107: Chapter 107 Xie Feng is a very petty person.

Xie Feng stepped out from behind a pillar of the hall, stood in the center, and bowed to Emperor Zhou Weixi.

However, his lack of proper etiquette made the nearby Ministry of Rites officials frown deeply.

Without any superfluous pleasantries, he spoke:

"Reporting to Your Majesty, the investigation is complete. All the stele rune nodes on the outer perimeter of the Shituolin Swamp Seal have been re-verified, and the Seal framework is functioning normally. However, more than one person in the Imperial City has been parasitized by an alien creature. They are not weirds, but alien creatures from beyond Jiuzhou."

"Sensationalist nonsense!"

Fang Jian, the Vice Minister of Works, stepped forward from the ranks of civil officials, the hem of his court robes scraping against the floor tiles with a harsh, grating sound.

He turned around, first cupping his hands in a polite bow to Emperor Zhou Weixi, before turning to Xie Feng with barely suppressed anger in his voice.

"Your Majesty! This brat crouched under the Shituolin Swamp for a day and a night the day before yesterday, and as soon as he came up, he claims officials and citizens are parasitized? Where is the proof? If there were an invasion by a weird, the Seal runes would have sounded the alarm immediately!

Just because he says they're parasitized, they are? Just because he says it's alien, it is?

I request Your Majesty to investigate thoroughly; this man's words are absurd, and his motives are sinister!"

Hearing Fang Jian's voice, the corner of Xie Feng's mouth twitched ever so slightly beneath his hood.

He recalled the memorial stamped with red lacquer and a fire Seal he had seen earlier in the Warm Chamber, titled On the Execution of the Capital's Grave Threat.

So you were the one who wrote it, huh?

"Vice Minister Fang. You just said that an invasion by alien creatures into the sealing department is sensationalist nonsense. Then what about yourself?"

Xie Feng spread his spiritual perception to its finest, wrapping it in an extremely thin thread of magic power, and slowly activated the Insects from Shaggai communication spell.

Layer by layer, the magic power swept through Fang Jian's cranial cavity.

Curled inside the choroid plexus of the posterior horn of Fang Jian's lateral ventricle was an extremely thin, dark, insectoid shadow. It was of the exact same species as the one he had pulled from his own brain yesterday, but larger, with its mouthparts buried deeper. The moment it detected the magic scan, it immediately released a razor-thin alkaloid membrane to try to conceal its parasitic traces.

It was resisting.

Not only the one in Fang Jian's brain—another inside the skull of a Ministry of Revenue administrator, and a third at the edge of the brainstem of an Imperial Guard in the back row were also resisting.

Xie Feng secretly connected his spiritual perception to his brain, switching to a private channel, and poked the Hedonistic Faction Shaggai Insect in his pocket with his mind.

"Is there any way to make them stop resisting?"

The Hedonistic Faction Shaggai Insect first lazily turned over.

"I'm from the Hedonistic Faction, and they are from the God-Worshipping Faction. We're different factions, so it's not convenient for me to interfere directly."

Xie Feng lightly singed it with a tiny trace of Cthugha's heat.

"If you don't tell me, I'll beat you to death."

"If they find out, they'll beat me to death too. It's the same thing."

"Then I'll pull you out and make sure you never get to eat again."

The Shaggai Insect fell silent.

Jokes aside, if Cthulhu knowledge could be quantified, Xie Feng knew even more than an average Great Old One.

He knew all too well how to handle these hedonistic, degenerate bugs.

The Shaggai Insect was silent for a moment.

"There is a way. I can temporarily semi-dematerialize the structure of your hand, making it just like our body structure. That way, you can pass directly through human tissue to touch parasites of our kind, while preventing them from tattling on me to the ones in your brain."

Xie Feng spread the five fingers of his left hand as a faint, delicate layer of silver-white magic threads surged out from his Meridians, covering the metacarpals and phalanges of his hand layer by layer.

The innate immaterial property of the Insects from Shaggai temporarily manifested on his hand structure.

His hand became lighter, turning into a semi-transparent texture that was harder to catch with the naked eye. Meanwhile, Fang Jian continued speaking, his tone shifting from anger to a formulaic admonition, declaring, "This subject does so for Your Majesty's safety, the safety of Jiuzhou, and the stability of the Realm..."

Standing at the head of the military officials, Duke Yong looked at Xie Feng's left hand—which was growing increasingly transparent and less solid—his brows furrowing tighter and tighter.

He had no idea what kind of Cultivation Technique this was.

Xie Feng moved.

A Fourth Realm Cultivator's speed was extremely fast. Just as Fang Jian uttered the last word of "safety of Jiuzhou," Xie Feng was already standing right in front of him.

Not a single official in the court managed to react. All they saw was his black hooded robe flash in the middle of the hall before Xie Feng's fully semi-transparent left fingers spread apart and plunged straight into the center of Fang Jian's forehead, knuckles sinking right into the skull!

"That'll shut your yap!" Xie Feng blurted out with a strange cry.

Fang Jian felt no physical sensation of his skin or bones being pierced at all. His eyes bulged so wide that his whites were completely exposed under the light of the hall's eternal candles; his lips twitched, but he could no longer utter a complete word.

He was nearly scared out of his wits.

"How dare you!" Duke Yong roared furiously, his right hand already gripping the hilt of the sword at his belt.

Spiritual power at the Peak of the Sixth Realm erupted from within him like a tidal wave. The blue-gold brick floor of the Hall of Supreme Harmony couldn't withstand the immense pressure, and fine, dense cracks began to spread outward in all directions from beneath his feet.

Just as the sword was being unsheathed, Xie Feng had already pulled his left hand out of Fang Jian's head.

In his hand, he held a pigeon-sized insectoid creature.

The creature was covered in triangular scales, its ten thin legs covered in shiny black tentacles thrashing wildly in the air. Its three mouths opened simultaneously, emitting a screech outside the range of human hearing.

"Traitor! You bug traitor!!"

Xie Feng backhanded the bug with a slap, and casually slapped Fang Jian as well while he was at it.

Xie Feng suspended it in mid-air, silver-white magic threads already wrapping around its abdomen, suppressing its neural stinger whips.

Fang Jian's neurons were completely undamaged. Standing rooted to the spot, he babbled confusedly, looking dazed before suddenly reaching out to touch his forehead, then the back of his head.

There was no wound, no blood, not even a scratch on his skin.

He just didn't know why his face burned with a stinging pain.

When Xie Feng precisely extracted the Shaggai Insect from the extremely narrow gap between neurons and synapses, he deliberately avoided all critical blood vessels and gray matter, even using magic to peel away that layer of alkaloid membrane along the way.

Although you only berated me because of the bug, while you may be spared the death penalty, you won't escape punishment.

Xie Feng thought to himself, feeling that slapping Fang Jian in passing was definitely the right move.

Duke Yong's sword was drawn only halfway out, the blade gleaming with a chilling light under the eternal candles.

Elder Zhou silently glided out from the direction of the side hall, landing below the Shaggai Insect. He leaned in to observe closely, his graying eyebrows furrowing deeper and deeper.

The entire court fell dead silent; the faces of a few young civil officials in the back row were as pale as the white marble bases of the hall's pillars.

The secretarial officer who was kneeling beside Fang Jian just now was now slumped on the floor, the middle-aged man's expression looking like he had seen a ghost.

Although the low-Realm officials couldn't see clearly, the high-Realm officials saw everything vividly.

Xie Feng raised the Shaggai Insect higher so everyone in the hall could see the creature, its three mouths still hissing.

Immediately, two people turned around and began fleeing!

Then, a bright yellow figure intercepted both of them in an instant!

Elder Zhou was already standing at the entrance.

"My two beloved ministers? The court session is not over yet; where are you heading?"

The Emperor on the Dragon Throne smiled faintly, his eyes flashing with cold menace.