Long Chao

"Good thing? Why don't you do good things yourself?" Long Lie gave him an annoyed look.

He was now in a dilemma. This matter concerned the Lineage's Sacred Tree and could not be taken lightly. He had to err on the side of caution and believe it to be true.

If I were to conceal the truth and cause a major incident involving the Lineage's Sacred Tree, I would truly become a sinner against the Lineage.

This is truly putting yourself in a precarious position; you have no choice but to go, even if you know it's a trap, you still have to plunge in.

At this point, he could only hope that his Lineage would be smart enough to err on the side of caution, even if nothing was found during the eye-washing procedure, and that they would send an expert to keep a close eye on him.

However, it's unlikely that the Lineage's higher-ups are fools. After receiving their warning, regardless of whether this person is an inside man or not, they will certainly be more vigilant.

Even if I am falsely accused, it will be worth it to protect the Lineage's Sacred Tree.

Besides, false accusation isn't a life-threatening crime. Faced with matters of great importance to his Lineage, he ultimately decided to stand up for what was right, regardless of the consequences.

"Who is that person?" Long Lie asked Long Xuan in a deep voice.

"It's Long Chen. I suspect he's been possessed. We need to thoroughly examine his brain," Long Xuan whispered.

Seeing that Long Lie had agreed, Long Xuan knew that he had successfully extricated himself from the matter and would not encounter any risks. After that, he decided not to get involved anymore. He would only help this once. If the Lineage could still lose the Sacred Tree even with his reminder, then he would truly be powerless.

"It's him? He doesn't seem like it given his personality."

Long Lie frowned slightly, but remembering that Long Xuan had just said he might have been possessed and that his brain needed to be examined, he put aside his hesitation and immediately walked towards the high platform of the Gu-Dueling Tournament.

Just then, Long Wanli announced the intermission, and the Lineage's senior executives were preparing to get up and leave when Long Lie suddenly walked up to the stage. Amidst the surprised gazes of the senior executives, he walked to Long Wanli's side and whispered something in his ear. Soon, Long Wanli's eyes gradually turned serious.

Although he spoke softly, the Lineage elders present were all Spiritual Sea Stage experts with keen hearing, and they could hear him clearly. Soon, everyone's expression changed.

The fourth elder frowned slightly and said, "Long Chen? Doesn't seem like it. This person made a contribution to the Lineage two years ago."

The ten elders snorted and said, "Long Lie has no grudge against him, and there's no reason to wrong him. What traitor would have the word 'traitor' written on their face? The less someone seems like a traitor, the more likely they are to be one."

"Although there's no evidence, I believe what Long Lie said. I think it's pretty much true. Why don't we just arrest him and interrogate him ourselves?"

"No! We mustn't alert them!" The elder raised his hand to stop him, saying, "Arresting someone for interrogation without concrete evidence is a poor strategy. What if we don't get anything out of them? We'll only alert them."

"Since their target is the Sacred Tree, we might as well turn the tables on Sacred Tree and lay a trap around it, waiting for them to walk right into it." The elder narrowed his eyes, revealing a cunning look.

Inside a secluded room, Long Chen sat facing someone. After taking a sip of tea, he said, "Although I lost a match, I'm pretty sure I'll make it into the top twenty. If I didn't have so many concerns, I wouldn't have wanted to lose this match. Hmph, do you really think I'm afraid of that swarm of bees?"

Long Chao looked at him and said, "Anyway, your mission after entering the Holy Land is to kill everyone for me and then create the illusion that you took away the Sacred Tree. Ranking is not important to you. You just need to get into the top twenty. Being too high-profile will only cause trouble."

"Of course?" Long Chen laughed, "But you're really ruthless. To obtain all the Divine Dragon Milk, you'd do something so crazy. Your Lineage has treated you very well."

"What you're doing will cause the Long Family to lose a large number of geniuses, and they will never recover. This is your Lineage, you really have the heart to do that?"

Long Chao's eyes remained unmoved as he said, "Those who achieve great things do not concern themselves with trifles. I don't want to do this either, but if I don't, there won't be enough Divine Dragon Milk to go around. Without enough Divine Dragon Milk, I won't be able to perfectly transform the Evil Dragon Emperor Eye."

"Don't even mention that I can't beat Long Ziyan. Even if I could beat Long Ziyan and win first place in the Gu-Dueling Tournament, the Divine Dragon Milk I would get would be far from enough. I have no other choice but to resort to this."

Long Chao's expression suddenly turned somewhat ferocious. "This is all because I was forced into it. My Evil Dragon Emperor Eye is supreme-grade Gu worm, and the Illusion Technique it carries is the Soul Seed. The Soul Seed is currently the strongest Illusion Technique in the Far West, without exception. However, the Evil Dragon Emperor Eye can only make the Soul Seed ability effective on everyone when it has undergone a perfect transformation."

"Such a powerful Illusion Technique, it would be such a waste if I couldn't unleash its full potential. How could I accept that? There's no other way but to use the power of external enemies to kill all the competitors and then monopolize the Divine Dragon Tree!" Long Chao became agitated, and his voice suddenly grew louder.

That's right. He didn't hesitate to betray his Lineage and kill many of Lineage geniuses, all for the sake of obtaining more Divine Dragon Milk. For such a small reason, he was able to commit such heinous and despicable acts.

He lured outsiders into the Lineage's sacred ground, then had them kill all the geniuses. He then feigned serious injury and near death, becoming the sole survivor among the crowd, thus monopolizing all the Divine Dragon Milk. The Lineage, however, believed that all the Divine Dragon Milk had already been taken by the outsiders and would never think it was in his possession. This was his perfect plan.

In his quest to become stronger, he was willing to severely damage his Lineage in order to obtain all of the Divine Dragon Milk; he was utterly insane.

Of course, outsiders wouldn't help him with this for free; there were conditions.

This condition is naturally the Gu Recipe for the Thatch Gu. Obviously, anyone with a modicum of common sense can see the enormous benefits hidden within the Thatch Gu.

However, the Raincoat Gu Recipe was not traded from Long Chao. If it were that simple, wouldn't it be more convenient to simply capture a Spirit Gathering Stage Gu cultivator from the Long Family and interrogate him severely? After all, Thatch Gu has already been widely used throughout the Long Family.

In fact, all Lineage have methods to prevent their unique Gu Recipe from leaking out. The Long Family's method is to place a restriction on the souls of all Long Family family members. No Long Family family member can pass on the Lineage's unique Gu Recipe, otherwise the restriction will destroy their soul and cause them to die.

Therefore, neither promising huge rewards nor randomly arresting and severely interrogating someone will yield the Long Family's unique Gu Recipe.

The only way is to forcibly break into the Long Family's Scripture Repository Tower and seize it.

This required an inside agent to sabotage the clan's protective formation beforehand; this was the secret deal between Long Chao and the Soul Clan.

Hearing Long Chao's words, Long Chen didn't show any disdain. Instead, he nodded and said approvingly, "That's right! Those who achieve great things don't concern themselves with trifles. To accomplish great things, one must be ruthless. That's what makes a true hero. You're absolutely right."

"But you absolutely mustn't mess things up. If you cause any trouble and it results in heavy losses for my clan, don't blame us for exposing you." Long Chen's expression suddenly turned stern.

"Hmph! There's no way I could make a mistake here. If anything, it could be you. I'm warning you, the Long Family's patriarch went out a month ago to seek cooperation with the Western Land Long Family. With the Gu King not here to oversee things, you only have this one chance."

"You must know how many Gu King the Western Land Long Family has. Once the two clans unite, you will never have another chance to strike. This is your only chance," Long Chao warned.

"Our clan is incapable of making mistakes. We plan to first send a large number of experts to plunder the various peaks of the Long Family, which will inevitably draw out a large number of the Long Family experts to provide support."

"If I create chaos in the Holy Land at this time, they will think they have fallen for a diversionary tactic and will send all the few remaining experts of their clan to the Holy Land."

"However, little did they know that our true target was not the Sacred Tree, but the Scripture Repository Tower. After the Long Family's two diversionary tactics, their rear was inevitably weakened. With the formation having loopholes, the loss of the Scripture Repository Tower was a foregone conclusion, with absolutely no possibility of any unforeseen events!"

"What about the Holy Land? There are at least twenty Gu cultivators in the Marrow Cleansing Stage and at least one Gu cultivator in the Spiritual Sea Stage there. Are you sure you can take care of so many people by yourself?" Long Chao asked doubtfully.

"Hmph! Don't underestimate the power of my Brain Gu Lineage. The strength of us Brain Gu depends entirely on the strength of our bodies."

"Don't underestimate this seemingly weak body of mine; it's only the strength of a Gu Marrow Cleansing Stage."

"But my Insect-Rearing Pouch contains the corpses of four Spiritual Sea Stage Gu cultivators, and four of my brothers and sisters are controlling them."

"When my Soul Clan raids the outer perimeter of the Long Family, we will inevitably have to transfer a large number of Spiritual Sea Stage Gu cultivators away. Our four Spiritual Sea Stage Gu cultivators are enough to massacre the Holy Land."

"When the time comes, I'll pierce your heart with my sword. You can just use the Cockroach Gu to fall to the ground and play dead. No one else will survive," the Brain Gu inside Long Chen said confidently.

Hearing the plan it described, Long Chen breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that such a perfect plan would be foolproof.

"That's good. Remember, the Raincoat Gu Recipe is the Long Family's most important secret. It must be kept on the ninth floor of the top floor of the Scripture Repository Tower. Go directly to the ninth floor to find the Gu Recipe, and leave immediately after you find it. Don't be greedy, and don't waste time on the lower floors. The Scripture Repository Tower isn't far from the Holy Land."

Time flew by and it was already afternoon, and the second half of the Gu-Dueling Tournament officially began.

Long Xuan arrived late, jumped onto the tree again, and looked into the distance.

He was anxious to know the outcome of the matter: whether Long Lie had successfully reported it or had been treated as a false accuser and given a major demerit.

When he saw Long Chen appear there unharmed, his heart sank.

Did his Lineage not take his words to heart? He frowned.

However, when he saw the Lineage elders glance at Long Chen with barely perceptible eyes a few times, he knew that the matter had been accomplished, and he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Once the Lineage has focused their attention on him and become wary, he doesn't need to worry about this matter anymore; he can eat and drink as usual.

He began to focus his attention on the upcoming Gu-Dueling Tournament, completely putting the matter out of his mind.

The second half will consist of countless more battles of Gu, continuing until sunset.

After so much time, he finally understood the rules of the Gu-Dueling Tournament. That's right, he was so carefree that he only started to understand the rules now; otherwise, he wouldn't have shown such surprise when he saw that there was no draw.

The rules of this Gu-Dueling Tournament are simple: win a match and you get ten points, draw a match and you get five points, lose a match and you get no points.

The rankings in the Gu-Dueling Tournament are determined by the highest and lowest scores. Whoever has the most points is the champion of the Gu-Dueling Tournament and can obtain the most Divine Dragon Milk.

However, there is no set number of matches in the Gu-Dueling Tournament; the matches are based solely on time and must end at sunset.

In other words, the faster the battle speed, the more Gu-Dueling Arena there are, and the higher the total score.

If there are too many long battles, many people may not be able to play more than a few matches, and the champion's points will not be very high.

As for who fights whom, that's completely random; it's just that the Lineage will handle the randomization for you, and you can't interfere personally.

If you're unlucky, you might keep running into the top ten favorites, and then you can only accept your bad luck. Every Gu-Dueling Tournament has many unlucky people who are clearly very strong but fail to make it into the top twenty.

Long Xuan had a record of seven wins and three losses in the first half of the season, for a total score of seventy points. The three losses were due to him admitting defeat because he felt they were too difficult, but it was definitely not because he was unable to win. Once he released all his supreme-grade Gu worm, how many people in the entire arena could be his match?

But doing so is pointless; besides revealing his hand, he won't gain anything.

He wasn't the only one who liked to admit defeat. It was precisely because many people would give up when faced with opponents they were unlikely to beat that the competition progressed very quickly, resulting in a large number of Gu-Dueling Arena. Long Xuan alone had ten rounds, and that was in just half a day.

Long Xuan estimates that there will be ten more games in the second half. He is not confident of winning by relying solely on the 70 points won in the first half. He will probably need to win seven more games in the second half to be secure.