Ding Ruoling actually smiled after getting surrounded.
"Hmm? Why are you smiling?" The demon felt something was wrong.
"He must be crazy after knowing that he will die here. Just kill him and continue with our plan."
"Yeah."
The demons were going to attack until the two demons that were supposed to block Ding Ruoling's path suddenly fell down to the ground, revealing the two humans that had been hiding behind them.
"Huh?!"
All five demons were startled as they couldn't help but realize that Ding Ruoling must be smiling because he knew them.
"No way. We were the ones tricked?"
The demons couldn't believe what they had just heard, but in addition to those two, there were six more people coming out of their hiding spot. It was the demons' turn to be surrounded.
"There are a lot of them." The demons began to panic. They might be able to fight one of them, but with this number, they had to defeat two of them at the same time if they wanted to escape from this place. And even if they could escape, they would suffer a heavy injury and a lot of them would have died.
"Do you think that the administrator was on your side?" Ding Ruoling's smile became even bigger.
It was at this time they realized that the charm didn't actually work. If the administrator could guide them to make that choice, he could definitely tell Ding Ruoling to gather more people to turn around the situation.
"Don't tell me…" The demon, who was controlling Hao Yu, gasped in shock. Hao Yu acted so well that she didn't realize that everything was fake.
"You guess that right. I gave the administrator a talisman to resist your charm ability and he intentionally led you all here. In this place, you have nowhere to go." Ding Ruoling pointed at them and shouted, "Kill them all!"
The clash between two groups had just begun. Each demon had to fight against two people except for the injured one as Ding Ruoling had her occupied with him.
The intense battle lasted for half an hour, but outnumbered, the demons had no chance to win.
Some of them were trying to run away, but once a demon died, the two cultivators that fought that demon earlier could help the other cultivators, creating an even more unbalanced battlefield.
On the other side, Hao Yu had been waiting for them the whole time.
His instruction was for the demons to prepare themselves in this forest. To loop around the city, they had to leave the city from the opposite direction and went around the city through the south. Meanwhile, the cultivators could easily lower the required time by going through the gate in the north that linked with the mountain. This way, they set up an ambush to those two demons first to thin out their number. There was no way two demons could win against eight cultivators of the same level.
This was Hao Yu's plan.
As long as the noisy battle had stopped, Hao Yu approached the battlefield carefully with his horse.
As expected, he saw a few demon corpses scattered around.
However, one of the cultivators soon appeared behind him and pointed his blade at his neck, asking, "Who are you?"
Hao Yu remained calm as if he wasn't scared of the cultivator. "I am Administrator Hao Yu."
As soon as he heard that name, the cultivator hurriedly sheathed his sword and became a bit more polite. "Then, may I ask what are you doing here?"
"I'm here to clean up the battlefield. I appreciate you, cultivators, for defeating the demon, but it's the city's job to keep this place clean. So, leave the disposing to us." Hao Yu explained.
"Wait a bit. I'll call the others." The cultivator nodded and disappeared for a few minutes.
He soon returned with Ding Ruoling and the other cultivators.
Hao Yu jumped off his horse and cupped his hands. "Congratulations, Esteemed Cultivators."
"This is thanks to you, Administrator Hao. Without you, we won't be able to kill them like this." Ding Ruoling nodded his head. "If you don't mind, I would like to thank you for your help."
"It's nothing. You don't have to thank me for such a thing since I'm just doing my job. With this, I can also return to the construction site to speed up the progress." Hao Yu smiled.
"Please. I have to thank you because I know that this mission will take at least a month, and it will be harder to find all of them after killing a few."
Seeing Ding Ruoling's insistence, Hao Yu reluctantly agreed, "I understand. But please take a rest and tend to your injury first."
"Of course. In that case, I hope that Administrator Hao doesn't mind if I repay you back in a certain brothel, right?" Ding Ruoling smirked.
Hao Yu understood what Ding Ruoling wanted and nodded his head. "Thank you. And please let me dispose of their bodies. There should be no problems, right?"
"Of course. We have confirmed their death, so if you want to take over, then be my guest. But please don't forget to inform the magistrate that we have fulfilled the mission."
"Certainly."
"In that case, we'll take a rest first. The corpses are over there…" Ding Ruoling pointed at a few locations since they had just finished their battle. They still had no time to gather the corpses.
"Yes, please take your time." Hao Yu politely bowed to them.
Ding Ruoling then led his group back to the city.
Unbeknownst to them, the corpses they gave Hao Yu would be a weapon that would claim a lot of their fellow cultivators' lives.
In fact, there were already two people gathered on the other side with a woman leading them. As soon as a few minutes passed, they began approaching Hao Yu, believing that the situation was under control.
Hao Yu smiled as he looked at them. "It seems that you've come."
One of them was obviously Ren Yexiang since she had been helping him in all matters regarding cultivators. However, the other person was actually Old Si.