Chapter 264: Tanking Salted Fish, Cleaning Curse (5k)

In the beginning, Gauss Weil was caught completely off guard by Wen Yan’s tongue-lashing and ended up tongue-tied, but once he calmed down and realized things were actually even worse than Wen Yan made them out to be—

Gauss Weil’s fighting spirit vanished altogether; his whole body just reeked of a lazy bum who’s given up on life.

To put it bluntly, this pathetic Pain Demon Lord thing—forget it, who cares.

Wen Yan was right, from now on he’d just go by Gauss Weil, and not mention the Pain Demon Lord title ever again. He felt embarrassed even thinking about it.

Out on the chaotic streets of Virtue City, the post-incident cleanup crew started to move in one after another.

All the devil corpses were taken away—precious materials, after all, no sense letting them go to waste.

The trashed streets were being repeatedly scrubbed and disinfected, while even the sewers had already been violently purged once beforehand—probably not a single live cockroach left down there now.

Anything washed down the drains would arrive at the wastewater treatment plant, where the next round of decontamination would take place.

The Scorching Sun Department, after years of experience, might not be the best at handling high-level threats, but when it comes to disaster management involving lots of people and cleaning up city-wide paranormal messes, they’re top notch—absolute leaders in the field.

Everything proceeded according to protocol, strictly ensuring that no weird creatures would mysteriously pop up in the sewers at the end.

All of this, of course, came courtesy of lessons learned from certain "test cases" overseas. The Scorching Sun Department always absorbed others’ hard-earned experience.

The post-incident cleanup unfolded in a perfectly organized fashion; they even shot a few short local videos to serve as "evidence of hazardous chemical cleanup."

Truth is, quite a few people had been keeping an eye on this place these past days—Scorching Sun had long since hijacked all cameras and surveillance equipment in the area.

Anything outside their control was jammed, but even so, sometimes a little something could still slip out; after all, this was a hell of a scene.

To handle stuff like this, the Scorching Sun Department had recruited a ton of top retired talent from the Battle Bureau, specializing in exactly these kinds of coverups.

No point in trying to refute the rumors; better to muddy the waters and let the truth and lies blend together.

The only thing they officially debunked was the story of that patient supposedly killed by chemical poisoning and multi-organ failure—using that, they seized a few would-be rumor-mongers as sacrificial scapegoats.

That close-up video wasn’t what it seemed—the "patient" was actually Scorching Sun’s own operative, injured by poison during a covert mission.

Officially, of course, the agent was a government employee, wounded in the line of unspeakable duty.

He’d actually been hospitalized two days before the so-called "hazardous chemical truck explosion."

Tidy, plausible, with video and hospital records as evidence—the narrative was shut down, then they used the arrested troublemaker to promote the whole "don’t trust or spread rumors" message.

After all the drama of the past two days, and with everyone’s attention focused here, anyone trying to stir things up again just wasn’t going to get traction.

It’s easy to keep the rumors snowballing at first, but after being smacked down this hard, nobody’s going to fall for the same trick again—at least not on the same story.

Wen Yan didn’t bother with any of the fallout—honestly, that whole brawl hadn’t had much to do with him to begin with.

If the Seventh Great-Uncle Master and Eighth Uncle-Master Ancestor hadn’t shown up in person, tossing him a chance to play errand boy—and if it weren’t for the Scorching Sun power he carried, making him the perfect stand-in—

The only thing he might’ve seen would’ve been Gauss Weil getting shipped off back home, vowing as he left, "I’ll be back..."

But now, everything was wrapped up—budget burned, a massive mess made—but not a single person had died because of it. Cai Qidong’s smile hadn’t left his face for days.

Only three patients had passed away in the hospital in the past two days, and honestly, all three were already at death’s door and their families had been bracing for the worst that same day.

As for ruined streets, damaged buildings and such—those are just money problems, and money solves those no problem.

Just the Changfeng Group’s donation for disaster relief alone was more than ten times what the aftermath would cost.

And as an unexpected bonus, during this operation, Virtue City got a Heavenly Master Avatar officially enshrined—so ordinary folks would reap unseen benefits for years to come.

As for the rest of the money, Cai Qidong didn’t plan to funnel it back into Scorching Sun’s budget—he’d just slowly spend it on the folks here, a little bonus for everyone who got swept up in this mess.

Amid all the chaos and noise, Wen Yan finally made it home.

For reasons known only to Cai Heizi, he hadn’t rushed to lock Gauss Weil up somewhere safe—instead, he left him in Wen Yan’s charge.

Watching Gauss Weil sitting there intently reading a picture book with phonetic annotations, Wen Yan couldn’t help rolling his eyes.

If not for Cai Heizi promising he could pick something from the warehouse—and Wen Yan actually wanting to help Sparrow Cat get that item—

If Gauss Weil hadn’t been knocked down so hard that he lost all his spirit and had his power sealed—

No way he would’ve taken this job.

Good thing he was only a contractor; otherwise, Cai Heizi would absolutely work him to death.

"Man, it’s wild—this world actually had ten suns once? And some big shot could shoot down nine of them? How come you all seem so weak now?"

"The Last Dharma has arrived, you ever heard of it?"

"Nope."

Wen Yan thought for a moment.

"Other places have other names for it, like the Twilight of the Gods. You know that one?"

"Oh, that one I’ve heard."

"Our world only started picking up steam again about a decade ago."

Gauss Weil’s face grew solemn and respectful.