“Yongzi! My child!!” Watching his daughter suffer that fate with his own eyes, the Zhou family head cried out in anguish, his eyes bloodshot with rage. Beside him, his wife clutched her chest and fainted.

Gone. It was really gone. Not even ashes remained.

As long as a person was alive, there were always possibilities. There was always a way, always a chance to wait for the right moment and turn things around. But now? There wasn’t even ash left!!!

His atavist power slipped out of control for a moment. Blood surged into his throat, and he coughed up a mouthful.

At the Wu family estate,

everyone hid behind doors, walls, and windows, peeking into the arena. When they saw the three demons burned away so completely that not even ashes remained, they all swallowed hard.

Why? Why had Lou Ting shown up? Wasn’t he supposed to be in the cage in the sky above the Yuewan Mountain Range? It was terrifying. They didn’t even dare imagine what would’ve happened if they’d run a second slower.

At that moment, only Jing Pei, Lou Ting, and Chu Xusheng, collapsed on the ground, were left in the arena.

The judgment ended. The golden Scales of Judgment vanished, and the gold-bright Lou Ting turned back into the silver-bright Lou Ting.

“Who’s this bug?” Lou Ting asked, frowning at Chu Xusheng.

“Rude. That’s a person.” Jing Pei shot a sidelong look at the angel, who had bent down behind her so that his cheek was right beside hers and had started sniffing at her again. “The judgment’s over. Shouldn’t you be going back now?”

Lou Ting knit his brows. “I’m not a dog you can call over and send away.”

“Then what do you want?”

The angel spread one wing and began rummaging through the dense snow-white feathers. A moment later, Lou Ting finally dug out a tiny golden feather from among them with great difficulty.

Then he fell silent.

Judgment Feathers were precious. One could only be used once. The one he’d given Jing Pei had already been used up. He had intended to give her another, but this one hadn’t fully grown in yet. It was still just a baby feather. Even if he plucked it, it would be useless.

Lou Ting tilted his head slightly, troubled. She seemed to be doing something dangerous. She’d used up a Judgment Feather that quickly—what was he supposed to do now?

Just then, the summoning time limit ran out, and Lou Ting’s body began to turn transparent.

“Then take this. It’s not as precious as your Judgment Feather, but still.” Before he vanished, Jing Pei took out the return gift she had prepared long ago and handed it to him.

It was a small box. Lou Ting opened it curiously, and his silver eyes widened a fraction. Before he could say anything, he disappeared completely.

Only after Lou Ting was gone did the people who had been peeking from outside dare to come in. They crowded around Jing Pei and bombarded her with questions.

“Didn’t I send Zhang Simiao up to the sky before? That’s how we became friends.”

“It was a gift from him. I can use it to summon him.”

“Of course I wouldn’t summon him for no reason. It’s just that Zhou Yongzi really made me mad. I couldn’t help it.”

Jing Pei answered them gently, but her replies sent a hundred thoughts spinning through their minds.

Lou Ting had existed for so many years. How was it that none of them had ever managed to become friends with him?

Then again, even if they’d been given the chance, they wouldn’t have dared go near him. Who knew what he might decide counted as sin on them? No one was willing to gamble with their life.

This girl really was the child of fortune the Long family had spent two hundred years building toward. She alone could hold up the entire Long family. After today, no atavist family would dare make a move against them just because the Long family only had one Atavist.

And Zhou Yongzi truly had gone too far. So far, in fact, that not a single person felt Jing Pei had overreacted. This was a matter of family dignity, and family dignity was not something anyone was allowed to trample on. Zhou Yongzi deserved to die. As for the two foreign demon mercenaries, no one cared in the slightest.

“Get on good terms with her.”

“Whatever you do, don’t provoke her. She can summon Lou Ting!”

The elders, still shaken, whispered those warnings to the younger generation. The younger ones were speechless. Did the old people really need to tell them that? Besides, that whole way of thinking was outdated. They didn’t want to hear it.

Lou Ting was a rare mutated six-winged angel among the angel race. Historical records on six-winged angels were close to blank, so no one understood Lou Ting’s abilities. No one knew Judgment Feathers were one-time-use items, either. They all thought Jing Pei could summon Lou Ting anytime, anywhere.

Chu Xusheng’s injuries were severe enough that he had already gone into shock. If it had been an ordinary person, they would have died hundreds of times over. Even an Atavist with lower purity probably wouldn’t have survived. Luckily, the Insect race was hard to kill to begin with, and he was a King Insect, the hardest of them all to kill.

The nurses from the Wu family’s private clinic hurried over with a stretcher and carried Chu Xusheng off for treatment.

“This kid really is tough as nails.”

“Ah, forget it, forget it.”

He was the one who had been beaten half to death, but when a person’s backbone was truly strong, they often earned respect for it. After this, Chu Xusheng would no longer be seen as an outsider to the circle.

What had happened in the arena seemed, to the atavist families present, hardly worth mentioning. It didn’t affect their mood much at all. Only a small number of more sensitive people felt uneasy and left in a hurry. The Wu family seemed much the same, so the birthday banquet, originally meant to end at nine, wrapped up early.

Which meant Wu Ying and Jiang Qing…

As Jing Pei was leaving, she looked back at Wu Ying, who had personally come out to see them off, and the boy standing beside her. Mm. Forget it. What did she care?

…

The livestream—opened by no one knew who—had already been shut down, but the video was still spreading. The mood online was so heated it felt like magma from the earth’s core had erupted onto the surface.

The evil of the Zhou family and Zhou Yongzi had actually overwhelmed the shock of Lou Ting’s appearance. No one even had time to swoon over him.

They were furious. They were grieving. They shouted for justice and demanded that the government and the Tribunal Division give an explanation.

Inside the conference hall,

a group of men and women in uniform sat with grim faces and sharp eyes. The air was cold with killing intent.

With a creak, the door opened.

Qiu Fa walked in.

“Qiu Fa, this is a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity. The operational plan has already been confirmed. We hope the Tribunal Division will cooperate.” The man who spoke had a stern, upright face, but anger strained beneath it. His fists were clenched tight. This was the chance they had been searching for all these years.

Qiu Fa said, “Understood.”

…

The moment he got home, the Zhou family head slapped Zhou Qian hard across the face and roared, “I’ve placed high hopes on you since you were young, and this is how you handle things? You couldn’t even protect your own sister. How am I supposed to trust you to protect the Zhou family?”

Zhou Qian’s face was knocked to the side. His expression was dazed.

He hated Zhou Yongzi, but he had never imagined he would one day witness her death with his own eyes—such a horrific one. Even so, he knew perfectly well that this was the retribution she deserved.

“Family Head, the young master already did everything he could. None of us expected Miss Yongzi would run off on her own and do something like this,” a retainer hurriedly said.

Zhou Qian was too emotional. He still needed more tempering before he could become a qualified member of the Zhou family. As for Zhou Yongzi, she was a fool who ruined more than she ever accomplished. In the end, if she hadn’t insisted on wanting Chu Xurao’s face, Chu Xusheng would never have become a hidden danger. The Zhou family would never have lost all face, either. They had brought this on themselves. If she died for it, so be it.

“What was going on with that livestream? Why was it allowed to stay up that long? Don’t tell me the other families interfered again!” They all knew that was impossible. At this point, the other families had no need to pull something like that.

“We’re still investigating. The people at that livestream company are acting like they’re dead. There’s been no response at all,” the retainer said.

“They ruined our family’s reputation. Make sure we settle the score with them properly, so they learn exactly who they can offend and who they can’t!” said the Zhou family head.

More than anything, he wanted someone to take responsibility for his daughter’s death—someone he could vent his rage on.

Go after Jing Pei? What if she summoned Lou Ting? Then the ones who would die would be them. That suffocating pain in his chest, that feeling of swallowing broken teeth and blood—this was the first time in his life the Zhou family head had tasted it.

So as always, they would start by taking it out on ordinary people.

“Family Head, if the Tribunal Division treats Miss Yongzi’s soul-image as criminal evidence, will they come arrest us?”

The Zhou family head let out a cold snort. “What soul-image? Who’s to say Lou Ting didn’t just make the whole thing up with his powers? As long as we refuse to admit anything, and the other families also agree that evidence like that can’t be trusted, what can they do to us with the Atavist Management Regulations in place?”

None of them were familiar with Lou Ting, and people within atavist circles knew almost nothing about his abilities. That was the loophole they could exploit.

The fact that the Tribunal Division hadn’t come to arrest anyone immediately seemed to confirm it.

In the eyes of the Zhou family and many other atavist families, this livestream had certainly destroyed the Zhou family’s reputation and caused a big stir—but it would die down in a few days, just like what had happened a few days ago, and the many incidents before that.

…

When Jing Pei got home, she found Long Yiming and a crowd of Long family members waiting for her at the entrance.

The smile on Long Yiming’s face was, for once, not that crocodile smile of his. His pleasure was written all over his face. And it wasn’t just him—Long Peici and the other members of the Long family all looked the same.

The moment Jing Pei got out of the car, they surrounded her and went in with her, all talking at once.

“When we saw that Zhou Yongzi forcing you up there, we were furious. She really had no respect for our family at all. Good thing you had the ability to deal with it—and to think you even managed to make friends with Lou Ting.”

“The only question is whether the Zhou family will hold a grudge.”

“Oh, they definitely will. Just look at how they do things. I’ve never seen a family that filthy. They won’t dare do anything openly, but in the dark they’ll keep trying. We all need to be more careful from now on.”

For a moment, all the Long family members tensed up, and some of the excitement drained away.

Jing Pei gave a soft smile. “Don’t worry. The Zhou family will be very quiet soon enough.”

Things weren’t over yet.

If you cut the grass, of course you pull out the roots too. Otherwise, wouldn’t you just be leaving yourself future trouble?

…

The next day, the members of the major atavist families who worked inside the government sent back an urgent message.

Overnight, while no atavist family had paid any attention to the ordinary world, one major event after another had broken out.

First, the families of the victims who had appeared in Zhou Yongzi’s soul-image jointly reported the case to the police. Public outrage was running high, and under the guidance of a lawyer named Xiang Huagong, people had jointly submitted a petition to the government demanding revisions to the Atavist Management Regulations, condemning the many absurdities on the law.

For example, from those recordings and Zhou Yongzi’s soul-image, it was clear that the Zhou family’s Atavists had caused the deaths of more than thirty ordinary people, and the number they had maimed and abused at will was impossible to count. If all the victims were ordinary people, then on what grounds could anyone still insist that atavist affairs should be handled only by atavists?

In a single night, the number of signatures on the petition had already passed one hundred million, and it was still rising. That showed just how much public anger this incident had stirred up—or perhaps it was a small eruption of the long-accumulated conflict between Atavists and ordinary people.

As a result, the government had held several meetings through the night, and Qiu Fa had participated in them as well. Though the exact outcome was still unknown, the chances of the Atavist Management Regulations being revised were now very high.

It was like a thunderclap exploding over the atavist world.

“Revise it? Who gave them permission? These rules have stood for thousands of years. They think they can just change them whenever they want?”

“Have they forgotten who made this country what it is today? They want to use us and throw us away? Dream on!”

The atavist families first flew into a rage and started cursing up a storm. But once some of the heat died down, unease began to creep in. They had long known that the government wanted to abolish the Atavist Management Regulations. The only reason it hadn’t happened was because the government had never found the chance. Because of that, the families had been somewhat cautious, and far more restrained in their conduct than before.

But they had never imagined the Zhou family would be this filthy.

But their ingrained arrogance and pride, along with their habitual contempt for ordinary people, had dulled their sense of danger. So when everything happened last night, many of them had failed to grasp the chain reaction it would trigger. They had even gone to sleep just fine.

Now, finally, they were beginning to panic.

“Come to think of it, if the government really uses this chance to force through changes, what can we do? Their weapons are getting stronger and stronger. If we clash head-on, we might not lose—but what happens to us after that?”

At those words, they all fell silent.

Then, almost as one, they started cursing again. “The Zhou family caused this mess, so why are we the ones getting dragged into it?!”

“Isn’t the evidence already right there? Let the Tribunal Division arrest them! They’re making it sound like we can still use the Atavist Management Regulations to cover the sky with one hand. Why don’t they take a look at how Qiu Fa beats our people when he feels like it!”

…

At the Zhou family estate,

the lights had burned all night. Having lost her beloved daughter, the Zhou family’s mistress cried until her face was streaked with tears, cursing Jing Pei and the Long family without stop while the other women clustered around her to comfort her. The ones with good acting skills squeezed out a few tears with her. The ones without stayed on the outside and secretly smiled, feeling nothing but satisfaction inside.

She deserved to die. To them, the Long family’s young heir was justice descending from heaven.

Because of that, many of them only managed to fall asleep at dawn and completely missed the exciting news from the morning.

Qiu Fa arrived at the Zhou family’s gate with officers from the Tribunal Division and knocked on the door.

A household servant opened it. The instant he saw so many Tribunal Division officers, his face went white with fright, and he ran to notify the family head.

The Zhou family head had barely been asleep for long before he was woken up. Furious, he strode outside. “Qiu Fa, I may have invited you to my home for tea, but I didn’t invite you to come ruin my sleep this early!”

Qiu Fa stood to one side, smoking a cigar. His assistant thrust a list right in front of the Zhou family head’s face. “Family Head Zhou, have these people come with us.”

The Zhou family head snatched the list. The very first name at the top was his own.

Below it were the names of one Zhou family member after another—people of status and rank in the family, along with several retainers.

Once he looked carefully, every single one of them had appeared in Zhou Yongzi’s soul-image. There were those whose murders had been shown clearly, those who had carried out orders to do evil, and those who had appeared in earlier recordings—people who had once been released for lack of evidence after witnesses and victims’ families changed their statements.

“What is this supposed to mean? You’re going to treat Lou Ting’s power as evidence? Then what’s the point of law? You might as well let Lou Ting handle everything. No need for judges. No need for police. What, are you planning to let him be the world’s only judge?” the Zhou family head roared.

“Whether it can be used as evidence or not will be verified in due course. For now, please come with us.”

The blazing anger in the Zhou family head’s mind felt as though a bucket of ice water had just been dumped over it. All at once, he realized something, and his face changed drastically.

He took two steps back. “Fine. Then you won’t mind waiting while I change clothes and notify the rest of the clan?”

The assistant sounded surprisingly accommodating. “In consideration of the Zhou family’s past contributions to the nation, this much dignity we can naturally grant you.”

“Hmph.”

The Zhou family head returned inside. With a glance, he signaled the servants to shut the doors, then hurried back to the main hall and issued a rapid stream of orders.

“Seal every entrance and exit. Activate every security system. Contact every major atavist family at once and ask them for support!”

“Dad?” Zhou Qian had just come over. He stared at him in shock. It looked as though his father’s lips were trembling. A powerful sense of dread surged up in his heart.

The retainers also grew tense.

“I have a bad feeling. The Tribunal Division is far too calm this time—something’s wrong. We absolutely cannot go with them. If we step through the Tribunal Division’s doors, I’m afraid we’ll never come back out!”

The Zhou family moved at once, contacting all the major atavist families in Yunjin Prefecture to request aid.

The Zhou family head had assumed the other families, on receiving his call for help, would think: What? If they move on the Zhou family today, they’ll move on our families tomorrow. We have to support them!

What the other atavist families actually thought when they answered was: “At this point, stop struggling. The evidence is solid. How are we supposed to help you?”

“Isn’t all this your own doing? What kind of daughter did you raise? What kind of family were you running? You made the whole thing reek. You’ve dragged the name of the atavist families through the filth!”

“Our family wants nothing to do with yours!”

Click.

Even if he were beaten to death, the Zhou family head never would have imagined this would be the response: every family drawing a line between themselves and his. And not only over the phone. They swiftly registered official social media accounts and publicly severed ties with the Zhou family online as well.

The Zhou family had been abandoned by the other atavist families.