The Warning Light

Following Wang Xiaojun's directions, Mo Fan and Lingling swept through the grove and caught one of the "venomous rat monsters" Wang Xiaojun had described.

Lingling's knowledge of Demon-Beasts ran deep. One glance was all it took to identify the creature — a rare subspecies of forest-burrowing plague rat that nested in underground burrows, known as the Razor-Claw Plague Rat.

The Razor-Claw Plague Rat occupied the lowest rung of the Servant-class hierarchy. Mo Fan had tangled with Servant-class creatures before; these were even weaker than the Giant-Eyed Ape-Rats he'd faced back in Bo City.

Lingling dissected one of the Razor-Claw Plague Rats on the spot. Her movements were so swift and clinical that both Mo Fan and Wang Xiaojun watched with uneasy expressions, unable to believe a girl barely ten years old was capable of something like this.

"Strange — there's Aberrant Blood present. Am I really this lucky?" Lingling murmured. She glanced at Mo Fan and pointed toward the depths of the grove. "Go catch a few more. Kill them on the spot and check whether they have Aberrant Blood too."

Mo Fan did as he was told. Dealing with Demon-Beasts at this level cost him almost no effort. What puzzled him was that every single Razor-Claw Plague Rat he caught turned out to carry Aberrant Blood.

Aberrant Blood was rare — across dozens, sometimes a hundred Demon-Beasts, only a few drops might appear. It was a perpetually scarce material on the market. Hunter-mages risked their lives in the wild for exactly three things: Aberrant Blood, Aberrant Bone, and Aberrant Hide. Aberrant Bone and Aberrant Hide were essential materials for forging Enchanted Gear; Aberrant Blood had even broader applications, most notably as the base ingredient refined into healing Blood Serum.

For a rare commodity like Aberrant Blood to appear in every single Razor-Claw Plague Rat was simply beyond comprehension.

Mo Fan relayed the situation to Lingling, who appeared to have already reached her conclusion. A slow smile curved the corner of her mouth. "I have the full picture," she said.

Mo Fan and Wang Xiaojun settled beside her, ready to listen.

"These Razor-Claw Plague Rats are highly unusual — an exceptionally rare breed among the rat tribes that have overrun this region. They are extraordinarily weak and small, unable to fend for themselves even at the bottom of the Demon-Beast food chain. When I was reading about rat-type creatures, I always found it puzzling: how had a species this feeble — one with no instinct for concealment and frankly little intelligence — avoided extinction? Now I have the answer. They survive through a unique method of reproduction."

"First: their bodies harbor a substance I'll call Plague Blood. Plague Blood is nearly indistinguishable from Aberrant Blood — so similar it can fool anyone. Without rigorous analysis, the two are impossible to tell apart. Factor in everything that's been happening lately, and..."

Mo Fan could already see where this was heading. He finished her thought: "Someone has been passing off this Razor-Claw Plague Rat blood as the real thing — mass-producing healing Blood Serum from it. And that's what triggered this outbreak."

Lingling nodded. "According to the information my sister sent me, the first two rotting corpses discovered at the scene of the initial disturbance both had records of purchasing Blood Serum from Bai Town. And the earliest patients — they almost certainly all bought Blood Serum tainted with Razor-Claw Plague Rat Plague Blood."

The entire Blood Serum production chain was under strict Magic Association oversight — the chance of a sourcing error slipping through was vanishingly small. The most likely explanation was that someone had colluded with a Magic Association inspector to exploit the Razor-Claw Plague Rat's unusual blood and manufacture substandard Blood Serum on a massive scale.

The counterfeit Blood Serum had probably performed just like the genuine article at first. What its makers had never anticipated was that the Razor-Claw Plague Rat's blood, lying dormant inside human bodies, would one day mutate without warning. The mutation then underwent a further, more aggressive transformation — and turned contagious. The Plague Blood latent in others who had consumed the same counterfeit Serum was rapidly activated in turn, accelerating the spread of the disease and ultimately unleashing the catastrophic plague that had engulfed Hangzhou.

The source of the epidemic had been traced. At last.

None of it had anything to do with the Totem Xuan Serpent. What the world had taken for an act of heaven was entirely the work of man.

Now they had to root out whoever possessed the audacity — and the utter absence of conscience — to exploit this catastrophe for personal gain.

Lingling and Mo Fan brought their findings to Leng Qing, who had made progress of her own. She had already confirmed that the Magic Association official responsible for overseeing Blood Serum production at the time was none other than the wife of Deputy Chief Adjudicator Wang Yi.

Bold as Wang Yi was, he would never have dared to unilaterally authorize pumping Plague Blood into the Blood Serum supply. Tracing the chain of command further up, the finger pointed squarely at a single individual: Councillor Luo Mian.

If Councillor Luo Mian was truly behind it, that also explained why he had so suddenly allied himself with Councillor Zhu Meng.

The plague incident would ultimately need a scapegoat. The Totem Xuan Serpent's appearance had been a windfall — the perfect solution to his problem. He had wasted no time pushing for the creature's execution, knowing that once it was dead, every shred of blame could be laid at the feet of a Totem Xuan Serpent that could no longer speak in its own defense.

What a staggering revelation — and what a spine-chilling, calculated conspiracy.

Before long, Mo Fan, Lingling, Wang Xiaojun, Leng Qing, and Tang Yue gathered at West Lake. The moment Mo Fan laid out the full sequence of events, Tang Yue's face flushed a deep, furious red. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, agitated bursts. She never could have imagined that the devastating plague had been engineered by Councillor Luo Mian — and what enraged her beyond measure was that this man, entirely without remorse, had exploited people's terror of the Totem Xuan Serpent and Councillor Zhu Meng's desperate impatience, letting the serpent shoulder the blame for everything. Just what kind of heartless, vicious creature was he?

"Now that we've uncovered the truth, let's arrest Councillor Luo Mian as quickly as possible," Wang Xiaojun said.

"A Councillor commands more authority than the Chief Adjudicator himself. Arresting him is easier said than done." Mo Fan said. "Our priority right now should be persuading Councillor Zhu Meng to release the Totem Xuan Serpent. It's already weakened — the longer it's held and tormented, the less likely it is to hold on."

Leng Qing nodded. Bringing down a Councillor was no simple feat, and they had no hard evidence to prove he was the mastermind behind the Plague Blood Serum scheme. Everything depended on what Chief Adjudicator Ah Li Tian had managed to turn up on his end.

Tang Yue tightened her fists. They knew exactly who was responsible — and they couldn't touch him.

Mid-conversation, Leng Qing appeared to receive a message. She looked down at her phone, and weary resignation settled across her face. "Deputy Chief Adjudicator Wang Yi has committed suicide to avoid arrest," she said. "The news broke at the Western Fortress a short while ago."

"That entire shipment of Blood Serum moved from the warehouse to the Western Fortress was compromised. It makes sense that the whole Fortress fell ill all at once. If we'd found this out sooner, we could have stopped that shipment from getting in," Mo Fan said.

"Even uncovering the truth means nothing now. Councillor Luo Mian has sacrificed a pawn to protect the king — the entire Western Fortress crisis has been pinned on Deputy Chief Adjudicator Wang Yi. The Fortress is now ravaged by plague, its defenses badly diminished. The White Demon Eagle Legion will almost certainly seize the opportunity to strike." Leng Qing said. "This city of Hangzhou is heading for catastrophe."

As those words left her lips, she raised her eyes and fixed her gaze on the western horizon.

Moments later, a streak of warning light blazed to life on the city's west side — vivid and searing, it slashed hard across the sky just overhead, impossible to look away from, impossible to ignore.

The setting sun lay in that same direction, burning a deep, bruised red. Two shades of violent crimson bled into each other — as though even the heavens themselves were foretelling the horrors soon to come.