Gu Baiqing’s voice, carried by thunder from the heavens, struck straight through the roof of the grand hall, flooding the chamber with a blinding light and sheer force of authority.
But one pair of fists could not fight four hands. A single person feared Gu Baiqing, yet a group could stand against him.
The next second, nearly half of the hall’s famed immortals revealed their spiritual weapons.
The air was tight as a drawn blade.
Just then, a dragon’s roar split the sky. A massive black dragon surged into the hall, coiling midair before the two master and disciple, forming a protective circle around them. Its dragon breath alone forced everyone back a step.
Three Bean landed on Mo Xuanli’s shoulder, its fur bristling toward the crowd.
With a true dragon added to the mix, the tension in the hall reached a breaking point.
Yet no one dared to strike first, they all knew it hadn’t come to that yet. If they fought, the outcome was unpredictable, and both sides would suffer.
“Fu Zhiyi! Does your Zixiao Sect intend to interfere or not?!” He Jingyuan shouted.
Fu Zhiyi said coldly, “Of course we will. Junior Brother, calm yourself. Rest assured, no one will be allowed to bully a disciple of our Zixiao Sect.”
Gu Baiqing cast him a brief glance but didn’t lower his sword. His gaze remained icy as he swept across the hall. “This is your final warning. If you cannot bring forth evidence, if it’s nothing but empty slander, then every one of you who’s defamed my disciple will apologize to him!”
The faces of several aggressors darkened to iron-blue in fury.
Meanwhile, Mo Xuanli who had been stunned senseless since the start could only stare blankly at his master before him. Everything felt like a dream. This scene… it had appeared countless times in his mind. Every time he despaired, it was always this same image:
The moment his master heard he was a half-breed, he didn’t doubt, he defended him without hesitation.
At that moment, Mo Xuanli was so moved he almost wanted to dig out his heart and offer it to his master. Yet in the very next instant, guilt nearly crushed him.
Because he was a half-breed. He’d deceived his master, let him protect him so fiercely. If his master ever learned that the disciple he risked everything to defend was in truth a despised, unworthy hybrid, one who had deceived his trust, his affection, and even tainted his reputation and standing—
What would he think?
Mo Xuanli dared not imagine it. He was like a child cornered to the cliff’s edge, one step away from falling, refusing with all his might to move forward.
He couldn’t drag this man down with him. He still wanted… to live on, to stay with this man.
What should he do? But this time was different. In every past hardship, Mo Xuanli could stay calm, find a way, adapt to survive but faced with the fear buried deepest in his heart, he truly couldn’t think of a way to take control.
He couldn’t flee, fleeing would mean admitting it.
He couldn’t fight, alone he would lose, and even if he won, he couldn’t escape.
He could only… argue. Endure. Deny till the end!
His body trembled lightly, cold sweat beading on his forehead, only to be brushed away by a soft, furry tail.
“Xuanli, don’t be afraid. You have Master, and you have us,” Three Bean whispered. “Master will always protect you.”
Mo Xuanli’s heart shuddered. His pupils quivered as his gaze fixed on the man’s back before him. His lips moved, murmuring the word, Master… as if drawing courage from the sound.
Fu Zhiyi spoke at once, “My junior brother is right! Our direct disciple won’t have filth flung at him for nothing! To accuse someone of being a hybrid is no small charge, this isn’t something you can claim without proof. Besides, Mo Xuanli’s been walking Taixu Hall for quite some time now. Everyone here is a master of their path, if he truly had mixed blood, wouldn’t someone have noticed? Not just our sect, none of you saw it? To believe this baseless accusation is to say we’re all blind! Anyone in the Nascent Soul stage or above can tell by spiritual sense alone. Did all our senses fail at once?”
His words won over many who’d been neutral at first.
After all, half-bloods were easy to detect and precisely because of that, few ever survived to adulthood. In the cultivation world they were hunted as shameful abominations; in the demon realm they were devoured as delicacies. There was no escape for them.
“Enough d*mn talk! Bring out your witness!” He Jingyuan barked at Zong Lei.
Zong Lei hesitated. He wasn’t fully certain the witness would convince the crowd, he’d hoped to attack from other angles first, but those had been countered one by one.
With no other choice, he called out, “Come out.”
Soon, a figure stepped forward.
Some had seen this “witness” before, but most hadn’t.
The moment they did, gasps echoed through the hall.
Gu Baiqing narrowed his eyes slightly. Of course. Both father and son, equally detestable.
“Zong Ziming? Your son’s the one accusing my disciple?” He gave a cold, mocking laugh, the meaning behind it plain as day.
Given the earlier debacle with the Yinyuan Stone, many couldn’t help recalling Fu Zhiyi’s words—if you can’t have it, destroy it—though that seemed a stretch even now.
Zong Lei’s face darkened. “What are you laughing at?”
“I thought it would be a demon clansman,” Gu Baiqing said lightly. “Turns out it’s your precious son. In that case, what I said earlier about demanding apologies doesn’t count anymore.”
Before the crowd could process this, Gu Baiqing added, “I’ll add one more term: if Zong Ziming has real evidence, fine. But if he’s spewing nonsense then I want him to fall back to the early Golden Core stage and start cultivating again.”
A collective gasp rippled through the hall.
Zong Lei roared in fury, smashing the table before him with a single palm.
“How arrogant, you’d cripple my son’s cultivation over one sentence?!”
“What, you can demand my personal disciple’s life under the name of exposing a ‘hybrid traitor,’ but I can’t demand your son lose three stages of cultivation? I’m already being merciful. Or would you prefer he falls back to Foundation Establishment instead? You’re all so confident in your accusations, what are you afraid of?”
Gu Baiqing’s voice was glacial, his killing intent palpable as he turned to Zong Ziming, clearly trying to cow him into silence.
But to his surprise, the young man didn’t flinch, he stood firm, unshaken. Every cultivator dreaded losing cultivation; to fall a realm was to cripple one’s future, one’s heart and Dao forever scarred.
Yet Zong Ziming did not waver.
In Gu Baiqing’s eyes, if it had been a demon clansman making the claim, that might have been something, after all, according to the information from Half-Step Mad, someone in the demon realm did know Mo Xuanli’s identity.
But now it was just a minor cultivator speaking, Gu Baiqing wasn’t the least bit worried.
Zong Lei was about to say something, but Zong Ziming stopped him.
“Father, my sister’s already been taken. I’m not afraid of threats like this. I’m the one who reported it.” Zong Ziming looked straight at Gu Baiqing, his gaze fixed firmly behind him. He raised his hand, pointed directly at Mo Xuanli, and declared in a clear, ringing voice, “Mo Xuanli is a hybrid. When the demon clan came to seize my sister, I heard it with my own ears, it was Mo Xuanli who set up the formation and let them in! His goal was to collude with the demons from the inside, then pretend to play the hero and earn the trust of the cultivation world, only to later leak information about our operations to the demons! Everything he’s done against the demon clan before this was part of a scheme, arranged with them in advance, all to raise his own standing among cultivators!”
Point, point, point again—keep pointing and I’ll break your fingers, Gu Baiqing thought grimly.
He narrowed his eyes, considering two possibilities: First, that Zong Ziming had somehow heard some truth, which was why he could so suddenly declare Mo Xuanli a hybrid.
Second, that he was simply making things up.
But this time, Gu Baiqing leaned toward the first. Otherwise, wouldn’t that mean Zong Ziming had just happened to hit the mark by blind luck?
After Zong Ziming finished, the first to jump out was the representative of Rufeng Sect. “Wasn’t there also something suspicious about that puppeteer incident?”
Good grief, Gu Baiqing thought. They really knew how to wash themselves clean. He truly despaired at the moral standards of these so-called righteous sects.
“Do you take us for blind?” Jingzhan couldn’t hold it in any longer and shouted, “Xie Qingrong and I were both there! Mo Xuanli nearly died that time, if that was some elaborate ruse, wouldn’t that be far too high a price?”
He despised hybrids as much as anyone, but he absolutely didn’t believe Mo Xuanli was one. These people were just picking on him because he was mild-tempered and never played dirty.
Someone from Chuixue Pavilion also looked ready to speak up, but Si Chun stopped them. Even if Si Chun couldn’t openly take sides, she wouldn’t allow her fellow disciples to wrong someone out of selfish gain, no matter whether that person was a hybrid or not.
Li Xiuran gave a short laugh. “Zong Ziming, the demons sure told you a lot, huh? What were you doing, chatting over tea? They weren’t in a hurry to capture anyone, and you weren’t in a hurry to fight them off?”
At that, Ji Chuling burst out laughing outright.
Zong Ziming’s face twisted with humiliation and anger as he glared at Li Xiuran.
Li Xiuran only turned toward Mo Xuanli and said, “Brother Xuanli must be disgusted by you by now, huh? Xuanli, what do you have to say?”
Gu Baiqing tilted his head slightly. He could protect Mo Xuanli, but if Mo Xuanli kept silent, it would only deepen suspicion. Was he… all right?
Just as Gu Baiqing began to worry, the person behind him suddenly stepped forward.
White robes fluttered, just slightly apart from the black.
A low, slightly hoarse voice came, steady, controlled. He had calmed down. Whether life or death, he would fight this to the end.
“Zong Ziming,” Mo Xuanli said, “what you said can’t count as evidence. You’re repeating rumors, claims from the demon clan. I reject this slander. And since only you heard these things, whether they’re true or false is still up for debate. Now, I have some questions for you. You heard what your father just asked me, didn’t you? Then let me ask you the same because you’ve done the very same things I did.”
The crowd instantly recalled the details.
First, Zong Ziming hadn’t shown up that night either, claiming he’d fallen into qi deviation.
Second, he’d been wandering about daily, supposedly to “entertain guests.”
Third, at Constellation Island, he had long periods of solitary action, saying he’d been breaking through in cultivation.
And fourth, last night, he too had vanished without a sound, leaving even earlier than Mo Xuanli. So he hadn’t tested the Yinyuan Stone either.
Li Xiuran smirked. “Yeah, that’s right. Now that I think about it, you’re the only one who actually talked so much with the demons. Doesn’t that make you even more suspicious?”
Zong Ziming, who had felt so sure of victory a moment ago, suddenly burned with fury. He glared from Mo Xuanli to Li Xiuran, his expression growing sharper and darker by the second.
Why were Mo Xuanli and Li Xiuran both so d*mned irritating?! He should have told the demons to kill the two of them before leaving, now they were nothing but trouble!
And that woman, what had she said? That Mo Xuanli would soon fall into demonic ways, that his master would abandon him. Why was it nothing like what she’d promised?!
Zong Lei barked angrily, “Nonsense! My son has a name, a father, a mother, he’s no hybrid, no demon! What reason could he have to be a suspect?”
Gu Baiqing’s eyes narrowed.
He hated people who attacked others based on birth.
You think lineage makes you noble? When the beam above’s crooked, the one below won’t stand straight either.
Mo Xuanli’s face stiffened. “I’m an orphan. Does that mean I deserve to be suspected?”
“I’m an orphan too,” Li Xiuran said, stepping forward. “Should I be suspected as well? Half the cultivators here are probably the same. Does Hall Master Zong plan to accuse us all?”
Zong Lei hadn’t expected Li Xiuran to keep butting in. Being someone chosen by both the Hidden Gods Clan and the God-Slaying Sword, his words carried weight. So Zong Lei turned toward He Jingyuan.
He Jingyuan snapped, “Li Xiuran, shut your mouth! Don’t you want your senior brother back? Ah Xuan, make him shut up!”
He Zixuan looked toward Li Xiuran, who clearly wasn’t standing on their side, her expression darkening.
“Master,” she said, “I just think this so-called interrogation is laughable. To brand a man of merit as a hybrid based on a single person’s accusation, is that the conduct of the righteous path? And to judge a person’s innocence by their birth, how absurd. If you truly want to save Senior Brother, stop wasting time on this infighting. Convene a proper meeting, set a plan, and figure out how to rescue him.”
Jingzhan clapped immediately. “Well said!”
Several others seemed to awaken as well, murmuring to each other. It was as if everyone had been under a spell because they’d heard the words “traitor” and “hybrid,” they’d lost their reason, letting outrage cloud their minds and drive them into a corner of their own making.
Gu Baiqing couldn’t help the slight curve of his lips, Mo Xuanli had really made some good friends. Words like these, if spoken by members of their own Zixiao Sect, would only provoke backlash. But coming from outsiders, they actually made people stop and think, forcing them to see just how absurd and laughable the entire situation was. To offend Zixiao Sect, to offend the most promising young cultivator in the entire cultivation world, all because of a mere rumor, a single sentence passed around… it was utterly ridiculous.
The tense atmosphere in the hall gradually began to ease, and Gu Baiqing finally started to relax. Perhaps this crisis might just…
Zong Lei, however, was already panicking, unsure how to salvage the situation. After all, he was the one who had led the charge. If this fell through, the reputation of Taixu Hall would take a devastating blow. And what Gu Baiqing had said earlier wasn’t wrong, someone would have to take responsibility for this failure. If no outsider could be blamed, then as the current Hall Master of Taixu Hall, he would be in serious trouble.
So when he heard his son speak, it was like seeing a lifeline. Naturally, he didn’t believe his son was lying, after all, when his son described the details, and some of them did check out, the suspicion seemed reasonable. Besides, truth or not, it was worth testing. He had wanted to find a way to control Mo Xuanli anyway; if not through a marriage alliance, then through other means.
He had prepared many strategies. Yet now, none could be used.
As everyone hesitated, Zong Ziming suddenly dropped to his knees and kowtowed toward Zong Lei. “I don’t wish to continue arguing with words. I am willing to stake my life just to prove it once and for all.”
Zong Lei’s face changed slightly. “What do you mean by that?”
“I am willing to gamble,” Zong Ziming said solemnly. “Let everyone test Mo Xuanli’s true form. If he is not a hybrid, then I have wronged him and I will willingly die to atone for it!”
The words shocked the entire room.
If he weren’t absolutely certain, who would dare say something like that?
“Young Master Zong, you must understand,” someone tried to dissuade him, “even if you truly heard something, the words of the demon race are not to be trusted. To make such a wager—”
“For the safety of the entire cultivation world, I have no regrets!” Zong Ziming declared righteously. “Think about it, if what those demons said was true, and the cultivation world truly harbored a hybrid, one who has gained admiration and heavy support from all sides, how terrifying would that be? Such a thing cannot be tolerated!”
His impassioned speech immediately swayed many people.
Indeed, their aversion to hybrids was not only because of their filthy origins, but also because of the fear of their power once grown.
Many years ago, before the extermination of hybrids became so severe, some had secretly grown up. Because they could cultivate both immortal and demonic paths, they became a headache for both realms. In the end, many had sided with the demon race, causing disastrous consequences.
He Jingyuan spoke up bluntly: “Enough talk. Let’s just test him directly. If we can’t tell, isn’t the Hidden Gods Clan here? They can identify demon bloodlines, can’t they?”
That was precisely why the Hidden Gods Clan had been invited, for their ability to distinguish demonic blood.
Ji Chuling immediately turned to look nervously at her grandfather. The clan leader nodded and said, “It can be done. If he is a hybrid, our clan has two ways to test it. The first, inject him with demonic energy. If he truly has demon blood, he will absorb the energy and grow stronger immediately; that will make it clear. The second, drive eighteen anti-demon nails into him. This will stimulate his demonic nature; whether hybrid or demon, it will force the true form to appear instantly.”
Gu Baiqing nearly coughed up blood on the spot! In the original story, Mo Xuanli chose to turn demonic himself, who could have expected there would be such a brutal “interrogation” method in this version!
Mo Xuanli’s muscles tensed uncontrollably; his entire body went rigid, eyes lowering with a faint stiffness.
“But if he’s not a hybrid, there will be harm,” the clan leader continued. “If a normal person is infused with demonic energy, they may suffer backlash and fall into deviation, the damage needs no explanation. As for the second method, while the anti-demon nails are meant to provoke demonic nature, for an ordinary cultivator they instead stimulate latent spiritual potential. If he can endure it, his cultivation may advance significantly; if not, his meridians could be permanently damaged, leaving lingering aftereffects. The pain, however, is something few can withstand. There are pros and cons. You may all consider it carefully.”
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