Chapter 617 - 397: The Three Innocent Female College Students of the Substitute Death Tribulation, Red-clothed Taoist! (2)

Chapter 617: Chapter 397: The Three Innocent Female College Students of the Substitute Death Tribulation, Red-clothed Taoist! (2)

Lu Yuliang had already taken the lead in breaking the silence, his voice carrying a hoarse roughness tempered by the years: "Fang, long time no see."

The two words "Fang" entered his ears, and Fang Hai’s whole body jolted as he hurriedly lifted his head.

His turbid gaze fell on Lu Yuliang’s face; with just a brief glance, that familiar outline and brows instantly awakened memories long buried in dust.

His lips trembled, his tone full of incredulous shock: "Lu... it’s you? How are you here?"

The decadence and dazedness from being taken away at the villa just now were instantly scattered by this sudden reunion.

Fang Hai’s eyes widened, his face written all over with "totally baffled."

His whole body froze in the chair; he even forgot to adjust his breathing. Clearly he had never expected to run into a former subordinate in this place.

"Lu, don’t tell me... you’ve fallen from office too?"

Fang Hai abruptly leaned forward, a complicated light flashing in his cloudy eyes—shock, and even more a kind of unbelievable conjecture.

In his view, being brought to this remote, desolate holding room, there was no second possibility besides corruption being exposed, the scandal finally breaking.

Then Fang Hai fixed his gaze on Lu Yuliang, the corner of his mouth curving in a self-mocking arc, his conviction deepening.

Back when they worked together in Yingnan City, he had already known well that in officialdom, there is no one absolutely clean.

If a decent man wants to climb up, how could he not dip his hands into some benefits?

The fact that Lu Yuliang had ended up in such a situation today, in his eyes, was nothing more than a belated "of course."

"In Dragon Country, as long as you sit in the kind of position we used to have back then, one hundred percent of people will start having other ideas."

Fang Hai leaned back against the chair, his voice full of worldly sighs.

"Lu, don’t you try to refute it; refuting it is just lying to yourself—this is a rotten trait carved into human bones,

greed, desire, the urge to grasp power, twining around the heart like vines. No ’normal person’ can truly resist that temptation."

After rambling on to himself, he paused, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the armrest, his tone gaining a few shades of self-mockery. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

"Back then I thought you were an exception; now it seems you just hid it deeper than anyone."

Lu Yuliang watched Fang Hai chattering away, eyebrows dancing as he freely spun his speculations, and a hard-to-describe strangeness flitted across his face.

This guy, even at this point, his mind was still this muddled—hopelessly confused.

But Lu Yuliang had no interest in wasting time arguing over such irrelevant nonsense. His tone was crisp and direct, going straight to the point.

"Fang, the homicide case at Yingnan University twenty years ago, those three girls in Dorm 506—do you still remember?"

"Huh?"

At the sound, Fang Hai’s pupils suddenly contracted; those cloudy old eyes flew wide open, the veins on the hands gripping the table edge bulging.

Shock and terror churned together in his eyes, even his breathing snagging for half a beat.

"You... you, Lu," Fang Hai’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently, his voice quivering, laced with barely concealed panic.

"Why would you suddenly bring up... bring up that matter?"

Lu Yuliang’s expression was as cold as if coated in a layer of frost. He raised a hand and picked up a transparent document pouch from beside him.

Inside, that black talisman paper with jagged edges and dim color exuded an eerie aura under the light.

"Hmph." He slammed the pouch down heavily on the tabletop with a dull thud, his gaze sharp as a blade, stabbing straight at Fang Hai.

"You’d better explain honestly what this thing is—back then, why did you have people paste these talisman papers in Dorm 506?"

You had to know, the function of these talismans was definitely not to pray for blessings or ward off evil, but to suppress the souls of the three girls who had died tragically in that dormitory!

The next moment, the panic in Fang Hai’s eyes abruptly faded. His eyes narrowed slightly, leaving only a fathomless heaviness in his pupils.

That unusually calm look was completely different from the bewildered, rambling old man he’d been just moments ago—like two different people.

He slowly straightened up, his tone so flat it bordered on indifferent, as if he were discussing some trivial matter that had nothing to do with him: "Lu, what are you talking about? I don’t understand."

The feigned ignorance in those words could not have been more obvious.

Fang Hai locked away all his emotions and flaws, refusing to expose even the slightest weakness.

"You!"

Lu Yuliang’s chest heaved violently, his anger about to burst out of him.

But just then, a calm, almost rippleless old voice rang out at the perfect moment, instantly pressing down the drawn-bow tension in the room.

"Yuliang, let me handle this."

Before the words had fully fallen, the door creaked open. Lu Xuan stood with his hands clasped behind his back and slowly stepped into the room.

When his gaze landed on Fang Hai, it carried not a trace of warmth, only pure indifference, as if the man before him were nothing more than a speck of dust.

Just as confusion flooded Fang Hai’s heart, a strand of golden ripple suddenly shot out from Lu Xuan’s eyes.

That golden light flashed and vanished in an instant, quietly melting into the void, so swift it was as though it had never appeared at all.

Yet in Fang Hai’s perception, heaven and earth abruptly changed color.

Millions of towering mountains crashed down, like the collapse of the firmament itself pressing upon his heart.

That vast and mighty oppressive force shattered his tiny mind in an instant; even breathing became unbearably difficult.

The next second, Fang Hai’s eyes turned abruptly vacant, his whole body stiff like a puppet on strings.

Whenever Lu Xuan asked a question, he would mechanically answer, voice flat and unruffled, each word and sentence repeated with perfect accuracy.

He was like a playback machine with its program already set, devoid of any trace of the calm and disguise he had shown before.

A Grandmaster of the Embracing Elixir Realm had no need to lift a hand; with Martial Arts Will unleashed, he could crush an ordinary person’s spirit like Mount Tai bearing down.

That vast oppressive force, born of the physical and spiritual power of the body, could easily tear through the opponent’s psychological defenses, making their mind shatter.

Within a short span, they would completely lose control of their brain, reduced to a puppet at another’s mercy.

"Red-clothed Taoist...." Fang Hai’s eyes were empty as he mechanically repeated this name, his tone without the slightest fluctuation.

"It was him... he said he could help me avert disaster," his Adam’s apple moved stiffly as the words surged out beyond his control.

"The method was... to use another’s life as the trigger, to take the disaster on behalf of the client."

"Those three female students from Yingnan University, it wasn’t a vendetta killing. They were nothing but sacrifices he randomly selected when I sought the Red-clothed Taoist’s services... they just happened to become the substitutes who took the calamity for me."

Back then, twenty years ago, Fang Hai was at a critical stage of rising in officialdom. At a high-end wine reception, through a twist of fate in someone’s introduction—

He came to know a mysterious Taoist wearing a red robe—that was the man later known as the Red-clothed Taoist.

At the time, the Red-clothed Taoist had barely laid eyes on him before pronouncing, with unwavering certainty, that he would soon face a ruinous disaster.

"Your life chart is murky and dim, calamity is approaching. If it is not resolved in time, not only will your official career be destroyed and plunge into the abyss, you will ultimately fall into prison and grow old behind bars."

"Where is the Red-clothed Taoist?" Lu Xuan’s voice was calm.

Fang Hai’s head drooped slightly as he mechanically replied, "He... he’s in the Mingxin Temple in the city center."

That Mingxin Temple was the largest Taoist temple in Liangqing City, with flying eaves and carved beams, magnificently imposing.

Presumably, there were quite a few people like Fang Hai, whose weaknesses had been seized by this heretical Taoist.

In secret they used official channels to provide funds, allowing the Red-clothed Taoist to build such an extravagantly luxurious ’sanctuary’.

In the deepest part of the Mingxin Temple’s secret chamber, candle flames flickered, illuminating a red-robed figure.

It was an old man with white hair; the scarlet Taoist robe set off his face, pale as paper, his entire body wreathed in a deathly stillness, devoid of any trace of a living person’s warmth or vitality.

Suddenly, his tightly shut eyes snapped open, pupils contracting. The emptiness in his gaze was instantly flooded by a thick, inescapable unease.

"Something’s wrong... how can there be this kind of heart-palpitating feeling?" he muttered to himself, the five fingers of his right hand clenching around the small skull Magic Artifact hidden in his sleeve.

"Could it be... someone intends to make a move against this Magus?"

Those who cultivate Magic Skill have long had their bodies linked with the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, and possess an exceedingly keen instinctive vigilance.

At this moment, the chill and warning arising from the unseen depths clung to him like a tumor on bone, spreading through his entire body; it was by no means a groundless delusion.

Before his words had finished, just as the red-robed old man braced himself on the meditation cushion to rise, the heavy iron door of the secret chamber thundered with a tremendous boom.

The reinforced metal panel was actually smashed into a bend and deformation, then blown inward like torn paper, crashing heavily down onto the central ritual altar.

In an instant, ash flew everywhere, Magic Artifacts shattered, and blood-red copper bells rolled across the floor. The altar was reduced to a wreckage-strewn ruin in the blink of an eye.

Amid the drifting smoke and dust, Lu Xuan’s figure entered slowly with his hands clasped behind his back. His black Zhongshan suit was spotless, his steps steady as though treading upon mountain peaks.

His gaze swept over the bedraggled red-robed old man; his expression remained indifferent, as if that earth-shaking destruction of door and altar just now had been nothing more than brushing away a speck of dust.

"There’s something I need you to help with." Lu Xuan stood in the still-hazy secret chamber, his voice flat and calm, as if speaking of a matter no more than commonplace.

Yet there was not the slightest hint of request in those words!