Chapter 65: Pure blood

Chapter 65: Chapter 65: Pure blood

Back in the present.

"We went to a hidden place inside the temple, and guess what we found? They weren’t cremating the bodies at all. They had been secretly smuggling the remains of the dead away."

The moment Luo Qingya’s words fell, a wave of shock swept through the crowd. Even the monks who had remained composed until now could no longer hide their unease.

Whispers broke out among the people gathered around them, but the family reacted the most strongly.

The old madam’s face turned pale, tears already spilling down her cheeks.

"Then... where is my son’s body?" Her voice trembled as she looked at Luo Qingya. "Where did they take my Bo’er?"

"Don’t worry, Madam. Fortunately, we were able to retrieve his body safely." With that, Luo Qingya gestured toward the disciples behind her.

Several disciples stepped forward once again, carrying coffins. But this time, it was not just one.

One coffin after another was carefully placed before the crowd, their sheer number making the atmosphere grow increasingly heavy.

"Look carefully, everyone. These are the bodies of people the temple claimed had already been cremated. Yet when we searched the temple, we found every one of them hidden in a secret room. They were not cremating the dead at all. They were secretly processing their bodies for other purposes."

Luo Qingya’s voice was calm, but her words carried enough weight to silence the surrounding murmurs.

Luo Qingya did not directly reveal that the bodies had been intended to be refined into corpse oil. Instead, she gave the families a vague answer, unwilling to make their grief even more painful. To have their bodies secretly taken and refined into corpse oil—a substance often associated with unorthodox practices and used to harm others—was a desecration that many found difficult to accept.

One by one, the coffins were opened.

The family members stepped forward to examine the bodies, and before long, they were able to confirm that the deceased were indeed the people the temple had claimed to have cremated.

The two monks were then brought forward for questioning. Having been caught with the evidence in front of them, they did not dare deny their involvement and immediately confessed.

"It was the Abbot. He was the one who told us to do it," one of the monks said hastily.

"Yes, it was him!" the other monk quickly added. "He was the one who instigated us. He said these dead people would be of no use anyway, so why not use their bodies to earn some extra money?"

The two monks pointed their fingers toward the Abbot one after another, eager to shift the blame onto him.

Their words only deepened the unease among the crowd.

Many exchanged uneasy glances as an old rumor resurfaced in their minds—the rumors of people who had gone missing after coming to the temple.

Could those disappearances have something to do with what they had uncovered today?

The thought alone sent a chill through the crowd.

How could something like this have been happening right under their noses?

"Preposterous! It must have been those two wicked monks acting on their own!"

Seeing that the situation was rapidly slipping out of his control, the Abbot immediately pointed toward the two monks beside him, trying to push all the blame onto them.

Sui Sui’s brows drew together. "Acting on their own?"

His voice was loud enough for everyone to hear and the disbelief in it was unmistakable. He stepped forward, his gaze turning cold as he stared at the Abbot. "When you perform a funeral ritual, don’t you have to guide the deceased’s soul into the underworld?"

The Abbot’s expression stiffened.

Sui Sui continued, his words growing sharper with every sentence.

"If the body in the coffin had already been replaced, then there would have been no soul inside it. You were the ones performing the ritual. How could you possibly not have noticed?"

The surrounding crowd fell silent.

His question was simple, but it struck directly at the weakest point in the Abbot’s excuse.

Sui Sui’s eyes narrowed.

"Or are you saying that you were performing the funeral rites without even knowing whether the person you were supposedly sending to the underworld was actually there?"

The Abbot’s face turned ashen.

For a moment, he had no answer.

Seeing that there was no longer any way to talk himself out of the situation, the Abbot’s eyes flashed with desperation. His hand suddenly moved toward his waist, and a string of Buddhist prayer beads appeared in his palm.

Spiritual energy surged.

He was going to flee.

But before he could take even a single step—

Whoosh!

A sharp sound tore through the air.

A streak of burning light flashed past.

The Abbot’s body suddenly jerked.

A sword had pierced straight through his shoulder, the force of the strike driving him several steps backward before he crashed heavily to the ground. The prayer beads in his hand shattered with a sharp crack, several beads scattering across the stone floor.

"Gah!"

Blood spilled from the corner of the abbot’s mouth.

The surrounding monks finally panicked when they saw this scene "Run!"

Several of them turned to flee, but before they could get far, figures from the Vermillion Moon Pavilion moved.

The female disciples stepped forward almost simultaneously, their movements swift and decisive. One after another, the fleeing monks were struck down and knocked unconscious.

Most of the temple’s monks were only at the Qi Refining Realm. Against cultivators who had already reached the Foundation Building Realm or Golden Core Formation, they had no chance of escaping.

The commotion gradually subsided.

Then, from the shadows behind the crowd, a dark-robed figure slowly emerged.

His long robes seemed to blend into the darkness, and his steps were unhurried, each one carrying an inexplicable sense of pressure.

It was Yizhou.

His expression remained as calm as ever, as though the chaos before him had nothing to do with him.

With a slight flick of his wrist, the sword embedded in the Abbot’s shoulder trembled violently. In the next instant, it tore free and shot through the air, flying straight back toward him.

Yizhou raised his hand and caught the sword effortlessly.

The Abbot stared at Yizhou with a mixture of hatred and fear. His face was pale, and the calm composure he had maintained earlier was nowhere to be seen. He was clearly at the end of his rope.

"You! You humans will pay for this! This isn’t over!" His voice was hoarse with fury.

The next instant, the Abbot violently compressed the last remnants of spiritual energy within his body and forced them into his palms. The energy that erupted from him was no longer pure spiritual power. It had turned black and viscous, writhing like smoke beneath his skin as a dense demonic aura flooded the temple. The air grew cold, and an oppressive, bloodthirsty presence spread through the hall.

Everyone present felt the terrifying demonic energy.

Even to this day, demons remained a feared and hated existence in the Human Realm. For years, their activities had become increasingly rare, largely because they had been suppressed by both the Mythical Beast Race and the forces of the Human Realm. Yet their innate power remained terrifying.

In terms of raw prowess, demons were naturally stronger than most human cultivators of the same cultivation level. Their strength, physical bodies, and innate abilities gave them an advantage that could not be easily overcome, which was precisely why the Human Realm had never truly let down its guard against them.

Without even realizing it, they began to retreat, their bodies instinctively moving away from the Abbot. Fear spread through the crowd as they stared at the black aura twisting around him.

"He’s a demon!"

"That isn’t spiritual energy!"

"Run!"

With a feral roar, the Abbot thrust both palms toward Yizhou.

Yet Yizhou did not even flinch.

Just as the Abbot’s attack was about to reach him, Yizhou’s figure shifted slightly, effortlessly avoiding the strike.

The Abbot’s pupils contracted.

A flash of sword light followed.

STAB!

The sword pierced through his other shoulder.

The force of the strike sent the Abbot crashing to the ground, the blade pinning him firmly against the earth. Blood quickly seeped into his robe as he gritted his teeth against the pain.

"Damn you, human!"

His eyes were filled with hatred as he struggled beneath the blade. Yet instead of weakening, the demonic aura around him grew increasingly violent.

Yizhou’s gaze suddenly sharpened as he realized something was wrong.

The spiritual energy within the Abbot’s body was not dispersing after the failed attack. Instead, the remaining energy was rapidly converging toward his core.

His expression changed slightly.

The Abbot was not trying to attack him.

He was going to detonate his own cultivation!

Self-detonation was a desperate technique in which a cultivator forcibly shattered the balance within their own dantian and released all of their accumulated cultivation at once. The resulting power could far exceed what they were normally capable of unleashing, but the price was their own life. Once the process began, there was almost no possibility of survival.

Even a cultivator at the Foundation Building Realm could produce a devastating explosion by sacrificing everything they had cultivated and their remaining vitality.

The Abbot clearly intended to take everyone around him with him.

Seeing this, Yizhou moved at a terrifying speed.

Before the Abbot could complete the technique, something suddenly changed in the air.

A terrifying pressure descended upon the abbot, Yet strangely, no one else seemed to notice it.

Only the Abbot felt it.

As someone who had practiced demonic cultivation, his senses were far more sensitive to the presence of other demons. What he felt was not the oppressive might of a higher-level cultivator, nor was it the suppression of spiritual energy.

It was fear.

A fear that came from the deepest part of his bloodline, an instinctive terror that he could neither suppress nor understand.

His entire body froze.

Before the Abbot could even comprehend what was happening, Yizhou had already appeared directly in front of him.

His palm struck against the Abbot’s chest.

Bang!

The force of the blow surged straight into his body.

The unstable demonic energy within the Abbot violently trembled before being forcibly suppressed. The energy that had been gathering around his core scattered in an instant, disrupting the self-detonation he had been preparing.

The Abbot’s body went limp.

His eyes rolled back as consciousness rapidly faded.

Yet in the final moment before darkness consumed his mind, one thought flashed through his head.

Why... is there a Pureblood Demon here?

Yizhou looked down at the dying Abbot.

After realizing what the man had been planning, he had instinctively released a trace of his own demonic energy, carefully concealing it beneath his spiritual aura so that no one else would notice.

Unfortunately, the Abbot had died too quickly.

Yizhou’s gaze lingered on him for a moment.

What a pity.

He had originally intended to interrogate him properly. From the Abbot’s reaction alone, it was clear that he knew far more than the other monks. There was a good chance he had a much closer connection to the real culprit behind everything.

Now, however, that opportunity was gone.

Yizhou withdrew his thoughts and turned away.

"If you won’t say, then I’ll figure it out myself."

Not long after, hurried footsteps came from outside the temple.

People from the City Lord’s Mansion arrived one after another. They had already been informed of what had happened and quickly took the monks into custody. The evidence was secured, while the recovered bodies were also taken away to be properly handled.

Once everything had been dealt with, the commotion gradually subsided.

The people who had gathered at the temple slowly dispersed, and before long, only Sui Sui and Yizhou remained.

Sui Sui walked over to Yizhou and looked at him curiously.

"Senior Brother, what are you thinking about?"

Throughout the entire confrontation, Sui Sui had remained on the sidelines. He knew that Yizhou was more than capable of handling the situation, so there had been no need for him to interfere.

Yizhou was silent for a moment before answering.

"I’m thinking about how to catch the real culprit."

Sui Sui paused, remembering that the matter was still not over yet

"Then... do you have an idea who it is?"

"Mn." Yizhou glanced toward the direction of the City Lord’s Mansion.

"I have a guess."

He turned and began walking.

"Let’s go to the City Lord’s Mansion. There’s something I need to confirm."

After a brief pause, he added,

"If my guess is right, we should be able to wrap this up soon."