The Quest for Immortality

Mo Hua’s pupils constricted.

Extermination?

The Xie family?

”The Xie family from Bishan City, isn’t that...”

Murong Caiyun nodded, ”Exactly, that day, when we went to capture the traitor from the Sever Gold Sect, we encountered that Second Grade Xie family.”

Mo Hua remembered.

That day, he, Senior Sister Murong, and Senior Brother Feng took up a mission to go to Bishan City to capture a traitor from the Sever Gold Sect.

The traitor, reportedly having stolen something from the Xie family, vanished without a trace. The Xie family, unable to capture him, posted the mission to our sect.

To catch him, the Xie family sealed the city and searched the streets, going through a lot of trouble.

But surprisingly, they offered very few merit points.

And indeed, that traitor was not easy to capture.

He cultivated the Sever Gold Sect’s ”Escape Gold Technique” movement technique and was also skilled in ”Disguise,” disguising himself as a woman, hidden in a brothel disguised as a restaurant.

Capturing him took quite an effort.

The odd thing about this matter was...

The traitor’s disguise technique was extremely exquisite, changing from man to woman, from old crone to dwarf. When we captured him, he appeared as a burly man.

We couldn’t tell what his original appearance was.

Divine Sense could only detect the presence of Spiritual Power, not the fleshly appearance.

Thus, even though Mo Hua had strong Divine Sense, able to identify his Spiritual Power, he couldn’t revert the fleshly appearance of the traitor outside his Spiritual Power.

Moreover, what exactly the traitor stole from the Xie family, Mo Hua didn’t know.

Leaving Bishan City, Mo Hua vaguely felt that this matter was not yet over.

But he never expected it would start with the ”extermination” of the Xie family...

Mo Hua asked softly,

”Senior Sister, why would the Fire Buddha exterminate the Xie family?”

Murong Caiyun shook her head, ”I don’t know, Taoist Court is still investigating, and the rumors outside are hardly credible.”

”What kind of rumors?” Mo Hua asked curiously.

”All sorts...”

Murong Caiyun raised her fair finger, counting them out for Mo Hua...

”Some say the Xie family offended Fire Buddha in the past and accumulated grievances, and this act was his revenge...”

”Some say Fire Buddha collaborated with the Xie family, and they fell out over dividing the spoils, which led him to slaughter the entire Xie family...”

”Some say Fire Buddha was cultivating Evil Skills, using the entire Xie family as a sacrificial offering...”

”Others suggest the Family Head of the Xie family once took a woman whom Fire Buddha admired, leading him to become dispirited, leave secular life, and enter the demonic path. Now that his spells are accomplished, he sacrificed the lives of the Xie family to commemorate the woman he loved...”

”And more absurdly, some people, unable to discern right from wrong, say the Xie family deserved their extermination for their misdeeds, and Fire Buddha was carrying out heavenly justice...”

...

”Rumors rise with the wind, and nobody really knows what happened...” Murong Caiyun said, shaking her head.

Mo Hua frowned, then, with some sympathy, asked:

”Did they really... not leave a single survivor?”

Murong Caiyun sighed softly, ”No...”

In addition to sympathy, Mo Hua had some doubts:

”Did the Xie family not resist?”

”The Xie family, after all, is a Second Grade family. There are quite a few cultivators in the family. Even if they couldn’t win, they should have been able to hold them off for a while, perhaps allowing one or two to escape...”

Murong Caiyun’s gaze grew intense, ”I thought the same...”

”This matter is very suspicious...”

”The Xie family, weak as they are, is still one of the top Tao Cultivation families in Bishan City...”

”And Fire Buddha, strong as he may be, is just a Second Grade Sin Cultivator.”

”Logically, he shouldn’t have been able to annihilate an entire family of cultivators...”

”But the fact is...”

Murong Caiyun took a deep breath, her expression extremely solemn.

”The entire Xie family is dead...”

”According to Cultivators in Bishan City, that night, the entire Xie residence was engulfed in a sea of fire, blood lighting up half the sky. The cultivators of the Xie family, like evil ghosts in purgatory, were killed, dismembered, and then turned to ashes in the Karmic Fire...”

”In that endless Karmic Fire, Fire Buddha, clad in a kasaya, with fiery red eyes and chanting Buddhist scriptures, had an expression of indifferent compassion...”

Thinking of that scene, Mo Hua felt a chill in his heart.

Fire Buddha seemed much more dangerous than he had imagined...

And the power of that Meteor Fire Skill might also be much more terrifying than he had expected...

Mo Hua remembered ”Qiao Laowu,” ”Yin Thunder Child,” and other three and asked with confusion, ”Fire Buddha... Did he have accomplices?”

Exterminating a family was something he might not have been able to accomplish alone.

”I don’t know...”

Murong Caiyun shook her head, ”The act of exterminating a family is extremely cruel and has a very negative impact. The Taoist Court will lock down the news, and no clues will be revealed to the public.”

”Has there been any similar extermination before?” Mo Hua inquired.

Murong Caiyun thought for a while before speaking, ”Very few... The last time was more than a hundred years ago, a small family was exterminated by Evil Cultivators...”

”The specifics are unclear, I only learned of it from my aunt.”

”That time, because of the terrible nature of the act, some small families were panic-stricken, the upper echelons of the Taoist Court were furious, deploying a large number of Supervisors and Enforcement Leaders, searching day and night for those Evil Cultivators.”

”Eventually, those Sin Cultivators were all captured, suffered death by Formation as a public warning...”

”Since then, there hasn’t been much talk about exterminations.”

”And now, it’s the extermination of the Xie family by Fire Buddha...”

”This event will also shake people’s hearts, so, until the Sin Cultivators are apprehended and the truth is clarified, the Taoist Court will not reveal any information.”