Chapter 59: Plan To Search

Chapter 59: Chapter 59: Plan To Search

After walking for quite some time, they finally arrived at their destination—the temple.

However, the moment they approached, they realized they were not the first to arrive. Another group had already gotten there ahead of them and was currently speaking with several monks from the temple.

Sui Sui’s gaze fell upon the familiar blue robes among them, and his expression immediately soured.

As if sensing their arrival, the group turned in their direction. Sure enough, it was Lin Fan and the other disciples from the Wenjian Sect.

"It seems Cultivator Qingya and your group are here as well?" Lin Fan was the first to speak. He greeted Luo Qingya and the others warmly enough, yet completely ignored Sui Sui and Yizhou, as though the two of them were not even there.

Sui Sui watched him and couldn’t help but think that this person was truly two-faced. Just looking at him was annoying enough to make his teeth itch.

Since Lin Fan and Luo Qingya’s group were occupied with their own conversation, Sui Sui and Yizhou decided to investigate on their own first. They approached one of the monks and began asking about the funerals held at the temple, including the procedures and rituals involved.

The monk patiently explained that the funeral would take place at night. The ritual would be presided over by the abbot, with the other monks gathered around the casket. They would chant prayers to guide the deceased’s soul toward the afterlife, offering incense and paying their final respects before the body was cremated.

Once the rites were complete, the body would be reduced to ash and returned to the earth, while the monks prayed for the deceased to rest in peace.

When Sui Sui and Yizhou heard that the body would be cremated, they realized they had arrived at a fortunate time. If they had come any later, there would be nothing left for them to inspect.

With this in mind, they asked the monk if they could see the body. Their request, however, was firmly rejected.

"Apologies, fellow cultivators, but the body is sacred. It should not be desecrated after death. We will not allow anyone to see the bodies. This is out of respect for the souls of the deceased," the monk said firmly.

His gaze lingered on Sui Sui and Yizhou as though he regarded the two of them as nothing more than troublemakers. Without giving them any room to argue, he turned and walked away.

Seeing that they had apparently offended the monk, Sui Sui and Yizhou could only step aside and discuss their next move among themselves.

"So, Senior Brother, since they won’t allow us to see the body, what should we do now?" Sui Sui asked, glancing at Yizhou curiously.

Yizhou remained silent for a moment, his gaze following the monk who had just walked away. Then he calmly said, "Since they won’t let us investigate openly, we can only take matters into our own hands."

Sui Sui stared at him in disbelief.

"You don’t mean we’re going to sneak in and look, right?"

He really didn’t want to do that. For one, he agreed that the dead should not be disturbed. More importantly, Luo Qingya’s earlier talk about ghosts was still fresh in his mind. The thought of sneaking into a funeral temple at night to inspect a corpse was already unsettling enough without having to wonder whether something might appear in the darkness.

Yizhou glanced at Sui Sui’s increasingly uneasy expression and seemed to understand exactly what was going through his mind.

"What? Scared to go?"

Sui Sui blinked, caught off guard. A trace of embarrassment crept into his expression.

Well, it was perfectly normal to be scared, wasn’t it? Even a grown man could be frightened. What if they encountered something horrifying inside?

His mind immediately conjured up scenes from the horror movies he had watched in his past life. He had rarely watched them, but the few he had seen were more than enough to leave a lasting impression.

Just thinking about it made Sui Sui’s skin crawl.

"If you don’t want to, I can just go on my own," Yizhou said, teasing Sui Sui while leaving him an easy way out.

Yet Sui Sui couldn’t bring himself to take it. If he agreed, wouldn’t that make him look like a coward? He was a cultivator now. What was there to be afraid of?

Ghosts?

He refused to be scared of them.

In the end, Sui Sui steeled himself, and the two of them quietly made their plan.

Not long after, they saw Luo Qingya and her group finally making their way toward them. It seemed they had finished speaking with Lin Fan and the others.

When Luo Qingya reached them, she greeted them again, though the exasperated look on her face did not go unnoticed.

"What’s with that look, Sister Qingya? Did they give you a hard time?" Sui Sui asked.

One of the junior sisters behind her immediately laughed and answered on Luo Qingya’s behalf. "Haha, that Lin Fan was far too talkative. Sister Qingya got annoyed with him."

"Yeah," another junior sister chimed in. "He kept telling us all sorts of things, clearly trying to hint that he wanted us to join their team. We rejected him again, but that cultivator called Lin Fan just kept rambling on and on about how impressive he was. Hahaha!"

The girls burst into laughter, and even Luo Qingya let out a faint laugh, seemingly amused despite her earlier annoyance.

"So? What exactly did they talk about?" Sui Sui asked.

"Well, apparently, they’re following the same lead as us and have the same suspicions about this place. It seems they’ve already gathered quite a bit of evidence to support their theory. Anyway, long story short, they invited us to attend the funeral tonight. They said there would be a good show to watch," Luo Qingya explained.

Sui Sui was slightly surprised.

Had they really already found clues?

And were they actually about to uncover something tonight?

More importantly, they seemed to suspect that the temple was the culprit. That was completely different from the conclusion Sui Sui and Yizhou had reached regarding the Matchmaker Association.

What exactly had they discovered to make them so certain?

Sui Sui exchanged a glance with Yizhou. For now, there was nothing they could do but wait until nightfall and see what kind of "good show" Lin Fan had prepared.

The group continued chatting as they waited for the funeral to begin.

—

On the other side, Lin Fan watched as Luo Qingya walked toward Sui Sui and Yizhou. A strange glint flickered in his eyes as he watched the three groups come together.

It was them again.

Lin Fan still couldn’t understand why Luo Qingya and Luo Qingxue were so close to those two bumpkins. He had already noticed it several times, and every time he saw them together, it irritated him.

Still, he had to admit that he was somewhat surprised that Sui Sui and Yizhou had managed to trace the clues to this place so quickly.

Unfortunately for them, they were still far behind.

With his golden finger—the knowledge of the original plot—Lin Fan already knew exactly where to investigate and what they would find. He had known from the beginning that the true culprits were the monks of this temple.

The monks had secretly been colluding with demons from outside the city, conducting illegal dealings involving dead bodies and soul refinement. Their business had declined in recent years, leaving them with fewer corpses to sell and fewer souls to refine. Eventually, they resorted to killing people in the city themselves, turning the deaths into a means of both reviving their business and obtaining more bodies and souls.

And after following the original plot, Lin Fan had already gathered all the evidence he needed.

Tonight, he would expose everything.

This was his chance to show everyone the true bearing of a protagonist.

Just imagining Luo Qingya and Luo Qingxue’s expressions when they witnessed his intelligence and ability made Lin Fan’s heart itch with anticipation.

Surely, after tonight, the two sisters would finally see him in a different light.

He could hardly wait.