The Ambitious Councillor

Mo Fan sat atop the Totem Xuan Serpent's head just as Tang Yue always did. After their unlikely bonding sessions — which had involved feeding the creature gutter oil — much of his deep-seated dread toward the beast had faded. When he actually thought about it, the massive thing was really just... big. Underneath all that size, it had a surprisingly gentle soul.

He carefully examined the Totem Xuan Serpent's body and found that the festering skin from earlier had clearly begun to separate. Even some of the deeper wounds were... peeling away, as if they too were sloughing off like scabs.

*What's going on? Wounds dropping off like scabs?* He was quietly astonished.

He spent another half-hour walking the length of the serpent's body and found the same signs of peeling at wound after wound.

When Mo Fan returned to its head and surveyed the great coiled mass spread below, he suddenly noticed something separating from within the serpent's body — as though a second form were slowly cleaving itself away from the first.

"Mo Fan! Mo Fan! What on earth are you doing out there?" A small, adorable girl on the Su Causeway called out toward Mo Fan over the water.

Mo Fan turned. It was Lingling. He frowned slightly. "Weren't you supposed to be helping Wang Xiaojun get back? Why are you here?"

Lingling was cradling a mini laptop, eyes fixed to the screen. She answered without looking up. "I can monitor his route from here too."

"This snake looks like it's splitting in two. I'm just a bit puzzled. Did the lightning actually cleave it in half?"

Fearless as ever, Lingling jumped straight onto the Totem Xuan Serpent and clambered her way up — tiny arms and legs going hard at it — until she finally reached Mo Fan. Standing at the top, she gazed down at the enormous coils spread far below and said flatly, "Split in half? Can't you tell? It's shedding its skin."

Mo Fan looked more carefully and the pieces clicked into place. A smile spread across his face. "After everything it's been through, the old serpent is finally starting to molt. It should make it through the Molting Season just fine. Tang Yue's going to be thrilled when she hears."

"She will. And if Wang Xiaojun makes it back safely, this whole crisis will have ended with nothing worse than a scare." Lingling tapped away at her laptop as she spoke.

"Let's hope so."

"Wait — why has he stopped?" Lingling set the laptop on her little lap and looked up with a frown.

"Who stopped?"

"Wang Xiaojun. My tracker shows he's suddenly come to a halt — and he's still on the ground. There's nothing particularly dangerous in the area. He should be flying straight back to the Western Fortress by now." Her brow furrowed deeper.

"Did something happen to him?" Worry sharpened Mo Fan's voice.

He genuinely admired Wang Xiaojun's courage. In a crisis like this, people who could stand up and face death without flinching were vanishingly rare — and this was a seventeen-year-old kid.

Deep in a patch of woodland west of the Western Fortress, Wang Xiaojun lay flat against the gray eagle's back, eyes fixed and alert on the figure blocking his path.

Above him — blanketing the sky over the treetops — was a vast, dense swarm of White Demon Eagles. Their white wings packed together like an enormous pale net, they covered the night sky from edge to edge. Every time Wang Xiaojun glanced up at those razor talons and those wings that swallowed the heavens, ice shot through him.

The White Demon Eagles were streaming ceaselessly toward Hangzhou. Wang Xiaojun had never seen a battlefield before, had never encountered so many Demon-Beasts at once. He kept the gray eagle pressed close as cover, every nerve stretched taut, terrified of being spotted by the creatures overhead.

But it wasn't the White Demon Eagles blocking his way.

It was the middle-aged man with the goatee standing directly in front of him.

"Wang Xiaojun, yes? I'm Councillor Luo Mian. You've done excellent work on this mission. Hand over the Eagle Red Grass — I'll take it straight to the quarantine zone and save the infected."

Wang Xiaojun's gaze was locked hard on this uninvited guest. He recognized Councillor Luo Mian — one of Hangzhou's most prominent public figures. But he didn't trust him. Mo Fan and Lingling had already told him the full truth: the epidemic had been caused by Councillor Luo Mian himself.

He had no idea why the Councillor had appeared here. What he did know was that he could not hand the Eagle Red Grass over to someone this corrupt.

"I'll deliver it personally to the Military Commandant. If Councillor Luo Mian truly needs the Eagle Red Grass so urgently, I ask that you clear the path for me."

Councillor Luo Mian stroked his goatee and laughed softly. He looked Wang Xiaojun over. "You want a Councillor to clear the path for you — a boy with no military rank whatsoever?"

"Then what do you want?" Wang Xiaojun said.

"Know your place and hand over that spatial bracelet." The smile on Councillor Luo Mian's face cooled slowly into something else — cold, and shot through with contempt for this ridiculous child.

Luo Mian could easily have dispatched a subordinate to intercept Wang Xiaojun and seize the antidote by force. But given how completely the White Demon Eagles blanketed every inch of sky, and given that not everyone could move as silently and invisibly as he could...

Councillor Luo Mian was a Shadow Element Transcendent Tier Mage.

In all of Hangzhou, in all of the Western Fortress, no one would have imagined that Luo Mian could slip through a battlefield swarming with Demon-Beasts across every patch of sky and earth, moving freely and without a sound.

He had been surprised — genuinely — that this utterly unremarkable boy had actually found the key to lifting the epidemic. But in his view, the one credited with saving Hangzhou from this catastrophe should not be some nameless nobody. It should be him: Councillor Luo Mian.

Even with a scapegoat in place, Zhu Meng had already stopped trusting him. Clearing his name would be nearly impossible, and his council seat might well be lost.

But if he obtained the Eagle Red Grass — if the last lifeline for all of Hangzhou rested in his hands — then not only would Zhu Meng and the others not dare call him to account, he could use the glory of having averted the crisis as a springboard to climb even higher.

A clever man knows how to wrest opportunity from the jaws of destruction. And the only thing standing between him and that opportunity was this one green boy. Nothing could be simpler.

"What?" Councillor Luo Mian smiled with quiet contempt, looking Wang Xiaojun and his pitifully weak gray eagle up and down. "Were you thinking of resisting me?"

"You're going to rob me?" Wang Xiaojun's voice rose with indignation.

He had never imagined a Councillor could stoop to something like this.

"Be a good boy, hand the items over, and I'll spare your life — and guarantee your future career. Otherwise, you, Wang Xiaojun, will vanish from this world without a trace. Trust me — no one in this world will lose a moment's sleep over the life or death of a nobody like you." The Councillor's voice could have curdled blood.

His entire presence seemed shrouded in shadow and death. The face that had always worn a warm, approachable smile before the public now looked like that of a cold, ravenous predator.