---

The sea wind off Listening-Waves Lodge carried the damp bite of salt, scattering what remained of the acrid smoke from the great battle. The Core Formation clash between Victor Jin and Everett Li had been nothing short of a heavenly tribulation — grinding the shoreline reefs to powder — yet it had also bought me a fleeting moment to catch my breath.

I crouched beside the ruins of the jade pool, fingertips grazing the blue crystallised spiritual energy that had hardened on the pool walls. The spirit-eye water that had once nourished my breakthrough had evaporated in the battle's aftershock, leaving nothing but a scene of utter devastation.

"Stop spacing out," came Elder Kai's voice from behind me. He was leaning on his dragon-head cane, gathering up the scattered seaweed charts that had blown apart. "Surviving a Core Formation duel is something to be quietly grateful for. What's the point of staring at those qi crystals?"

I stood, brushed the sand from my trouser legs, and let my gaze settle on the worn dragon-scale carvings at the tip of his cane. "Elder Kai — just now, Victor Jin mentioned the Demon Demon Suppression Bureau. What kind of history do you have with him?"

Elder Kai's movements stilled. His clouded eyes drifted toward the horizon, where the setting sun bronzed his profile the colour of aged copper, his wrinkles seeming to hold decades of sea wind within their creases. He was quiet for a moment, then walked to what remained of the demolished wooden cabin and sat down amid the wreckage, fishing a flat wine gourd from his breast pocket — only to find it bone dry.

"The Demon Demon Suppression Bureau…" He smacked his lips as if tasting the ghost of wine. "That's old history, thirty years gone. Back then, the Xuanmen Administration hadn't grown all these twisting layers of bureaucracy yet. Our Bureau — we were the real thing. We caught deviant cultivators, suppressed demonic threats, protected the common folk. Proper work."

I dragged over half a stone bench that hadn't been blasted apart and sat down, ears pricked. The voice of the System Elder surfaced in my mind, carrying an unusual gravity: "Pay close attention, rookie. This is insider history of the cultivation world in Huaguo."

"Our director's surname was Zhang," Elder Kai's voice dropped low. "Zhang Yuanshan. And your Uncle Zhang — he was that very same Director Zhang of the Demon Demon Suppression Bureau. In those days he was barely past fifty, stubborn as a mule, the sort of man who couldn't tolerate a single grain of sand in his eye."

My head snapped up. "Uncle Zhang? He used to be the director?"

"What did you think?" Elder Kai let out a short, contemptuous laugh. "Thirty years ago, Baizhen Pavilion was nothing but a back-alley workshop skulking along the coast, quietly brewing deviant pills. Victor Jin at the time was just a small-time Foundation Establishment lackey — he'd go out of his way to avoid our director if he ever spotted him."

"And then?" I pressed, a strange tightness settling in my chest.

"And then…" The light went out of Elder Kai's eyes. "Baizhen Pavilion stumbled into some gods-awful luck and got itself connected to the Xuanmen Administration. The Deputy Hall Master of White Tiger Hall in those days also had the surname Jin — a distant relative of Victor Jin's — and once he'd been handed his benefits, he started throwing his weight behind Baizhen Pavilion."

He paused, as though steeling himself against the worst of the memory. "One year, Baizhen Pavilion set up a wicked ritual array in the Eastern Sea — a 'spirit-child sacrifice' — and killed seven children. Director Zhang led us in an overnight raid. The chain of evidence pointed straight at Deputy Hall Master Zhao of White Tiger Hall."

"So what happened? Didn't the Xuanmen Administration act?"

"Act?" Elder Kai barked a cold laugh, snatched up a nearby shell, and hurled it out to sea. "White Tiger Hall joined hands with Vermilion Bird Hall and Black Tortoise Hall and turned the whole thing back on us — accused Director Zhang of abusing his authority and cultivating deviant arts. The Administration's director was in seclusion at the time, the deputy director was in White Tiger Hall's pocket, and they buried the case outright."

"Director Zhang refused to accept it. He took us — a handful of old brothers — to appeal up the chain." Elder Kai's voice roughened. "The next day he was framed for embezzling spirit-ore resources. The 'evidence' was ironclad. The Administration seized on it as a pretext, declared the Bureau inefficient and wracked by internal strife, slashed our establishment, and folded our duties into the so-called 'Public Order Division' under White Tiger Hall."

My hands balled into fists, knuckles cracking. "They dismantled the entire Demon Demon Suppression Bureau just because we'd gone after Baizhen Pavilion?"

"Why else do you think Old Zhang can only sit in a residential compound playing chess these days?" Elder Kai dragged a hand across his face, as if wiping something away. "Some of us old brothers were absorbed into other halls. Some lost heart and withdrew from the world entirely. Director Zhang took a handful of former colleagues, found himself a residential compound, and went to ground. Thirty years, just like that."

I looked at Elder Kai's weathered face, and something clicked into place — why Uncle Zhang always wore that expression of a man who had seen through everything. Those old men and women playing chess in the compound weren't ordinary retirees at all. They were heroes who had been pushed to the margins.

"Elder Kai — so you and Victor Jin…"

"Me and that little wretch?" Elder Kai's eyes sharpened to a glint. "Thirty years ago I was in the late Foundation Establishment stage. He sent men to ambush me and stop me collecting evidence — instead I cornered him in an alleyway. He'd only just reached late Foundation Establishment himself back then, nowhere near as vicious as he is now. I put three cracked ribs in him with one swing of this cane. He ran off while I was dealing with the others."

The System Elder's voice carried a note of approval: "Didn't expect the old codger to have been quite the force to reckon with in his younger days."

End of Chapter 36: The Sea Wind at Listening-Waves Lodge