117: Cleaning

"Who are you!"

A cold, sharp shout suddenly rang out, interrupting Lin Luo's gaze. He slowly withdrew his eyes from the distant sky—in the end, those two pieces of trash had escaped.

And now, someone actually dared to question him like this.

His suppressed rage reignited, and a cold light flashed in Lin Luo's eyes: "You seek death!"

"Protect the Prime Minister! Retreat, quickly!" The guards' cries of alarm and the sound of gunfire exploded simultaneously. Tongues of fire surged as bullets poured down like a torrential rain.

"Brother Luo, please stop!"

Before the words had even finished, eerie blue flames rose up like a swarm of butterflies, precisely coiling around every gun barrel. In an instant, the metal melted into molten iron, dripping to the ground with a soft sizzling sound. A tall, sturdy figure dropped from mid-air, standing firmly in front of Prime Minister Takaichi to face Lin Luo directly.

The moonlight was like water as a sword's flash suddenly sliced through the night, carving a clear boundary between the two sides.

Immediately after, two other figures quietly appeared. When Lin Luo's gaze met that familiar white-clothed figure, the chilling spiritual light gathering at his fingertips slowly dissipated.

"Chen Yu, Peng Geng, it's you guys." Lin Luo's tone was flat, showing no ripples of emotion at reuniting with old acquaintances.

A look of awkwardness appeared on Peng Geng's honest face: "Brother Luo, it's all orders from above. We're just following instructions."

Chen Yu pulled away from Peng Geng in disgust: "Brother Luo, don't make too big a scene. This matter has nothing to do with these people nearby; don't involve the innocent."

"Why isn't your Special Affairs Department arresting him?" Prime Minister Takaichi, her face pale from fright, questioned sharply. "Do I need to file a formal lawsuit against the Special Affairs Department?"

Before she could finish, the tip of a longsword lightly touched her throat. The cold sensation of metal brought a faint sting, causing all her unspoken words to freeze in her throat.

She realized clearly—these people were completely different from the Special Affairs Department personnel she usually dealt with. These people didn't care about her identity or status in the slightest.

"Lin Luo, if you don't leave now, I'm afraid it will be too late to see her."

The cold voice caused Lin Luo's expression to change abruptly. His gaze swept over the three people before him—Ye Nianyao, Chen Yu, and Peng Geng. Because they were of similar age, they had once been close, until Lin Luo left for Japan and they hadn't seen each other for a long time.

His hesitation lasted only a moment as he looked at the white-clothed woman holding the sword: "Sister Nianyao, I'll head off first."

Seeing Lin Luo's figure vanish into the distance, Prime Minister Takaichi couldn't help but mutter a low curse.

The moment her words fell, the sword at her neck suddenly erupted with a chilling light—Ye Nianyao was actually prepared to kill her!

"Sister, calm down!"

At the critical moment, Peng Geng's palm, wrapped in a thick layer of earthy-yellow Mystic Light, firmly grasped the blade. The Mystic Light and the sharp edge ground against each other, producing a tooth-aching hum.

"If she dies, the aftermath will be very troublesome," Peng Geng persuaded helplessly, the Mystic Light in his palm thickening a bit more.

Chen Yu also stepped forward at the right time and said softly, "Don't disrupt Director Zhou's arrangements. Should we go to the hospital and check? From Brother Luo's appearance just now, I'm afraid he's misunderstood something."

Ye Nianyao coldly sheathed her sword, her gaze sweeping over Takaichi's shaken face like frost.

"No." She turned and walked away, her robes fluttering in the night wind. "Let's go."

Lin Luo rushed to find Kanae. He had originally thought Himejima Gyomei and Thor would take her back to the Butterfly Mansion for treatment, but he met Thor flying hurriedly toward him on the way. Thor brought unexpected news: Kanae had been taken in by the Special Affairs Department and transferred to their exclusive hospital. With such severe injuries, her life would likely be forfeit if she relied only on the Butterfly Mansion's medical level.

Sitting atop Thor's dragon-form head, it took only moments for Lin Luo to arrive at the hospital named 'Yuezuno'. In the night, the hospital's silhouette appeared exceptionally quiet under the moonlight.

"Yuezuno Hospital"—Lin Luo murmured the name, feeling it was somewhat familiar, but he couldn't recall where he had heard it for the moment. He had no heart to dwell on it now and simply urged Thor urgently: "Quick, take me to see Kanae."

Although Thor had repeatedly assured him on the way that Kanae was out of mortal danger, Lin Luo's heart remained suspended until he could see her safe with his own eyes. The wind kicked up by the dragon's wings brushed past the treetops above the hospital and across his anxious brow.

Passing through the automatic glass doors, the scene before him caused Lin Luo to unconsciously slow his pace.

In the corridor, a nurse was gently changing the bandages for a Kappa covered in them, while an old silver-haired lady beside them smilingly offered a rice ball shaped like a flower. In the waiting area, a translucent ghost sat on a bench side-by-side with an elderly man in striped hospital pajamas, both watching a Kabuki performance on the television screen. Around the corner, several Karakasa-obake were tiptoeing as they carefully pushed a wheelchair, the old man in it snoring evenly.

"This place is really..." Lin Luo's unfinished words vanished into the air, overwhelmed by the sight before him.

A nurse pushing a medical cart stopped her pace; the cart neatly displayed not only conventional medicines but also glowing Spirit Medicine and Demonic Grass beaded with dew. In a consultation room further away, a doctor was using a stethoscope to touch a Zashiki-warashi's back, while the liquid in the IV bag in the next room shimmered with a pearly luster under the moonlight.

What touched him most was a withered old man outside the hospice ward—he was tremblingly pinning a wild chrysanthemum into a nurse's hair, his cloudy eyes filled with tenderness, as if saying, "It's truly wonderful to have met you all."

"Yuezuno never asks where one comes from," a clear female voice rang out. The nurse removed her mask, revealing Kuga Akine's bright smile. "Whether it's the elderly with no home to return to, or the non-humans with nowhere to go."

"Akine?" Lin Luo realized—no wonder the hospital's name sounded familiar; he had heard her mention interning here back at Longevity Manor.

"Long time no see, Luo-kun." She pretended to put on a stern face. "How long has it been since you last visited Longevity Manor? But..." Her tone turned gentle, "Miss Kanae is in the intensive care unit, and her condition has stabilized."

Following Akine through the long corridor, Lin Luo unconsciously took a deep breath. The scent of medicine intertwined with a faint Demonic Qi created a reassuring atmosphere. The soft sound of wheelchairs rolling across the floor and the whisper-like demonic language composed a night sonata. Having entrusted his precious person to such an inclusive place, his tense nerves finally relaxed slightly.

Inside the intensive care unit, there was only the rhythmic beeping of the monitors. Kochou Kanae lay quietly on the pure white hospital bed, looking like a fragile glass doll.

Lin Luo's gaze immediately fell on her bandaged neck—where a warm pulse should have been beating, it was now covered by layers of gauze. Her face was as pale as paper, her once full cheeks slightly sunken from blood loss, and her skin was so thin it was almost transparent. On the back of her hand resting outside the blanket, blue-purple veins were clearly visible, yet almost no life-force of blood flow could be seen.

"She lost over sixty percent of her blood," Akine explained softly, adjusting the flow rate of the IV. "It's only because you used your spiritual power to protect her heart and seal the ruptured blood vessels that she managed to survive until she reached the hospital."

Lin Luo slowly sat down by the bed. Only now did he see clearly that the golden spiritual light he had left in her body was still flickering weakly at her heart, maintaining her last spark of life like a candle in the wind. Those spiritual threads were as thin as gossamer, coiling around the major blood vessels—it was precisely these timely spiritual barriers that prevented her from succumbing to internal bleeding while unconscious.

He reached out, wanting to touch her ice-cold fingers, but curled his fingers back just before contact. The memory of her determined eyes while wielding her sword overlapped with her current sleeping face, which seemed so fragile it might shatter at a touch. The rising and falling EKG on the monitor screen became the most reassuring rhythm in the room.

"She still needs three blood transfusions and spiritual nourishment," Akine recorded the data from the monitor on her clipboard. "But her will to live is very strong... that is more precious than any medicine."

Outside the window, moonlight flowed in quietly, plating Kanae's profile with a clear glow. Lin Luo finally gently grasped her hand that wasn't on the IV, slowly channeling a sliver of warm spiritual power into her.

Meanwhile, inside the Special Affairs Department's underground command center, Zhou Dong sneered as he slammed the report in his hand onto the table, papers scattering everywhere.

"A lawsuit? She really thinks she's something."

Peng Geng rubbed the back of his head honestly: "Reporting to Director Zhou, it might just be that her kept man ran away, so she's feeling unhappy..."

"Nonsense!" Zhou Dong slapped the steel tabletop, making the teacups jump. "Chen Yu, you tell me!"

Chen Yu unhurriedly straightened his cuffs: "It's probably because she couldn't order us around, so she's unhappy. At that age, emotional instability is normal."

Zhou Dong's gaze finally landed on the consistently silent Ye Nianyao. She leaned against the wall holding her sword, her eyes cold, radiating an aura that warned others not to approach.

"Fine, fine, let's not talk about that." Zhou Dong waved his hand irritably and took a list from an encrypted drawer. "There's a new mission. Some people don't want to be human and insist on being ghosts; I can't control that, but they can't be allowed to drag too many innocent people to their deaths."

Peng Geng immediately straightened his posture: "Guarantee to complete the mission!"

"Visit these families on the list one by one." Zhou Dong pushed the list in front of the trio. "Make them obediently take the little pills."

His tone suddenly turned cold, and the air in the room seemed to freeze: "If anyone refuses to cooperate—"

Ye Nianyao's scabbard lightly tapped the floor, making a crisp sound.

Looking at her like this, Zhou Dong became inexplicably irritable: "Courtesy first, then force. Deal with those who won't take the medicine. Chen Yu, you handle the boundaries."

Although news of the attack on the Prime Minister's official residence was strictly suppressed by the authorities, it was already no secret within Tokyo's upper circles. Almost at the same time the event occurred, various details had spread through encrypted channels to the secret rooms of major conglomerates and prestigious families.

Footage of the Special Affairs Department storming the residence and destroying the annex played repeatedly on private screens. What was most alarming were those powers that transcended common logic—lightning leaping between fingers, fire condensing at will, and even the unfathomable Mr. Doma beside the Prime Minister actually retreated repeatedly before that youth clad in a coat of fire. Even when reinforcements joined later, the two of them still couldn't gain the slightest advantage in a two-on-one fight.

And that purple Talisman that tore through the night sky caused every viewer to feel a Soul-deep shudder, even through a screen.

Just as the various families were secretly rejoicing that the disaster hadn't yet affected them, the Special Affairs Department's purge descended in the most direct manner. Over the next three days, all families associated with the Blood Crystals successively welcomed three uninvited guests.

In heavily guarded washitsu, in courtyards surrounded by crowds, and even amidst layers of protection from Family experts—that white-clothed figure could always enter as if into an uninhabited land. When the cold longsword was silently placed against a neck, all defenses became a joke.

"Eat it, or not?"

Ye Nianyao's voice was very soft, yet it made everyone present shudder. The red pill at her fingertips glinted with an eerie luster under the lights, and the blade held against their vitals made no one dare doubt the weight of her words.

Some tried to resist, and the courtyard immediately became tense with drawn swords. But in the next moment, the sword light swept past like a crescent moon, and the guard who had been the first to draw his blade was already on the ground clutching his shoulder. It was so fast that no one could see the movement, and so strong that no thought of resistance could arise.

"Last time." The tip of her sword applied slight pressure, and a bead of blood slid down the neck. "Eat it, or die."

In the face of absolute strength, all power and schemes appeared so pale. One by one, the red pills were swallowed down.