novelnext Chapter 188 The Truth Behind the Scenes
Chapter 188 The Truth Behind the Scenes
Chapter 188 The Truth Behind the Scenes (The End)
Before long, more members of the Guan family arrived at Guan Sanye's residence.
Soon the place was packed with people, but no one dared to approach the core area of Guan Yu's villa without permission.
The old man with cloudy eyes and a hunched back was Guan Qingyuan, the current patriarch of the Guan family. He shared the same generation as Guan Sanye, but was a bit older.
He hadn't left his residence for many years, and he wouldn't have come here in person if he hadn't suddenly sensed a powerful energy fluctuation here.
After all, energy fluctuations of this level have rarely occurred in the Guan family's territory before.
"The Guo family?"
Looking at the bloodstained razor blade taken from Guan Yu's eye socket, Guan Qingyuan recognized its origin.
His face was ashen, and he said coldly, "Qingtong, have someone investigate. If this matter is truly related to the Guo family, make them give us an explanation!"
That being said, Guan Qingyuan also knew that the Guo family was no weaker than the Guan family, and that the other side wouldn't be foolish enough to come directly to the heart of the Guan family territory to kill Guan Sanye.
And they even left behind that quinoa-patterned knife that clearly belonged to the Guo family.
So there might be more to this than meets the eye, but they could use this opportunity to get the Guo family to help investigate.
At the same time, Guan Qingyuan could clearly sense a slight external energy fluctuation in the room, which seemed to be related to spacetime abilities.
Perhaps it was left behind by the murderer, or perhaps it was caused by a sequence object with spacetime capabilities.
That person was here just now, but disappeared in the blink of an eye. They must have escaped through time travel.
While others were still conducting on-site investigations and cleanup, Guan Qingyuan returned to his residence, the main house of the Guan family.
He arrived at the third basement level, passed through a narrow underground passage, pushed open a heavy bronze door, and then passed through three more basement rooms before arriving at the last one.
The place is equipped with a lot of ventilation equipment and is dimly lit, but there is incense burning all year round.
The object enshrined in the room was not a human figure or any other object, but a pitch-black oil lamp.
A faint light shone from inside the oil lamp, flickering from time to time, but it seemed as if it would never go out.
After Guan Qingyuan entered the room, he immediately knelt on the prayer mat in front of the oil lamp, kowtowed three times, lit three incense sticks for the oil lamp, and then stood up.
He faced the oil lamp and asked, "Ancestor, what is the reason for this?"
After a short wait, the room was deathly silent, as if Guan Qingyuan was talking to himself.
Suddenly, a hoarse, indistinct voice rang out, echoing in the small room, and it came from the oil lamp.
"This man, Qingzheng (Third Master Guan), is harboring ulterior motives. I just learned that he covets the Divine Sprite and wants to use it to advance his rank, so he has secretly cooperated with the World Prince without informing you."
"What?" Guan Qingyuan's face showed shock. "The one the Ancestor was talking about—is it that 'World Child'?"
"Yes, the son of the Gate of Boundaries."
"Alas, how foolish of me! How could I have thought of cooperating with Jiezi? That's not something we can afford to associate with—"
A hoarse voice interrupted Guan Qingyuan: "You should be glad he didn't succeed, otherwise—"
Guan Qingyuan knew what the patriarch wanted to say, and shook his head, saying, "I don't think Qingzheng wants to compete for my position as the head of the family. If he wants it, let him have it. I suspect he just wants to advance to a higher rank, firstly to prolong his life, and secondly to leap up his life level."
"Investigate thoroughly. Qingzheng must have offended some powerful figure. In any case, that person killed an elder of my Guan family, and this blood debt must be repaid."
"Yes."
"Are preparations underway for the awakening ceremony at the end of this month?"
"It's ready."
"I've selected six promising talents, and this time I'm confident I can awaken six more members of the family."
"yes.
""
Green Wave Sea, Guo Family.
This place is about 500 kilometers away from the capital of Tian Shu Kingdom.
The so-called Green Wave Sea is actually a vast lake, with several villages surrounding it.
The Guo family's territory was located in the middle of the lake, on an island also known as the Oasis.
The Guo family not only has a large number of Sequencers, but they are also extremely good at business, developing various tourism and aquaculture industries around Green Wave Sea.
This also made the villagers in several nearby villages rich, so these villagers respected the Guo family extremely and obeyed their every command. They could even be converted into their peripheral forces at any time.
The head of the Guo family was a middle-aged man, but his exact age was unknown.
-
He sat in a large hall in the largest building in the oasis, holding a small jade figurine in his hand.
The little figure resembled Guo Fan. The jade figure, which was originally clear and translucent with a faint green hue, now had a thick, inky blackness growing from within.
It looks like this black mass is still spreading outwards, and it won't be long before it completely turns the jade figure into a black jade.
"How long did it take to notice that Fan'er's beauty had changed?"
A middle-aged woman standing beside her replied, "When we discovered it yesterday, the center of the jade statue had already turned black, and we haven't been able to contact Fan'er since."
The head of the Guo family glanced down at the jade figure in his hand again: "No need to contact him, he's already dead."
His gaze then shifted and landed on an exquisite quinoa-patterned knife on the table, the blade still stained with some blood.
These bloodstains were deliberately left unwiped.
"Was this quinoa-patterned knife delivered this morning?" he asked.
Another young man immediately replied respectfully, "Yes, Master, it was sent by the Guan family. They only said that they found this deadly quinoa-patterned knife in the head of the deceased Third Master Guan, and then pulled it out and brought it back. As for the murderer—they haven't found him."
"Heh." The Guo family patriarch sneered. "What a fine 'specially delivered'! This knife does indeed belong to Fan'er. The Guan family's intentions are also very clear: someone from my Guo family used this knife to kill their Third Master Guan!"
"How could Fan'er, with his skills, possibly kill Guan Yu?" the middle-aged woman asked, puzzled. "Besides, Fan'er is dead too. Could they have killed him?"
"It shouldn't be," the Guo family head shook his head. "If they had killed Fan'er, they wouldn't have sent the Liwen Blade directly."
He took a deep breath: "The Guan family probably knows that someone wants to frame my Guo family, so they probably want us to help investigate why this knife is in Master Guan's head."
"So someone stole Fan'er's knife, killed Guan Yu, and framed us?" the middle-aged woman guessed.
"That's possible," the Guo family patriarch nodded.
He put down the jade figure that was soaked in black ink: "Investigate what Fan'er has been doing all this time. This boy is arrogant and doesn't tell us about many of his actions in advance."
"Yes."
The place where Yin and Yang meet is eerie and mysterious.
Standing in the woods, Li Jiuhe looked up and found that there were too many trees, and their branches and leaves were so thick that they almost completely blocked out the sky.
-
He had just stepped into the hazy, flowing mist and arrived here.
It seemed to be a primeval forest, but there was no one around, and the words of the death pass were nowhere to be seen.
As mentioned earlier, the pass will open a passage to "The Mysterious Forest".
So this is the Ghost Forest, one of the seven places where Yin and Yang meet?
Based on the sequence characteristics of the death pass, it is most familiar with these places where yin and yang meet, after all, this thing is a pass to death.
Li Jiuhe did not move for the time being, but quietly sensed that the Morning Bell of the Second Seventh was still with him.
Furthermore, his existence has now become one with that of the Morning Bell. Whenever Li Jiuhe has a thought, a Morning Bell appears in his mind.
At the same time, if he so desires, the two stone figures can immediately merge with his body.
Li Jiuhe can use the abilities of the stone golems at will, even the abilities of two stone golems fused together.
However, he had a feeling that his integration with the Second Seven Morning Bell still needed time to work out. Once that was achieved, he might truly and completely absorb everything from the Second Seven Morning Bell.
From then on, he himself became the Morning Bell, and the Morning Bell sequence could also exist and continue by borrowing his sequence energy.
The feeling of merging with the morning bell was extremely comfortable. As soon as Li Jiuhe had this thought, he vanished without a trace.
The next second, a young man wearing a vest, shorts, and flip-flops walked out from behind a huge old tree.
The young man was taken aback when he came out, then looked around: "Huh! Where's Li Jiuhe? Didn't he make it?!"
Upon realizing this, the young man's expression changed.
Morning Bell Space.
Li Jiuhe found himself back in the middle of the square, standing in front of the giant morning bell.
The stone figures of the Morning Palace and the Evening Palace stood on either side of the bell, looking at Li Jiuhe with faint smiles on their faces.
"I can enter here at any time now, so—our powers are now mutually reinforcing."
Li Jiuhe stepped forward and reached out to touch the main body of the Morning Bell. It felt as if he were touching his own body, without any sense of separation.
He now understands that not only has his physical attack increased dramatically, but also because he possesses the Morning Bell of the Second Seventh Day and has gained the right to use the Morning Bell Space.
This is essentially a huge, portable dimensional space that can hold many items and allows you to trap yourself within it.
In times of crisis, they temporarily sought refuge here to escape.
Just then, the reward for this mission suddenly arrived in his account. This was the first V-level D-rank mission Li Jiuhe had ever encountered, and the reward for this mission was extremely generous.
The reset point limit has been increased by 10 points, bringing the total limit to 52 points.
Five time anchor points will be awarded as a reward, bringing the total to 10.
You are rewarded with 4 chances to carry any item that has been reset, for a total of 9 chances.
The total task duration has been extended by another hour, now totaling 7 hours.
Most importantly, I was awarded 10 points. I originally had 4 points left, so now I have a total of 14 points.
He was also rewarded with 5 random low-quality labels and 1 ordinary label. This was the first time Li Jiuhe had received an ordinary label.
He immediately checked the label and found it was a "sudden drop in ability" label.
Unlike inferior labels, ordinary labels do not appear randomly and are then selected by Li Jiuhe to achieve the desired effect. Instead, each label corresponds to only one piece of content.
However, the effect of this content far exceeds that of inferior labels. Li Jiuhe suspects that ordinary labels like "sudden drop in ability" may directly reduce the target's ability by half, or even by more than half.
This is much better than those inferior labels that reduce sequence energy by one-fifth.
However, running a regular label requires 2 points, which is twice as many points as running a low-quality label.
After sorting through the rewards he received, Li Jiuhe stared blankly at the "Current Career Stage" section.
Before completing this task, he was still a "Task Designer - Junior (Upgrade Progress 39%)", but now his upgrade progress has increased to 95%!
It's important to know that the upgrade progress had always increased by single digits, and even when a major task was encountered, the progress never increased by more than 10%.
But now it has suddenly increased by several tens of percentage points, and Li Jiuhe does not believe that it is because the task was completed that it has increased so much.
A moment later, he looked up at the morning bell and the two stone figures in front of him, feeling the world of this other dimension.
Now, he can sense every inch of this vast plaza, every corner of the Morning Palace and the Evening Palace, and even the slightest movement in this space.
Chen Zhong has completely transferred control of this place to himself.
This feeling of complete control made Li Jiuhe suddenly realize that his increased professional level might not be related to completing the mission, but rather to the improvement in his strength after fusing with the Morning Bell of the Seventeenth.
His strength has always been his pure abilities, but he is not good at physical attacks.
If they encounter a truly powerful physical attack sequence user, they will immediately find themselves in a passive situation.
However, after encountering Guan Sanye's divination this time, Li Jiuhe also discovered a problem. Originally, Guan Sanye's identity as a great diviner was also that of a pure ability user, but he had managed to enhance his physical attack ability through other means.
He cultivated his divination body to the same level as his original self, and combined it with Guan Yu's expertise in divination and incantations, reaching a level where he could directly confront or even overpower the two masters, Mu Nian and Tong Cheng.
This inspired Li Jiuhe, who could also use a similar method to make up for his shortcomings and reach the same level as Guan Yu.
Moreover, his pure ability level is already stronger, so once he makes up for this weakness, his overall strength will be even more terrifying than Guan Yu's.
Thinking about it this way, he guessed that it might be because he had made up for his shortcomings that his professional level had increased significantly.
It seems that if he completes two or three more simple tasks, his task designer level will most likely be upgraded from beginner to intermediate.
Li Jiuhe was very much looking forward to what changes the intermediate level would bring him.
Now, with the powerful physical attacks from the two stone golems, coupled with his purely ability-based mission-defining abilities, his overall strength has actually surpassed that of Mu Nian and Tong Cheng.
What he lacks now is only practical experience.
This is also thanks to Li Jiuhe's high rank, which is why he has the purple-gold line after awakening.
He suspected that he was now at least at the mid-level of the Purple Gold Line, and was probably close to reaching the high level.
The change in his strength filled him with confidence. Looking at Chen Zhong, he said, "You made the right choice. That fat man from the Guan family almost destroyed us to complete his plan. If we hadn't joined forces, we would have died a terrible death. Now—"
This should be the best outcome for us.
It now seems that he and Erqi Chenzhong complemented each other, but he clearly took the lead, which is why Chenzhong hesitated at the beginning about whether to merge with Li Jiuhe.
If the morning bell hadn't been later controlled by Guan Yu, it wouldn't have prompted it to take this step.
"Now let's go out and find out exactly what that fat guy from the Guan family wants to use us for. Let's go!"
As soon as he finished speaking, his body vanished from the spot, and the two stone figures disappeared as well, leaving only the main body of the Morning Bell behind.
But at this moment, Chen Zhong's consciousness had also merged into Li Jiuhe's body and was taken out with him.
The scene before him changed, and Li Jiuhe found himself once again standing in the eerie, dark place where yin and yang met.
He looked around and, although there was no one around, he could faintly hear someone calling his name.
Following the sound, we hurried forward, passing through a forest of giant trees that required seven or eight people to encircle each one, and arrived at an even older forest.
Then they saw a strange young man wearing a white tank top and shorts walking around shouting.
"Who are you----"
Li Jiuhe looked at him in surprise.
The young man looked over in equal surprise: "My God, where did you go? We're business partners, how come I couldn't sense you just now?!"
Li Jiuhe then realized that when he entered the Morning Bell Space, he had instinctively shut out all external consciousness.
In other words, that place is only his and Chenzhong's world, and outsiders can no longer enter and disturb it, not even with a death pass.
This is the enhanced state resulting from the superposition of the two forces.
"Are you the death pass?"
"Yes." The young man nodded. "You can just call me the pass. I only take on human form in places where Yin and Yang meet, or in the 'Abyss.' To be precise, I am still a sequenced object, not a sequencer."
Li Jiuhe asked, "So you can freely enter and exit these places where Yin and Yang meet?"
"Of course." The young man nodded. "We can hide here for a while. Although your last move was pretty ruthless, I doubt the Guan family will fall for it. Instead, they'll join forces with the Guo family to search for you everywhere."
"We'll take it one step at a time. Since that fat guy's trying to mess with me, I'll naturally kill him and use the opportunity to divert everyone else's attention." Li Jiuhe spread his hands. "Now we just have to deal with whatever comes our way. Hmm, you said last time that if you absorbed Guan Yu's energy, you'd tell me a huge secret. Now you can tell me!"
The young man glanced around instinctively, as if afraid of being seen.
Then he took out a small tree carving from somewhere and handed it to Li Jiuhe.
Li Jiuhe took a look and found that the tree carving depicted a deformed human. The upper body resembled a human male, but the lower body was that of a hairy reptile with countless feet.
"This is----"
The young man lowered his voice and said, "Jiezi, he is the son of the ruler of the realm gate."
Before Li Jiuhe could ask further, he continued, "This guy wants to cross over from the Abyss into our world. Whether it's Guan Yu or Guo Fan from the Guo family, they're all just his pawns, doing things for him."
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