"But this time, when I saw you, I wanted to lead you out."
"Unfortunately, I failed."
Hardway gave another bitter smile, but beside him, the Great Elder suddenly let out a piercing cry.
"Hardway, you despicable, shameless scoundrel!"
As he spoke, he raised his face, mangled by Jiang Zhizhou's earlier sword thrust, and addressed Yang Qing and the others. "Hardway is a hypocritical scoundrel. If you believe him, you'll be falling into his trap."
Hardway turned a pity-filled gaze on the Great Elder. "Great Elder, even now, do you still feel no remorse?"
"How long are we going to keep deceiving ourselves?"
The Great Elder struggled up from the ground and staggered two steps toward Yang Qing's group, but in the end, his strength failed him, and he collapsed again.
"Young Master Yang, you must not let this man's false virtue deceive you."
Yang Qing looked calmly at the Great Elder. "What do you mean by that, Great Elder?"
"To tell you the truth, the curse is real, and it is also true that our Hard Tribe began conducting blood sacrifices."
"But everything you encountered after entering the tribe, including being lured into the Blood Sacrifice Forbidden Land just now, was Hardway's doing alone."
"His doing alone? You must take us for fools."
Ouyang Lin raised a hand and pointed at the elder whose body had been corroded into two halves by molten iron. "Wasn't it your joint assault that nearly cost us our lives?"
"And from beginning to end, Hardway was under the control of you two."
The Great Elder laughed loudly, coughing up a great mouthful of blood. "Indeed, all of that was done by the Second Elder and me."
"But surely you have heard a certain saying."
As he spoke, the Great Elder coughed up another great