The Truth

"The assailant has been neutralized. Uncle Zhang is dead?!" Caught completely off guard by this news, Zhang Yuanqing felt his mind snap awake before instantly descending into turmoil. He sat frozen on the bed. After about seven or eight seconds, he took a deep breath to force himself calm and spoke in a rapid rush: "How was the killer's identity confirmed? Where was he neutralized? Tell me everything in detail." Guan Ya's voice came through the speaker: "Early this morning, while patrolling the hospital, Wei Yuanzhou caught last night's assailant. He ambushed him and successfully took down the enemy. The body has already been transported back to the Jinghai City Public Security Bureau. "Height 1.7 meters, around sixty years old, very dark skin, thick fingers with heavy calluses... He also has burn marks on his chest, and the tender flesh that grew back overnight confirms it. The knife wound you inflicted is still there too..." It was Uncle Zhang. Uncle Zhang had died in the hospital... In an instant, something clicked in Zhang Yuanqing's head. His heart felt as though it had been stabbed. He sprang from the bed. Wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, barefoot, he bolted out of the room with long strides. *Bang!* With a grim, taut face, he kicked open the door to the standard twin room next door. The room was empty. The bed that had been occupied last night was already made up, neat and tidy. Uncle Zhang was gone. "Yuanshi, what's going on over there?" Guan Ya asked, having heard the door being kicked open. "I'm fine. Sister Guan Ya, send me a photo. A photo of the assailant." Zhang Yuanqing stared at the empty bed. "The body was sent to the Public Security Bureau, and I'm at the hospital... All right, I'll head over to the bureau right now. Luckily, it's not far. Hang on a moment." Guan Ya hung up first. Zhang Yuanqing returned to his room, quickly put on his clothes and shoes, hurried into the stairwell, and ran down the stairs to the ground floor. Right now, he did not even have the patience to wait for an elevator. ... In the hotel lobby. The air conditioner blew a steady stream of cold air with a low hum. Xiao Yuan, dressed in a white shirt and a tailored suit jacket, stood behind the front desk with a ramrod-straight posture. Hearing footsteps, she cast a cold glance over, then started turning her head away. But halfway through the motion, she whipped back around, scrutinizing Yuanshi Tianzun's expression. Her brow furrowed. "What happened?!" "Where did Uncle Zhang go?" Xiao Yuan's bright, fair, delicate face darkened. She said flatly, "I don't know! If you're worried about him fleeing, there's no need. Uncle Zhang is a man of his word. If he breaks it, I'll take responsibility for tracking him down." In front of Yuanshi Tianzun, she found it increasingly difficult to rein in her temper, though she had not noticed this herself. "Uncle Zhang is dead!" Zhang Yuanqing said in a low voice. "He died early this morning at Jinghai City People's Hospital. Killed by Wei Yuanzhou." Xiao Yuan froze. The cold detachment in her eyes crumbled instantly. Her hands clenched into fists, tighter and tighter, gripping with so much force that her knuckles went white. She squeezed her eyes shut, as though terrified that the sorrow she could not contain might spill out. After a long while, she opened her eyes, her expression calm once more. "Understood. That was his choice..." *His choice...* Zhang Yuanqing fell silent for a moment, then murmured, "He refused to come with me. His so-called unfinished business—was it all for this?" To trade his own life for his grandson's promotion to Deacon. Facing the yellow earth with his back to the sky for decades, widowed for half his life, raising his grandson grain by grain of rice, funding his education copper coin by copper coin, and in the end, sacrificing what was left of his broken body for his grandson's future. How foolish... Zhang Yuanqing badly wanted to scoff, yet an inexplicable tightness choked his chest. Xiao Yuan gave a quiet murmur of assent. "He probably had that in mind long ago. Half a month ago, he was injured by official Walkers in Jinghai City. When I went to see him, he was gravely hurt, yet he was extraordinarily happy. "In all the years I've known him, I'd rarely seen him smile so joyfully. He said his wish had finally been fulfilled, and that he would spend the rest of his life focusing on cultivating with Master Wuhen and bidding farewell to his past." Zhang Yuanqing listened in silence. "Yet when he came to see Master Wuhen yesterday, he was like a changed man—gloomy, burdened with heavy thoughts... I knew something was wrong. I secretly shadowed him to Jinghai City, and only then did I find out he was assassinating an official Walker..." Because he did not want to break his precepts, but for his grandson's future, he had no choice but to go against his conscience? Zhang Yuanqing frowned, sensing contradictions and something amiss. Just then, his phone chimed with an incoming text. He pulled out his phone to check. It was a photo from Guan Ya. In the picture, the dark, gaunt old man lay quietly on a mortuary slab. The sorrow and hardship carved by the passing years seemed frozen forever on his face. Across his chest was a dark-red wound, surrounded by a large patch of newly grown flesh. "It's Uncle Zhang..." Zhang Yuanqing sighed softly. "He didn't undergo Gu metamorphosis." When a Witch Doctor died while transformed, their corpse would retain a half-human, half-beast appearance. Yet Uncle Zhang had died in his human form, which meant he had chosen not to fight back—he had willingly gone to his death. *Ding-dong!* The notification chime sounded again as Guan Ya sent a long block of text: "Our call was cut short earlier and I didn't get to finish. There are a few details I can't figure out. The attacker was ambushed from behind by Wei Yuanzhou, stabbed through the heart, and infected with a severe illness right before dying—a Plague God ability. "However, wounds and an illness of that level shouldn't have caused instant death. A Spirit Medium should still have had a chance for a deathbed struggle, yet he didn't undergo Gu metamorphosis. It's very strange... "I didn't ask these questions to his face. Come back over here and try spirit questioning." *No need to question him. We're head—* Zhang Yuanqing began typing his reply to Guan Ya, but halfway through, Guan Ya's second message arrived: "I keep feeling there are many irrational things about this case. The attacker's motive for assassinating Long Live the White Tiger is unclear, and how did he track down Long Live the White Tiger's address in the first place? "Looking at the video of last night's fight, the attacker was agile and skilled in pursuit. As a veteran Saint who ambushed his target in advance, how could he have let Long Live the White Tiger escape? "I watched the surveillance footage of the second assassination attempt, and I seriously doubt the attacker's assassination skills..." Guan Ya was half-complaining and half-sharing her thoughts on the case. Reading these messages, Zhang Yuanqing's brows furrowed tighter and tighter as he caught on to the discrepancies. According to what Uncle Zhang had said himself, he was assassinating Long Live the White Tiger to clear obstacles for his grandson's promotion. In that case, there was no reason to hold back. For an established Saint lying in wait against a newly promoted Saint, holding such a massive advantage, to fail twice indeed raised doubts. It did not make sense. What made the least sense was that if Long Live the White Tiger was just an irrelevant passerby, and there had been no premeditated stalking or investigation beforehand, how could Uncle Zhang, an evil profession Walker, have tracked down Long Live the White Tiger's home address so easily? Unless there was an insider! Zhang Yuanqing's brow twitched. "I need to see Master Wuhen." Xiao Yuan looked at him in confusion. Without explaining, Zhang Yuanqing turned and bolted for the stairwell. Taking the stairs, he sprinted all the way up to the fourth floor in one breath. Stopping outside Room 404, he pounded on the door and shouted, "Master, I request an audience!" Having called out, Zhang Yuanqing tried twisting the doorknob. *Click!* The doorknob turned smoothly. The next second, the hotel hallway vanished, the wooden door vanished, and in their place appeared a Buddhist hall swirling with pale smoke and lit by candles. Zhang Yuanqing instinctively looked toward the towering golden Buddha that reached all the way to the hall's ceiling. Sitting in meditation with hand raised, eyes half-closed, it looked down upon the hall with an expression both compassionate and ferocious. *The golden Buddha hasn't changed. The Master's state of mind is still steady...* Zhang Yuanqing lowered his gaze to the figure in green robes sitting cross-legged on a prayer mat. He bowed and said, "Master, Uncle Zhang has returned to the Spirit Realm. There is a matter I don't understand, so I have come to ask." Pausing briefly, without waiting for Master Wuhen to reply, he asked directly, "Why did Uncle Zhang come to see you yesterday? Do you know what was going on with him?" The hall remained silent for a moment. Then Master Wuhen's voice, thick with suppressed grief, echoed through the chamber: "He said he had found the grandson from whom he had been separated for many years. His grandson forced him to assassinate an official Saint. He did not want to commit more slaughter; he was in deep torment... but he felt indebted to that child and could not refuse. "He intended to use his own life to make amends to his grandson. Last night, he came to bid me farewell. He was going to return to the Spirit Realm ahead of his time." Wei Yuanzhou forced him to assassinate Long Live the White Tiger?! Zhang Yuanqing's head buzzed with a loud *boom*, as if thunder had detonated inside his mind. His expression froze instantly. After a brief moment of confusion and shock, his thoughts snapped rapidly into place. No more doubt, no more bewilderment—the entire chain of events suddenly became crystal clear. After the slaughter trial concluded, the number of official Saints had surged modestly, squeezing the room for veteran Saints to get promoted. Due to Wei Yuanzhou's "aloof and unsociable" reputation, his own promotion prospects had already been slim and arduous. Just then, half a month ago, he had reunited with his long-lost grandfather, who happened to be a Spirit Medium. Wicked intentions had stirred within him, and he had coerced his grandfather into assassinating Long Live the White Tiger to clear away the obstacle. That was why, even though Long Live the White Tiger had not noticed anyone tailing him, his address had still been exposed—because the enemy came from within. *All the suspicious points Guan Ya brought up make sense now...* Zhang Yuanqing gave a bitter inward chuckle. Given Uncle Zhang's mindset, the next step was supposed to be a "willing sacrifice." But things had not gone according to plan—neither of them had expected that the one dispatched for backup would be him. Zhang Yuanqing continued pursuing the logic. No wonder Uncle Zhang had looked so terrified last night when Xiao Yuan introduced him. Uncle Zhang had already heard from Kou Beiyue about Yuanshi Tianzun's reputation as a champion of justice. If Wei Yuanzhou's coercion of his grandfather to murder a colleague was exposed, Zhang Yuanqing would never have let it slide. So the old man had shouldered all the blame alone. *If I were a Scout, I should have noticed the clues last night. Sigh. Thinking I could handle it off the record, I didn't bring Sister Guan Ya along... And there's one more thing: if that's the case, there was no need to call for backup from Songhai at all. Resolving it off the record and having Wei Yuanzhou take down the assailant himself to claim all the credit would have been perfect, wouldn't it?* *He forced his grandfather to assassinate a colleague, and when that failed, he killed the very grandfather who raised him to claim merit... Wei Yuanzhou is a madman—humble and gentle on the surface, but twisted, dark, and paranoid to the core.* *How did Sister Guan Ya fail to see through him? Does he possess a special prop that conceals his true disposition? Or has he played the gentleman for so long that he genuinely became one on the outside, impossible to tell apart from the real thing?* *What an absolute beast...* Zhang Yuanqing exhaled a long breath of turbid air and said, "Master, I understand!" With cold, resolute eyes, he turned and strode out of the hall. Behind him came Master Wuhen's admonition: "This matter carries its own karmic cause and effect. This poor monk respects his choice. You need not meddle." *Telling me not to poke my nose into it? Telling me not to intervene?* Zhang Yuanqing paused in his tracks. Standing at the hall entrance, he pondered for a few seconds before retorting, "Master, I am not your disciple. You have no need to tell me what to do either." He strode away. Returning to the lobby, he walked straight up to the front desk and looked at Xiao Yuan. "Get the car! "Drive me to the Jinghai City Public Security Bureau." ... Jinghai City, Hemen District Public Security Bureau. Inside the morgue, Wei Yuanzhou stood alone beside the mortuary slab, gazing in silence at the old man's remains. Memories of years past surged relentlessly in his mind. He had lost his parents at a young age, living with his grandfather for as far back as he could remember. His grandfather knew nothing other than farming, and life had been impoverished and grueling. From childhood, Wei Yuanzhou had envied his classmates who had pocket money, envied their new clothes and beautiful backpacks. Meanwhile, he wore the same clothes for three years, patched and mended them for another, and could never even obtain poverty subsidies. From primary school to junior high, the shoes he wore were hand-me-downs cast off by the older boy next door. A child who depended on his grandfather for survival and could not even afford new clothes was destined to be ostracized by the other village children. Once he started school, things only grew worse. The village kids would at least show a shred of consideration for their parents' relationships and merely shun him. His schoolmates, faced with an impoverished child who had no parents to back him up, only resorted to violence. Wei Yuanzhou remembered the year he entered junior high. During a parent-teacher conference, his grandfather, who had just finished farm work, rushed to the school covered in mud. In the end, they wouldn't even let him through the school gates. The look in the eyes of his classmates and teachers that day was something he would remember for the rest of his life. He hated those classmates and teachers, and he hated his grandfather even more for humiliating him. *Could you really not even manage to change into a clean set of clothes?* The first half of Wei Yuanzhou's life had been spent amid alienation, contempt, and violence. That was why he studied desperately—it was his only path to changing his destiny. To keep from being looked down upon, to avoid suffering violence again, he actively proved himself, participated in class activities, helped classmates, cooperated with teachers, and practiced warmth, goodness, respect, restraint, and deference. He became a good person in the eyes of his peers, an outstanding student in the eyes of his teachers, and a well-behaved dog in the eyes of the school bullies. If you became a perfect person, no one would look down on you or bully you, because they couldn't find a single flaw to pick on. The year his grandfather had that incident, he was terrified out of his wits, frightened of retaliation from that family's relatives. Over a decade of hardship had not tempered his will; rather, it had left him with severe psychological trauma. He could not fathom why his grandfather had to seek revenge, why he had to shatter their peaceful life. The weak being bullied by the strong had been the way of the world since ancient times. His uneducated grandfather was pathetic because he simply did not understand these truths. Becoming strong did not rely on reckless physical courage, but on intellect and hard work. Relying on his own efforts, he successfully graduated from university, became a Spirit Realm Walker by sheer chance, and entered the Five Elements Alliance, finally stepping into a good life. Over the years, he had not dared to make a single mistake. He feared making mistakes; he feared violence and punishment. Yet the shadow of his grandfather had always hung over him. His grandfather's past crimes severely impeded his prospects, turning him into a key subject of scrutiny for the organization. And then, half a month ago, he saw his long-lost grandfather again. What he felt was not familial affection or joy, but fear. Yes, intense fear. Because the man belonged to an evil profession. To Wei Yuanzhou, this was an unmitigated disaster. *Why did you have to come back? Since you chose to abandon me back then, why couldn't you just disappear from my world completely? Why must you ruin my life, ruin my future?* Wei Yuanzhou had devised a plan to kill two birds with one stone. He told his grandfather, *If you truly care about me, if you truly want to make amends, then eliminate my rival for me.* But that assassination attempt failed. After reviewing the surveillance footage, he knew his grandfather was unwilling to go through with it. *Then the only option left is to eliminate him,* Wei Yuanzhou had thought at the time. However, his grandfather was a veteran Saint belonging to an evil profession that excelled in combat over Orderly professions. Wei Yuanzhou had no confidence in his chances. So he persuaded his superior Deacon to request backup from the Songhai Branch. He did this partly because people from the Songhai Branch did not know his background and could not possibly know about his relationship with his grandfather, whereas the senior leadership of the Jinghai Branch was well aware of his family background and might very well catch wind of some clue during an investigation. On the other hand, whatever merit the people from the Songhai Branch earned would not affect him or turn them into his rivals. And he could use this merit to rise higher and become a Deacon. He had not anticipated that Yuanshi Tianzun would join the Songhai patrol squad and be dispatched to handle this matter. Fortunately, despite a few twists and turns, everything had ultimately come to a perfect close. *No, there's still one final step...* Wei Yuanzhou retrieved a piece of white joss paper from his inventory, round on the outside with a square cut in the center, and laid it across the old man's face. The paper burned silently. Amid the flickering flames, a faint, aged silhouette could vaguely be seen dispersing within the firelight. This was a consumable Wei Yuanzhou had purchased on the black market over the past half-month. Its function was simple: to dispel any remaining spirit body of the deceased. A faint shimmer of water light flashed across Wei Yuanzhou's palm as he gently wiped his grandfather's face, sweeping away the ashes left by the joss paper. "I'm sorry. From now on, I have to walk this path on my own..." He muttered softly to himself, cast one last glance at his grandfather's remains, and turned to leave without hesitation. The moment he stepped out of the morgue, a wave of relief washed over him. The gloom in his heart was completely gone. ... Seventh floor, official Walkers' office area. Inside the Hemen District Deacon's office, Wei Yuanzhou sat ramrod straight on the sofa in the reception area, steady as a bell, meticulous in every detail. The Hemen District Deacon was a Level 5 Mountain God whose Spirit Realm ID was Banshan. He was a short but exceptionally burly middle-aged man, gentle in temperament, though somewhat pedantic. "It's been confirmed that he was a Spirit Medium. Well done. According to organizational regulations, neutralizing a Spirit Medium earns one Class-C Merit. I'll submit the application report for you." Deacon Banshan smiled warmly. "Together with the seniority and merit you've accumulated over the past few years, plus your level being right where it needs to be, there shouldn't be any issue. Going forward, we'll be equals." A warm, heartfelt smile appeared on Wei Yuanzhou's handsome face. "Thank you, Leader!" Deacon Banshan nodded slightly and asked, "Has that Spirit Medium's identity been determined?" Wei Yuanzhou shook his head. "I've already had colleagues from the Public Security Bureau run facial recognition, but nothing turned up. DNA matching yielded no results either. As you know, DNA collection hasn't been implemented universally across the entire population." In truth, facial recognition had already produced results, but he had suppressed them. As a captain-level Walker, suppressing such a minor detail was effortless unless Deacon Banshan personally kept an eye on it. And leaders could not possibly oversee every little thing themselves. Besides, the incident had not caused major fallout and was already resolved. Having him write a report and agreeing to question him in person was already quite responsible. Deacon Banshan nodded. "Notify Taiyi Sect's Night Walkers to come over and perform spirit questioning. Standard procedure still needs to be followed." "This..." Wei Yuanzhou put on a difficult expression. Deacon Banshan set down his teacup. "Is there a problem?" "It's like this," Wei Yuanzhou explained. "Before ambushing that Spirit Medium, in order to guarantee success and prevent the cornered beast from lashing out and harming the innocent, I used a Night Walker prop to severely damage his spirit body. "By now, his soul has likely scattered, leaving no spirit body behind." Deacon Banshan frowned, pondered briefly, and said, "Then forget it." He picked his teacup back up, savoring the fragrant, sweet tea. Wei Yuanzhou stood up at the appropriate moment. "I'll head back to work then." Deacon Banshan nodded with a smile. Leaving the office, Wei Yuanzhou walked through the spacious working area. "Captain Wei!" "Hello, Captain Wei!" "Captain Wei, the case is wrapped up, right? Let's have dinner together tonight!" As he walked past, official Walkers and civilian employees cast aside any distance and extended goodwill. Every one of them was a decent person; every one of them was exceedingly respectful. Wei Yuanzhou responded to each in turn, a sincere smile gracing his face. Right at that moment, he saw the Songhai patrol squad striding in through the entrance of the office area, led by none other than Yuanshi Tianzun, who had been missing all night.