Chapter 1019: Chapter 369: Keep It as a Talisman, the First Wave of Sacrificial Offerings (5k)_3

Only today did something happen: a scammer who conned a whole bunch of people out of their money—each victim losing at least a hundred thousand, with quite a few losing several hundred thousand—the case had only been filed for a day, and it wasn’t even in the hands of the Scorching Sun Department.

Today it got handed straight over to the Scorching Sun Department, because the scammer’s entire family was wiped out in their villa, and the suspect was a Ghost who’d been cheated out of thirteen thousand.

After the Ghost finished taking revenge, most of its obsession dispersed, its reason came back, and it called the police itself and waited on the spot.

When the field agents from the Scorching Sun Department arrived, the newly risen Sun shone on the Ghost, and it vanished like smoke.

Stuff like this has happened a lot this year, to the point that the Scorching Sun Department has had to negotiate with other departments again and again, pushing them to strengthen financial regulation.

People really don’t want their lives anymore—if you’re going to scam, scam rich folks, they can afford the loss; scamming the poor, and in a Ghost’s storyline at that, you’re really not afraid of dying.

Every time he saw a case like this, the General Director would sit in his office fuming; if it were a few decades ago, back when he wasn’t in this position, he might well have been the one to go deal with it personally.

Too bad that now, in this position, he has to do the job it demands—he’s the one person in the whole department who absolutely cannot act on emotion.

Pinning those files down, the General Director looked at the freshly delivered documents.

Some of the Scorching Sun Department’s field agents had already gone to Nanyang, and working together with some locals, they’d obtained quite a bit of intel.

He stared at the great hall in the photo, pondered for a moment, then closed the file.

They came running to the Divine Land to stir up trouble and harmed so many people—how could that be just brushed aside.

He wasn’t in a hurry to act; aside from the fact that this was the Divine Land, with many factors to weigh, there was another crucial reason.

If they didn’t first figure out who was involved and how many parties there were, how could they launch a thunderous strike and take down all the Wicked Leaders in one go.

The General Director glanced at the desk calendar in the corner of his desk, flipped a page, and saw a date that had been marked.

The time for the Luo Tian Grand Ceremony was almost here.

What the Scorching Sun Department had prepared for the Luo Tian Grand Ceremony happened, right now, to be perfectly suitable.

For the first round of sacrificial offerings, they’d send those Ghost Wealth Gods all off to heaven together.

He believed the various deities of the Three Mountains and Five Ridges would definitely agree that for this Luo Tian Grand Ceremony, if no blood was shed and no thunderous methods were used, it simply wouldn’t cut it.

Setting the calendar down, the General Director sank into thought again.

He looked at the intel Wen Yan had sent and sighed inwardly.

Wen Yan had gone to take another risk and look for the Water Monarch.

That entry point into the water was under 24-hour surveillance—how could Wen Yan have gone down without him knowing.

These days, the Scorching Sun Department had been keeping things quiet, and there were even some others who, apparently knowing Wen Yan had gone to deliver wine, secretly went to toss in some bottles themselves, but unfortunately it was all useless.

Plenty of people knew the Water Monarch was right there in the Huai River, yet no one dared go near, more afraid of dying—and even more afraid of failing to get any benefit and offending the Water Monarch on top of that.

The Water Monarch’s temperament was eccentric; that much was recorded in the texts, and now, from various clues, it was clear that "eccentric" didn’t even cover it—he was practically some kind of dog, turning on you at the drop of a hat.

Wen Yan went to deliver wine and managed to obtain a key piece of intel from the Water Monarch.

But the cameras also caught Wen Yan coming out of the water seemingly injured, coughing up blood on the spot, with the water turning red clearly visible on the footage.

If it had been anywhere else, the General Director would definitely have sent people over immediately to take care of that blood, to keep it from being used by some evil object.

But the Huai River—no one on their side dared touch it; they could only let the blood Wen Yan spat naturally disperse in the water.

No one knew how Wen Yan had negotiated with the Water Monarch down there, that he’d come back with his life; that probably counted as the Water Monkey showing mercy and holding Wen Yan in special regard.

Wen Yan hadn’t mentioned being injured, only reported the critical situation and that other Sealing that had already been undone.

For the next week, Wen Yan didn’t go anywhere and stayed home every day; he was probably recuperating at home.

Now Wen Yan had sent over more information, basically asking the Scorching Sun Department not to push that Witch Priest too hard.

The General Director lifted his head and eventually sighed inwardly. Fine—since Wen Yan had stepped in, they’d follow Wen Yan’s wishes.

Although, according to their initial thinking, if just one Huo Yong could cause this much trouble, and there was another Sealing that had been undone who knew how long ago, then the trouble could be even greater.

In that case, the Witch Priest was a key figure in the chain of clues, and of course the Scorching Sun Department had to keep a very close eye on him.

If necessary, they would directly invite the Witch Priest over for a detailed talk.

The General Director couldn’t help recalling how the Wudang Sect Leader had commented that Wen Yanxin wasn’t ruthless enough, which left them with very mixed feelings.

On the one hand, they liked it a lot and were very glad Wen Yan didn’t do things too ruthlessly; on the other hand, they wished Wen Yan could at least pick up thirty percent of Cai Heizi’s power.

If Cai Heizi were the one overseeing this whole mess...

The General Director thought it over and felt the situation would probably look completely different from now.

First of all, out of that hundred-plus Ghost Wealth Gods, if even ten were still alive, that would count as Cai Heizi having a sudden pang of conscience.

As for Nanyang, given Cai Heizi’s style, he’d probably have gone straight for that wandering merchant stirring up storms all over Europa.

That wandering merchant had gone crazy lately too—rumor had it he was ambushed by the Church not long ago, and had since been fanning the flames and taking revenge like a madman.

From Europa all the way to America, he’d managed to ignite the powder keg between the Church and the Different Races like Vampires and Werewolves.

Armed with a Devil’s Body, the guy was playing the role of a super-grade shit-stirrer to perfection—impressive in its own way.

Because of this, the Scorching Sun Department had also been locked in a constant war of words with the Europa side lately, trading barbs for over a month.

The other side claimed the Scorching Sun Department had bad intentions, that they’d deliberately thrown a Devil’s Body out there to let the wandering merchant wreak havoc.

But the wording from the Scorching Sun Department’s side was even more aggressive: thanks to your damn mess, one of our Ministers at the Martial Path Fifth Stage died.

So it was basically them slapping on a black pot and us issuing condemnations, mutual daily trash talk to give the people handling bilateral exchanges something to do.

The General Director checked the latest intel again—apparently that wandering merchant had gone off to Lao Mo and even run into some trouble there.

After thinking it over, the General Director passed this information on to Feng Yao, to have Feng Yao forward it to Wen Yan.

The Scorching Sun Department absolutely couldn’t make a direct move; after all, nominally, that wandering merchant was still registered under the Scorching Sun Department. If the Scorching Sun Department managed to catch him, they’d definitely have to bring him back for some "tea."

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Wen Yan entered the Zombie Cave that even a Fuyu Sect Disciple wouldn’t enter, and finally saw Cai Heizi again.

Cai Heizi was lying inside one of the Stone Coffins, his face bluish-white as if he’d already turned into a Zombie, his body ice-cold. But the moment Wen Yan saw Cai Heizi, he felt this guy still had some nasty trick bottled up that he hadn’t had a chance to use.

It was like he had some bad fart held in; until he let it out, he was never going to truly go cold—worked even better than Grandma’s buff.

Wen Yan squatted by the coffin and stared at Cai Heizi for a long while.

"Hey, stop playing dead and get up. If you don’t, I’m taking your phone. Your last secret login got exposed."