High-level martial arts: Long spear with black flames to suppress demons.

Downstairs at Building B, Beiyuan Residential Area.

Outside the yellow warning line, residents had already gathered in layers to watch the spectacle.

On the outskirts of the crowd, Li Xiwan, dressed in a school uniform, looked blankly at her apartment building being sealed off.

"Auntie, what's wrong? What happened?"

Li Xiwan stopped a middle-aged woman who was eating sunflower seeds next to her and politely asked her what was wrong.

"Oh dear, little girl, you just got back! Someone's dead!"

The woman spoke in a thick Beijiang dialect, lowering her voice and speaking mysteriously.

"It happened in 401! I heard the death was horribly gruesome, there was blood everywhere!"

This one sentence was like flipping a switch on gossip; the surrounding aunties and uncles immediately started chattering away, and the rumors grew increasingly outlandish.

"Absolutely! I heard their intestines even spilled out!"

"Nonsense! I clearly saw the assailant throw someone out of the window!"

An old man pointed to a broken window on the fourth floor and made a solemn vow.

"You're talking nonsense! Where's the blood on the ground? I bet it was a couple fighting and they smashed the window!"

"Oh dear, no matter what, a murder happened in this building, it's bad luck! I'm going to find a real estate agent tomorrow, sell the apartment, and move out!"

Li Xiwan turned pale upon hearing this, a wave of fear washing over her. Such a thing had actually happened in their neighborhood.

Just then, the unit door on the first floor of Building B was pushed open.

Shen Chang'an originally intended to go straight out through the main entrance, but seeing the dense crowd outside the cordon, and even a few middle-aged women peeking inside, he decisively stopped and turned to the back entrance of the building.

Even though he moved quickly, Li Xiwan, with her sharp eyes, still managed to catch a glimpse of his profile.

"Why?"

Li Xiwan was stunned and rubbed her eyes.

That figure in the blue and white school uniform, carrying a huge, worn-out guitar case... why does it look so much like Shen Chang'an?

How did he end up walking out of the cordoned-off scene of the murder?!

Driven by intense curiosity, Li Xiwan broke away from the crowd of onlookers, bypassed the police line, and ran quickly toward the back door of Building B.

"Student Shen? Shen..."

When she ran breathlessly to the open space behind the apartment building, there was no one there.

Only a few ivy leaves swayed gently in the evening breeze on the mottled wall.

Li Xiwan stood there, looking around blankly.

"Could I have misread it?"

She patted her cheeks, which were slightly flushed from running, and muttered to herself.

"Yeah, how could he possibly be involved in a murder case like this? He's probably just overthinking things from doing so much practice problems these past few days."

After convincing herself, Li Xiwan shook her head and turned to walk back.

the other side.

Shen Chang'an straddled the pure black heavy motorcycle, twisted the throttle to the floor, and sped along the faint red line towards the northern suburbs of Qingzhou District.

This rat demon runs extremely fast. He must intercept it before it escapes beyond the boundaries of Qingzhou District, otherwise the subsequent handover procedures will be incredibly troublesome once it crosses district boundaries.

The motorcycle streaked through the night like a black lightning bolt. A dozen minutes later, Shen Chang'an slammed on the brakes outside a deserted grove of trees on the outskirts of town.

The red thread projected by the Thousand-Mile Silk Coil stopped extending here and instead became tangled together like a messy ball of yarn.

"We've been circling around here for quite a while."

Shen Chang'an pulled out the car key and got out of the car. He closed his eyes, and his powerful perception of the Fifth Realm spread outwards instantly like an invisible radar.

Just two seconds.

"Found it."

Shen Chang'an suddenly opened his eyes, and the muscles in his legs tensed instantly.

"Bang!"

A muffled explosion resounded beneath his feet. Shen Chang'an used his Explosive Step, his entire body moving as if by teleportation, accompanied by a gust of wind, directly rushing towards a clump of bushes dozens of meters away to his right.

Almost at the same moment he set off, the soil under the bushes began to churn violently.

The Rat Demon's innate skill—digging holes!

"Trying to run away?"

Shen Chang'an rushed forward without hesitation. The veins on his right arm bulged, his five fingers formed a claw, and with violent spiritual power, he directly and unimpededly pierced through layers of soil and grabbed down fiercely!

"Pfft!"

Dirt flew everywhere, but he grabbed nothing.

This rat demon not only knows how to dig holes, but it has also dug a network of escape tunnels underground. It is as slippery as an eel and is currently frantically burrowing through the underground tunnels.

"Playing guerrilla warfare in front of me?"

Shen Chang'an sneered, slowly stood up, raised his right foot, and then, with the terrifying spiritual pressure of the Fifth Realm like an abyss, stomped hard on the ground!

"Boom—!"

Centered on his landing point, the ground within a radius of several meters cracked as if a small earthquake had occurred. The violent spiritual energy transformed into invisible shockwaves, directly penetrating the ground.

"squeak--!"

With a piercing scream, a dusty gray shadow was forcefully "squeezed" out of the ground by the terrifying shockwave and landed awkwardly on the open ground a few meters away.

The illusion on the rat demon completely failed.

Because her cultivation level was too low, she was simply unable to maintain the highly visually appealing half-human, half-demon form with cat ears and a tail like Baiyin.

The creature lying on the ground was a giant rat, about the size of an adult mongrel, covered in gray fur, which looked disgusting.

"Sir, spare me! Sir, spare me!"

The giant rat lay on the ground, its front paws clasped in prayer, speaking in a human voice, frantically kowtowing and begging for mercy.

"I didn't mean to! I really don't know why I hit him. I just acted impulsively and couldn't control myself!"

"Save these nonsense for the interrogation room of the Night Watchman's Office and the lie detector. I don't have time to listen to your sophistry."

As Shen Chang'an spoke, he took out specially made restraint shackles from his pocket, stepped forward, and prepared to complete this arrest operation without any commission.

However, just as he took two steps...

A strong sense of crisis surged through Shen Chang'an's spine like an electric current.

"Bang!"

From the depths of the dark woods in the distance, a muffled gunshot suddenly rang out! It was the sound of a large-caliber sniper rifle fitted with a silencer!

Shen Chang'an didn't even have time to look back. Relying solely on his honed fighting instincts, he twisted his waist sharply to the left in a bizarre manner.

"Whoosh—"

A specially made psionic bullet flew past his nose, blasting a hole the size of a washbasin into a large tree behind him.

Someone actually dared to ambush the head of the Night Division in the outskirts of Beijiang City with a specially made psionic sniper rifle?! That's incredibly audacious!

Shen Chang'an's eyes narrowed, and he was about to roll away to find cover.

Just then, the rat demon, who had been lying on the ground frantically kowtowing, suddenly had a strange scarlet light flash in its eyes, which were the size of mung beans!

It let out a ferocious roar unlike that of a rat, and with a sudden burst of strength from its limbs, it took advantage of the moment when Shen Chang'an was dodging the sniper's shot, and opened its foul-smelling mouth full of fangs, like a cannonball, and bit straight at Shen Chang'an's throat!

"Overestimating one's abilities."

Faced with this sudden counterattack, Shen Chang'an didn't even bother to glance at it.

He casually used the twisting force of his waist to clench his right fist and unleash a violent punch at the rat demon in mid-air!

"boom!"

There are no fancy moves, only pure and simple physical salvation.

The terrifying power of a fifth-realm cultivator created a sonic boom in mid-air. The giant rat demon's head, upon contact with the fist, exploded instantly like a pair of trousers struck by a hammer, sending flesh and blood flying everywhere!

The headless rat carcass fell heavily to the ground like a tattered sack.

Shen Chang'an slowly withdrew his fist, just about to turn around and grab the sniper who had fired the shot.

Suddenly, a faint wisp of black mist rose from the rat demon's corpse on the ground.

"Um?"

Shen Chang'an frowned sharply and quickly dodged back two meters, staring at the wisp of black energy.

"Demonic energy?!"

Shen Chang'an muttered something to himself.

No wonder this second-tier low-level rat demon dared to kill people, and after being captured, it went insane and said it couldn't control itself... It wasn't blinded by hatred at all, but like the previous fourth-tier demon, it had demonic energy secretly planted in its body!