Having cultivated myself into an immortal, all I want to do is raise female disciples.

I underestimated you too.

Yunping stared coldly at the man who was slowly emerging from the shadows.

"Chu Jingqiao, the second young master of the empire."

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

How did you manage to know so easily...?

Was it based on guessing or genuine reasoning...?

138. The Dead

Fan Luokui's eyes widened in surprise. She remembered that Chu Jingqiao should be on the same side as Chu Xin. Compared to Chu Jingqiao, the most suspicious person should be the eldest son of the empire, Chu Aotian.

The thought of "the thief crying 'stop thief'" suddenly popped into her head.

"Actually, I've always considered you as someone I'm most wary of because you give me a very bad feeling."

Still looking sickly, Chu Jingqiao gazed meaningfully at the white-clad youth who was shielding Fan Luokui, as if quite moved, "I didn't expect you to jump out at this critical juncture."

In fact, if Yin Sha and his gang had been a little more proactive and had held Yun Ping back a little longer, his plan might have succeeded.

Unfortunately, Yin Sha disappointed him.

Chu Jingqiao leaned against the cold stone wall, his face, which looked incredibly timid, was filled with a gloomy expression. He seemed to have lost the confidence he had when facing Fan Luokui, and his tone had become quite flat.

"So you really wiped out the Yin Sha, or did you know I would come here all along?"

"Both."

Yun Ping answered calmly, his gaze sweeping back and forth over Chu Jingqiao in front of him, as if he had discovered something unexpected, and he couldn't help but raise his eyebrows.

Before he could even ask a question, Chu Jingqiao gave a ghostly smile.

He seemed amused. "So, you've suspected me for a while now? Since when?"

Yunping had no intention of wasting time talking to him, but since he still had questions to ask, he decided to let the guy ramble on for a while.

"From the very beginning."

His gaze fell on Chu Chenxi, who stood in the distance with a blank expression like a puppet, recalling what the little girl had told him that day.

That was a trap, a very simple trap.

"That sharp-tongued little girl once said that before she completely lost consciousness, she unexpectedly saw the people who had kidnapped her talking to a group of people wearing royal badges. It sounded like they were going to hand her over to the royal family."

"It's obviously bullshit—"

Yun Ping coldly looked at Chu Jingqiao, who was still smiling, and said in a deep voice, "Who would wear a royal badge on their chest while carrying out such a kidnapping? Are they afraid that others won't recognize them as royalty? Besides, the sharp-tongued little girl's cultivation is only at the Spirit Platform stage. It's impossible for the people who kidnapped her not to be able to tell whether she is unconscious or not."

"That was deliberately done for the little girl, to make her suspicious of the people inside the royal family."

Upon hearing this, Fan Luokui seemed to sense that something was amiss.

She remained silent for a few seconds, but finally couldn't help asking—

"But... he is indeed a member of royalty, why would he go to such lengths to make others doubt him?"

This completely increases the chances of being suspected, and no one with a brain would do that.

—At least that's what Fan Luokui, who's somewhat straightforward, thinks.

Yunping's face immediately showed helplessness, and he silently tapped the head of this straightforward girl.

"Can't you use your brain a little more? His goal was to make people doubt him."

"Huh?" Fan Luo Kui was taken aback, then seemed to realize something and immediately understood: "So that's why he sought out Yin Sha..."

"Pretend to be attacked by Yin Sha, and then appear to the world as if you are sickly and weak, and stand on the same side as Chu Xin - and then push the suspicion onto your elder brother, that is, Brother Ao Tian."

That being said—

Chu Jingqiao interrupted Yun Ping's words, smiled slightly, and his deathly pale right hand drooped down slightly, revealing strange patterns on his arm hidden under the Taoist robe of the royal family of the capital.

It wasn't a trace of surging spiritual energy; it looked more like strange runes.

He stared at Yunping, as if trying to see through his soul, his eyes unusually strange: "But shouldn't you be thinking about people outside the royal family? Logically speaking, deliberately making someone wear a royal badge should be the simplest way to frame someone. Logically speaking, you should first suspect people outside the royal family."

“That makes sense.” Yunping nodded in agreement. “At first, I did suspect someone outside the royal family, perhaps they were going to target the descendants of your royal Chu family one by one, but that’s where the problem arose.”

"Yin Sha is undoubtedly a henchman, so the question is, how did Yin Sha know the whereabouts of you royal family members, especially the Chu family members?"

……

Chu Jingqiao suddenly fell silent.

Yunping glanced coldly at Chu Xin, who lay in a pool of blood behind him, a spear still embedded in her back.

He walked over slowly, casually pulled out the spear, and instantly, blood splattered out.

As if he hadn't seen it at all, he waved his hand, and immediately a series of emerald green lights appeared in Chu Xin's body, with three vibrant green rings flashing above it.

Visibly, the near-fatal wound on Chu Xin's body was slowly healing as if time were reversing. This scene was nothing short of a miracle in Fan Luo Kui's eyes.

Although she had seen Yunping treat Zhang Ruoxue's injuries, it wasn't nearly as exaggerated as it is now!

The young man in white didn't care at all. He had already placed a magic array in Chu Xin and Chu Chenxi's bodies that could almost bring them back to life. As long as they had a breath left and their souls were still intact, they would basically not die.

After tending to Chu Xin's injuries, Yun Ping turned his head and looked at Chu Jingqiao, whose face was gloomy, and gave a cold smile.

"Therefore, even the Yin Sha could not possibly know the whereabouts of you young masters and princesses out of thin air, let alone kidnap and ambush you. The only explanation is that the mastermind behind the Yin Sha is a member of the royal family."

"Of course, I also wondered at first whether any members of the royal family had been bribed. If it was the royal guards, it wouldn't be too difficult for them to know where their master was."

"But now it's a battle of all factions."

Yunping pointed to the ground beneath his feet, which was the territory of the capital.

He recalled the map Chu Xin had given him that day. The most obvious things on it were the personal guards of Chu Aotian, the eldest son of the Lantian Empire, and the small stronghold of Yin Sha, but it also marked the locations of the personal guards of other royal family members.

For him, recalling it was not difficult.

Yun Ping crossed his arms and looked indifferently at Chu Jingqiao. "The battle of the myriad factions takes place once every ten years. Basically, apart from a few royal family members who are far away on the border and have not returned to the capital, the personal guards of all the other royal family members have been dispatched to various places to guard.

"The royal guards have all been taken out. In the Imperial Palace, besides you young masters and princesses, who else would know where the sharp-tongued loli is?"

"Furthermore, none of the other young masters and princesses on the border have reported being attacked. I originally thought you were just unlucky, but now that I think about it, it's probably because the Yin Sha's henchmen can't reach the other members of the royal family, right?"

Speaking of the Royal Guard.

Yunping couldn't help but recall the day Chu Xin and Jiang Shaoguang came to find him, interrupting his afternoon tea, just to use that map to prove that Chu Aotian was the mastermind behind it all.

Looking back now, it's clear that Chu Aotian's personal guards were positioned near the Yin Sha stronghold at Chu Jingqiao's behest.

He only needed to say to his elder brother, Chu Aotian—

He has discovered several Yin Sha strongholds, but it is crucial not to alert them. First, deploy your personal guards around the strongholds and wait for the opportune moment.

This method can be used to deepen the suspicion against Chu Aotian.

……

Chu Jingqiao took a deep breath.

He stared at Yunping with considerable interest. "As expected, you're the most troublesome one."

Yun Ping looked at Chu Chenxi with a sigh and couldn't help but say, "If the Yin Sha people had held me back a little longer, you might have actually succeeded."

"Now—it's my turn to ask you."

The young man in white suddenly became extremely solemn. He frowned and stared intently at Chu Jingqiao, whose face was pale but whose lips curled into a strange, cold smile.

Yes, Yunping has many questions.

Even now, standing here, having seen the mastermind behind this Yin Sha operation and the person who coveted the royal tomb, there are still things he cannot understand.

One of them—

His expression hardened slightly, a chilling aura emanating from his cheeks, and his tone was incredibly deep.

"I need you to tell me, who gave you this Blood Emperor Gu..."

"Oh?" Chu Jingqiao seemed quite surprised. "You actually saw through the Blood Emperor Gu..."

“Not only can I see it, I also know that you must know the art of Gu manipulation, and... the art of blood transfusion.”

The method of blood transfusion.

Upon hearing these four words, Chu Jingqiao's expression suddenly changed drastically. It was as if he had seen something he shouldn't have seen. He suddenly pointed at Yun Ping, as if there were words he wanted to say, but he swallowed them back for some reason.

This behavior clearly indicated to Yunping that the guy had serious problems.

It was at this moment that Fan Luo Kui couldn't help but ask, "Teacher, what are the Blood Emperor Gu and the Blood Exchange Method?"

“Something very ancient, perhaps even older than my own existence…”

Yun Ping gasped. He was determined to unravel this mystery: "The Blood Emperor Gu is a Gu worm that existed in ancient times. Besides being able to manipulate a person's mind and physical actions, it can also control that person's bloodline..."

“No wonder Chenxi…” Fan Luokui recalled Chu Chenxi’s stiff, puppet-like gait earlier, and a look of sudden realization dawned on her face, “That blood-changing method…”

"Just like its name suggests, it can extract the bloodline of the person implanted with the Blood Emperor Gu and exchange it with its own—"

The reason for doing this is obviously to—

He turned around and looked at the ancient and dilapidated tomb. There were hundreds of complex restrictions before the road leading to the dark stone gate—restrictions set up by Chu Lantian, the founder of the empire.

Only those who share my bloodline are permitted to enter.

That's what the kid said.

"I want to use the blood exchange method to swap Chu Chenxi's bloodline with my own, and then I can gain the ability to enter it."

"How on earth did you know about the blood transfusion method!?"

Chu Jingqiao's shocked words came from behind.

Yunping snapped out of his daze and glared at Chu Jingqiao with his cold, domineering eyes.

The next instant, his fingers twitched slightly, as if touching the threads of time and space, and a silver light suddenly appeared on Chu Jingqiao's right arm!

"I not only know how to perform a blood transfusion, I also know—"

Chu Jingqiao's right hand was cut open just like that!

Blood splattering?