Abandoned Ancestral Hall, Suspicious Idol

Very soon, the group rode Hu Liena's carriage to the entrance of Qingyuan Village, the place indicated by the mission.

The moment they got out, they began observing their surroundings.

According to the original records, this village had been very lively, but now, in broad daylight, there was not a single person on the streets, and every door and window was shut tight.

This situation was truly abnormal.

Ning Yuan immediately realized that this mission probably would not be that simple.

"Where is everyone? Where did they all go?"

The brash Luo Lie started shouting the moment he got out of the carriage.

Seeing him like this, Ning Yuan could not be bothered with him. Lin Xiao spoke up to remind him, "Are you stupid? People have gone missing here. Who would dare come out for no reason?"

Ning Yuan scratched his head, unable to think of any effective solution. "Then what do we do?"

At this moment, Ning Yuan's expression turned solemn. He suggested that they split up to investigate, then gather back at the village entrance.

Seeing that Ning Yuan was able to make a correct suggestion at a time like this, Hu Liena's eyes filled with approval.

But Luo Lie felt that Ning Yuan was only trying to steal the spotlight, and he snapped back directly, "We all came out to do this mission. Why should we listen to you?"

Ning Yuan was getting a little fed up with him. "Then what do you suggest? We accepted an investigation mission. If you don't take the initiative to look for clues, are you waiting for the clues to run right up to your face?"

"You..."

Luo Lie knew he was in the wrong, and after saying "you" for ages, he still could not come up with anything.

Hu Liena stepped forward at this point.

"Just listen to Ning Yuan. After all, this is your first time on a mission. There's nothing wrong with being cautious."

Seeing this, Lin Xiao stepped forward to smooth things over. "All right, all right, then we'll split up. How about this? Luo Lie and I will be in one group."

"Why should—"

Luo Lie still wanted to say something, but Lin Xiao directly covered his mouth and dragged him aside.

After that, he even gave Ning Yuan a look that said, I get you.

At first, Ning Yuan did not react.

But when he saw Luo Liena beside him looking at Lin Xiao with an expression that said, good kid, you know what you're doing, Ning Yuan understood.

It was over. The sky had collapsed.

"Junior Brother Ning Yuan, then Senior Sister can only wrong herself and team up with you."

Hu Liena took Ning Yuan's hand as if they were already familiar and walked into the village.

Because Ning Yuan had been malnourished before, he was thin and small. The more one looked at this scene, the more it looked like Hu Liena was walking Ning Yuan.

After entering the village, Ning Yuan felt that things were becoming even more abnormal.

There were clearly people inside several houses in the village, secretly watching them through the cracks in the windows.

But when Ning Yuan looked toward them, they unusually shut the windows tight at once.

[Something's wrong! Extremely wrong!]

At this moment, Venom also stretched its huge head out from Ning Yuan's shoulder.

[I smell it... whew... the aura of evil!]

Venom's sudden appearance gave Hu Liena beside him quite a fright.

"Holy shit!"

Hu Liena blurted out a curse.

Then, realizing that this was not something a lady should say, she hurriedly covered her mouth.

Seeing this, Ning Yuan realized that Hu Liena had never seen his martial soul before.

He quickly explained, "Senior Sister, don't be afraid. This is my martial soul. It's just a little special, that's all."

Special?

You called this special?

Since when had martial souls evolved to the point where they had independent consciousness and could speak?

"Hi! Hello there, beautiful lady!"

At this moment, Venom also greeted Hu Liena politely, like a gentleman.

It was just that its voice was rather hard to describe.

But no matter what age a woman was, calling her beautiful was always the right move.

Hu Liena was clearly pleased, and she also recovered from the fright Venom had given her just now.

Ning Yuan's martial soul was so special, so surely her teacher should have known about it long ago, right?

Since her teacher also thought there was nothing wrong, then there was nothing wrong.

"Junior Brother, in your opinion, what should we do next?"

"The answer's written in the riddle. Since the villagers are acting so strangely, we'll start with them."

Ning Yuan was completely confident. He immediately walked toward the nearest household.

Then he knocked on the door very politely.

But after just one light tap, the door panel gave a creak, tilted inward, and crashed to the floor with a bang.

Ning Yuan had not expected that. For a moment, he was so embarrassed he did not quite know what to do.

Still, as long as he was not embarrassed, the embarrassment belonged to someone else.

He cleared his throat.

"Ahem, well... I'll pay for this door later..."

Inside the house was a family of four: a middle-aged couple, a boy a little older than him, and a little girl who looked three or four years old, her hair tied into two little pigtails.

But at the moment, the family of four was huddled against the wall, trembling.

Clearly, Ning Yuan's actions had frightened them.

"Don't be nervous. We're soul masters from Spirit Hall. We came this time because we want to learn about the recent abnormalities in your village."

Hu Liena stood in the doorway as she spoke.

It had to be said, girls really did have more approachability, the kind that made people lower their guard.

Sure enough, as soon as Hu Liena finished speaking, the male head of the household finally stammered out a reply.

"L-Lord soul masters of Spirit Hall, what would you like to know?"

Seeing that Hu Liena was better at handling communication, Ning Yuan simply took the chance to size up the inside of the home.

Very soon, he discovered something unusual.

On the offering table to the north stood a statue of a god. The statue looked extremely bizarre, a little like a chimera.

All kinds of good food were being offered to it as well. Logically speaking, there was nothing inappropriate about a household worshiping a divine statue.

But from what he had just observed, this family was clearly in very poor condition. Their clothes were torn and could not even be mended, and the people themselves were so hungry their faces were sallow and their bodies thin.

For such impoverished people to worship a deity yet lay out fish and meat before it was abnormal in itself.

On top of that, when the male head of the household answered questions, his eyes kept darting away, as if he were deliberately hiding something.

After asking a few questions, knowing that they would gain nothing by continuing, the two prepared to leave.

Before leaving, Ning Yuan also took out several copper soul coins to compensate the family for the damaged door panel.

Unexpectedly, just as Ning Yuan was about to step out of the house, the youngest little girl suddenly ran up to him, grabbed the hem of his clothes, and said in a childish, frightened voice, "Big bwother, the abandoned ancestral hall... has baddies..."

A three- or four-year-old child could not even speak a complete sentence clearly.

Hu Liena was just about to ask what bad thing it was when the woman of the house hurried over, picked up the child, and covered her mouth, clearly afraid of something.

"Hey..."

Hu Liena was about to ask more, but Ning Yuan stopped her.

He shook his head at her.

After they walked out, Hu Liena looked somewhat puzzled.

"Why did you stop me just now? That little girl clearly had something to say."

Ning Yuan glanced back at the house.

"Didn't you notice how strange that family was?"

"They really didn't want to answer my questions," Hu Liena said after thinking for a moment.

"Exactly. They don't want to tell us the truth. Otherwise, that woman wouldn't have stopped the little girl from speaking."

"Then what do we do next?"

"What else? Didn't the little girl already say it? The abandoned ancestral hall. We'll know once we go take a look."

They visited a few more households, and the situation was more or less the same as the first. Every family enshrined that bizarre statue, and whenever they were asked questions, their eyes darted away as if they were afraid of something.

Still, it was not as if they gained nothing. Every household, whether intentionally or unintentionally, pointed them toward the abandoned ancestral hall in the center of the village.

The group met again at the village entrance.

Lin Xiao and Luo Lie had also visited several households, and they had likewise found clues that something was strange about the abandoned ancestral hall in the center of the village.

What surprised Ning Yuan a little was that Luo Lie had been the first to obtain this information.

Luo Lie looked extremely smug.

"I'm pretty damn smart, you know!"

Ning Yuan laughed despite himself. Luo Lie really was the type to take a little praise and run with it.

The four of them arrived at the abandoned ancestral hall in the center of the village.

From the outside, the abandoned ancestral hall was clearly in disrepair, and with no one maintaining it for years, its exterior was rotten and dilapidated. Some parts had even crumbled away under the erosion of wind and sand.

They pushed the door open, and the falling dust made them hurriedly cover their mouths and noses.

But after they went in, they discovered another strange phenomenon.

The inside of the ancestral hall was a far cry from its decaying exterior. The furnishings inside were very new, and at a glance, they clearly hadn't been cheap.

Most importantly, a huge divine statue stood in the center, exactly the same as the divine statues worshiped in every household.

Luo Lie waved away the dust with his hand, his face full of disdain as he said, "Didn't expect this village to be pretty rich. The inside of this ancestral hall's been renovated so well—did the village chief embezzle the money?"

Ning Yuan was speechless. Was Luo Lie's brain made entirely of muscle?

Luo Lie walked toward the center of the ancestral hall while grumbling in disgust, touching this and poking that, acting completely as if he'd entered his own house.

Beside him, Lin Xiao even spoke up to stop him. "Be careful. Don't destroy any evidence or trigger some mechanism."

As if to prove those words right, the moment Luo Lie touched the candlestick beneath the divine statue, the floor of the ancestral hall suddenly began to tremble, and a hidden door abruptly appeared at the statue's feet.

Seeing this, Luo Lie even looked rather smug.

"If you don't take the initiative to investigate clues, are you just waiting for the clues to run up and slap you in the face?"

But he soon couldn't feel smug anymore, because more than a dozen soul beasts suddenly emerged from the hidden door.

Only these soul beasts were rather strange. Their forms were twisted, half-human and half-beast, with twin wings on their backs, their bodies covered in scales and fur, and poisonous mist spraying from their mouths.

After the soul beasts came out, they surrounded the group.

"Damn it, Luo Lie, what kind of luck is that?"

Lin Xiao couldn't help roasting him.

Luo Lie was still being stubborn.

"What's there to be afraid of? They're just a few soul beasts. We'll deal with them, that's all!"

"We're soul masters!"

The monsters let out a shrill screech and charged at them.

Luo Lie might have wanted to show off in front of everyone, because he immediately released his Blazing Hunting Lion martial soul.

In an instant, the phantom of a male lion appeared, domineering and ferocious in form, its entire body burning with flames. Then it turned into a streak of light and sank into Luo Lie's body.

The current Luo Lie's soul power had already reached rank 16. Among the students of Heaven Class, he was one of the very best—excluding Ning Yuan, of course.

"First soul skill, Blazing Roar!"

A yellow soul ring lit up beneath Luo Lie's feet.

In his perception, these were only a few soul beasts of several hundred years, a thousand years at most. With his current strength, defeating them shouldn't be difficult.

Luo Lie struck out fiercely, crashing head-on into the soul beasts.

But something jaw-dropping happened. The soul beasts did not budge an inch, while Luo Lie was sent flying straight back by the impact.

He clutched his chest in pain, blood spurting from the corner of his mouth, his eyes filled with shock in that moment.

"Are these things... are these supposed to appear in a low-risk mission?"