"Two quarters of an hour. I gave you a chance, but unfortunately, none of you took it."
"Even now, when you know full well what you've done wrong, you still refuse to see reason."
Without waiting for the eight to argue, he raised a hand and steadied the screen of light at the edge of the sky. "What you may not know is that when I ordered Bai Chuan to bring you here, eight other demonic cultivators were being interrogated by the Secret Demon Extermination Guard in the distant Heavenly Prison."
As he spoke, the assembled cultivators looked up and saw two figures appear on the screen.
Cultivators from the Central Region knew the first figure, if not by sight, then by reputation: Ning Jiu, the Gold Ranking prodigy from Meishan, known as Sword Immortal Lin Han.
She held her sword against a disheveled demonic cultivator bound in shackles.
Judging by his state, the earlier interrogation had brought him to the brink of collapse.
The projection seemed to work both ways.
The moment the image appeared, the demonic cultivator on the screen grew agitated.
He dragged his heavy shackles forward and pointed at one of the eight. "Yes! Him! That young Prince of the Great Yong Dynasty! He came to me, and together we plotted to kill the Dynasty's eldest princess!"
"You! You fiend! That's utter nonsense! I... I've never even met you! How could we have plotted anything together?"
The Prince's face changed at once, and he denied it with panic in his eyes.
But the next moment, an elderly cultivator in black appeared inside the cell, his aura deep and his eyes blazing like torches.
Fear filled the young Prince's eyes when he saw him.
"An... Ancestor... I... I didn't..."
He stammered, unable to meet the old cultivator's