Chapter 5: An Enemy One Dare Not Provoke

When his beloved son lay comatose after the attack, He Chunhua had also sent a message by bird to the leopard monsters of the Western Mountains, but he had received no reply.

He sighed. “Also, all emergency dispatches from further inside the state have been cut off for ten days now. Pingning Region has been seized by rebels, and then floods struck. Relay posts along the route were destroyed, and all communication ceased. Heishui City has spent the last few days reorganizing its military forces.”

He Lingchuan was slightly taken aback. “We’re going to war too?”

He had noticed recent stirrings in the garrison but had not thought much of it. While Qiansong Commandery had not seen a major battle in years, minor skirmishes near Heishui City were commonplace, though this usually came in the form of state troops hunting bandits. The fights were so routine that both soldiers and civilians had grown accustomed to them.

“It’s hard to say.” He Chunhua’s expression was grim.

“Forget it.” Seeing the weariness on his old man’s face, He Lingchuan could not bring himself to resent him. The commandery was a burdened land—grain yields, commerce, border tensions, military defense, and natural disasters—none could be neglected. On top of that, there was always the looming threat of rebels pouring in from the heartlands. He Chunhua rose earlier than roosters and slept later than dogs. He truly governed like a tireless civil servant.

And yet, despite exhausting himself for Qiansong Commandery, the most troubling news still came from the heart of Yuan.

This state was being devoured from within.

“So, what did you call me here to see?”

“This.” He Chunhua pried open the dead leopard’s maw.

The sight of those razor-sharp fangs was enough to chill the blood, but He Lingchuan noticed something strange at once. “Its canines are gone?”

All four of the leopard’s canine teeth had been violently extracted, leaving bloody sockets behind.

“The one that attacked you also used its canines to hide something. And this leopard’s internal injuries are very similar to those of the one you fought.” He paused, then continued, “Where did you put the objects hidden in its fang? Bring it out for me to look at.”

Back when He Lingchuan was found unconscious and covered in blood at the bottom of the cliff, the leopard was already long dead. The He Family had retrieved both of them, rushing He Lingchuan into emergency care and sending the corpse off for dissection. Though He Lingchuan had gone hunting for a cliff ram and come back with a leopard monster, the kill was still credited to him. After examining the objects hidden in the leopard’s fang, He Chunhua handed it over to his eldest son as a keepsake.

Monsters needed storage solutions, too. However, since they did not typically wear clothes, where could they keep their belongings? Most monsters refined a body part into a storage space. This did still require special talent, though. Crocodile monsters, for example, preferred to use their stomachs as treasure pouches, while tigers, leopards, wolves, and jackals typically refined their canines to stash items.

Those familiar with this trait would always extract the canines of a slain monster as spoils of war.

But opening a storage space required spiritual energy. At the time, the newly transmigrated He Lingchuan had not known any of this and assumed the tooth was simply hollow.

“Oh, it’s in my room. I’ll go fetch it in a moment,” He Lingchuan replied before finally getting down to business, “Actually, before that, Father, there’s something important I need to report.”

He then relayed, in full detail, how the guards from Donglai Mansion had come in search of the sand leopard’s whereabouts.

The more He Chunhua listened, the deeper his frown grew. When he heard the words “Donglai Mansion,” he suddenly shot to his feet. “What did you say?”

His expression changed drastically, and he raised a hand, ready to slap.

He Lingchuan instinctively took half a step back.

But He Chunhua’s hand froze midair, and the blow never landed.

After a few seconds, the raised hand clenched into a fist and slammed down on the table with a heavy thump.

“Using torture without authorization, have you lost your mind?!”

𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

He had always known this son of his was headstrong and willful, never one to heed warnings. He expected the boy would run into a brick wall eventually, but never thought it would happen so soon and with such grave potential consequences.

The Minister of War!

Of all people to offend, how did it end up being him?

In the officialdom of Yuan, He Chunhua’s reputation was often summarized with the word “steady.” However, He Lingchuan, well-acquainted with his father’s occasional outbursts, was not particularly intimidated. Instead, he spoke up in his own defense, “They were asking questions all over town. The streets are full of gossipy fools. I was afraid they’d trace everything back to us sooner or later.”

At that moment, he found himself somewhat admiring He Chunhua’s caution. After the incident with the leopard monster, Commandery Administrator He had deliberately kept things quiet, ordering everyone involved to hold their tongues. If not for that, the story of the young master of Heishui City single-handedly slaying a leopard monster would have been the talk of the town. Those two men would have barely needed to ask around to learn of what had happened; they may not even have needed to ask at all.

Then again, there was no wall so tight that the wind could not slip through.

“The Zhang Hongbin case, spearheaded by the Minister of War six years ago, implicated one duke, two marquises, and seven barons, over 2,600 people in total. How many do you think survived in the end?”

Seeing his father’s face turn as dark as thunderclouds, He Lingchuan cautiously ventured, “Not... many?”

“Seventy-three!” He Chunhua enunciated clearly. “How many women and children were among the dead? Hah, in the end, only seventy-three were left alive!”

A chill crept through He Lingchuan’s spine.

Forget commoners. Even high nobility were discarded like weeds. When they needed cutting down, down they went.

“By comparison, our family’s misfortune is far from the worst...” He Chunhua muttered before returning to the matter at hand. “When the Red and White Society sent word, why didn’t you come straight to me?”

“I wanted to extract what information I could first,” He Lingchuan said, his eyes narrowing with a hint of menace. “If they turned out to be nobodies, I could get my revenge right away. If their backer was too powerful, then all the more reason to make sure they don’t find out that the escaped sand leopard is in our possession.”

He Chunhua had been boiling with anger, but as he mulled over his son’s reasoning, his expression slowly eased. In the end, there was even a trace of approval. “Hm, not unreasonable.”

Whether those two were captured or not was not the crux of the issue. The real problem was that whatever the Minister of War was after might very well be in their possession.

He gave He Lingchuan a thoughtful look. “So you’re finally using that head of yours.”

Faced with his father’s rare look of satisfaction, He Lingchuan simply grinned and sidestepped the moment. “I’ll go get the fang.”

A quarter of an hour later, He Lingchuan returned with the leopard fang and spilled its contents onto a small side table.

“That’s everything.”

The relics retrieved from the sand leopard that had attacked him included several monster cores of various sizes and colors, a dagger sharp enough to split a hair, several pieces of suet white jade, a pearl necklace, some unidentifiable miscellaneous items, and even over a dozen gold and silver ingots.

Monsters were not just violent beasts; they also conducted trade with humans. Gold and silver, being universal currency, came as no surprise to the He father and son.

“I doubt that the Minister of War is after this necklace,” He Lingchuan said, lifting the string of pearls to the light.

The pearls gleamed softly, each one slightly larger than a melon seed. Under the sunlight, they shimmered gently with a bluish sheen. After just a few moments of exposure, a cool mist began to form around them. Anyone standing nearby felt refreshed, their breathing easier, as though they were on a breezy seashore.

“It has some moisture-gathering properties, but it’s nothing too remarkable.” All living things need water. In the dry desert, a pearl like this would be a comfort to a sand leopard, but it was unlikely that the Minister of War would care for such a thing.

He Chunhua’s eyes shifted to the pile of miscellaneous items. Last time, he had merely pushed them aside. Now, he leaned in for a closer inspection.

However, the items were a strange mix: shriveled herbs and flowers, half a blackened piece of musk, a gnawed bone, bloodstained rings likely taken from human victims, a broken hairpin, a few pouches of spice, over a dozen feathers, half a comb, and...

An entire pile of dried insects, dried snakes, and dried lizards.