"Stop chanting Buddha's name," Hao Shuai said scornfully. "Abbot Pu Hong, if you have Buddha in your hearts, why didn't you come to Qingyun Mountain five years ago and tell us the truth? Why didn't you stand up for Xiao Fan during his public trial? Why did you just watch him be wrongfully accused?"
"Amitabha!" Monk Pu Hong chanted, his face full of shame.
"If the Demonic Sect hadn't attacked the mountain, were you planning to watch Xiao Fan be executed?" Hao Shuai continued. "Too bad your plans went awry. You never imagined, did you, that Xiao Fan had already told me what happened soon after he joined the Qingyun Sect, because he trusted me?!"
"Once I learned about it, I devoted a great deal of effort to investigating the truth. In the end, I identified Puzhi as the culprit."
"Wondering why I'm so sure it was Puzhi?" Hao Shuai asked, noticing Tianyin Temple's confusion. "Because Cang Song had no reason to do it."
"As a traitor who conspired with the Demonic Sect to destroy the Qingyun Sect, Cang Song had no reason to go out of his way to murder the villagers of Grass Temple Village."
Hao Shuai's explanation finally made everything clear to the others.
But Faxiang still tried to defend his master. "Brother Hao, you don't understand. My master had his reasons!"
"His reasons, my ass!" Hao Shuai swore. "Your so-called reasons boil down to this: you were afraid the truth would get out and tarnish Tianyin Temple's thousand-year reputation. I was even planning to give you a chance to tell the truth yourselves, but I never expected you to show me what Tianyin Temple is really like—and what a so-called virtuous monk looks like."
At that moment, all the righteous cultivators present looked at the people