Chapter 44: Because I’m Wanted, I Have No Choice but to Refuse Being a Saint!

“Elder Redflame, Elder Blueflame, I’ve completed the task. What about my reward?”

Xu Gu’s gaze landed on the two elders. Doing a mission without a reward? Absolutely not.

Redflame and Blueflame both froze. Clearly, they hadn’t even thought this far—mostly because they had never actually believed Xu Gu could complete the mission.

All the other elders turned to look at them, eyes full of mockery and schadenfreude, waiting to watch them suffer.

Such a nightmare of a task, and Xu Gu had actually done it. That meant the reward couldn’t be small.

Otherwise, if they really made Xu Demon Child hold a grudge, the rest of their lives would be tragic.

“Don’t worry, the reward will definitely be generous!”

“Not just generous—it’ll definitely satisfy you!”

The two elders exchanged a look, then steeled their hearts and went all in.

Redflame gritted his teeth and said,

“The two of us spent years building a Fallen Spirit Pool. Inside are forty-nine fallen spirits—each one forged by throwing one hundred thousand evil ghosts into a blood-fight gu raising.

“Every fallen spirit is priceless. Whoever can subdue one will massively strengthen any evil-spirit-type spell.

“We’ll give you seven days—no, one full month of fishing in front of the Fallen Spirit Pool. Bare minimum, you walk away with four. If you fish up more, you can take as many as you catch.”

The hall fell silent.

Then the sound of sharp inhales rang out one after another.

Everyone was stunned.

The demonic overlords were shocked by Redflame and Blueflame’s sheer extravagance.

Fallen spirits, huh. Even for Nascent Soul bigshots like them, those things were still useful. Each one was incredibly hard to obtain.

They knew very well: collecting those forty-nine fallen spirits had taken Redflame and Blueflame eight hundred years.

If Xu Gu fished up even one, their hearts would ache.

If he pulled up seven or eight, those two might actually vomit blood.

The righteous-path five, on the other hand, were horrified by that one phrase—“forged from one hundred thousand evil ghosts.”

Rage burned in all their chests.

Those damned devils. One hundred thousand evil ghosts—how many massacres did that take?

They deserved to die ten thousand times over.

“One hundred thousand evil ghosts?” Xu Gu raised a brow, his opinion of the two elders ticking upward a notch.

Under the relentless suppression of the righteous path and the imperial court, they’d still managed to gather one hundred thousand ghosts. They did have some skill and guts, after all.

He had underestimated the demons of the world a little.

But then Redflame and Blueflame puffed up with pride and added,

“Of course. Not one ghost short. Back when the crackdown was the harshest, we disguised ourselves as a Daoist priest and a monk, waving the banners of ‘expelling evil’ and ‘subduing demons,’ roaming every corner of Great Shang.

“It took us centuries of travel through remote villages to gather that many. We suffered more than you can imagine.

“And to keep from being discovered by the authorities, we only moved in the most out-of-the-way rural regions. The hardship was real.

“I tell you, those righteous sects and that imperial court are completely useless. They never noticed a thing. We played them all in the palm of our hands.”

“…”

Xu Gu was speechless.

The five righteous infiltrators jerked their heads up, eyes full of shock.

That’s how you got your hundred thousand ghosts?

Blueflame and Redflame continued bitterly indignantly,

“And that damned court!

“They even gave us a silk banner and praised us as good monk and good Daoist doing good deeds for the people, saying they wanted to commend us publicly.

“Isn’t that an insult?

“We’re demon cultivators! How could we be doing good deeds? We only did all that to advance our cultivation so we could run wild in the future!”

Xu Gu nodded. He could understand.

But he still asked, “Having an official identity would make life easier. Why refuse the commendation?”

Redflame and Blueflame’s mouths twitched. Their faces stiffened, and they fell awkwardly silent, clearly too embarrassed to say it.

Ping Wuqi, who had—out of habit—already stepped forward to shield everyone with his presence, spoke up in their place.

“The two elders were already wanted criminals on the boards back then. They didn’t dare accept, in case they got recognized.”

Redflame and Blueflame’s faces darkened.

Xu Gu’s vision went black for a moment. Of course it was that.

The five righteous infiltrators, meanwhile, fell into a deep, shaken silence.

Waves thundered through their hearts.

“Two hundred years ago, those two who apprehended countless ghosts, who roamed Great Shang’s countryside eight hundred years like a day,

“Seeking no fame, no fortune, who rejected all honors and chose to retire from the world in obscurity—

“The ones the Great Shang court named that year’s ‘Most Moving People of Great Shang’—the Fat Monk and Skinny Daoist…

“Were actually two great demon overlords of the Demon Grotto—Heavenly Demon Elders Blueflame and Redflame?”

“This…?”

The five of them felt their Dao hearts wobble.

The blow was too big.

In the righteous sects, those two had always been upheld as textbook role models for disciples to learn from.

And now you’re telling me they’re absolute-grade demon overlords?

In their hearts, ten thousand grass-mud horses thundered across the plains.

“So, what do you think? Are you satisfied with this reward?” Blueflame and Redflame asked Xu Gu under their breaths, faces full of sincerity.

Their expression said very clearly: if not, we can keep negotiating.

“I can just fish however I like?” Xu Gu asked.

“Hiss…”

For some reason, the two elders suddenly had a very bad feeling.

But then they thought about how intelligent and stubborn fallen spirits were, how hard they were to hook.

At worst they’d lose seven or eight. If they were lucky, maybe only four. They could handle that.

“Right,” they confirmed.

Then Xu Gu turned to Huan Caiyi.

“This assignment was completed with Junior Sister Caiyi’s help. Can she get a reward as well?”

“Her?”

The two elders looked at Huan Caiyi together, hesitated, then said, “We could also let her fish in the Fallen Spirit Pool. But… no guaranteed minimum.”

“Huh? I don’t need fallen spirits.” Huan Caiyi shook her head.

She didn’t practice ghost-type spells. It’d be a waste of time.

She wanted to go into seclusion and train; she’d already fallen behind everyone while she was away. This trip out had cost her cultivation.

“Does anyone want it?” Huan Caiyi asked Li Shaobai and the others. “If not, then forget it.”

She didn’t expect to get anything from the Demon Grotto elders that would actually be worthy of her attention anyway.

Sure enough, the other righteous infiltrators shook their heads one after another—

Except Confucian cultivator Kong Haoran.

“I do,” Kong Haoran said. “I’ll go in your place.”

“Huh?”

Li Shaobai and the others stared.

What did a Confucian cultivator want with fallen spirits?

Everyone knew Confucian cultivators were extremely effective against ghosts.

Maybe not as brutally as thunder cultivators or Buddhist cultivators, but still terrifyingly strong.

Fallen spirits were used to empower ghostly spells.

What kind of Confucian ran around casting ghost spells?

“I was thinking… Confucians use writing to carry Dao. In battle, we have to recite elegant prose and righteous essays, which is a bit troublesome.

“But if I could refine a group of ghosts and have them recite my essays for me during battle, wouldn’t that massively boost my combat power?”

Kong Haoran’s eyes shone with anticipation.

“Huh?”

All the demon overlords, and Huan Caiyi’s group as well, were stunned.

You can do that?

Honestly, in their eyes, this wasn’t any less outrageous than Xu Gu’s “chefs refining pills” idea.

Okay, maybe a bit less outrageous.

Everyone fell silent.

Once chefs could refine pills, a Confucian having ghosts recite literature for him in battle didn’t seem all that strange anymore.

“You can do that?”

Beside him, Mi Suhui’s eyes lit up like a new world had just opened.

“I want to fish for fallen spirits too!”

(End of this chapter)