Chapter 357

Chapter 357: You Weren’t Ready for Me to Strike Back?

His anger flared and faded in a blink, and he finally answered anyway: “In the Hidden Realm. You can also think of it as the Cultivation Realm. Most people there are cultivators. The spiritual energy is very dense, so many spirit plants, spirit beasts, and demonic beasts were born there.”

Yu Zhi Yi’s eyes narrowed in thought: [Is Heavenly Secret Sect inside the Hidden Realm?] Sadly, her master had left too fast and never explained the sect’s affairs. It seemed she needed to speed up those old pending cases. If she didn’t go to the Hidden Realm, she might not even be able to feed Jinlin.

“Fourth question,” she asked, practical as ever, “how much demonic beast and spirit beast meat are you carrying?”

The man almost lost it, but still, the truth came out: “This is too much… I brought one month of rations for Jinlin.”

Yu Zhi Yi nodded. Good. That meant she had one month to clear the old cases. She was now mid-stage Foundation Establishment, so she could handle more cases each day. With just over a hundred files left, she would finish soon and then take leave again.

By now the man had closed his eyes in despair.

Yu Zhi Yi did not push him further and simply asked: “Fifth question-where did you hide Marquis Wu’an’s heir apparent and the others?”

He gave up struggling and said flatly: “In a tree hole in the original forest. I set illusions around it, but with your skill you should break them quickly.” After all, his main goal was to lure and kill her. If she died, the chance of others breaking the formation would be tiny. There was no need to make that formation too advanced.

“Sixth question,” she said, “where is the formation core for this illusion?”

He forced the answer out between clenched teeth: “In the lotus pond outside the door.”

Yu Zhi Yi raised a brow: [You really like hiding things in water.]

“The last question,” she added generously, “what’s your name?”

Hearing “last question,” he let out a hard breath. He’d had enough of watching his own mouth betray him. “Gao Wen Feng. I’m from the Gao Clan of the Hidden Realm.”

The Gao Clan of the Hidden Realm was one of the top families there. He reported his background so quickly because he wanted to live.

Too bad he made a fatal mistake. When facing a giant enemy, the best answer is not to let the tiger return to the mountain, but to cut the grass and pull up the roots. As long as the Gao Clan didn’t know she had killed their junior, they wouldn’t come for revenge. Then their power would have nothing to do with her.

Yu Zhi Yi’s eyes stayed faint and calm. Even deciding to kill this hidden threat, her mood didn’t ripple. In her last life she had seen too much killing and even gone to war herself. She was not a greenhouse flower, and she was not a noble idealist who only talked about benevolence and trust. In this world, pure idealists don’t live long.

A chill crawled up Gao Wen Feng’s back. The young miss before him looked pretty and cool, with no obvious killing aura. But fear still stabbed his heart. A terrible thought jolted through him and he blurted out: “You actually want to kill me?!”

Yu Zhi Yi tilted her head and asked like it was obvious: “Before you came to kill me, didn’t you prepare to be killed in return?”

She had admitted it! Gao Wen Feng stared, shocked that she truly had such courage. “You can’t kill me!” he cried. He didn’t want to admit it, but panic had seized him. Even though she didn’t bare her teeth, he still felt the threat of death.

Yu Zhi Yi took out a fire command talisman. The heavenly thunder talisman kills fast-blink once and the target is dead-but then you have to deal with the corpse. Annoying. The fire command talisman wasn’t as quick, but afterward there was nothing left to clean up.

Gao Wen Feng’s pupils tightened as he blurted: “If you kill me, your Jiang Clan won’t survive either!”

Her hand paused as she lifted the talisman, and she raised a brow: “What do you mean?”

Grinding down his hatred to save his life, he explained: “My Gao Clan has a legacy technique. We brand a soul-bound protective talisman on clan children. If they face a killing blow and the protective talisman isn’t enough to block it, the talisman will record a short image.”

He added, a touch of pride slipping in: “You people in the mortal world may not know, but the Hidden Realm has something called an image-recording stone. It records moving images. Every person’s life tablet holds a small piece of it. The image from the protective talisman gets sent back to the image-recording stone in the life tablet, as the last memory before death.”

“If a clan member is murdered, the image shows the killer. It’s proof.”

Yu Zhi Yi’s heart jolted. She had always wondered: even if mystic sect families owned life tablets and knew at once when someone died, how did they track the murderer? Now she understood there was such a treasure in the Hidden Realm.

Her gaze sharpened: “So does your Gao Clan already know I killed your son?”

Gao Wen Feng’s eyes flashed as he lied smoothly: “Yes, they all know. So you can only let me go.”

Yu Zhi Yi frowned and said nothing. She didn’t move either. [No. Something is off.] Forcing herself to calm down, she replayed Gao Wen Feng’s looks and actions, and the chain of events.

When she looked up again, her expression was clear: “You’re lying.” She flicked out another truth-telling talisman.

Truth-telling talismans have a time limit-about a quarter of an hour. The first six questions had nearly used up the time.

Gao Wen Feng’s face went numb. He wanted to curse her out, but the words that came from his mouth were: “Yes, I’m lying!”

Yu Zhi Yi’s lips curved as she ordered: “Tell me the details about the life tablets and the image-recording stones.”

Blue veins stood out on Gao Wen Feng’s forehead. He had no choice. Against his will, he told the truth.

“Every child of the Gao Clan receives a life-bound protective talisman at birth,” he said. “If the talisman shatters, it records a short clip and sends it back to the image-recording stone in the clan life tablet. But the image can only be viewed once. The moment it’s played-whether one person watches or a hundred-the image is erased when it ends.”

He swallowed and confessed the key point: “When I sensed my son might be in danger, I rushed to the ancestral hall and checked the life tablets. I saw Gao Yao Wen’s tablet had shattered. In my grief and rage I forgot to notify anyone else and opened the image-recording stone myself.”

He shut his eyes and finished, hollow: “In other words, only I know that you, Yu Zhi Yi, killed my son.”