisters, their skin tinged a sickly blue-green — a sight that turned the stomach. Without treatment, they wouldn't last until morning.

In the very hour that Mo Fan and Tang Yue fled Bai Town with the Skyreach Serpent — the creature most suspected of being the plague's source — the first three patients to have contracted the disease died in their hospital beds.

The deaths sent shockwaves through the medical world. Experts flooded the Magic Association hospital, gathering in a circle around the beds — every one of them masked, every one of them staring in stunned silence at the three grotesquely corroded bodies before them.

Once the blisters had burst, the flesh had been eaten away with terrifying speed. Just that morning, these had been sick patients. By nightfall, they were unrecognizable.

"Elder Lu," Zhu Meng said, his voice carefully controlled. "What is your assessment?"

Elder Lu waved a hand, signaling the nurses to cover the bodies. Even someone of his stature — the foremost authority in the entire medical world — could barely stomach what he was looking at.

"This is the worst plague I have witnessed in over a decade," he said at last. "We have run the calculations. From initial infection to..." — he gestured toward the shrouded forms — "...this, is seven days. Seven days." A heaviness settled over his voice. "That gives us almost nothing to work with." As the spokesman for every healer present — himself a peak Healing Element Mage — the only word he had for this plague was *dread*.

"Chief Adjudicator," Zhu Meng said, his gaze sliding to Tang Zhong. "I assume you are aware that the number of confirmed infections has now surpassed one thousand?"

"I know," Tang Zhong said with a single nod.

"Then looking at these three bodies," Zhu Meng said, jabbing a finger toward the white-shrouded remains, his voice edged with fury, "do you still believe that I, Zhu Meng, staged all of this? That I would gamble with human lives to frame your precious serpent? I have no interest in such contemptible games. If you still insist your god is innocent — then what is your explanation for these bodies?!"

Chief Adjudicator Tang Zhong said nothing.

The truth was difficult for him to accept. When the first two bodies were discovered a week ago, he and the rest of his clan had been certain they were Zhu Meng's handiwork. But when he saw that the plague's dead matched those two bodies exactly — the same horrific progression, the same gruesome end — that certainty crumbled, and shock flooded in to fill the gap.

*It wasn't Zhu Meng...*

*Could it really be the Totem Xuan Serpent?*

*Had it grown so feral during its Molting Season that it could no longer contain its own dark nature?*

The media had already seized on the story — every major outlet was fixated on Hangzhou. And once word spread that the two bodies killed directly by the Totem Xuan Serpent bore the exact same marks as the plague victims, the terrified city would rise up in a crusade demanding the creature's destruction.

At that point, it wouldn't matter whether the Totem Guardian Clan disclosed anything or not. The Totem Xuan Serpent would be branded a catastrophe. If the government wouldn't move against it, if the Tribunal wouldn't move against it, public pressure would be so immense that every major faction would have no choice.

"The Totem Xuan Serpent has made its home in West Lake for more centuries than anyone can count," Tang Zhong said, his tone measured and grave. "Nothing like this has ever happened before. I need time to investigate this properly."

"Tang Zhong!!" Zhu Meng's voice cracked like a whip. The beard at his jaw trembled as he rounded on the Chief Adjudicator, fury barely reined in. "Even now you're shielding that serpent? Do you have any idea what we are actually facing? The infected count stands at one thousand, three hundred and twenty-four people. One week from now, every single one of them will look like that." He thrust a hand toward the covered bodies. "You are the Chief Adjudicator — are you truly going to cling to some laughable ancestral tradition and watch them all die?!"

"It may appear that the serpent merely inhabits our city," Tang Zhong said quietly, "but the truth is the reverse. The Totem Xuan Serpent has existed for untold centuries before humanity ever set foot here. Our ancestors sought its protection to survive in a land ruled by Demon-Beasts — it was under that shelter that they endured, built this city, and found peace. History has not recorded any of this, but it has been carried in our hearts through every generation. I understand that the Totem Xuan Serpent is the prime suspect in this plague. But I ask only for a little more time. I will have Tang Yue bring back samples of the Totem Xuan Serpent's fluids from during its Molting Season — if an antidote can be extracted from them, we may yet stop this plague from spreading further." His voice shifted into something close to a plea. "Whatever else you decide — I beg you, Councillor Zhu Meng. Do not push for its complete destruction."