Black Pot Dumped on My Head? Elders, Could You Be More Professional When Making Excuses?

Xiao Xun'er wore a strange expression as she replied softly, "Yesterday afternoon at the training grounds—the Cloud Mist Sect inner disciple who insisted on challenging you to a duel. No one knew where he went last night. He never returned, and there was still no sign of him. The Xiao Household guards had turned Wutan City upside down without finding him."

An Yi raised his teacup and moistened his throat, speaking indifferently. "What's so surprising about that? Could a living person just vanish into thin air? Maybe he couldn't stand being lonely last night and went to one of the city's pleasure houses to listen to music and have some fun?"

"Think about it. Disciples of such a major sect are bound tightly by all those strict rules up in the mountains and have been pent up for so long. Now that he finally came out on a mission, it's perfectly understandable for him to let loose a little."

As An Yi spouted utter nonsense with a straight face in front of everyone—

Xiao Yan, seated diagonally across from him, felt the corner of his eye twitch wildly.

Others might not have known what had happened, but he had personally seen An Yi twist that man's head off last night!

After killing someone, he could still stand before the dead man's elder without batting an eye or quickening his heartbeat, and dump this kind of filth all over the victim's name...

This guy's mental fortitude and shamelessness had truly reached an unparalleled level!

Just then, a captain of the Xiao Household guard squad who had been sent out to search rushed into the hall in a panic. He dropped to one knee, his voice trembling with fear.

"Report—! Reporting to the Patriarch, we found... found traces of that lord from the Cloud Mist Sect... in the mountains outside the city..."

"Where is he?!" Ge Ye shot to his feet and asked urgently.

The guard captain swallowed, his face deathly pale. "He... he may already be dead."

This time, not only Ge Ye, but even Xiao Zhan and the three elders could no longer remain seated.

Led by the guard, the entire group hurried toward the outskirts. Out of curiosity—or simply to watch the spectacle—the younger members of the Xiao Household followed along as well.

An Yi went with them too. Everyone knew he loved excitement more than anything; if he failed to follow now, it would be as good as writing guilty conscience across his face.

Before long, the group arrived at the massive waterfall deep in the mountains outside the city.

The sight before them made everyone suck in a cold breath.

The clearing by the pool was a complete mess.

The earth had been torn up, and the vegetation broken.

Most horrifying of all, enormous and chaotic magical beast footprints covered the ground!

Between those footprints lay pools of shocking dark-red blood, along with several bloodstained bone fragments that had been gnawed into incomplete pieces.

Several torn strips of black cloth also hung from the nearby bushes.

With trembling hands, Ge Ye removed the scraps of cloth. After examining them closely, his vision went dark, and he nearly lost his footing.

From the material and dark patterns alone, he recognized them at once. They were the night clothes worn by the missing inner disciple last night!

Xiao Zhan and the others turned pale in an instant.

It was over! Something huge had happened!

That had been an elite inner disciple of the Cloud Mist Sect!

He had vanished without even a corpse left behind within the Xiao Household's territory. If the Cloud Mist Sect held them accountable, how could the Xiao Household bear such monstrous fury?!

Ge Ye's entire body trembled, his eyes full of disbelief and terror.

A dignified Five-Star Dou Practitioner! Why would he run to such a desolate wilderness in the middle of the night? And how had he ended up being devoured by a pack of magical beasts?!

How was he supposed to explain this to the Sect Master when he returned?!

Just as the atmosphere grew unbearably grave—

Someone among the crowd, apparently a Xiao Household disciple, suddenly muttered in a low voice.

"Eh? Isn't this... the place An Yi usually likes to come and play in the mud?"

The moment those words were spoken, every gaze present—including Ge Ye's, Xiao Zhan's, the three elders', and all the younger members'—locked onto An Yi!

An Yi blinked, the corner of his eye twitching. "No, why are you all looking at me?"

The First Elder's gaze darkened as he took the lead in attacking, staring at An Yi with piercing eyes.

"An Yi! Tell us honestly, where exactly did you go last night? Were you truly at the Mittel Auction House?"

An Yi spread his hands. "Of course. If you don't believe me, send someone to the Mittel Auction House and ask Sister Ya Fei face-to-face."

"Hmph. What could questioning her prove?"

The Second Elder snorted coldly and said in a mocking tone, "Even if you ask, at most she can prove that you ate breakfast there this morning. As for the long midnight hours last night, who besides Ya Fei can prove whether you were at the auction house? And who knows whether you slipped out in the middle of the night to do something shameful before sneaking back?"

An Yi rolled his eyes speechlessly. "Oh? Second Elder, are you saying that I, a Sixth-Stage Qi Disciple, ran out of the city in the middle of the night and killed a Five-Star Dou Practitioner? Then, to destroy the evidence, I carried him all the way out to this wilderness to feed him to magical beasts?"

"I never said that," the Second Elder argued coldly.

"Fine, fine."

An Yi was so annoyed he laughed. He simply shrugged as though giving up. "All right, I admit it. I did it, okay?"

"After all, I'm a peerless master at the dignified Sixth-Stage Qi Disciple! Silently killing a mere Five-Star Dou Practitioner in the dead of night, then carrying the corpse out of the city and dumping it here to destroy the evidence—it would be as easy as lifting a finger for me, wouldn't it?"

An Yi's heavily sarcastic "confession" made even the Second Elder's expression stiffen.

Indeed, for a Qi Disciple to kill a Five-Star Dou Practitioner sounded even more absurd than magical beasts becoming vegetarians.

But how could these old foxes leave it at that?

The Second Elder's eyes shifted as he said coldly, "I never said you defeated him through strength. Maybe you wanted revenge, lured him here with sweet talk, then used some underhanded trick that couldn't see the light of day?"

An Yi's face darkened. "Am I sick? I only met him for the first time today. I don't even know his name. Why would I lure him here in the middle of the night to feed mosquitoes?"

The Third Elder stepped forward at this point. "Whether you are sick or not is beside the point. Yesterday afternoon at the training grounds, you had a fierce conflict because of Nalan's niece."

"Everyone knows you spend all day fooling around outside and have plenty of shady tricks up your sleeve. Perhaps you had some highly toxic substance bought from the black market hidden on you, poisoned him when he wasn't paying attention, and then dumped his body here. That is not impossible!"

"..."

An Yi was completely defeated by the elders' imagination and shamelessness.

He looked helplessly at the sky and let out a long sigh.

"No, Elders, if you're determined to dump this black pot on me, could you at least put some skill into it? Even saying I hired someone to kill him would sound more plausible than 'a Sixth-Stage Qi Disciple poisoned and assassinated a Five-Star Dou Practitioner'! Could you put some thought into your excuses?!"

The three elders' expressions immediately became somewhat unnatural.

Yet their stance was already perfectly clear: even if the heavens themselves descended today, An Yi would have to shoulder this blame firmly.

This was an elite inner disciple of the Cloud Mist Sect!

He had vanished without a corpse left behind near the Xiao Household's territory. If they did not quickly find a sufficiently important scapegoat to hand over and calm the Cloud Mist Sect's rage, the entire Xiao Household would face utter destruction!

And what about An Yi?

He was Xiao Zhan's adopted son in name, so his status was important enough that the Cloud Mist Sect could barely accept him.

But in the end, he was an outsider without Xiao Household blood. His death would not truly pain the family.

Forcing the charge of murder onto An Yi would kill three birds with one stone:

First, it would immediately remove the Xiao Household entirely from this troublesome homicide case.

Second, it would deal a heavy blow to Patriarch Xiao Zhan's authority by pinning on him the charge of "failing to discipline his son and allowing his adopted son to commit murder."

Third, it would conveniently eliminate An Yi, the thorn in their eyes who constantly caused trouble in the household and knew too much of their dirty laundry.

When the family's survival was at stake, what did the life of a martyr's orphan with no background or strength matter?