# Chapter 91: The First Task
There was now no need to guess why two men of the Office of Inquiry had appeared here, or why they had carried beast cages and caught so many animals. Their purpose was clear enough. Jiang Wang stared at the other beast cage, still unopened, and felt a surge of impulse to cleave it apart.
He had witnessed with his own eyes the battle on Jade Scales Peak — how many cultivators had died there, how much had been sacrificed. So the savage beasts were no calamity of heaven. They were a scourge of man's own making!
Then what of all that striving, all that sacrifice? The senior brother who had died carving proud words at his own end. The city lord who had planted himself atop Standing Brush Peak, stripped to resist the Killer Rock Bees. The woman who had cut off her own path of cultivation, breaking through all five prefectures? What meaning did any of it hold?
"Do not move." Bai Lian's hand settled lightly on Jiang Wang's shoulder. She could feel the tremor he could not suppress, and said softly, "This time I have truly cast an obscuring art."
In the valley below, the transformation from beast to savage beast was complete. Because of their cruel nature, many savage beasts fell to fighting one another on the spot; roars rose and blood and flesh flew in every direction.
"Such a small catch this time?"
At this dissatisfied voice, a cultivator in the robe of the Office of Inquiry came striding through the air. Jiang Wang instinctively held his breath. To tread the void unassisted meant a cultivation of the Dragon-Rising Realm at the very least!
Though this man complained, he did not press the matter further. Hovering in midair above the valley, he formed a seal with both hands, and a stretch of the cliff wall rumbled aside, revealing a broad gorge. From Jiang Wang's vantage he could not make out what lay beyond it.
Then the Office cultivator's hand seal shifted again. Jiang Wang noticed that across the valley floor within his line of sight, faint vermilion array lines flickered and vanished. But of arrays and array-patterns, the City Dao Academy taught only the barest fundamentals; he could not read what these lines portended.
And yet the newly "born" savage beasts stopped their killing on the instant, as if guided by some unseen hand, and together charged into the gorge.
Where would these savage beasts run? Which village, which little town? How much grain would they ruin, how many innocent folk would they devour?
At the mere thought, Jiang Wang could not help the murderous intent that welled up in him. This was the first time in his life that he had felt the urge to kill toward men of the Office of Inquiry — toward cultivators who, in a sense, represented the Zhuang court.
For one must remember that, to a student of the Dao Academy, the Ministry of War, the Office of Inquiry, places such as these were among the fates awaiting them. It was true that the highest pursuit was to enter the Zhuang court directly once cultivation succeeded, to be awarded office and rank. Yet no small number of disciples discovered, in the course of their training, a path better suited to them; and there were still many who, from childhood, had dreamt of the Office of Inquiry. It was an important transcendent force — one that hunted wrongdoers, punished evil, and kept the kingdom of Zhuang at peace.
And these cultivators of the Office of Inquiry who stood on Jade Scales Peak... what were they truly about?
"He cannot be killed." Bai Lian sensed something and spoke at once. "If any one of these men died, the Zhuang court would receive word immediately. The reason the defenses here are so lax is that these men's very lives are the best alarm. As for the strong one who oversees this matter, he possesses the divine power of closing in a thousand li at a pace. The instant he is roused, he will appear here on the spot. And when he does, even I could not escape."
A bitter smile tugged at Jiang Wang's lips. And what ability did he have, after all, to kill a strong one of at least the Dragon-Rising Realm?
Still, he understood now. When Bai Lian had refrained from killing the two Office cultivators outside the cave, it had never been out of regard for his feelings. It was plainly because she dared not.
By now, that mighty one of the Office had already left, and the gorge was rumbling shut behind him.
"What lies beyond that gorge?" Jiang Wang asked.
"I have no way to take you there." Bai Lian shook her head. "That place is not like this one. A true grand array is laid over it, so deep I dare not enter myself. At most I can offer you a guess."
"What guess?"
"You should know that the chief material of the Meridian-Opening Pill is the Dao meridian of demon beasts. But have you ever considered this — among the thronged kingdoms, the mortal peoples number in the hundreds of millions. Is their need for such pills not enormous? Would the demon beasts not be hunted to extinction, no matter how fast they bred? I suspect the reason demon beasts endure without end has a great deal to do with these savage beasts."
The guess had a fair likelihood of being right. After all, those savage beasts were before his very eyes, made from ordinary beasts. And if they could pass through some further unknown means into demon beasts born with natural Dao meridians, that too was not impossible. Certain savage beasts were already capable of wielding spells; apart from lacking reason, they differed not at all from demon beasts.
If this was true, then in a certain sense Jade Scales Peak was one of the resource bases of the Zhuang court. It was also the guarantee of the very development of the kingdom of Zhuang. It was even the source of the Meridian-Opening Pills that Dao-sect disciples like Jiang Wang and Ling He needed for their cultivation.
Only...
The common folk who had died before the savage beasts. The people who had stood to their dying breath before the common folk, facing the savage beasts to fight. The people kept in the dark — including this Jiang Wang.
What were they, in the end?
"If that is so, then why hide it from everyone? Why watch, with open eyes, as the cultivators of every city domain emptied their lives into it, one after another?" Jiang Wang's voice had gone hoarse and low. His entire view of the world had suffered a tremendous shock.
"You have to understand — every demon beast that is penned and bred will lose its natural Dao meridian in the next generation." Bai Lian did not seem entirely certain of this herself; a thoughtful look came into her eyes. "I think that untamed wildness is an essential element for demon beasts, and that killing is some necessary part of the process. There is a secret at work in it that I do not understand, but it is what decides this outcome. And so this matter must never become widely known — it can only be kept in the hands of the few, because no one would ever be willing to die for nothing." Her look shifted to one of jest. "Or perhaps, once you have become a great official in Xin'an City, you may go and ask Zhuang Gaoxian yourself."
When you became a great official, go ask the sovereign of Zhuang.
The remark was only the most ordinary of teasing.
And yet it was a sentence that filled Jiang Wang with a particular dread.
It was not that he had never imagined it — imagined what he would do in the future upon learning such a thing. He firmly believed that whatever lay behind the raising of these savage beasts, he would stand before the innocent dead and put an end to it.
But Bai Lian's question brought him to think:
The great men of Xin'an City were, by no small measure, men who had climbed their way up, cultivation step by cultivation step, from one city domain or another. They must themselves have endured, or at least felt, the pain of being ravaged by savage beasts. Among them there were surely some who, from childhood, had carried the ideal of guarding their land and soothing their people, who had cherished the ambition to relieve the suffering of all the living.
And yet — nothing.
In the three hundred-odd years of the kingdom's founding, everything about the savage beasts was still kept a secret from the vast majority of its people.
Every boy who had once sworn to change the world had, in the end, been changed by the world instead!
And it was not only the Zhuang Kingdom that was like this. Yong was. The entire world was!
Was this not terrifying?
How frightening it was!
...
"So — do you want to destroy this place?"
Bai Lian deliberately leaned close to his ear, her breath soft and fragrant. "On one side is the Zhuang court you will one day serve — the countless Meridian-Opening Pills it cannot even number. On the other are the poor folk of Sanshan's city domains. Mm, and they do not seem to hold much value..."
Jiang Wang had already cut her off. "I do."
At that moment he did not let his mind think. He offered his decision to instinct instead. To the deepest, most unrefusable kindness and pity at the heart of human nature.
Bai Lian looked at him for a long while, then said, "This is the first task I would have you do."