I sat cross-legged on a plastic stool, fingers still pinching a medium-grade spirit-gathering stone. Spiritual energy drifted across the dark green surface, casting a faint glow across my palm. Since breaking through to the Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement, my cultivation efficiency had improved considerably — but tonight I wasn't in any rush to circulate my energy. Instead I stared at the sickly yellow streetlamps in the courtyard, my mind a pot of congee left too long on the stove, thoughts bubbling up in every direction.

From that cup of instant coffee I'd splashed across Gale Zhang's leather shoes on the day I lost my job, to the bronze ring's inexplicable binding, to the current life-or-death standoff with Baizhen Pavilion — the whole thing still felt like some grotesque fever dream. Yet it was undeniably real: the humiliation of nearly getting flattened by a falling billboard, three days of diarrhoea courtesy of the Body Tempering Pill, and that sharp, nauseating reek of Fishy Scale Powder drifting through the underground hideout at the water plant…

"Old man." I lowered my voice toward the bronze ring on my ring finger. "Can we have a proper talk?"

The ring grew faintly warm. The old system elder's holographic projection flickered to life, same as always — draped in his Foundation Establishment is Fun pyjamas, cradling a bowl of virtual Kang Shuai Fu pickled-pepper beef instant noodles. "Oh? Rookie's skipping knife practice tonight? Moving on to life philosophy, are we?"

"Cut the act." I shot him a flat look. "I'm doing a debrief. From the moment Baizhen Pavilion's procurement manager first showed up asking to partner with me, all the way to now — posting a bounty and sending a Sixth-Layer evil cultivator to kill me. What are they actually after? Can't just be my grilled fish."

The old man slurped a strand of noodles. "Only just figured out something's off? Where were you before?"

"I was getting pummelled by life, wasn't I!" I rubbed my throbbing temple. "Middle-aged, unemployed, mortgage, kid's after-school care fees — who had the headspace to untangle all this? But things are different now." I paused. "Uncle Zhang and those other retired Demon Demon Suppression Bureau folks have been helping from the shadows, yet Baizhen Pavilion just keeps getting bolder. There has to be a bigger force backing them."

I thought of the reactor vessels I'd seen in the underground hideout at the water plant. The cultivators in white coats extracting Fishy Scale Powder. The system notification flagging a mid-grade spirit stone bounty on "Venomscale Hand" Guan Er. No ordinary rogue-cultivator outfit could operate at that scale.

"On the surface, Baizhen Pavilion is a restaurant," I murmured. "In reality, they collect spirit objects, refine cursed materials, and have even built spirit-gathering arrays in the mortal world to absorb vital energy. When they first came to me about an exclusive supply deal, what they truly wanted was the meteoric iron chopping board — and the 'spirit-infused grilled fish' I'd been making with Qi-Gathering Pills. The chopping board is a fragment of a Dao Ancestor's divine treasure, and the Qi-Gathering Pills likely have some special property for their cursed-item refining…"

The old man set his instant noodles aside. For once, he didn't interrupt. Something more calculating had entered his gaze. "Keep going."

"At first they probably assumed I was just some ordinary person who'd stumbled onto a treasure by accident — someone they could buy off or threaten into compliance." The picture was sharpening the more I thought about it. "But I refused to cooperate. I wrecked their spirit-gathering array. I even raided their production line at the water plant. My rate of progress has caught them completely off guard — Third Layer to Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement in such a short span. They've started to see me as a genuine threat."

What struck me even more was how little Baizhen Pavilion actually seemed to know about my situation. Or rather — they'd underestimated the existence of the system and those old monsters from the Demon Demon Suppression Bureau. Every person they'd sent after me had looked like a hastily-recruited freelance cultivator: ruthless in method, sloppy in planning.

"There's one more thing." I dropped my voice lower. "Uncle Zhang is a retired Demon Demon Suppression Bureau operative. By rights, taking down an evil-cultivator outfit like Baizhen Pavilion should fall squarely within their mandate. Yet they've stayed hidden in the shadows the entire time. Even when I had a bounty on my head, they only stepped in enough to drive attackers away — never a direct, open confrontation. What does that tell you?"

The old elder finally spoke, a note of gravity in his voice. "It tells you that whatever is standing behind Baizhen Pavilion gives even the Demon Demon Suppression Bureau pause."

"Doesn't Huaguo have an official body that governs cultivators?" I looked up sharply. "Something like the Demon Demon Suppression Bureau that Uncle Zhang used to serve under — isn't there still an institution handling rogue cultivators like this?"

Once the thought surfaced, it spread through my mind like ivy, wild and unstoppable. A modern society couldn't truly leave cultivators completely ungoverned — especially organisations like Baizhen Pavilion that actively preyed on ordinary people.

The little old man was quiet for a moment, so distracted that the virtual noodles in his projection sat completely forgotten. "There is. But it isn't called the Demon Demon Suppression Bureau anymore. It's called the Xuanmen Management Authority."

End of Chapter 24: Stocktaking