Chapter 9 : Being a Demon Suppression Envoy is Worse Than Cleaning Toilets

Scarlet warning lights stained the night sky red.
Black SUVs with the Shanhe Group logo surrounded the scene in a fan formation.

The chaotic sounds of the logistics team members coming and going rose and fell.

A corner of the temporary tent’s canvas was lifted by the night wind, revealing Xu Zhi’s lowered eyelids.
His knuckles unconsciously tapped the taotie-patterned hilt of the long saber at his waist.

Even though it wasn’t his fault, several young lives had come to an end in this demonic disaster.

“My surname is Cheng, I’m telling you!”

The woman in the tent was cursing at the screen, her fingers, painted with wine-red nail polish, nearly poking through it.
“If you can handle this, handle it! If you can’t, then get the hell out of the Demon Suppression Bureau’s position and let me handle it!”

Amidst the beeping of the disconnected communicator, she slammed her phone onto the folding table with a loud “bang!”

Her name was Ye Zi, and she was the commander of the Lin’an Demon Suppression Division, Xu Zhi’s direct superior.

Normally, the commander, who was responsible for regional combat command, wouldn’t casually come to the front lines.
But this incident had indeed exceeded the Demon Suppression Division’s estimates.

Out of eight victims, the Demon Suppression Division had only detected demonic energy fluctuations during the last attack.
Rather than saying this case was strange, it was more like the Demon Suppression Division was inactive.

Ye Zi suddenly tore open the tent flap.
The evening wind rushed out, carrying the lingering scent of her bitter orange perfume.

“I want that beast’s corpse hung from the top of the Shanhe Group building for public display. If you can’t do it, then go clean the toilets! Do you understand, Demon Suppression Envoy Xu?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Xu Zhi answered with his head lowered.
This commander had always been short-tempered and intolerant of any wrongdoing.
Moreover, eight people had been brutally killed by demons without their knowledge.
This was a serious dereliction of duty by the Demon Suppression Division.

In the evening wind, the woman’s figure grew more and more distant.

“Field team report! Found in freezer number three—”

“Say it’s a cold storage ammonia leak! Surveillance footage has been replaced!”

The low whispers of the Demon Suppression Division’s logistics personnel were mixed with the sound of keyboard tapping.
A specialist from the External Affairs Bureau, in a white lab coat, rushed between the police tape, holding a tablet.
The words “External Affairs Bureau” on his chest badge flickered in the flashing lights of the police cars.

Gu Xiyan sat slumped on the curb, her torn dress revealing her fair skin.

She tilted her head and tore open the inhibitor package with her teeth.
The needle slowly pierced the bruised vein below her collarbone.
The skin corroded by demonic energy was showing spiderweb-like black patterns.

The streetlight stretched her shadow to the edge of the police tape, where seven body bags were piled.
The forensic examiner’s white lab coat was rustling in the night wind.

“Commander Ye’s sonic attack can be heard from three streets away.”

Lu Qingyu suddenly appeared from the corner of the tent, holding a bottle of chilled glucose and pressing it against the back of Xu Zhi’s neck.

“She said if I can’t catch that demon, she’ll make me go clean the toilets…”

Xu Zhi smiled wryly and rotated his stiff neck, twisting open the glucose bottle and downing it in one go.

“At least cleaning toilets doesn’t require staying up all night looking at demon files…”

The empty glucose bottle crackled in his hand.

“That girl was lucky. The low temperature in the cold storage slowed down her metabolism, so she held on for a little longer. The demonic energy corrosion isn’t too serious.”

Lu Qingyu sat down next to Xu Zhi, the corner of her white lab coat sweeping across the road surface, which still held the residual warmth of the day.

“The other deceased…”

Xu Zhi rubbed the label on the empty bottle and asked slowly.

“We’ve only identified one. Her name is Chen Ling. The plastic lamination of her student ID was embedded in her flesh.”

The tablet Lu Qingyu opened lit up with an autopsy photo.
“Time of death calibrated to forty-eight hours ago—”

The girl’s completely dissolved skin was juxtaposed with the innocent smile on her ID photo, stinging one’s eyes.

Forty-eight hours ago was exactly the last period of their time as a support team in Rongcheng.

“An average of one victim attacked every two days. All the victims’ skin was completely dissolved, except for the one who is still alive.”

Zhou Xuan suddenly popped out of the tent, holding a tablet.
“All the wounds show caramelized spiderweb patterns, consistent with the predatory cycle and characteristics of a Skin-Painter.”

In the hot summer, a Skin-Painter needed a new skin every forty-eight hours to prevent its own from rotting.

“But a Skin-Painter shouldn’t be able to sever its tail to survive.”

Gu Xiyan kicked away the ice pack blocking the tent door.
Her stockings were torn, and a bandage was wrapped around her ankle, making her look like she was wearing a leg ring.

“The severed limbs fished out of the drainpipes are writhing like slugs. The cut sections can grow new mouthparts in five minutes.”

Suddenly, the harsh sound of body bag zippers being pulled came from outside the tent.
Seven bodies were being loaded into a vehicle one by one.

Lu Qingyu’s eyes suddenly widened as she looked at the latest autopsy information on her tablet.
In this demonic disaster, the time of death of the first victim was exactly the morning they had set off to support Rongcheng!

Chengzi staggered onto the lakeside wooden path, a can of unfinished beer in her hand.
This drunken fool suddenly spread her arms and rushed towards the railing.

“A toast to the moon—hic—can’t see the moon—a toast to our revolutionary friendship!”

Bai Ling hurriedly grabbed the hem of her shirt at the back, afraid this girl would do a somersault and fall headfirst into the lake.

Su Jiu Li quickly supported Chengzi’s arm from the other side.
“Slow down! Your heel is stuck in the crack of the wooden planks!”

“So hot… the ice cream is going to melt…”

Chengzi muttered again, reaching for her shoulder strap.
Two pearl buttons popped off and rolled into the lake, the ripples they created shattering the reflection of the city’s neon lights.

“Such a low tolerance for alcohol, yet she still insisted on drinking…” Bai Ling muttered, holding down Chengzi’s hand, which was trying to take off her shirt.

This silly girl started struggling like a pig at New Year’s, determined to take off her clothes.

The summer night breeze blew across the lake.
The LED screen on the commercial street on the opposite bank was playing a soda commercial.

Smelling the slightly salty evening wind, Bai Ling suddenly felt that this wasn’t so bad.

‘Maybe she could make a few not-so-close friends.’
‘Maybe she could live a little happier without seeing Xu Zhi.’

“Why is Senior Chen Ling feeding the mosquitoes?”

Lin Xiao Xia suddenly stood on her tiptoes and pointed to the reed bed by the lake, where a figure in a floral dress stood.

It was the same senior who had helped Lin Xiao Xia with her luggage in the afternoon.

She slowly turned around, but the hem of her skirt remained motionless, as if it were sewn to a stone.

“What are you all doing here?”

the senior suddenly asked.

The headlights of a car on the cross-lake bridge a hundred meters away suddenly lit up, momentarily illuminating her stiff smile.
The curve of her lips was like someone was pulling her facial muscles with a fishing line.

“We just finished a dorm dinner,” Lin Xiao Xia had already bounced over to the senior’s side.

The senior’s pupils suddenly constricted into lines, then quickly returned to normal.

“So beautiful…” she suddenly said.

“It is beautiful…” Lin Xiao Xia looked at the lake reflecting the neon lights, the breeze making the leaves by the lake rustle.

A silver bracelet suddenly knocked against the railing, the sound startling a roosting night heron.

Bai Ling felt a cold sweat break out on her palm.
Chengzi’s pulse, through her thin skin, was vibrating in sync with the faint beat of the nightclub in the distance.

“No, I mean you all. You’re so beautiful…”

The corners of the senior’s lips suddenly tore towards her ears, like a marionette being pulled by invisible strings.

Bai Ling saw the skin on her neck peeling off like melting wax, revealing a network of black blood vessels underneath.

Those blood vessels throbbed under the moonlight, like a swarm of earthworms parasitizing rotting flesh.

The night wind brought a strong smell similar to formalin.
The index finger of the senior’s drooping right hand was bent at an unnatural angle, the skin at the protruding joint peeling back like a cicada’s shed skin.

A willow leaf stuck to the collar of her floral dress was suddenly pushed up.
A half-inch of black thread drilled out from under the leaf’s veins, rhythmically contracting with her twisted smile, like the strings controlling a puppet.

A laser beam from the opposite bank swept across the lake, momentarily illuminating the depths of her pupils.
Where the irises should have been, there were now countless tiny holes, and in each hole, a miniature compound eye was rotating in sync.

‘She wasn’t human at all!’