Sacred Sword Art

The beef buns had been bought by Wu Qing's men from a shop in Licheng City called Golden Juice Beef House. The shop was small, and the owner did everything himself, from kneading the dough and mixing the filling to steaming the buns.

The owner's wife sold them.

The one who bought them was Wei Bo, one of the Black-Clad Academicians.

Li Ye felt he could first rule out the owner, and then the owner's wife.

Wei Bo was a possibility.

After Wei Bo picked up the buns, they came into contact with two more people.

First, Wei Bo had accidentally bumped into a street tough named Niu Er on the way.

In other words, Niu Er had the opportunity to poison them, provided he was quick enough.

Next, after Wei Bo brought the buns back, he tossed them to Old Man Yang, the person who delivered meals to the Corpse Refining Courtyard.

Finally, the meal deliverer brought the beef buns to Li Ye.

By rights, the Heavenly Secrets should have revealed who had poisoned the buns by now.

But they hadn't.

Because the Heavenly Secrets of the poisoning were directly connected to Li Ye, they had been skipped.

Damn it, I'm no good at deduction.

Li Ye felt his head ache. As he struggled to think it through, his eyes suddenly lit up. "Finding the poisoner is easy, too."

"There are two ways."

"First: Wu Qing will still have buns delivered to me tomorrow. I just need to wait at Golden Juice Beef House in advance, and I'll have a chance to catch the poisoner. Well, if they try to poison me again tomorrow."

"Second: starting tomorrow, I can use Daily Divination to examine the Heavenly Secrets of each of these people one by one. Then I'll find out who's suspicious."

Although Li Ye wasn't good at deduction, he felt the poisoner had to be inside the Corpse Refining Courtyard.

Even Qin Yu, Lin Jing, and the other junior brothers and sisters didn't know he was in the Corpse Refining Courtyard, yet the poisoner had managed to find him.

That meant the other party was close to him, somewhere nearby.

"Not only are they in the Corpse Refining Courtyard, they should be right by my side."

"They see me every day, and when they see I'm still alive, they poison me again."

"So, it's either Wei Bo or the meal deliverer, Old Man Yang."

"Huh, I figured it out! Hahaha, I really am a genius."

Even Li Ye hadn't expected that, as he thought it over, he would narrow down the suspects so quickly.

Buzz!

Night fell.

The Corpse Deliverers arrived carrying a stretcher with a corpse covered in Corpse Wrapping Cloth.

After setting it down, the two of them left.

Seeing that they walked steadily and weren't in any hurry, Li Ye figured the corpse was unlikely to rise.

Tap, tap, tap!

A flurry of footsteps approached as a group of Black-Clad Academicians poured in.

They lined up on both sides.

Wu Qing entered last, one hand on his sword hilt, striding with the steady gait of a dragon.

He made quite an entrance.

Li Ye was already very familiar with these Black-Clad Academicians, but he didn't know their names.

So, using the appearance of Wei Bo he'd divined through the Heavenly Secrets, he easily picked him out.

Wei Bo stood at the end of the line, near the entrance.

He looked like a very honest, unassuming fellow. He was of average height, dark-skinned, sturdily built, and bright-eyed.

As it happened, when Li Ye looked at him, he was looking back at Li Ye.

Their gazes collided across the room.

Was it you?

Those mysterious eyes watching from the shadows.

The culprit who killed the Holy Son.

Li Ye thought.

Based on his experience watching movies in his previous life, the more unremarkable someone seemed, the more likely they were to be a mole or a spy.

Their eyes met for only an instant before they both looked away.

The Black-Clad Academicians were all cold and aloof. Why would one of them look away just because he'd met the gaze of a lowly Corpse Burner like Li Ye?

Could that mean he was hiding something?

Li Ye entered the Corpse Incineration Hall, and the door was locked behind him.

"Hello!"

He stepped forward, lifted the Corpse Wrapping Cloth, and found a member of a prominent lineage. He greeted the man.

The man was in his early thirties, quite young.

His heart was his fatal wound. The wound was purplish-black, and it gave off the foul stench of decay.

Li Ye recognized it as the work of the Devil Sect.

If nothing unexpected had happened, this man had died at the hands of a Devil Sect expert during the battle in the Great Barren Forest.

Faint red spots had already appeared on the surface of his skin. He was indeed showing signs of Corpse Transformation.

But it was progressing slowly.

It would take at least three days.

Li Ye stitched up the man's wound, washed his face, burned incense, and paid his respects.

After completing the ritual, he pushed the young man into the Corpse Incineration Furnace.

The flames roared, their glow blazing bright.

They quickly swallowed the corpse.

Whoosh!

Before long, a stream of Light Mist shot out of the Corpse Incineration Furnace and darted into Li Ye's body.

Boom!

Li Ye's cultivation began to surge violently, and countless Crimson Electric Arcs burst from within him.

In the briefest instant, it was as if his physique had undergone years of tempering.

His strength, resilience, and every other aspect improved by a huge margin.

His strength was now sixty-three thousand jin.

He was one step closer to Body Tempering Level Fifteen.

Li Ye knew the young man's family would likely come to claim his ashes, so once the Corpse Incineration Furnace went out, he scooped the ashes out with an iron shovel and put them in an iron bucket.

And with that, the cremation ended without a hitch.

"Good work!"

In the courtyard, Wu Qing praised Li Ye.

Then he left today's wages and led his men away.

Li Ye fixed his gaze on Wei Bo's retreating figure.

After thinking it over, he made a bold decision: he would follow Wei Bo.

The Divine Concealment Sect was shrouded in mist, auspicious rays rising into the sky. Immortal mountains and cave abodes stretched across the landscape.

Some places were as bright as day even at night, suffused with brilliant light.

They looked like the abodes of immortals.

From high above the Divine Concealment Sect, one could faintly see Immortal Cranes circling, divine birds flying, and Auspicious Beasts playing.

Main Peak Hall:

Several high-ranking members of the sect had gathered there, including Sect Master Luo Jiang.

Why were they here in the middle of the night instead of sleeping or cultivating?

Because one of the elders was recounting what had happened in the Great Barren Forest the previous night.

"What? Destructive Sword Intent?"

The Core Elders were thrown into a frenzy. Shocked beyond words, they rose from their seats one after another, their voices changing.

"Isn't that one of the sword intents said to possess the greatest Killing Power?"

Sect Master Luo Jiang shot up from his throne, breathing hard.

Destructive Sword Intent! A genius like that had appeared near the Divine Concealment Sect, and they hadn't even known.

The old men's eyes burned with excitement, as though they'd just laid eyes on a priceless treasure.

"Who is he? What's his name?"

"Which sect or school is he from? Does he have a master?"

"How old is he?"

"What's his character like?"

The elders questioned him in detail.

The Divine Concealment Sect knew that Golden Ginseng had appeared, and they also knew that the great lineages and the Devil Sect had fought over it in the Great Barren Forest.

The Divine Concealment Sect hadn't always been called the Divine Concealment Sect. It had once been called the Sacred Sect.

Several hundred years ago, the Sect Master at the time suddenly announced to the world that the Sacred Sect would withdraw from public affairs. From then on, it would only accept disciples and would no longer take part in disputes among the various sects and schools.

It had also changed its name to the Divine Concealment Sect.

So they hadn't joined the struggle over the Golden Ginseng. They'd only just learned what had happened there.

"Everyone who saw him is dead."

"But we can be sure the other party isn't old."

"He's very young."

The Third Elder explained.

The elders' eyes burned even brighter.

The Great Elder, dressed in black, spoke urgently. "Sect Master, if this young man joins our sect, could he have a chance of mastering the Sacred Sword Art?"

At the mention of the Sacred Sword Art, everyone's expressions changed.

It was an peerless sword canon that no one had ever mastered since the Divine Concealment Sect's founding.

Even the Founding Patriarch had only comprehended a small part of it.

The Sect Masters who came after him had gained nothing, inheriting only the fragment of insight the Founding Patriarch had left behind.

That was until the previous Sect Master emerged like a force from the heavens and made further breakthroughs based on the Founding Patriarch's insights.

Sect Master Luo Jiang sighed. "The Sacred Sword Art is an unparalleled inheritance from beyond the heavens. It's profound and vast, and its power is boundless. The Patriarchs of every generation only comprehended a fraction of it, yet even that was enough to make them shine brilliantly in this world."

"Meanwhile, the previous Sect Master, Ye Chuan, comprehended it to an unprecedented level. After leaving seclusion, he swept through the six kingdoms without a rival. Only A Jian San, the Devil Race's once-in-a-millennium prodigy, could stand against him—and even he was defeated, dying with hatred in his heart..."