"Little Lu, Meng boy, over here, over here!"
Daoist Buyu had noticed the pair's footsteps long ago, and beckoned them over.
"Master, why are you here?" The corner of Lu Yang's eye twitched. How should he put it? Running into his master in a prison cell didn't feel surprising in the slightest.
Although his master had altered his appearance, Lu Yang still recognized his dear master at a glance.
"And Clan Head Jin, you..."
Clan Head Jin, on the other hand, had not changed his appearance.
Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou had no idea that after the Demon Empire's founding ceremony, Clan Head Jin had taken Daoist Buyu as his elder brother in order to hone his eloquence.
Lu Yang still remembered how full of mettle and pride Clan Head Jin had been back when they met in the Qiongqi Clan—neither servile nor arrogant even before the pressure of Supreme Zhu Tian. How had he fallen to his master's level in the blink of an eye?
This decline had been a bit too rapid.
"I came here to study under Big Brother Buyu," Clan Head Jin chuckled. Running into acquaintances in a place like this made him somewhat embarrassed.
Lu Yang racked his brain, but simply could not think of anything his master had that was worth learning.
Daoist Buyu laughed heartily, not feeling embarrassed in the slightest. "Aiya, wasn't I teaching Little Jin that deceivers will inevitably be caught? To get used to prison life in advance and teach him how to live comfortably and leisurely in a cell, I deliberately left a small opening so the Ye City yamen would arrest Little Jin and me."
Daoist Buyu patted Clan Head Jin's shoulder, imparting his precious knowledge: "Have confidence! In our line of work, the most important thing is confidence. The countenance springs from the heart—when you're confident in your heart, your face will glow with assurance, and only then will the other party believe your lies!"
Lu Yang clutched his forehead. Why hadn't Master been this earnest when teaching him? Wait, Master didn't need to teach him this kind of thing anyway.
"And who would've thought there'd be an unexpected bonus?" Daoist Buyu added. "We ran into the Patriarch! I heard the Patriarch was arrested because he wanted to go undercover in the Emotionless Cult?"
Lu Yang nodded and recounted what he had gathered earlier. "The Ye City yamen received intelligence regarding an Emotionless Cult stronghold, so they teamed up with several neighboring cities to wipe it out. That was how the Patriarch was caught."
"So that's how it is."
"We bought some food from Youfulou, though we don't know if it suits your tastes, Patriarch."
Meng Jingzhou opened two large food containers, releasing an appetizing aroma. Although from a mental state perspective Daoist Xiantian was long past the stage of craving food and drink, he was currently at early Foundation Establishment, so his body had an instinctive reaction.
"Smells wonderful." Daoist Xiantian's nose twitched as he took the chopsticks and began feasting.
"Where are my chopsticks?" Daoist Buyu pointed at himself. Secular cultivators didn't abide by fasting; enjoying good food was the proper path for a secular cultivator!
"There's only one pair," Meng Jingzhou replied, thinking, *How was I supposed to know you were locked up here too, Sect Master?*
Of course, even if he had known Daoist Buyu was here, he wouldn't have prepared an extra pair.
Daoist Buyu had no choice but to condense a pair of chopsticks out of spiritual energy to pick up food and eat.
Ye City Prison contained formations that suppressed cultivation and spiritual energy. Even for Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou, mobilizing spiritual energy here felt arduous, like being bogged down in a mire and unable to move freely.
Ye City was considered a major city, its city lord possessed Void Refining stage cultivation, and the formations were also of the Void Refining level. However, a Void Refining level formation was nowhere near enough in front of Daoist Buyu.
As a half-step Tribulation Transcendence cultivator, a mere local prison's formation couldn't possibly suppress Daoist Buyu. He could cast arts at will.
Never mind a half-step Tribulation Transcendence—even Clan Head Jin, at the Body Integration stage, could cast arts freely.
Considering that exposing his identity might attract old friends teaming up to come spectate him, Daoist Buyu had entered the prison under a false identity, posing as a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Clan Head Jin had done the same.
"Speaking of which, it's also fortunate the Patriarch didn't join the Emotionless Cult. I spent some time knocking about in the Emotionless Cult back in the day, and that place truly isn't fit for human beings." Even eating couldn't keep Daoist Buyu's mouth shut.
"Back then, I happened upon the Emotionless Cult recruiting people. There was no time to notify anyone else, so I figured I'd test the waters first, and then I joined."
"Huh?" None of them had expected Daoist Buyu to have such a history. "Isn't the entrance trial for the Emotionless Cult to kill the person closest to you? How did you pass the test?"
"Simple! The person closest to me is myself. Inside the formation, I encountered another me, identical in strength. You forget causes and circumstances inside the formation, right? So when I saw another me, I just assumed I'd stumbled into some secret realm and needed to defeat myself to clear it. Then I broke through mid-battle and slaughtered myself.
"After clearing the trial, the Emotionless Cult still investigates who the person closest to you shown in the formation was, and you need to kill them in reality before you're truly considered a member of the Emotionless Cult.
"When their investigation revealed that the person closest to me was myself, they couldn't exactly make me commit suicide, so they let me through.
"After I joined the Emotionless Cult, I found they were delving into the Dao of Emotionlessness. To study the Dao of Emotionlessness, they would get married, attempt to walk the Dao of Emotion, and then prove the Dao by slaying their wives to reinforce the emotionlessness in their hearts.
"I took one look and thought, this won't do! If the Dao of Emotionlessness keeps going like this, how many innocent women will suffer?
"So back then, I offered a suggestion to the upper echelons of the Emotionless Cult. I told them that slaying one's wife to prove the Dao was the wrong approach. Does killing your wife prove you're an emotionless person? What if you killed your wife on an impulse in the heat of the moment and regretted it afterward?
"The upper echelons thought my words made some sense, so they asked me what good ideas I had.
"I said that if you want to prove the Dao of Emotionlessness, you need a long-term vision. You can't just rely on killing, killing, killing. If you kill off everyone close to you, how are you going to prove the Dao of Emotionlessness later on?
"I suggested that rather than falling in love with your wife and killing her, it's better to fall in love with your wife, and then let her sleep with someone else.
"Logically speaking, having your wife sleep with someone else will either make you furious or agitated. But no matter which it is, neither is an emotion that a member of the Emotionless Cult should display.
"And witnessing your wife sleeping with someone else with your own eyes maximizes the emotions of anger or agitation. Therefore, I also suggested that Emotionless Cult members stand by and watch the entire process of getting cuckolded.
"If your wife cuckolds you and you still have no reaction whatsoever, only then are you a qualified member of the Emotionless Cult!"
"The cult's higher-ups thought what I said made sense, so they promoted my theory on a wide scale within the Emotionless Cult.
"This theory of mine even tested out lots of cult members who couldn't achieve emotionlessness and wanted to betray the cult, all of whom were executed.
"Dying was good for them too. Those people had blood on their hands when they joined the cult anyway; their deaths were well deserved.
"Later, I discovered that the fundamental doctrine of the Emotionless Cult wasn't emotionlessness at all, but using any means necessary to become stronger.
"Furthermore, the Emotionless Cult had a strict promotion system. You could say each turnip had its pit—every time you advanced a rank, the resources you received increased drastically, similar to outer disciples and inner disciples in other sects.
"At that time, I told them: since superiors sitting up there are preventing the people below from advancing, wouldn't getting rid of the people on top give us a chance to take their place?
"They thought what I said made sense, so they secretly assassinated several superiors and successfully took over.
"Seeing this, other branch halls followed suit one after another. The Emotionless Cult was quite a mess for a while."
Chapter 893