At night, the alarm blared at the Nanwu County Scorching Sun Department's station.

The people who'd been tracking and monitoring the Mountain Lord suddenly discovered that all the cameras near him had failed at once—every surveillance feed turned into static.

Losing the trail basically meant things were starting to spiral out of control, so the alarm was triggered immediately.

Cai Qidong hadn't been home for days; he'd just been eating and sleeping at the office the whole time, so he could handle emergencies and give orders at any moment.

When he learned the Mountain Lord had gone to the Dragon Mother Temple and then the cameras cut out, a bad feeling crawled up his spine.

"Was it only the nearby cameras that went down?"

"Yes."

"Expand the range. Look for other cameras that have gone down."

"Found it. The area where the surveillance failed is spreading southward."

The big screen immediately showed a real-time map, with the affected areas marked in red.

One look, and Cai Qidong instantly realized the Mountain Lord was heading to the West River.

"Call and confirm—are all personnel in place?"

"They're close by. Within half an hour, everyone can arrive."

"Double-check—did the upstream folks do all the prep we asked for?"

In thirty seconds, someone answered.

"Confirmed. Every reservoir upstream is at a historic low, all the dams are open, and water levels are already below the minimum."

"Inform upstream. Switch to contingency plan three. Close the gates, store water.

Get all the reservoirs, dams, and diversion points on it together. Just cut off the flow entirely.

The river's now under temporary control.

With that place as the center, within a 300-kilometer radius, everyone—stand by."

After all that, Cai Qidong personally made a call to double-check whether the two experts from Dragon Tiger Mountain were nearby.

Cai Qidong's face was stone-cold as he stood in the command hall, giving the map a hard stare.

The Mountain Lord was a powerful threat—deadly as hell—but honestly, the Scorching Sun Department didn't see him as the biggest problem.

The real threat, ironically, was what lived in the water system.

If you talked destructive power or reach, no matter how fierce the Mountain Lord was, he couldn't compete with a massive flood.

The history of Divine Land's flood control, the ancient wars against the things in the water, went back to mythic times before anyone was writing stuff down.

All along, as far as the Scorching Sun Department was concerned, the West River Dragon God deserved more attention than the Mountain Lord.

That's precisely why Cai Qidong had sent Wen Yan to chat with the West River Dragon God—so long as the Dragon God stayed chill, the Mountain Lord was just a high-priority problem child.

No matter how nasty a sniper rifle is, even headshotting everyone, it's still not as scary as an area-of-effect nuke.

Too bad the water system was absolute AOE central—almost all attacks were area killers.

Single-target damage might be low, but the coverage? Absolutely insane.

Back when Cai Qidong launched the Goddess Ascension plan, he'd only dared to try it here on the West River—an area that'd always been chaotic with loads of water gods, all over the place, but without any real monsters awakened—yet.

Try pulling that crap further north and no one in the Scorching Sun Department would have dared approve it—that's basically sharpening a knife on the heads of water element creatures.

The whole point was to act fast and cut through the mess, pick on the weak and fear the strong; get it done before the other water systems could even react, and no one would dare make a fuss.

From Wen Yan's last report, Cai Qidong had actually felt that King Guilong, while hot-headed and a little rebellious, was at least pretty filial—just like the legends said.

In ancient times, a lot of dynasties ruled by promoting filial piety. If you weren't filial, that was straight-up a one-vote veto.

If not for that, with King Guilong's temper, he wouldn't have only gotten his ass kicked—probably would've been hauled off to the Beheading Dragon Platform ages ago.

Time and again, the baddest dudes never managed to finish off King Guilong. In the end, what can you say? This guy's worst sin is needing a beating—not really deserving of death.

A couple of days ago, Cai Qidong was still sighing—whatever kind of education the Dragon Mother gave, at least King Guilong, even if he turned out weird-looking, didn't grow up crooked.

Filial is good. Filial kids are rarely all that bad.

But now, Cai Qidong just felt like they were absolutely, totally screwed.

That bastard Mountain Lord—last time he went, King Guilong barely managed to hold back, but this time, Mountain Lord went to the Dragon Mother Temple.

Cai Qidong didn't even need to think—he could guess it with his heel. That bastard Mountain Lord was playing dirty and about to seriously stir shit up.

This is fucking bullying honest people!

Has that guy no sense of shame at all!

Cai Qidong was about to explode—he'd racked his brains but never imagined Mountain Lord would sink this low, with literally no bottom line.

What the hell was he pushing King Guilong so hard for, anyway?

What could possibly be so damn important for him to go this far, throwing away all his pride just to push King Guilong?

...

Wen Yan was at home practicing when he got the call. After hearing what happened, he was entirely dumbfounded.

What the hell?

Has the Mountain Lord really sunk this low? Trying to use the Dragon Mother herself to threaten that big dumb King Guilong?

But then he thought: crap, they're really screwed.

That bastard Mountain Lord—sure, he's dirty, but he really did grab the softest spot.

King Guilong—there is no way in hell he'll put up with this.

Last time they chatted, even just a hypothetical scenario got King Guilong all flustered—no way he shrugs this off now.

If he can let this slide, he's not King Guilong anymore.

Wen Yan scrambled to grab his stuff, getting ready to head out.

He tried, at the same time, to call the phone he'd given King Guilong last time.

But obviously, down at the depth where the King Guilong Temple was located, there was zero signal—no way through at all.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.