Chapter 439: Identity

Li Musheng turned the treasure the large black cat had just presented to him over in his hands, paying no particular attention to the gazes fixed on him throughout the guesthouse's main hall.

At this point, the large black cat was the first to walk up to the Blood Spring Holy Lord and stop, extending a paw to point directly at him.

Li Musheng naturally understood what the cat meant, glanced at the Blood Spring Holy Lord, and asked evenly, "Is this yours?"

The white-haired Blood Spring Holy Lord was tense with nerves at this moment. Facing this great demon lord who had single-handedly subdued all three of them, his inner terror far exceeded even Ah Xiu's.

After all, he, the Rakshasa Holy Lord, and the Ghost Prison Holy Lord had all personally experienced the full extent of Li Musheng's terrifyingly extreme strength.

"This item is indeed this old man's."

The Blood Spring Holy Lord gave a nod without the slightest attempt at concealment. Naturally, he would never dare lie to Li Musheng under these circumstances.

"Tell me where it came from."

Li Musheng continued, asking the question.

At those words, the Blood Spring Holy Lord's expression shifted visibly. He instinctively glanced up at Li Musheng, and a trace of hesitation crossed his face.

Seeing that the Blood Spring Holy Lord wasn't answering promptly, Li Musheng glanced at him, raised an eyebrow, and said, "No need to bother explaining. I'll just have a look myself."

The moment the words fell, before the Blood Spring Holy Lord could even register what Li Musheng meant, his consciousness suddenly went completely blank.

In the eyes of the Rakshasa Holy Lord and the others, the Blood Spring Holy Lord had, for some unknown reason, suddenly become vacant-faced and utterly motionless, as still as a clay or wooden statue.

This was naturally because Li Musheng, finding it too tedious to bother with questioning, had directly applied the Soul-Searching Technique to the Blood Spring Holy Lord. After all, when questioned directly, the man might still lie, but under the Soul-Searching Technique, Li Musheng could learn whatever he wished without obstruction.

A moment later, the dazed Blood Spring Holy Lord slowly came back to himself. He shook his head instinctively, then his expression suddenly shifted, and he turned to look at Li Musheng with sharp wariness.

Though the Blood Spring Holy Lord had no idea what had just happened to him, his instincts told him it couldn't have been anything good.

At this point, having gone through the Blood Spring Holy Lord's memories related to the White Tiger Fang, Li Musheng rubbed his chin with a thoughtful expression.

At the sight, the large black cat's round green eyes spun rapidly. It rushed over to Li Musheng's side and tugged at the hem of his robe with a paw, clearly hoping he would explain to it just what kind of treasure this jade fang actually was.

Li Musheng withdrew from his thoughts, casually pushed the large black cat aside, and let his gaze sweep back and forth between the Blood Spring Holy Lord and Ah Xiu and the others.

Then, without any warning, Ah Xiu, the Fifth Elder, and the rest of their group suddenly went rigid, falling into the same vacant, statue-like state the Blood Spring Holy Lord had just experienced.

The Blood Spring Holy Lord, who had still been wary of Li Musheng, caught sight of this and his expression shifted dramatically. He seemed to recognize, in what was happening to Ah Xiu's group, exactly what he himself had just gone through.

Even so, though deep unease churned within the Blood Spring Holy Lord, he dared not say a single word about it.

After a moment, Ah Xiu and her group all came back to their senses. Faced with the unusual looks from the Blood Spring Holy Lord and the others, they seemed to realize something at once, and all of them turned to look at Li Musheng with complicated expressions.

"No need to look at me like that. I just used the Soul-Searching Technique to go through your memories, that's all."

Li Musheng waved a casual hand in response to their stares.

At those words, everyone in the hall, the Blood Spring Holy Lord and Ah Xiu included, changed expression sharply, instinctively crying out, "The Soul-Searching Technique?"

At this moment, whether it was the Rakshasa Holy Lord and the other two Holy Lords, or Ah Xiu and the Fifth Elder, all of them recalled a piece of news from within the Great Xuan dynasty's territory that they had heard not long ago.

Apparently, someone had recently opened the Demonic Cores in the Great Xuan imperial capital, obtained the Demonic Patriarch's legacy, and personally wiped out the cult masters of the three great demonic sects.

But with the Western Desert being so remote, and martial world rumors notoriously difficult to verify, they had only caught wind of this in passing without paying it any real attention.

It was only now, with Li Musheng mentioning the Soul-Searching Technique, that Ah Xiu and the Rakshasa Holy Lord suddenly recalled that the Soul-Searching Technique was a legacy art originating from the Demonic Patriarch himself.

Combined with the terrifyingly powerful demonic cultivation Li Musheng had already demonstrated, everyone present suddenly realized that the Li Musheng before them was very likely the very same person who had obtained the Demonic Patriarch's legacy in the Great Xuan imperial capital.

What none of them could understand, however, was how someone who should have still been in the Great Xuan imperial capital had ended up here in this remote, impoverished corner of the Western Desert.

Ah Xiu's pretty face shifted rapidly through a series of expressions as she fixed her eyes hard on Li Musheng, "I heard from some of the merchants traveling to the Western Desert that the person rumored to have obtained the Demonic Patriarch's legacy in the Great Xuan imperial capital might be that Eighth Prince of Great Li who has recently become famous throughout the martial world. Could you be..."

But before Ah Xiu could finish, Li Musheng gave a nod, "You're a bit slow on the uptake, little girl. I already gave you a subtle hint back at the town inn, but you clearly didn't catch the gist of what I was saying."

Li Musheng naturally still remembered his earlier failed attempt to impress her. At his words, the look in Ah Xiu's eyes as she watched him grew visibly complicated.

At this moment she felt both shock at Li Musheng's true identity and regret at not having recognized it sooner.

In truth, Ah Xiu was not entirely unfamiliar with information about Li Musheng, the Eighth Prince of Great Li. It was simply that the rumors circulating about him in the martial world had been so extraordinary that, although she felt certain his current reputation must have some genuine basis, the claims that someone so young had subdued a Martial Saint and was destined to become the fourth Martial God of the martial world had seemed too unreal to believe. She had instinctively assumed these were simply exaggerations that had grown wilder with each retelling as they spread through the martial world.

But now, hearing Li Musheng confirm his own identity, combined with the terrifying strength he had just displayed in single-handedly subduing all three Holy Lords of the Yellow Spring Tribe, Ah Xiu finally truly understood that the rumors circulating about this Eighth Prince of Great Li throughout the martial world were very likely entirely true, with hardly a trace of exaggeration in them at all.

At the same time, the three Yellow Spring Holy Lords and the Fifth Elder's group, now learning Li Musheng's true identity, wore expressions of even greater shock than before.

This was mainly because the rumors surrounding Li Musheng had simply seemed too far-fetched to believe. Previously, all of them had shared the same skepticism as Ah Xiu, especially the three Yellow Spring Holy Lords, who had never put any stock in news from the distant Great Li martial world.

After all, they themselves were people of exceptional martial talent who had spent decades cultivating with great difficulty to reach their current level of formidable martial cultivation, and the idea that a mere young man not even twenty years old could single-handedly destroy an entire sect, subdue a Martial Saint, and rival a Martial God, was something they would never have believed even if they racked their brains over it.