Unlike the other church temple Xu Qing had seen, which was built on a heart, this church temple was atop a gigantic eyeball. Dark veins covered the eyeball, and it pulsed with the power of inspection, which it used to scan the area it passed through. There were a lot of cultivators on the asteroids that orbited around it, and they pulsed with killing intent.

When the Captain noticed it, he slowed down the artificial sun.

“What are they doing here? Did they track down my unfortunate friend?”

He quickly took out a mirror and went to the Moonrebel Congregation, only to return a moment later. Looking at Xu Qing, he said, “I got in touch with my friend. It seems that after he posted his mission, someone passed the information to the Red Moon Cathedral. Because of that, he isn’t willing to tell me exactly where he’s hiding.”

Xu Qing looked at the distant church temple and noticed that it had just shifted directions, and was now accelerating.

“I think they already found him,” he said.

The Captain immediately sent the sun flying in pursuit. Before long, they saw the church temple stop above a valley.

The huge blood-red eyeball pulsed with a demonic glow that locked onto the valley. Then, a streak of red shot out of the eyeball. Countless streams of blood created a magical symbol that entered the valley. The grounds shook. Boulders shattered. The sides of the valley crumbled, sending dust floating up everywhere. Everything in that spot collapsed, leaving behind a huge crater.

Shockingly, there had once been a cave under the valley.

In the middle of the crater that was all that remained of the cave, surrounded by masses of rubble, was an altar. And laying on that altar was a person. It looked like he wanted to fight to defend himself, but could hardly move. What was more, he was surrounded by a poisonous miasma. Blood was splattered all around the altar, some of it dried up and some of it fresh. Clearly, this person had been there for quite a while coughing up blood.

Seeing that, Xu Qing sighed. He recognized that poison….

The Captain blinked a few times as he also realized the poison seemed familiar. He looked suspiciously at Xu Qing, but didn’t ask any questions. Instead, he looked at the Heir Apparent with a fawning expression. .

“Grandpa…?”

The Heir Apparent was currently playing with the parrot and pretended not to hear.

The Captain gave Xu Qing a helpless look. 𝑖𝘦.𝒸𝘰𝘮

Xu Qing turned and bowed respectfully to the Heir Apparent. “Senior…?”

The Heir Apparent looked up and smiled. “What did you call me?”

Xu Qing blinked a few times. “Grandpa?”

The Heir Apparent smiled and looked out of the sun. A moment later… the Red Moon Cathedral’s church temple suddenly shivered. Without any warning whatsoever, the asteroids orbiting it suddenly exploded, sending deafening booms out everywhere. The cultivators atop them instantly went unconscious and dropped to the ground like dumplings dropping into a wok of boiling water.

The church temple atop the eye seemed inclined to fight back, but in the end it just went silent, and the blood-red glow it emanated faded and went away.

A moment later the main entrance opened, and a middle-aged godherald stepped out clad in a red robe with golden trim. The godherald looked threatening without being angry, and pulsed with extraordinary fluctuations. He obviously had a very high standing in the cathedral. However, his eyes were blank and his face was expressionless and even numb. He almost looked like a marionette. Following him were three godservants in red robes, two men and a woman. They had similar facial expressions, and behaved in the same way. Next came a few dozen godslaves who walked in a similar fashion. It was almost as if they all had strings attached to them guiding their movement. All of them hovered up into the air, where they remained in place unmoving.

The gruish scene caused Wu Jianwu and Li Youfei to tremble. Although both of them knew that Smoldering Gods were terrifying, the reality was that they had no idea how strong they actually were. Now that they were seeing for themselves, it was like a new world was opened up to them.

It’s like an actual god….

As they trembled, Ning Yan sighed and continued scrubbing the floor.

The Captain was thrilled. Giving Xu Qing an encouraging look, he jumped down into the crater below.

“37951, is that you?” he called out. The figure in the miasma stirred weakly. Eyes fluttering open, he struggled to rise, but failed. All he could do was call back to the Captain in a weak voice.

“The red moon is by no means eternal….”

“Now’s not the time for code phrases!” the Captain snapped as he got closer. “Are you 37951 or not?”

“Yeah…” the figure replied from within the poison.

As they spoke, Xu Qing also emerged from the sun. Glancing around at the chaos, he descended into the crater and walked over to the blood-splattered altar.

I told him from the beginning not to take the whole pill….

With the man’s identity confirmed, the Captain squatted at the edge of the miasma.

“How did you end up like this?” he asked curiously. “I thought you cultivate the Ultimate Poison Resistance Body!”

The figure in the miasma looked angry, and was about to say something, except his injuries suddenly caused him to cough up a huge mouthful of blood. He passed out.

“Don’t tell me he’s dead,” the Captain exclaimed, shocked.

Xu Qing waved his hand, and the poisonous miasma dissipated, revealing the unlucky cultivator within.

He was an old man dressed in a wrinkled navy blue robe. His hair was gray, and he had pronounced cheek bones and a large nose. He had a proud look to him, and he seemed like the kind of person who normally spoke his mind and acted decisively. His face was wrinkled, but he didn’t come across as a frail elderly person. Instead, he seemed dignified. He was clearly an important person. But right now, he was obviously in immense pain. His brow seemed to overflow with helplessness, as if the world had come to lack meaning to him. The black blood splattered on his face looked horrendous and ghastly. His hands were clenched into fists, as if he wished to crush away the unwillingness in his heart, and yet… could not.

Seeing that, Xu Qing sighed and waved his hand, sending a medicinal pill flying out. It landed in front of the old man, where it exploded, turning into a stream of white energy that entered his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Within moments, the poison in the old man was already half dispelled. Seeing that, the suspicion in the Captain’s eyes grew. He looked at the old man. Then he looked at Xu Qing.

It seemed to him that Xu Qing had dispelled the poison a bit too easily. It was almost as if… Xu Qing was the original source of the poison.

No, that’s not possible. Little Ah Qing isn’t a member of the Moonrebel Congregation! How could these two know each other! He couldn’t be the poisoner.

As suspicion swirled in the Captain’s heart, the old man regained consciousness. After looking around blankly for a moment, he sat up, his gaze sharpening. Checking to confirm that the poison in him was gone, he looked at the Captain and Xu Qing, clearly moved.

“How did you get rid of the poison?”

Xu Qing didn’t say anything. He just backed up a few steps.

The Captain, meanwhile, chuckled sarcastically and looked the old man up and down. “First you have to tell us how you ended up like that, 37951.”

The old man didn’t respond immediately. He really was an important person, and he wasn’t used to Nascent Soul cultivators talking to him like equals. It was true that they had saved his life by dispelling the poison. But he had to wonder how they got past the Red Moon Cathedral forces. And that left him feeling a bit suspicious. That was especially true considering he had no idea what was going on beyond the crater….

Clearing his mind, the old man decided he needed to leave as quickly as possible. Standing, he smoothed out his garments, recapturing a bit of his usual dignity.

“I offer you my thanks, young friends,” he said. “However, I’d prefer not to get into personal details about myself. Suffice it to say that this was a tribulation for me. Please, don’t spread word about it.” With that, he took out a bag of holding and tossed it to the Captain. “That’s the reward I promised. It wouldn’t be wise to stick around here for very long. We’ll see each other again in the future, and I’ll provide some further rewards.”

The old man then flew up into the air. Ignoring Xu Qing and the Captain, he released the power of his cultivation base and prepared to start fighting if necessary. However, as soon as he was out of the crater and saw the situation outside, he lurched to a halt. As he looked around, his heart was battered by waves of shock, and his expression flickered dramatically. What he saw was a group of cultivators from the Red Moon Cathedral all lined up in ranks. They weren’t hurt, but they weren’t moving, as if they lost consciousness. What was most shocking of all was that one of them was a godherald. And even the godherald was just hovering there quietly.

“What’s going on here??” The old man felt rocked by astonishment. Deeply shaken, he looked back down into the crater. He had spent two months battling for his life with that poison, so he had no idea what had been going on outside. Also, where had those two Nascent Soul cultivators come from…?

Suddenly questioning his previous behavior, he dropped back down into the crater. This time, instead of acting proud and dignified, he adopted a very polite tone.

“I was caught up in the moment before and was a bit impolite,” he said. “I offer profound thanks to you two Fellow Daoists for your kindness. About the scene outside….”

He could tell that something very strange was going on with the people from the Red Moon Cathedral. And yet he couldn’t fathom what force could be at play that would cause an entire group of cathedral cultivators, including a godherald, to seemingly lose consciousness like that.

Xu Qing’s face remained expressionless, but the Captain smiled.

“Don’t worry about all that, 37951. Let me guess, that poison that almost killed you must be the work of some archenemy of yours. Am I right?”

The Captain was clearly very curious about the poison.

The old man looked the two of them over, then thought back to the shocking scene he had just witnessed. After a moment of consideration, he sighed. “No, it wasn’t an archenemy.”

“Then what happened?” the Captain asked curiously.

“Two months ago I bought a medicinal pill from someone in the Moonrebel Congregation.”

“Then what?” the Captain prompted.

“It wasn’t a very expensive pill, so I didn’t look at it very closely.” The old man shook his head helplessly.

“Was the pill some sort of trap?” the Captain asked.

The old man kept explaining. At first, he kept things very simple. But as the Captain interacted with him, he began to vent all the frustration and humiliation that had been building up within him.

“I thought it was just some ordinary poison pill. How was I supposed to know that some freaking whoreson was plotting against me? When I consumed the pill, everything seemed normal at first. It wasn’t that bad. But who could have guessed that the after-effects would keep getting stronger and stronger? Eventually, they went completely out of control, and before I could react, I was fully poisoned!”

“That’s outrageous!” the Captain said, glancing at Xu Qing.

Xu Qing’s face remained expressionless. In contrast, the old man was getting more worked up.

“Exactly! Completely and utterly outrageous! I could hardly move this whole time. I did everything I could to fight back and dispel the poison. I was basically on death’s door when you arrived. This whole dang thing is something a good person would never do! Now that I think about it, whatever whoreson gave me that pill probably was an archenemy! I just got careless. How villainous!!

“Most outrageous of all is that the pill he sold me was actually a mix of many kinds of poison. A pill like that should be really expensive! But he gave it to me for so cheap! All I gave him was a bit of information. How sinister!”

The Captain continued to provide loud exclamations in response to various parts of the story, getting the old man even more worked up. As for Xu Qing, his frown deepened as the old man kept using the word ‘whoreson’ over and over again.

“And then, in order to pull the wool over my eyes, the whoreson hypocritically told me not to consume the pill, but to shave off a bit to try first. See what I mean? He was obviously trying to egg me on!” The old man finally sighed. “I suppose I have my stubborn personality to blame for why I just consumed the whole thing…. If an archenemy wasn’t behind this situation, then who was? It was a clever trap designed around my personality! I’m definitely going to track down that archenemy to get payback!”

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