Please, graduates, slay the demon!

"You've been flattering me all day, and this is what you're waiting for?"

Old Man Sun straightened up a little in the armchair. Seeing this, Chen Yang put down the hammer and handed Old Man Sun a pot of tea.

"Do you know why we use this specially made spirit stone sword to slay demons?"

Ok?

Upon hearing this, Chen Yang raised an eyebrow and looked at Old Man Sun, but the old man continued drinking his tea, completely ignoring him.

Chen Yang sighed and continued pouring tea. He knew the old man was using another topic to evade his question.

When Chen Yang asked the old man if he had ever seen a great demon, he was thinking about the conversation between the old man and Ma Yuchao. The old man had not only seen a great demon, but had also obtained a special breathing technique from it.

His little trick of trying to get information out of him was quickly seen through by the old man.

But Chen Yang was still interested in the old man's new topic. After pouring the tea, he returned to the assembly line and continued forging iron without stopping.

"Conventional methods cannot kill great demons. If you cut any part of a great demon's body with a weapon, it can regenerate. Great demons only have two weaknesses: their heads and their mist."

"A demon will die immediately once it leaves the mist, regardless of its rank."

At this point, Old Man Sun looked at the battle sword being forged in the furnace:

"As for this kind of battle sword made of spirit stone ore, as long as the soldier holds the sword, the sword can draw on the soldier's own aura to attach to the blade."

As the old man spoke, he began to gesture with his hand over his head:

"If you just cut off the great demon's head with a knife, the head will grow back. But if you attach your own aura to the knife and leave it at the wound when you cut off the great demon's head, your aura will block the great demon's own aura flowing in its blood. Without the nourishment of blood and qi, the severed wound will quickly rot, and then the great demon will truly die."

"Outside the wall, if you severely injure a powerful demon, stand by and watch it die. If it's not quite dead, remember to finish it off."

Upon hearing this, all the blacksmiths fell silent, each imagining the scene Old Man Sun had described.

Under the fog, thousands of Survey Corps soldiers rushed forward with swords, and after much hardship, they finally managed to sever one of the great demon's arms, only for the arm to regenerate instantly.

They had never seen the great demon, but just thinking about it filled them with utter despair.

How did people fight against the great demons before they discovered this secret?

"Master Sun, what you're talking about...why didn't my teacher tell me about this at school..."

A soldier from the convict camp asked the question.

"There are already few people joining the army. Once the truth about slaying the demon is revealed, everyone will know how difficult it is to kill the great demon, and no one will voluntarily join the army anymore. At that time, the government will enforce conscription, and all kinds of unrest will occur."

"Is it true that no one in human history has ever slain a great demon? Even a ninth-rank martial artist couldn't do it?"

The person who asked this question was Chen Yang.

On the way from City 7 to City 11, Chen Yang asked Xu Chuan similar questions, but Shen Nanfeng interrupted Xu Chuan's answer on the grounds of political sensitivity.

Chen Yang asked Sun subconsciously because he saw that the old man seemed to be in a good mood today, but he didn't expect the old man to actually answer.

Before he could finish speaking, the old man blurted out:

"Of course I've killed them. If I haven't killed a single demon, why would I have time to build this high wall? If a Grandmaster-level martial artist can't even kill a single demon, humanity would have been utterly defeated long ago."

Hearing this, Luo Pengfei blinked, somewhat puzzled: "Master Sun, but our history says that humans have never defeated a great demon head-on."

"Kid, history is written by the victors. The history you see is what the higher-ups want you to know."

At this point, Old Man Sun got up and used the fire tongs to turn over the battle swords being forged in the stove, his back to everyone:

"In the past, a group of geniuses emerged from the Zero City government. At that time, the government leader was a peak ninth-rank martial artist, and the army he led was the regular army that killed the most great demons in human history."

Old Sun took a wallet out of his pocket and spread it out in front of everyone. Inside the wallet was a black and white photograph.

The photo shows a young man standing on the city wall, covered in wounds, holding a severed head in his hand.

The features of the head were indistinct, but judging from the head circumference being more than twice that of a normal human head, it should be the head of a great demon.

"Master Sun, where did you get this photo?"

Faced with Chen Yang's question once again, Old Man Sun still did not answer:

"That person made a decision; he intends to lead this army outside the walls and reclaim City Twelve, which humanity has lost for many years."

To reclaim the cities that humanity has lost?

The soldiers present were all young, and upon hearing this mind-blowing thing, the young men were excited, and the clanging of metal in the room became somewhat faint.

Old Man Sun glared at him:

"Stop trying to be clever and slack off!"

As soon as he said this, the clanging of metal striking metal rang out again.

In fact, the new recruits present were somewhat panicked.

The fact that the area outside City Eleven is still shrouded in fog indicates that the human martial artist mentioned by Old Man Sun has failed in his attempt to reclaim City Twelve.

If even such powerful humans have failed, then where is humanity's hope?

Old Man Sun continued:

"That person led all of humanity's top martial artists outside the wall, and they were gone for a full five years. For five whole years, there was no news of them."

"Until the sixth year, an arrow pierced the clouds from the distant border, crossed the high walls of humanity, and struck a house somewhere inside. Attached to the arrow was the head of a fifth-rank demon, and a letter from that warrior."

Hearing this, Qi Zijian became somewhat curious:

"Master Sun, what did the letter say?"

Old Sun picked up the already sharpened knives from the ground and began to attach handguards to them one by one:

"The letter says that after five years of arduous fighting, the army that went out has besieged a high-level demon. Both the demon and the human army are exhausted, but as long as the humans send reinforcements now, they can kill the only high-level demon and take back City Twelve."

"And then..."

At this point, everyone listening to the story was intrigued, but Old Man Sun abruptly stopped and took a sip of tea.

Qi Zijian and the others were seething with hatred, but they couldn't openly attack the old man.

After the old man finished his tea, blowing on it as he drank, and even picked some tea leaves from between his teeth, he continued speaking, still at a slow pace:

"The Zero City government did not send reinforcements later."

Upon hearing this, everyone present fell silent.

"Why?!" Luo Pengfei almost shouted.

"Because if that person really returns in triumph, he will be a hero to the government and the people. At that time, the leader of the Zero Government will have to step down. He will no longer be entitled to enjoy resources and power. In order to protect his own power, he will not let that person come back."

Everyone present turned their gaze to the person who had spoken.

This matter is not that difficult to understand.

The Jingkang Incident during the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties of the previous era is the most typical example.

"Yes, that's politics."

Old Man Sun echoed Chen Yang's words, still with his back to everyone.

But Chen Yang seemed to detect a hint of melancholy in the old man's words.

"Humanity's elite legion has been lost for five years. No one can verify the authenticity of that letter. If it's a trap set by a powerful demon, and we send out an army that has been raised for five years to fight against the demon, only to have it all wiped out, then humanity is truly doomed. The government dares not gamble on that."

"Who knows if that person was acting out of selfish desires or genuinely thinking about all of humanity. But in the end, the council voted overwhelmingly against it, choosing to ignore the matter."

Old Sun continued to add:

"That arrow that pierced the clouds also served as a wake-up call for humanity. Regardless of whether the arrow was shot by a human or a demon, it showed that someone's martial arts skills were already capable of shooting lethal weapons in from outside the walls."

"Both humans and demons can evolve."

"What if one day the great demons evolve to the point where they can fly, and mist can drift in through the walls? What will we do then?"

Only then did Old Man Sun turn around and look at everyone, his tone harsh:

"Why did you stop what you were doing again!"

Everyone was stunned for a moment, and then the recruits, who were listening intently, picked up their hammers and continued to strike.

"The policy changed later."

"The original policy was to invite human geniuses to slay demons, and outstanding graduates to join the army and enjoy government resources to fight against the great demons."

"The later policy was to concentrate all geniuses in the central urban area, allowing them to enjoy the resources of spirit stones and pills, and to rapidly cultivate ninth-rank martial artists. Rather than believing that the army could defeat the great demon, it was better to believe that these geniuses, who had exhausted all the resources, could ascend to immortality and protect all of humanity."

"In the past, we asked graduates to slay demons; now we ask graduates to take college entrance exams."

"Later political measures were all relatively conservative. The geniuses all went to university, and the level of people in the military was getting lower and lower. The government's strategy for the border was to just hold it and not worry about anything else. Overseas exploration missions were all applied for by the border troops themselves."

"Therefore, historical records are wrong. It's not that humans have never killed a great demon, but that the Survey Corps has never killed one. From the moment the overseas expeditionary force was renamed the Survey Corps, it has never won. Here, people's talent, resources, cultivation time, and mortality rate all determine that a person's upper limit is the fifth-grade Grandmaster realm."

"The government is concealing this cowardly history and telling the people inside the wall that the soldiers have always been fighting against the outside world. Please remember their bravery."

"It doesn't sound like this policy is so bad." Qi Zijian scratched his chin. "I heard from the elders in the slums that the death rate in City Eleven used to be extremely high, but now life is relatively peaceful."

"Alright, that's all old news, let's not talk about it anymore."

Old Sun stopped talking, put down what he was holding, and started playing chess by himself.

"Master Sun, aren't you afraid we'll spread this around?" a new recruit asked.

"Speak up," Old Man Sun shouted without turning his head. "If you war criminals have no other thoughts, you'd better let the whole world know, let your parents, relatives, and friends know how cowardly, timid, and insignificant we are in this world."