With three choices and two wrong answers ruled out, choosing wrong still means dying of stupidity.

The Clearwind Sect.

Inside the side chamber used for deliberations.

Zheng Xiaofeng stood below, looking utterly aggrieved as he faced the sect leader's questioning gaze.

The sect leader asked suspiciously, "You mean they just lay beside the stream ordering you around today, and did nothing else?"

Zheng Xiaofeng's gaze and tone were both utterly sincere. "Sect Leader, that really was all!"

The sect leader was plainly skeptical. "They didn't say anything about evil cultivators or anything else? They just tormented you?"

Zheng Xiaofeng sounded both aggrieved and tragically heroic. "Sect Leader, I've been in the Clearwind Sect since I was little. Don't you know what I'm like? My loyalty to the sect is such that I'd smear my liver and brains across the ground for it!"

These words seemed to move the sect leader. He nodded lightly, signaling that Zheng Xiaofeng could leave.

Zheng Xiaofeng hurriedly breathed a sigh of relief. At least he had muddled his way through.

He did not dare disclose anything about that Blood Qi Spirit Stone.

Whoever the damn elder involved in this was, I couldn't afford to cross them.

I lost half my life clawing my way from Foundation Establishment to Golden Core, just to scrape my way into this whipping-boy elder position.

And this could very well be a joint conspiracy among the elders. Even the sect leader might know about it. How could someone like me, excluded from the elders' circle of power, get involved in something like this?

Zheng Xiaofeng looked forward to graduating from his career as a whipping-boy elder, but not the kind of graduation that cost him his life.

Only by pretending he knew nothing about this might he preserve himself.

If I'm going to be a whipping boy, I have to see it through!

Zheng Xiaofeng hastily