Just as Lu Yang was pondering what kind of bizarre encounters one might stumble into during the Body Integration stage, a chilling voice drifted over.
“Heh heh. When did the Immortal Palace fall so low as to let men wander in as they please?”
“Aaaagh!” Xue Shilou was rolling on the floor in agony, his screams echoing throughout the Hall of Sinners.
“To think of the glory the Immortal Palace enjoyed under my leadership back then...”
“Aaaagh!” Xue Shilou slammed his head against the ground in sheer pain, trying to distract himself.
“And now that girl Luo Hongxia has driven it to this...”
“Aaaagh!” Xue Shilou clawed at his skin, his body burning up, turning beet red all over.
“Shut your mouth!”
The chilling voice erupted in fury. Xue Shilou’s caterwauling had completely ruined the mood she had set.
If they weren't in the Hall of Sinners, a single glare from her would have ensured Xue Shilou never dared utter another peep.
Unfortunately, the Hall of Sinners had an array that sealed everyone's cultivation. Even with earth-shattering magical power, she couldn't stop Xue Shilou's miserable wails.
Lu Yang traced the sound to its source: a pale-skinned woman with an indifferent expression.
“Who might this be?”
“Our Immortal Palace's previous palace master, Qu Ling. By generational rank, I should address her as Martial Grand-Aunt.”
Lu Yang was thoroughly astonished. He hadn't expected the Moon Laurel Immortal Palace to throw even its former palace master into the Hall of Sinners.
“You are that Lu Yang who has been cutting such a grand figure in the outside world lately?” Although being confined in the Hall of Sinners cut one off from contacting the outside, newcomers were constantly brought in, allowing the inmates to keep abreast of outside news in real time.
“The Immortal Palace has truly fallen. Kowtowing to brute power, admitting men into the palace, trampling on ancestral tradition.” Qu Ling sneered repeatedly, looking down with disdain at Lu Yang and the Dao Seeking Sect behind him.
“Had I not been betrayed by Luo Hongxia, how could I have fallen to such a state? And how could the Immortal Palace have sunk this low!”
“What did she get locked up for?” Lu Yang grew even more curious and took two steps back to check the plaque outside her cell.
*Qu Ling: Embezzlement, Life Imprisonment.*
Lan Ting explained from the side, “Martial Grand-Aunt secretly embezzled sect resources to attempt a breakthrough to the Tribulation Transcendence stage. When the breakthrough failed, the truth came out, and Master joined forces with others to arrest her.”
“Afterward, they also discovered she had meddled in gray-market businesses out in the world, embezzled sect assets for gambling, and so forth. She committed quite a few crimes, but whoever made the plaque was too lazy to write so much, so they only listed the main offense.”
“Nothing more than your master wanting to seize power and taking the opportunity to purge her rivals. History is always written by the victors; it has been so since ancient times.”
Lu Yang wore a baffled expression. “Senior, since that’s what you believe, why did you call out to me?”
He had assumed Qu Ling had some grievance she wanted to appeal to him about.
The Five Great Immortal Sects not only held law-enforcement authority, but also possessed supervisory power over one another.
The corner of Qu Ling’s mouth curled into an enigmatic smile.
Lu Yang came to a sudden realization. “I get it. You just thought doing this looked cool, didn’t you?”
Qu Ling kept smiling, thoroughly at a loss as to what her next move should be.
Didn’t the books brought back by Ancestor Zhuiyue always have plots like this? A mysterious figure imprisoned in a dungeon calls out to the protagonist, sneers or mocks them, spouts a few cryptic remarks that make no sense to anyone, and the protagonist walks away full of questions while the mysterious figure wears an unfathomable smile in the dark cage.
The books never mentioned *why* the mysterious figure had to call out to the protagonist in the first place.
Seeing Qu Ling’s reaction, Lu Yang knew he had hit the mark. Feeling thoroughly satisfied, he led Lan Ting out of the Hall of Sinners. On his way out, he had wanted to peek at what Elder Molan was writing, but she reacted too quickly, leaving him no chance to see.
Just as they stepped out of the Hall of Sinners, an explosive *boom* sounded not far away. Flames shot into the sky, and dense demon qi billowed outward.
“Is that the Alchemy Chamber? Come on, let's go check it out!”
Without a second thought, the two rushed straight toward the Alchemy Chamber!
A colossal snow-white demon rabbit was burrowing out of the chamber, having punched a massive hole right through the roof. Its eyes were bloodshot as if it had gone mad, and it kept grabbing roof tiles and shoving them into its mouth, crunching them down with ear-piercing crunches.
“Beast, cease your rampaging!” Lan Ting unleashed her green silk sash. It extended endlessly, elongating like a green serpent before coiling around the demon rabbit.
Though the rabbit looked fierce, it was merely at the Golden Core stage and posed no real threat.
Once bound, the demon rabbit collapsed to the ground, thrashing its body and craning its neck to gnaw on the roof tiles scattered across the ground with relentless, harsh crunches.
“Thank you for the help, Senior Sister Lan!” A disciple dashed out of the Alchemy Chamber, whom Lu Yang remembered was named Qin Nan.
“What happened here?” Lan Ting touched down and used her sash to gag the demon rabbit's mouth, stopping it from chewing any more tiles; the noise was simply too grating.
“I remember this demon rabbit was used for testing pills, wasn't it? How did it suddenly grow so massive?”
To test the medicinal properties of pills, the Immortal Palace reared many demon beasts. Unlike the demon race, demon beasts possessed no spiritual intelligence, making them ideal for testing pills.
Attracted by the commotion, other disciples rushed over one after another, asking after Qin Nan’s safety.
Qin Nan scratched the back of his head sheepishly and explained to the crowd, “I was testing medicinal efficacy, and well, it failed, didn't it?”
“I suspect the ratio of ingredients wasn't quite right. It triggered this demon rabbit’s dormant bloodline, causing it to swell in size and slip out of control.”
“What did you feed it?”
“A derivative of the Beauty Preserving Pill—a Beauty Mooncake with osmanthus filling.” Qin Nan pulled a mooncake from his robes. The front was stamped with the words *Moon Laurel Immortal Palace*, and the back was stamped with *Beauty Preserving*.
“Your Immortal Palace makes mooncakes too?” Lu Yang asked in surprise.
He had never imagined there could be a mooncake that combined the attributes of a mooncake, a Beauty Preserving Pill, and a flower pastry all in one.
Lan Ting hummed softly in assent. “With the Mid-Autumn Festival just around the corner, our Immortal Palace has always had the tradition of making mooncakes every year. The Alchemy Chamber tries to innovate by combining pills and mooncakes.”
“Though judging by the current situation, the research isn't going very smoothly.”
The Mid-Autumn Festival was a tradition handed down from ancient times. Back then, the moon waxed and waned, and the full moon on the fifteenth day of the eighth month marked the festival.
Ever since Immortal Jiuchong created the unified celestial body that merged the sun and moon, the saying that ‘the moon waxes and wanes’ was no longer true. Every day was a full moon, yet the custom had endured.
The Dao Seeking Sect didn't pay much heed to the Mid-Autumn Festival. Most likely, the moon held special significance for the Moon Laurel Immortal Palace, which was why they placed so much importance on it.
“What should we do with this rabbit?” Lu Yang asked. The rabbit looked to be six meters long and was still refusing to settle down, wriggling and squirming on the ground.
“Let's dissect it to see what made it lose control,” a disciple called out from the side.
“Look at how red its eyes are. It’s definitely gone berserk. It's beyond saving.”
“Aren't rabbits' eyes naturally red to begin with?” a younger disciple asked in confusion.
“Shut up! Do you want to eat rabbit or not?”
The younger disciple felt torn. Telling the truth would save the rabbit, but she wouldn't get to eat delicious rabbit; telling a lie wouldn't save the rabbit, but she would get a delicious meal. Was this what the grown-up world was like, filled with lies and compromises?
She racked her brains, wavering between ideals and reality, before finally settling on how the rabbit should be prepared.
“Then let's roast it.”
Chapter 1019