In the dead of night,
the hazy moonlight floated like a thin veil across the sky.
Sitting crouched on the roof ridge, Duke gazed at the bright moon, while his golden eyes also reflected the stars and moon in the heavens.
Although the moon was not full, the endless moonlight, using Duke himself as a medium, surged into the black cauldron space and entered the interior of the black cauldron, where it was rolled up by the flames and condensed into an elixir.
One after another, moonlight pills jumped out of the black cauldron, while Duke's vitality was also continuously sapped.
While refining the moonlight pills, Duke was also constantly swallowing the twice-refined moonlight pills, outlining demonic diagrams in his mind and refining the moonlight.
With the essence of the sun and moon and plenty of blood food, Duke's demonic visualization cultivation progressed quickly.
Moreover, the demonic visualization cultivation was also greatly beneficial to his inner force cultivation, his inner force was constantly being purified, becoming increasingly refined, while mobilizing the heavens was also increasingly effortless.
Duke's five organs were also tempered under the circulation of inner force.
However, without the quintessence of the five elements, he was still unable to officially nurture the five organs.
He could only nourish and radiate the five organs through inner force, making them even more resilient.
As Duke was cultivating, his ears suddenly twitched, and between the fluctuations in the surrounding spiritual rhythms, he also blinked, withdrawing from his cultivation state.
After loosening up, Duke looked in the direction of the fluctuations in the spiritual rhythms. His pair of golden eyes shone brightly in the darkness, but his figure gradually became vague and then disappeared without a trace.
Just as Duke had turned invisible, in the dark of night, a few panicked cat cries also abruptly rang out, but disappeared without a trace the next second.
Duke followed the miserable cat cries and arrived by leaping lightly over the eaves and across a street over ten meters wide, landing on the wall of someone else's house.
After several more jumps along the wall to follow the cries, Duke arrived at the place where the cat cries originated from.
Here, there were several dead cats.
The cats' eyes were wide open, their lush fur was gnawed beyond recognition, half of their entrails were gone from their bellies, and one cat's intestines were dragged out along the ground for quite some distance.
"Tsk!"
Seeing this scene, Duke immediately clicked his tongue. What kind of damned creature did this?
Judging from the cats' fur, they were carefully raised pets from the surrounding households.
Wandering out at night was just to play, they would return home at daybreak.
If these cats didn't return home by morning, and their owners came looking and saw such a miserable sight, it would surely cut them to their hearts.
Thinking of this, Duke gritted his teeth.
As he caught a faint whiff of a fishy, rancid smell in the air, he left this tragic scene.
The beast that killed the cats had run off. He had to kill it before it could strike again.
The death of one or two cats would cause grief for one or two families.
But if people died, that would be no trivial matter.
Duke followed the fishy, rancid smell all the way until he had circled around and returned to Old Li's small courtyard.
Landing on the roof ridge, Duke sniffed the air with his nose and blinked.
Had the beast come for them?
Otherwise, why would it come directly to his and Old Li's house?
Had Old Li offended someone?
Duke narrowed his eyes, but immediately rejected this idea in his mind. This old guy spent his days at home grinding knives. Even when the auntie from next door tried to spark a summer-autumn romance with him, he was like a block of wood.
How could he have made any enemies?
And Duke had only just apprehended a human trafficker named Yang earlier today for using evil arts, but Yang had already been thrown into prison.
Could he have escaped and returned to take revenge?
Thinking this, Duke jumped down from the roof and as soon as he touched the ground, he perceived an aberrant aura that was now present in his yard.
This aura gave him a completely different feeling than the lively spiritual rhythms he normally sensed. Instead, it was rigid and dull, while also giving off an indescribable sense of filth and bloodiness.
It was as if the entity behind this aura did not belong in the human realm at all.
Having thought this, Duke strode swiftly toward the front hall following the aura.
As soon as he entered the front hall, Duke saw that Shi San's whole body was tense, his fur standing on end while his ears were pinned back and he was baring his teeth fiercely.
Seeing Shi San reveal this sort of form, Duke raised an eyebrow. He had never seen Shi San look so ferocious before.
It appeared Shi San had also noticed the extra thing that was now present in the front hall.
Concealing himself, Duke walked through the front hall while also carefully observing his surroundings, glancing left and right. During this, Duke inadvertently caught sight of a blood-red figure coiled atop a roof beam.
"On the roof beam?"
Duke immediately looked up at the roof beam.
On it was crouched a creature that was six parts sheep, four parts human, completely hairless, with eyes full of chaotic fierceness and greed.
"What is this thing?"
Duke's eyes widened. He had never seen anything like this creature, neither in the Record of Rare Beasts nor any other documents.
This creature was less than a Chi in height, completely hairless, instead having skin the color of a jaundiced infant covered in filthy, sticky fluids.
Its human-like body had a sheep's limbs, a bald sheep's head without horns, but in their place were one long and one short protruding bones. Its slightly parted mouth revealed two incisors like those of a rat.
Right now this creature was coiled on the roof beam, staring fixedly at Shi San with intense, greedy malice its gaze.
Seeing this, Duke immediately jumped onto the roof beam. This creature had not noticed his existence at all and was still staring fixedly at Shi San.
For its part, Shi San vaguely sensed the creature's presence and was on high alert.
Getting close to the creature, Duke covered his nose in disgust.
Not only did the creature give off a fishy, rancid smell, there was also a very strong scent of oleander.
"What is this disgusting thing?"
While holding his nose, Duke swung his paw to deliver a palm strike to the top of the creature's head.
Infused with inner force, with one strike Duke smashed half of the creature's head into its chest cavity.
As the last of the creature's vitality drained away following the strike, it faded away along the inkling of a connection leading into the void.
The goat-headed creature toppled off the roof beam from Duke's blow and crashed onto the floor of the front hall.
The thud as it landed badly frightened Shi San, who then fiercely pounced towards the corpse of the goat-headed creature.
Seeing this, Duke immediately jumped down from the roof beam to block Shi San.
"That's enough, that's enough," said Duke as he reappeared. "It's already dead. The corpse is so filthy and smelly, stay away from it!"
After the dog growled at the goat-headed creature several times, it finally settled down, instead cuddling up to Duke and burying its face in his fur.
"Just what was that thing?"
Duke raised his paw and dangled the goat-headed creature. The back door curtain of the front hall was lifted, and Old Li, wearing a coat and holding up a lantern, walked in.
"I heard some loud noises from the front hall just now and came to see what happened."
After Old Li entered the front hall, Duke pointed to the goat-headed creature on the ground.
"Well, that thing was making trouble earlier, but I slapped it dead with one palm strike," said Duke.
"Oh, so it was an evil fetus!" said Old Li.
"Evil fetus?" asked Duke, a glint flashing in his eyes. "The Six Realms of Reincarnation?"
"The sorcerer who created this thing must be nearby still. Let me take a strand of aura from this sheep evil fetus for you to track them down, go quickly and deal with that sorcerer," said Old Li.
"That sorcerer must have severely damaged his own lifespan or crippled himself in order to use those evil arts. Now that this sheep evil fetus has been slaughtered by you, I reckon things aren't looking good for that sorcerer either."
"That sorcerer needs to deal with this as quickly as possible, lest the residual devilish energy from the arts he used attracts some evil spirits over."
Old Li completely ignored Du Ke's questions, acting as if he hadn't said anything at all.
Seeing Old Li's reaction, Du Ke clicked his tongue. It was clear the old man didn't intend to say anything more to him.
But never mind, Old Li just loved being cryptic, and this wasn't the first or second time.
Old Li made a grabbing motion at the air over the sheep evil fetus. With just that one move, he managed to extract a wisp of faint spiritual essence.
Old Li then smacked this wisp of spiritual essence onto Du Ke's head.
Du Ke shook his head, then sensed something extra in his perception.
"Go and return quickly. Deal with that sorcerer's corpse then come back to rest."
"His Majesty relayed that he traced the aura of whatever stole those children to outside Ma City. The city's defenses are now up to you and Men Kuhu."
"Got it."
Du Ke shook his head again and looked at the dog.
"Let's go, dog!"
At this time, Shi San still had his face buried in Du Ke's fur. Du Ke poked the dog with his paw, causing the dog to flop over on the spot, clearly having fallen asleep.
Du Ke clicked his tongue, slapped the dog awake, then said: "No more sleeping, come out with me."
"Awoo!"
The dog let out an excited howl. Old Li also picked up the sheep evil fetus.
"I'll dispose of this sheep evil fetus. It may not be a true evil fetus from the Animal Realm, but it still harbors pestilent energy from those wicked arts. If not handled properly, it could trigger an epidemic."
"Understood."
Du Ke nodded, then immediately led the dog out of the house, tracking the aura Old Li had imparted to him.
Right after Du Ke left, Old Li carried the sheep evil fetus out to the yard.
Old Li drew a ladle of water from the water bucket by the well and poured it over the sheep evil fetus.
The clear water landing on the sheep evil fetus was like aqua regia dissolving gold - in an instant, the sheep evil fetus's corpse completely melted away.
All that remained were a few strands of black miasma that Old Li grabbed out of the air. He blew on them and they vanished without a trace.
"Ah, now even two-bit sorcerers are making evil fetuses. Truly, trouble comes in battalions!"
After washing his hands, Old Li sighed and lamented while walking back to his room.
...
"It's right ahead!"
Riding on the dog's back, Du Ke looked at the dilapidated residence up ahead and said directly: "Slow down now, don't run so quickly."
Hearing this, the dog timely slowed its pace as they approached the dilapidated residence.
Just as they reached the crumbling wall around the dilapidated residence, Du Ke heard excited roaring from inside. Du Ke blinked, then poked his head through a gap in the wall, wanting to see what was happening inside.
Shi San copied Du Ke's actions.
Du Ke took one look and his pupils instantly constricted - inside the dilapidated residence was an extremely miserable-looking ewe, lying dead on the spot. Its chest and abdomen had been ruptured from inside by some unknown creature, not only causing its intestines to spill out but also splattering a large area with blood mixed with organ fragments.
This was surely the "mother" of that sheep evil fetus.
Next to the ewe's corpse was another corpse - wrinkled-faced with silver-white hair. However, this corpse was now stripped naked, nothing but skin and bones.
And on top of the corpse was a yellow monster with a baby carrier on its back, vigorously ploughing away.
"Gross, what the hell is this thing?"
Du Ke suddenly felt this scene was too much for his eyes. He lowered his head and noticed the dog was also watching excitedly, so he quickly used his tail to cover the dog's eyes.
"Old Li said this would attract evil spirits. So this is what he meant?"
"Gah, too hard on the eyes. What a freak, still going at it after dying."
As Du Ke clicked his tongue, he noticed something off.
Wait...something's not right here.
That yellow monster has a baby carrier on its back?
Du Ke's eyes widened. He looked through the gap in the wall again - indeed, there was a baby carrier on the back of that yellow monster.
That means...
This freak is the baby-snatching bandit who kicked up a storm across the city?!