Chapter 23: Reprimand

"You arrived at just the right time," Yaoguang said as he glanced at the corpse of You Long lying on the floor. In just a few moments, the daemon traits on You Long's body had already subsided, leaving him looking no different from an ordinary human.

"Su Yaoguang, you..." Lin Xiaowei's eyes widened in utter disbelief.

"Drop your weapon!" the two officers barked at once.

Xia Wuyuan also looked at Yaoguang. "The evidence is conclusive. What else do you want to say?"

"Say what?" Yaoguang countered. "Say that I faced a crisis and acted in self-defense?"

Self-defense?

The group watched as Yaoguang casually wiped the fresh blood on the Chengying Sword onto You Long's corpse right in front of a pair of police officers and a prosecutor.

He called this self-defense? We have never seen anyone so brazen.

"But your arrival isn't entirely useless." Yaoguang shifted his gaze toward a middle-aged man who had entered with them, someone who appeared to be part of Yulong International's management. "If I were you, I would immediately restrain him, call for backup, and seal off the entire Yulong International building. Otherwise, the number of people like that girl, who was erased and silenced, won't be limited to one or two."

"What do you mean?" Xia Wuyuan sensed that this matter was far from simple.

"Use your brain," Yaoguang said. "Your trip up here wasn't smooth, was it? They must have been doing everything they could to stall for time. Otherwise, I wouldn't have arrived on this floor before you."

"You came to investigate the victim's cause of death?" Lin Xiaowei hurried to give him a convenient excuse.

Yaoguang walked straight to the desk. Relying on his sharp hearing, he had caught something when he pushed the door open earlier, and he didn't mind letting the others hear it too. He redialed the previous call.

The phone connected quickly. A man's voice came through. "Director You, we've already started destroying this batch of goods..."

Before the man finished, the senior executive of Yulong International, who clearly knew what You Long had been up to, suddenly roared, "Inspector Lin, Prosecutor Xia, what are you still standing there for? The murderer who killed Director You is right in front of you! How could you just watch!? Arrest him now!"

As soon as he finished, the voice on the phone paused, then...

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The line disconnected.

At once, the expressions on Lin Xiaowei, Xia Wuyuan, and the others' from the Police Bureau face shifted. Lin Xiaowei immediately spun toward the shouting middle-aged man. "Director Jiang, do you take us for fools?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. But I know that you watched a murderer kill Director You and did nothing. If you won't arrest him, we'll do it ourselves! Men!" Director Jiang shouted toward the door.

A dozen men rushed over at once, some holding T-batons, anti-riot forks, and other security equipment.

Fortunately, Dayu's gun laws were strict. Otherwise, their weapons would not have been restricted to those simple melee onesy.

"I dare you!" Lin Xiaowei immediately drew her gun.

Yaoguang cut in calmly. "I should remind you all. If I'm right, the goods they mentioned aren't the goods you think."

Based on what had happened to Yu Xiaoying, it was easy for him to draw the connection.

"It's people." He looked at Lin Xiaowei and Xia Wuyuan and said quickly, "They are destroying a group of people using some unknown method. Destroying in the literal sense: killing, burning bodies, grinding them up. Anything that makes them vanish from the world."

He paused. "This batch might be a few people, a dozen... or dozens. Maybe even hundreds."

Dozens or hundreds of people slaughtered? That's an earth-shattering case.

Lin Xiaowei, Xia Wuyuan, and the others felt their scalps tighten. If not for seeing Yu Xiaoying falling off a window, they would never have believed the words of a so-called murderer like Yaoguang. But that phone call...

They had come precisely because they suspected Yu Xiaoying's death was tied to Yulong International. Yet even under this scrutiny, Director Jiang still tried to cover things up at the risk of confirming their suspicions. The truth was absolutely worse than they had imagined.

"Jiang Feng, start explaining immediately!" Lin Xiaowei shouted sharply.

Even though the one who needed to be detained at this moment was Yaoguang, his complicated identity and the urgent weight of the situation forced her to turn her focus on Director Jiang first.

"Explain what? You're shielding a murderer! I'll report this to your superiors!" Jiang Feng jabbed a finger toward Yaoguang as more Yulong International enforcers rushed in. "Seize him! He is the one who murdered Director You! As for these so-called inspectors and prosecutors... they're clearly colluding with him, covering for him. They can't be trusted. We'll take him down first and hand him to Shanlong City's Police Bureau!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Over a dozen men shouted in unison and lunged toward Yaoguang.

"Stop!" Lin Xiaowei roared. "Take one more step, and I'll shoot!"

"Impudent!" Another voice exploded from outside.

Moments later, Chairman Ou Zhengyang of Yulong International strode in, glaring at Lin Xiaowei. "We are assisting Shanlong City's Police Bureau in capturing a murderer with conclusive evidence. You, a mere inspector from Yunmeng, dare to point a gun at us? Looks like you don't want your job."

He swept his arm sharply. "Take the murderer!"

"You..." Lin Xiaowei was speechless. With Ou Zhengyang backing them, Yulong International's personnel completely ignored her authority as a police officer, as well as the fact she had a gun. Shock and fury surged in Lin Xiaowei's chest.

Still, she didn't dare fire.

"Stop! Didn't you hear me tell you to stop!?" Zhang Qing and the others shouted as well.

Yaoguang only shook his head. "Truly pathetic."

He had originally planned to rely on them to press the investigation with full force, to use Yulong International as a starting thread and tear the entire matter open, to see exactly where the higher-ups stood.

But judging from the situation now, he still had to act himself.

Swoosh!

The next moment, Yaoguang charged head-on toward the dozen enforcers and martial artists rushing at him, sword in hand.

The two martial artists at the front wielded anti-riot forks. One swung high, the other swept low, both stabbing toward Yaoguang in a coordinated strike.

But as the forks closed in from above and below, Yaoguang suddenly lunged upward. He stepped on one fork, forcing it down, while the other fork was cleaved cleanly in half by the sharp edge of the Chengying Sword.

Clang!

Sparks flew as Yaoguang vaulted forward.

Compared to Lin Xiaowei, Zhang Qing, Ye Yuhe, and the others—who hesitated and held back—he was utterly unrestrained.

As he closed in on the armed martial artists, the sword in his hand flashed like a shard of icy light slicing through the void. In an instant, the blade pierced straight through one martial artist's skull.

Pssch!

Blood sprayed forth.

Yaoguang spun, and the Chengying Sword swept toward the second martial artist. Before the man even fully reacted, the sword edge had already slid across his throat, carrying a crimson trail with it as it continued toward the third enemy.

They supported a villain's cruelty. Perhaps they didn't know that You Long was a daemon, but they absolutely knew the things he had done. In a sense, they had already become a daemon's claws.

And for claws that dared reach toward him, he would sever them without hesitation!

This was the lesson he had learned after showing mercy to the wrong people twice and almost losing his life because of that.

Pssch! Pssch! Pssch!

Inside the crowd, Yaoguang killed as effortlessly as chopping vegetables. Every strike targeted a fatal point, and every movement was ruthless to the extreme.

These martial artists, or at best well-trained ordinary men, were no match for a battle-hardened grandmaster like him.

In moments, five people had fallen dead on the spot. The cruelty, the blood, the utter ruthlessness shocked the remaining Yulong International fighters. Their souls trembled, and terror flooded their eyes.

He's killing them? He dares to kill right in front of officers from the police bureau?

The men were shocked.

They more or less suspected what You Long and his circle were doing—human trafficking. But they had never intervened directly. They were simply tasked with suppressing escapees or nosy bystanders. As for rumors, they treated them as gossip, turning a blind eye while feigning ignorance.

Besides, Yulong International paid too well. Every single one of them earned over a million a year. That was why, when trouble came, they stepped forward without hesitation.

𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

The people they usually dealt with were ordinary troublemakers. However, this time, they faced someone even more ruthless and cold-blooded than they were, a butcher who regarded their lives as worthless.

We are going to die!

A collective thought appeared in their minds.

"He's killing people! He's killing people!" they yelled as they watched coworkers who usually smoked and drank together die in seconds, blood spattering the floor and heads rolling.

The horror and brutality of the scene made some of the more timid ones scream out in panic.

It wasn't only Yulong International's enforcers reacting like that; even Lin Xiaowei, Zhang Qing, Xia Wuyuan, and Ye Yuhe felt their eyelids twitch violently at the sight.

"Insane! Completely insane!" Ye Yuhe couldn't help recalling Su Yaoyu's plea earlier, asking her to protect Su Yaoguang.

If Su Yaoguang really is the Shadow Devil, we're the ones needing protection.

She thought.

"That's enough!" Xia Wuyuan shouted and kicked a T-baton across the floor. Seeing that the Yulong International fighters had already lost all will to fight while Yaoguang continued cutting them down, Xia Wuyuan couldn't hold back any longer.

Yaoguang was forced to sweep his sword sideways, knocking the baton away.

"You want to stop me?" Yaoguang turned his gaze on Xia Wuyuan. "Yulong International is already eliminating everyone who knows the truth. Every second you delay me might mean another person dies. When all of them are dead, you will be the one who killed them indirectly. So tell me, do you want to be an accomplice?"

Xia Wuyuan's forward momentum halted slightly.

"Yaoguang, put down the sword!" Lin Xiaowei also snapped back to her senses and quickly said. "We will handle this. We won't wrong a good person, and we won't spare a bad one..."

"Can you actually handle it? You claim to uphold justice and protect the law, yet knowing full well that dozens of people might be getting killed right now, all you can do is stand here and watch. Worse, you dare stop me? Where do you get that courage? My kindness? Where is your shame?" Yaoguang lashed out mercilessly.

Lin Xiaowei, Zhang Qing, Xia Wuyuan, and the others flushed pale and then green, unable to respond, because he was right.

Their performance just now had indeed been terrible.

And besides, compared to Yulong International, the Su family was the true giant here, wasn't it? If something happened to Su Yaoguang right under their noses...

"A bunch of useless trash!" Yaoguang's harsh reprimand crashed over them, leaving the upright righteousness they had shown moments ago completely shattered.