Dawnless Sovereign-Chapter 125 (1): Kill!

With the assessment looming, everyone at the Unmatched Escort Agency was even more polite than before.

Even if a beggar were to walk past outside, someone would rush out of the escort agency to stuff some food and money into their hands, and they were donating huge sums of money to help the poor and underprivileged, truly living up to their status as glowing role models.

In fact, Zheng Yunqi and the others had pooled together funds for an enormous donation for the disaster relief efforts some time ago, and that had earned them another brocade banner from the Hall of Protectionists.

Fang Che was continuing to work hard in his cultivation, and he had already reached the pinnacle of the Warlord tier.

Thankfully, the King tier bottleneck proved to be very resilient, and Fang Che was able to take advantage of it to compress his spirit qi as much as possible.

He was taking in vast volumes of spirit qi every single day, bolstering his dantian further and further, and he was also keeping up with his saber, sword, spear, and halberd training.

At the moment, he was heavily reliant on his sword and saber, but he was still lacking suitable cultivation arts for his halberd and spear when those two were supposed to be his trump cards.

At the very least, he could go to the cave and bask in the spear intent there every day, and that provided some direction for his spear training, but as for the halberd, he still only had the foundational forms enclosed in the Boundless Sutra.

He had no future direction whatsoever, and he was beginning to consider giving up on the halberd altogether.

Whenever he visited the cave, he was reminded of what he was forced to do to Zuo Guanglie and his band of brothers, but he still had to go.

Thankfully, he now had a wife, and even though he couldn't be completely open and transparent with her, she was still a warm and intimate influence on his life.

Every night, he would bathe himself after a long and grueling day, then go to bed with Ye Meng, and having been a virgin for the entirety of his previous life, all of his pent-up enthusiasm for sexual activities had Ye Meng falling asleep from exhaustion every single night.

Ye Meng felt like she had less time to cultivate, but somehow, she was advancing very quickly in her cultivation base, having already reached the fifth-rank Lord tier.

Unbeknownst to her, Fang Che was using the Boundless Sutra to cleanse her meridians every night after she fell asleep, and that, in conjunction with the effects of the Dual Cultivation Fruit, had resulted in a complete cleansing of her meridians.

Fang Che wasn't doing this solely to help Ye Meng's meridians. At the same time, he was also using her as a guinea pig of sorts to see if he could use his Boundless Sutra to suppress other people's Five Spirit Parasites.

At the moment, Fang Che could channel his Boundless Sutrai into the meridians of others, but not on a permanent basis.

As soon as his spirit qi was withdrawn, the influence of the Boundless Sutra would be gone, which meant that only through constant spirit qi transmission would he be able to maintain a long-term state of Five Spirit Parasite suppression.

Everything was already on the right track in the Hall of Protectionists, so Fang Che was able to have much more freedom. He would go out every day under the guise of patrolling the streets, not even taking Tang Zheng with him, and after he left, he would quickly go to one of his six houses, then reemerge shortly thereafter as Starlight to go to the branch helm.

With the main church's assessment imminent, Fang Che didn't dare to get complacent, either. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Compared with his work at the Hall of Protectionists, this was much more important.

Whenever Fang Che adopted the identity of Starlight, he would take off the protective undershirt given to him by Chen Yin and leave it at home.

The undershirt had been given by Chen Yin to Night Demon, and if he were caught wearing it, then he would instantly be exposed.

***

On this day, Zheng Yunqi was running a combat prowess examination at the time of Fang Che's arrival.

As always, Jiang Bin was ranked dead last, and he was hung up on one of the Eighteen Levels of Hell.

One of the people to join him was Tian Wanqing, who had encountered some very unfortunate circumstances. While out on an escort assignment a few days ago, he had encountered a particularly formidable group of bandits.

During the ensuing battle, he sustained severe injuries that dealt a huge blow to his combat prowess, dropping him all the way down to the bottom eighteen.

Everyone was gathered together with excited and eager expressions to watch the show.

The eighteen bottom-ranked escorts were standing under the Eighteen Levels of Hell, looking as if they wanted to die.

Zheng Yunqi wore a serious expression as he asked in a loud voice, "Are any of you not wearing underwear? You have a chance to tell me now before I strip off your clothes and administer your punishment!"

No one said anything.

"Do any of you object to this punishment."

Once again, the eighteen escorts remained silent.

"Let the punishment begin! Do you want to strip yourselves, or do you want us to help you?"

"We'll do it ourselves!"

The eighteen escorts immediately began stripping themselves. If they were to enlist the "help" of others, then they were likely going to be torn to shreds!

All of a sudden, everyone erupted into laughter and began wolf-whistling loudly.

As it turned out, Tian Wanqing was wearing a pair of bright red underpants, which stood out like a sore thumb among the lineup of black underpants.

"I had my birthday this month," Tian Wanqing explained, his face bright red with embarrassment to match his underpants, but that did nothing to stop everyone from laughing at him.

"Enforcers, take your positions!" Zhao Wushang yelled, and eighteen burly men stepped forward with malicious looks on their faces.

"Tie them up!"

The eighteen escorts were quickly hung upside-down from the Eighteen Levels of Hell.

"Begin! The first victim will be Jiang Bin, with Zhao Wubai acting as enforcer!"

Zhao Wubai strode forward with a sinister grin, while Jiang Bin implored, "Please be careful not to whip off my underpants..."

"I didn't think of that!" Zhao Wubai exclaimed as his eyes lit up.

"Don't you dare, Zhao Wubai!" Jiang Bin wailed.

Crack!

Zhao Wubai's first whip strike landed squarely on Jiang Bin's underpants.

Before long, his underpants were torn to shreds, revealing a dense and dark bush...

All of the girls hurriedly covered their eyes in embarrassment, but it was unclear whether any of them were sneaking glances through the gaps between their fingers.

Even after Jiang Bin's punishment was over, he continued to be left hanging in the nude, and he would only be let down once everyone else's punishments had also been administered.

The six hundred or so spectators were cheering like it was the spring festival!

"That's it! It's almost come off! Just a little more!"

"Where are you aiming, Zhao Wubai? Aim for the middle!"

"Give me the whip! I'll do a much better job!"

"I can see it! Ha! Look at that tiny little thing! It looks like a baby carrot!"

"Why don't you give it a bite?"

Starlight had already been here for quite some time, and he was looking on with a perplexed expression.

Isn't this meant to be a punishment? Why are they celebrating it like some festival?

Tian Wanqing was the final victim, and his bright red underpants were suspended in mid-air the entire time like a red lantern.

Even before his whipping commenced, hundreds of stones had already been pelted into his backside.

"Just you all wait! This is the only time I'm ever going to be up here! You better pray you never get hung up here!"

The more threats he delivered, the more rocks he was pelted with.

Some of the guys were aiming for his butthole, trying to wedge a rock inside.

In response, Tian Wanqing tightened his buttcheeks to catch a rock, using it as a makeshift buttplug to protect himself, yet his triumphant smile was quickly erased as someone yelled, "Aim for that rock!"

***

Finally, the punishments were completed, and all of the victims hurriedly put on their clothes as soon as they were let down.

Everyone was guffawing like hyenas, only to turn around and discover Starlight standing behind them with a dark look on his face.

"Head Escort!"

Everyone hurriedly extended respectful bows toward Fang Che.

"Who invented this torture method?" Starlight snapped.

"W... Wasn't it you, Head Escort?" Zheng Yunqi asked.

Starlight faltered slightly upon hearing this.

"I suppose I did. It seems to be inspiring a lot of joy."

"Not only that, but ever since this torture method was introduced, everyone's been advancing rapidly in their cultivation bases, and it's all thanks to you, Head Escort!" Zheng Yunqi said with a look of admiration on his face.

Starlight didn't know what to say.

"Alright, once you're done here, I want all of the deputy head escorts and captains to come see me for a meeting."

With that, Starlight made his way into the main hall, and as he did so, he began contemplating if it were possible to somehow replicate this in the Hall of Protectionists.

It seemed both plausible and unfeasible at the same time.

All of the female administrators under his command were quite weak, so they were most likely going to be the ones punished every single time, and that would definitely not be appropriate.

Before long, around a dozen people entered the main hall to join him.

One of them was Tian Wanqing, who was one of the captains, and everyone instantly burst into laughter at the sight of him.

"Stop laughing! This is a meeting! We have to be serious!" Tian Wanqing urged, his face red with embarrassment.

"Where did you buy your underpants from, Wanqing? They're a very nice color," Starlight remarked, and the ensuing chorus of laughter threatened to raise the roof!

"Please spare me, Head Escort," Tian Wanqing implored.

"Alright, let's get down to business. How many escort parties are out on assignments right now?"

"At the moment, there are twenty-two ongoing escort assignments, and eighteen of those parties should be able to return today. As for the remaining four, they should be back either tonight or just past midnight. Over the coming five days, we have 372 escort assignments, amounting to a total revenue of around 1.52 million taels of silver. That number should be able to exceed two million in the five days after that."