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Chapter 1023: True Demonic Qi
Meng Zhe watched helplessly as Song Jiang's blood slowly dyed the entire basalt boulder dark red. He could do nothing but clench his fists tightly... He used to think that Song Jiang was just a mortal, and it was really wrong for him to be involved in these disputes. No matter what, he couldn't let him lose his life because of it.

But now it seems that his original idea was really ridiculous. Even as a god, he has things that he cannot control. This is true for Qinglong and Song Jiang. Now he just hopes that all these sacrifices are worth it. I don't know how much time has passed. Song Jiang lowered his head slightly... sitting motionless on the basalt boulder. The blood-stained boulder finally reacted, and a faint red light flashed from it. Meng Zhe recognized it as the natal color of Suzaku at a glance. It seems that the barrier he set up with his soul is finally about to break.

Just when Meng Zhe was wondering whether he should step forward to pick up Song Jiang, he saw the red light in the Xuanwu boulder suddenly surge, illuminating the entire cave with red light, and a familiar voice sounded slowly, "Baihu... Xu Jian, are you okay? I know that you are the only one who can find this stone alive, so don't blame us for being willful and putting all the burdens on your shoulders. You must have too many questions about what happened back then, especially why I had to seal Brother Xuanwu's soul here. I will answer these questions for you one by one, and then you will naturally understand that all the choices I made were forced."

The words left by Suzaku were like pre-recorded voice messages. Suzaku was the only one speaking, and Baihu had no chance to ask any questions. However, Suzaku also answered most of the questions in his mind and connected most of the truth of the incident a thousand years ago...

It turns out that the ancient books, because of absorbing the evil spirits, violence and murderous auras from the monsters and demons trapped within them over the years, actually developed a consciousness that was neither god, devil, monster, nor ghost. The power of this consciousness was immeasurable and would directly affect the entire six realms, especially the human world.

Ordinary mortals influenced by this consciousness will gradually become paranoid, warlike, bloodthirsty and fond of killing, thus creating the most chaotic period in human history... The frequent changes of regimes brought about constant wars, and the large-scale massacres caused the number of ghosts in the underworld to skyrocket. The corpses scattered all over the ground led to large-scale plagues and natural disasters, and eventually evolved into the tragedy of cannibalism.

At that time, the ancient book was guarded by the White Tiger, so the first one to be eroded by the evil spirit was actually the White Tiger God. Later, it was Qinglong who first discovered the abnormality of the White Tiger, so he immediately joined forces with Xuanwu and Suzaku to trap it in the formation and force the evil spirit out of the White Tiger's body.

As a result, Baihu's spiritual power was damaged and he fell into a coma. He also lost part of his memory and naturally forgot that he had been possessed by the devil... It was also at that time that Qinglong and the other three discovered that the consciousness transformed by the evil energy could not be eliminated at all. The only way was to trap it in the body of a true god, and then perish together with the true god who voluntarily sacrificed himself.

The Four Saints were the gods responsible for guarding the ancient books. Although it was not the Four Saints' responsibility that the ancient books gave rise to the true devil energy that was naturally raised by nature, it was their job to eliminate the devil energy and keep the world peaceful. So in the end, the Three Saints, Azure Dragon, Black Tortoise and Vermillion Bird, discussed together... and decided that one of them would die together with the true devil energy.

Xuanwu first proposed that he would take the initiative to accept the true demon energy, and then Qinglong and Zhuque would work together to kill it. But Qinglong objected, thinking that Xuanwu's power was the strongest among the four saints, and the only one who could compete with him was Baihu before his spiritual power was damaged. Now Baihu was injured and unconscious, and if Xuanwu lost his original intention, Qinglong was worried that he and Zhuque would not be his opponents, so he proposed that he would lure out the true demon energy that escaped back into the ancient book, and then let Xuanwu and Zhuque work together to kill it, so that their chances of winning would be greater.

As a result, no one expected that Qinglong, who absorbed the true devil's energy, not only lost his original heart, but also increased his spiritual power and turned completely black... After all, they were once comrades in arms. Although Xuanwu and Zhuque had agreed to it before, they found it difficult to kill at the critical moment, so they were both injured by Qinglong. Later, he even killed several gods in heaven who knew the truth. At this time, Baihu, who had awakened, found that Qinglong was possessed by the devil. He had no choice but to join forces with Yang Jian to deal with Qinglong, but they were still no match for him.

In order to prevent the true devil energy from continuing to wreak havoc on the world, Xuanwu had no choice but to use the body of the god, the leader of the Four Saints, to lure the true devil energy into his own body. However, Xuanwu's heart was firm, and he was not influenced and turned evil by the devil energy... Qinglong also woke up at this time, so he worked together with Suzaku to eliminate Xuanwu and the true devil energy who had given up resistance.

Unexpectedly, after Xuanwu's death, the true devil's energy was still hidden in his soul, wanting to continue looking for the next true god's body. Zhuque knew that if they continued like this, everything they had done before would be in vain, so he used his own soul to seal Xuanwu's soul, which contained the true devil's energy, and hid it in the lowest level of hell. After a thousand years, when Zhuque's soul was exhausted and the true devil's energy broke out of the seal, the hell of endless suffering would be the last barrier to trap him.

Qinglong was branded as a demon and took on all the killings, even taking the blame for killing his brother to protect Xuanwu's soul. In the end, he was killed by Baihu and Yang Jian who didn't know the truth. Although Baihu lost some of his memories, he couldn't bear to see Qinglong's soul destroyed, so he sealed Qinglong's soul in his own soul for a thousand years to atone for his sins. This is the truth of the whole thing.

After listening to Zhuque's message, Meng Zhe was shocked. He never thought that the whole story was so complicated. Not only did he wrongly accuse Qinglong, but he also teamed up with outsiders to kill him...and when Qinglong was found to have awakened last time, the other party did not mention a word about these things.

But Meng Zhe had no idea that this was far from the whole truth of the matter. The reason why Song Jiang was so determined to die was because when Qinglong awakened, he told him the whole truth of the matter in person, including the part that Meng Zhe was missing.

In fact, Song Jiang's true body was that Baihu used his spiritual power to cut off Qinglong's shadow before Qinglong died so that he could have a body to carry Qinglong's soul after a thousand years. Later, Baihu and Qinglong's souls were sealed in the magic stone together. After their bodies died and their spiritual power was damaged, they forgot about it completely.