One Person: I, the Dragon Tiger Stall King! I Won!

41: The secret is hidden in the mung bean powder, and the black robe kneels down to reveal the true blood contractA faint bloody glow pulsed like a heartbeat.

The system’s cold whisper, ”Traceability prompt: Copper Coffin Ghost Guard, has been drinking fluid for three days,” branded itself deep into Xuan Weizi’s soul like a red-hot iron.

Three days!

This number, even more than the terrifying illusion of an army of corpses he had just witnessed, sent a chill through his entire body, as if he had fallen into the Nine Nethers.

He abruptly looked up, his bloodshot eyes seeming about to burst, his voice hoarse as if abraded by sandpaper: ”Impossible! The keys to the underground palace are yin and yang; I hold the yang, the Old Celestial Master holds the yin. No one can enter without permission! Who could send him True Qi Fluid? And for three days straight?!”

This roar, rather than a question, was his final struggle, a drowning man clutching at his last straw.

He so wished Xuanyi would tell him that all of this was fake, an illusion created by this counterfeit fluid.

However, Xuanyi merely squatted in front of him, his gaze as calm as an ancient well, and placed the cold, half-bronze bell back into his trembling palm.

”You simply misunderstood,” Xuanyi’s voice was soft, yet every word was like a dagger to the heart, ”Did you think someone needed to ’send’ it in?”

Xuan Weizi’s body trembled, his pupils suddenly contracting to pinpricks.

”You’ve forgotten,” Xuanyi’s fingertip lightly traced the ground, as if outlining some invisible network, ”Mount Longhu’s largest array core is the underground palace. And the underground palace, precisely, is built at the convergence of the most abundant leyline spiritual energy. Does that place need spiritual energy transported from the outside?”

It does not!

Xuan Weizi’s heart was violently shaken, and a terrifying thought, one he had never dared to ponder deeply, even deliberately avoided, slithered out like a venomous snake.

The underground palace itself was a massive spiritual energy pump, drawing on the power of the leylines through complex formations, nourishing everything in the Tianshi Mansion.

”Your brother... no, he should be called ’Copper Coffin Ghost Guard’ now,” Xuanyi’s tone carried a hint of playful cruelty, ”He isn’t ’drinking’ the fluid; he’s ’refining’ it. He’s entrenched at the core of the array, treating the entire Mount Longhu’s leyline spiritual energy as his personal alchemy furnace. He is reversing and refining the purest spiritual energy, through the wicked methods of the ’Three Caves Forbidden Scripture,’ into his own ’True Qi Fluid’! Those seventy-two corpses of outer disciples are not guards; they are dregs, sacrifices!”

”No... it can’t be...” Xuan Weizi murmured distractedly, his face ashen.

He recalled how, in the past month, the herbs in the spiritual fields on the back mountain had withered, and inner disciples of the Tianshi Mansion always felt their spiritual energy was impure and sluggish during cultivation.

Everyone thought it was just the change of seasons, normal leyline fluctuations... Who could have imagined that the source itself was problematic!

Someone was pulling the rug out from under them, stealing the vitality of the entire mountain!

Gongshu Yin stood to the side, his small notebook already turned to a new page.

He did not look at the distraught Xuan Weizi, but instead stared intently at the stall cloth.

When Xuanyi spoke the words ”refining fluid,” the golden patterns on the cloth, the ”figure” pointing deep into Mount Longhu, had raised its arm higher, as if mimicking a drawing, swallowing motion.

The faint bloody glow deep within the leylines also pulsed in sync, becoming even more eerie.

”It... it’s resonating,” Gongshu Yin’s voice was extremely low, tinged with uncontrollable excitement and fear, ”Boss, this cloth can not only trace the origin but also monitor the target’s ’situation’ in real-time!”

Xuanyi ignored him, merely looking at Xuan Weizi, and delivered the final blow: ”The secret order the Old Celestial Master gave you, ’If he awakens, kill him,’ what did you think it meant? The Old Celestial Master had long foreseen this day. What he left for you wasn’t for you to judge right or wrong, but simply to be an executioner. What a pity, you were too soft-hearted.”

”I...” Xuan Weizi opened his mouth, a sweet, metallic taste rising in his throat, but he couldn’t say anything.

Yes, he was soft-hearted.

How could he not be soft-hearted?