Successor

"Your Holiness the Pope, what on earth is..."

"If possible, could we inspect your ring?" Venerable Tongtian asked cautiously.

This was the gap between eras, Xia Fan thought. The accused had no awareness that videos could be forged, nor would the onlookers question their contents. So long as an image was projected by the Skywell, they would accept it as fact.

That saved him quite a bit of trouble.

"Wake up! He is an infected person now, not the Pope you all knew!" Xia Fan warned loudly. "And Yao Wu could never have had time to dispose of the aftermath in so short a span. If we go to Wuyi's room now, we will definitely find that boy's body."

"No... I know nothing about any of this, and I was never by Venerable Pingtian—" Wuyi broke into violent coughing halfway through. Mouthfuls of bloody froth sprayed from his lips, splashing across the table before him. Yet at such a moment, everyone else merely watched him warily from where they stood. Not one dared step forward to support him.

When he raised his head again, his gaze had become entirely different from before.

"So... you are Xia Fan?"

Though his voice was weak, it brimmed with ruthless ferocity.

"Who are you?" Li Mengyun was the first to react.

The two sides had clearly held a formal meeting before. There was no way the Pope could fail to recognize Xia Fan. For him to say such a thing now, he could only have become someone else!

On the other side, Venerable Tongtian made his move as well.

He sprang from his seat and pounced on the Pope at the head of the table. From his posture, he did not intend to harm him, but to restrain the Pope lest he leap over