Luo Xuechan looked at him as if deciding which piece of him would bleed prettiest.
Her charm pressure spilled outward in a slow wave.
It did not erupt. It breathed.
The air warmed. The scent of blood and crushed flowers drifted across the clearing. Red light touched the edges of the dead grass. For a moment, the ruined land seemed almost soft. Almost inviting.
"You smell like human trash," Luo Xuechan said.
Lu Shenzhi's head remained lowered.
"And you smell like blood that has learned manners."
The clearing went still.
Luo Xuechan's smile became dangerous enough to cut skin.
A lesser human would have apologized. A foolish one would have tried to flatter her. Lu Shenzhi did neither. He simply straightened and met her eyes with the calm of a man who had chosen each word before speaking and accepted the possible cost.
The warmth in the air deepened.
Several dried grass needles curled into smoke.
Xue Moren raised one hand.
"Let him speak."
Luo Xuechan did not look away from Lu Shenzhi.
"You are no fun."
"You were about to waste time."
"I was about to test his bones."
"They appear functional."
Lu Shenzhi smiled faintly.
Only faintly.
He understood the line he stood on.
The demonic race was arrogant. More arrogant than beasts in many ways, because beasts respected territory, bloodline, and raw dominance, while demons respected power sharpened by appetite. But arrogance was not stupidity. The Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion had not survived beside the strongest Noble Domain hegemonies by biting every hand that entered reach.
Lu Shenzhi's pressure was hidden well, but not perfectly.
Xue Moren had already sensed it.
This human elder was not prey. His cultivation was at a similar level, and his aura carried the cold depth of someone who did not fight for glory. Men like him did not stand in front of demons unless they had already measured three exits and five ways to poison the ground under their own feet.
Killing him here was possible.
Easy? No.
Useful? Perhaps not.
Lu Shenzhi turned his palm upward. "You already know the talisman trail is false. I can show you where the true battle began."
Xue Moren's eyes sharpened.
"Show me."
Lu Shenzhi lifted the wooden abacus from his belt.
Luo Xuechan's gaze flicked toward it.
"That is your weapon?"
"One of them."
"How plain."
"It has never complained."
He slid one bead across.
The sound was small.
Click.
The dead ground answered.
From his sleeve, Lu Shenzhi tossed out a thin black compass no wider than his palm. It landed upright on its edge, spinning slowly without falling. Lines of black light stretched from its rim, crawling over the ground like living thread.
The first thread touched a talisman burn.
The second passed through old demon blood.
The third sank into a broken stone.
The fourth curved beyond the red-black patch, reaching toward half-erased steps in the dirt.
Then more threads came.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Black lines crossed the clearing, linking fragments that had seemed unrelated a breath before. Scattered beast blood. Demon blood. Crushed grass. Stone powder. A streak of torn Sky Qi. A claw mark half-covered by talisman flame. A smear of fleeing aura buried beneath the scent of death.
The clearing changed.
Not physically. Not fully.
But to Sky Lord perception, a hidden pattern rose from the land.
Luo Xuechan's smile vanished completely.
The talisman marks were no longer the center of the scene.
They were the curtain.
Beneath that curtain was motion.
A violent one.
A battle had begun farther south, then shifted. Two powerful beings had crossed the field with speed and force. One had been a beast, its aura heavy, territorial, and savage. Another had been demonic, sharper and more corrupt, leaving traces like red knives dragged through wet flesh.
But there were other marks as well.
Human steps.
Light. Confident. Almost insulting in how little they sank into the earth.
A second set beside them, heavier with killing intent, but equally controlled.
Long before the talismans fell, this place had been a moving battlefield.
Not a simple ambush.
Not a trap arranged by distant Noble Domain cultivators.
A clash between multiple strong beings, fast enough that ordinary scouts would have seen only aftermath.
Luo Xuechan studied the revealed pattern.
"There was a beast here too."
"Yes," Lu Shenzhi said. "A 7th layer Sky Lord beast scout. The one I presume you were working with."
Xue Moren said nothing.
Luo Xuechan's gaze cooled.
Lu Shenzhi continued, "Both died the same day the beast tide failed."
For once, neither demon answered at once.
The compass spun.
The black threads pulsed.
A beast tide failing was not impossible. Tides broke for many reasons. Bad timing. Strong city defenses. Internal beast hierarchy disputes. Interference from rival powers.
But a 7th layer Sky Lord beast scout dead.
A 7th layer Sky Lord demon general dead.
A staged talisman field.
A vanished beast king.
A conquered city.
Those were no longer separate incidents.
They were beads on one string.
Xue Moren looked at Lu Shenzhi.
"Why come to us?"
"Because demons hate being deceived."
"Everyone hates being deceived."
"Yes," Lu Shenzhi said. "But demons tend to repay it with better methods."
Luo Xuechan laughed.
It was a soft sound, but the dead grass around her trembled.
"You speak well for a ledger rat."
"My sect trains us to survive conversations with creditors, widows, patriarchs, assassins, and women who smile before murder. Demons are only a more honest version of the same problem."
"Careful," she said.
"I am being careful."
Xue Moren stared at the compass threads for several more breaths.
Then he said, "You have more."
It was not a question.
Lu Shenzhi nodded.
"I do."
From within his sleeve, he withdrew a narrow recording stone sealed in black wax.
Lu Shenzhi broke the seal.
The air above the compass darkened.
A projection unfolded.
At first, it was blurred.
Then Moonwatch appeared.
Its walls. Its frightened streets. Its defensive formations flickering under the pressure of the beast tide.
The recording was not perfect. It had been taken from a distance through layered concealment, then copied through several Night Ledger channels. The image had grain, static, and missing fragments where aura pressure had overwhelmed the stone.
But what it showed was enough.
Long Shenyu stood above Moonwatch.
Calm.
Smiling.
His robes moved in the wind as if the world beneath him were already something he owned. Beside him stood Long Shenyin, spear in hand, beautiful and cold in a way that made violence seem like a natural extension of her breathing.
Below them, the beast tide broke.
Not slowly.
Not after a heroic struggle.
It broke as if a king had spoken and the wild had remembered fear.
Beasts that had charged toward the city with red eyes and frothing mouths suddenly staggered. Some collapsed. Some fled. Some lowered their heads to the dirt. The great pressure rolling through the tide did not belong to Moonwatch. It came from above.
From him.
The image shifted.
Tuo Shan appeared.
The 2nd layer Sky Lord beast was massive, horned, and powerful enough that Moonwatch's old ruling forces should have treated him like a catastrophe. Yet in the recording, that beast knelt.
He knelt before Long Shenyu.
Not because chains dragged him down.
Not because formations bound his limbs.
He knelt with terror in his bones.
Luo Xuechan watched with narrowed eyes.
Interest lit there, bright and dangerous.
"So that is him."
Lu Shenzhi said nothing.
The recording continued.
Long Shenyu spoke, but the sound was distorted. Only fragments emerged.
Moonwatch.
Submit.
Shen Family.
Guard.
The projection ended.
Silence followed.
Xue Moren raised one finger.
"Again."
Lu Shenzhi played it again.
The demon coroner watched without blinking.
He did not react when Tuo Shan knelt. He did not frown when the beast tide broke. He did not admire Long Shenyin's spear. He did not show fear when Long Shenyu's aura distorted the recording stone.
He watched the way a corpse-reader watched organs cooling.
The projection ended.
"Again."
Lu Shenzhi played it a third time.
This time, Xue Moren's eyes fixed on the moment Tuo Shan lowered his head. Then on the moment the tide's aura collapsed. Then on Long Shenyu's hand, barely visible through the distortion.
When the recording died away, Xue Moren stood very still.
Luo Xuechan glanced at him.
"Well?"
Xue Moren did not answer immediately.
He looked toward the red-black patch again. Toward the false talisman burns. Toward the hidden path revealed by the compass. Toward the direction of Moonwatch.
Then his eyes shifted farther.
River Ridge.
His suspicion had not become anger.
It had become certainty.
Lu Shenzhi said, "He is currently in River Ridge City."
Luo Xuechan's gaze slid back to him.
"What do you want?"
"Mutual correction of a dangerous irregularity."
She smiled again.
This time the smile carried no warmth at all.
"You mean you want us to bleed him for you."
Lu Shenzhi did not deny it.
"If Bloodmoon bleeds him, Night Ledger will not complain."
"And if he bleeds us?"
"Then Night Ledger will update its records."
Luo Xuechan laughed.
"You really are trash."
"Accurate trash is still useful."
Xue Moren looked toward River Ridge.
The clues presented to them were not complete. Lu Shenzhi had not brought a confession, a corpse, or a perfect record of the killing itself. No one had seen Long Shenyu pierce the demon's heart. No one had watched him stage the talismans. No single piece of evidence would force judgment alone.
But investigations were not built from single pieces.
They were built from pressure.
From what did not fit.
A beast tide failed too cleanly.
A Sky Lord beast scout vanished.
A Bloodmoon demon general died in the same region.
Noble Domain talismans marked the ground too conveniently.
Tuo Shan, a beast king by Lower Domain standards, now guarded Moonwatch like a hound tied outside a stranger's gate.
And at the center of the ripples stood one name.
Long Shenyu.
Xue Moren slowly spoke.
"We were already working with the Heaven-Horn Desolation that day."
Luo Xuechan's amusement faded into attention.
"The timeline matches," he continued. "The beast tide. The dead scout. Our dead general. The staged talismans. That vanished so-called beast king those mere beasts are caught up on. Too many threads meet at one name."
Lu Shenzhi listened quietly.
That was the benefit of speaking to experts. One did not need to push them after a certain point. Push too hard, and they would smell manipulation. Offer too little, and they would dismiss the trail. But give them enough to build their own conclusion, and they would defend that conclusion more fiercely than any argument offered to them.
Luo Xuechan touched the hilt of her crescent blade.
"Then we go."
Her voice was light.
Her eyes were not.
Xue Moren raised his hand again.
"No open attack at first."
She looked at him.
"Do not tell me you are afraid of an Origin Core boy."
"I am afraid of bad information."
"That sounds less poetic."
"It kills fewer fools."
Luo Xuechan's lips curved.
Xue Moren continued, "If he can enslave a Sky Lord beast king, he may possess bloodline suppression, a soul art, or an ancient beast-control inheritance. If he killed our demon, then he can bypass Rakshasa recovery. If he staged the talismans, then he thinks beyond the immediate corpse."
He glanced at Lu Shenzhi.
"And if Night Ledger wants us pointed at him, then we must assume there are things they have not said."
Lu Shenzhi did not object.
Luo Xuechan drew her crescent blade half an inch from its sheath.
A red line of light appeared.
The dead patch answered with a faint pulse, as if old blood recognized a predator.
"I will observe his face," she said, "when he realizes demons are harder to frighten than beasts."
Xue Moren looked at her.
"If you attempt charm pressure before we understand his soul defenses, you may learn something unpleasant."
"That almost sounded like concern."
"It was resource management."
"Cold man."
"Alive woman."
She laughed again, and this time there was genuine pleasure in it.
Lu Shenzhi bowed.
"Night Ledger can provide routes into River Ridge."
Luo Xuechan tilted her head. "Of course you can."
"We can also provide current movements. Heaven's Edict Thunder Palace has stirred. Verdant Edge is already involved. The Qin Family has suffered losses. The city is tightening, but not unified."
Xue Moren's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Heaven's Edict?"
"Because of Ning Huang."
That name changed the air.
Even in the Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion, certain human geniuses were not ignored. Heaven's Edict Thunder Palace was one of the great Noble Domain powers. A young war-heiress of that force lingering beside an unknown Origin Core monster in a Lower Domain city was not a small matter.
Luo Xuechan's smile turned slow.
"Oh? A Heaven's Edict girl too?"
Lu Shenzhi glanced at her.
"I would advise not touching that thread first."
"Why?"
"Because thunder palaces are loud when offended."
"And Bloodmoon is quiet?"
"No. Bloodmoon is beautiful when offended. The difference is that thunder tells the whole region where the storm began."
Luo Xuechan studied him for a moment.
Then she laughed softly.
"You should have been born a demon. Your tongue enjoys danger."
"My mother was disappointed enough with a human son."