Half an incense stick later.
Nine Prefectures, Cloud-Pacifying Peak.
Inside Cloud-Pacifying Hall at the summit.
Seated above, Prefect Liu Chuxuan sternly berated Xu Taiping, who stood in the center of the hall:
"Rogue cultivator Chu Ping'an, name whoever ordered you to do this, and the Nine Prefectures might spare you the agony of having your soul scattered and spirit dispersed!"
Because this was a secret interrogation, the hall doors were tightly shut. Only Prefect Liu Chuxuan and a few elders, including Qian Yi, were present.
Xu Taiping shook his head calmly.
"Lord Prefect, I did not kill Elder Chu Qiuyai. You have the wrong man."
Liu Chuxuan pointed at the mirage rising from the Moonshadow Stone in the center of the hall.
"The evidence is conclusive, yet you still dare quibble?"
Qian Yi, the guest elder from the Pure Yang Sword Sect standing nearby, also spoke coldly:
"This Moonshadow Stone was restored from the pieces you damaged inside the Golden Hall. The images within it cannot be false."
Understanding appeared in Xu Taiping's eyes at those words, and he thought to himself:
So that was it.
When those people assassinated Chu Qiuyai, they deliberately left fragments of the Moonshadow Stone.
Then, calculating how long the Nine Prefectures would take to restore those fragments, they replaced the images within this Moonshadow Stone with what they wanted the Nine Prefectures to see.
Thus framing whoever they wanted to frame.
Of course, Xu Taiping had been able to think of this immediately because he had known beforehand that those people were going to murder Elder Chu Qiuyai.
He then asked Liu Chuxuan and Qian Yi in return:
"Elder Qian, Prefect Liu, how can you be certain that no one replaced the images inside this Moonshadow Stone?"
Although this sounded somewhat like quibbling, Xu