Chapter 192 - 190: Red Lotus Sect

"Run!"

The Martial Artist whose arm had been broken by Qin Suguang roared, and his body immediately erupted in fierce, crimson flames.

This was no ordinary burning of True Qi. It was a raging inferno that consumed his physical body, Qi Blood, True Qi, and even his Divine Soul, burning from the inside out.

A formidable burst of True Qi erupted from Qin Suguang's hands, but it was completely unable to suppress the flames.

He had tried before, but every attempt had ended in failure.

Just then, Chen Yuan suddenly struck with his palm, and a torrent of Demon Flame instantly enveloped the Martial Artist.

The core of this Demon Flame contained the Fire Origin—the supremely tyrannical Celestial Fire Power. It suppressed and extinguished the man's flames in a mere instant.

In that brief moment, the Martial Artist had already burned through most of his True Qi and Qi Blood. His face was now deathly pale.

Qin Suguang's eyes lit up. 'Brother Chen really has a way!'

He immediately moved, instantly dislocating the man's four limbs and his jaw to prevent him from biting his tongue to commit suicide.

Meanwhile, the Martial Artist who had attacked Chen Yuan was extremely decisive. Instead of trying to rescue his companion, he directly burned his Qi Blood and turned to flee.

But before he could take two steps, the surging Demon Flame morphed into chains and wrapped around his legs.

He was about to activate his power to self-immolate, but in the next moment, the Celestial Fire Power surged directly into his Eight Extraordinary Meridians, completely sealing all the power in his body.

Under the impact of the powerful force, the man passed out.

"Done. Let's take them back for interrogation."

Chen Yuan picked up the Martial Artist and gestured to Qin Suguang.

"Tsk! It really had to be you, Brother Chen."

Qin Suguang's face was filled with admiration.

As the Chief Constable of Jieyang Prefecture, he had been tearing his hair out for years, unable to capture a single one alive, yet Chen Yuan had solved the problem as soon as he arrived.

Chen Yuan shook his head and said, "I'm not being humble, it was just luck. These Martial Artists are definitely not nobodies. Their background must be significant, and the power they use is very strange."

If Chen Yuan hadn't cultivated the *Celestial Fire Secret Manual*, he wouldn't have been able to stop them from self-immolating, even with an origin power like the Blood Fiend Power.

The power of that flame was supremely tyrannical, yet it also contained a strange energy that Chen Yuan had never encountered before and could hardly describe.

It wasn't True Qi, True Essence, or a Power of Origin. All in all, it was utterly bizarre.

Only the Celestial Fire Power, which contained the Fire Origin, could suppress it. It seemed these enemies had finally met their match.

Carrying the two men, they returned to the Six Gates Government Office in Jieyang Prefecture. Qin Suguang immediately arranged for his men to interrogate the two Martial Artists.

There were some old-timers in the Six Gates Government Office who specialized in this, and their methods were quite extensive.

An hour later, a hunchbacked old man with a grim face walked in, looking utterly dejected.

"Lord Qin, those two are tough nuts to crack. They're barely breathing now, but they still won't say a word."

Qin Suguang was stunned. "Elder Ge, they can withstand your methods?"

This Elder Ge was an old Chief Constable of the Six Gates. His strength wasn't actually that great, only at the Blood Movement Realm.

However, his interrogation techniques were famous throughout Qin Province. Chief Constables from other Province Capitals often came to borrow him to question certain criminals.

The most vicious bandits and heinous criminals would fall into his hands, and in less than a quarter of an hour, they would confess everything, right down to peeking at the neighbor's widow bathing when they were children.

Yet now, a full hour had passed, and Elder Ge said he hadn't gotten anything out of them. This was far too strange.

Elder Ge's face flushed slightly.

He couldn't believe that his lifelong reputation had taken such a tumble today.

"My lord, those two are truly strange. It's like they're made of wood, not making a sound. It's as if they feel no pain at all."

Chen Yuan, who was standing nearby, said, "Let's go take a look."

The two went to the torture chamber in the dungeon. The two Martial Artists were suspended from racks. There weren't many obvious wounds on their bodies, but Chen Yuan could sense that many of the injuries were hidden deep within their flesh. He had no idea how Elder Ge had managed to inflict torture through the physical body.

The torture chamber was filled with all sorts of chilling instruments—knives, needles, and more. Some even came in sets, ranging from small to large.

Elder Ge took out a needle as fine as a strand of hair and actually inserted it into one of the Martial Artist's eyeballs, stirring it around inside.

"You see? The scoundrel doesn't even have the slightest reaction. It's like he's already dead."

Qin Suguang frowned slightly.

'If it's like this, then capturing them alive was useless.'

Chen Yuan walked over and sent a wisp of his power into the Martial Artist's body, using the power of the Inner Vision God Observation Method to meticulously inspect his physical form.

There was nothing wrong with the body. His power wasn't sealed, and no tricks had been played on his acupoints to block pain.

His power continued onward. When it reached the man's Spirit Platform Ancestral Acupoint, he found a Red Lotus sealing it.

The moment Chen Yuan touched that power, a scorching aura instantly washed over him.

Along with this aura, Chen Yuan felt as if he could hear countless people chanting scriptures and praying, and all sorts of strange whispers flooded into his mind.

It was like Buddhism but not, like Taoism but not. Amidst the profound mystery was a sense of bizarre and sinister evil.

Chen Yuan grunted and abruptly withdrew his power from the Martial Artist's body.

As the Red Lotus was triggered by Chen Yuan and dissipated, the Martial Artist suddenly began to howl in agony. His body twitched uncontrollably, and in less than three breaths, his eyes rolled back, blood trickled from his nose and mouth, and he stopped breathing entirely.

"Brother Chen, are you alright?"

Qin Suguang rushed over to help Chen Yuan up.

Chen Yuan shook his head, his expression grave. "I'm fine. My Spiritual Power just took a hit.

"These guys have a serious background. There's a seal on their Forehead Ancestral Acupoint. It's this seal that allows them to separate their spirit from their body and block out all pain.

"I just touched the seal and made it dissipate. All the pain he should have felt erupted in a single instant, directly shattering his mind.

"The power sealing his Ancestral Acupoint is very strange. It's not a type of True Qi, but rather leans toward a spiritual type of Incense Fire Will Power. It looks like a Red Lotus."

As soon as he said this, Qin Suguang's expression became extremely grim.

"Brother Chen, there's no need for any more interrogation or investigation. I know who's behind this."

"Who?"

"The Red Lotus Sect of Qin Province!"

Qin Suguang took a deep breath. "Brother Chen, have you heard of the Red Lotus Sect rebellion in Qin Province twenty years ago?"

Chen Yuan nodded. "Of course. But I heard it was just a small rebellion, limited to Qin Province, and was suppressed quickly."

Qin Suguang sighed. "The Red Lotus Sect rebellion was indeed suppressed quickly, but it was by no means a small rebellion.

"I was still young then. The rebellion swept through more than half of Qin Province. Half the province was turned to scorched earth, and countless people died, both from the Jianghu Forces and the common populace.

"My parents and relatives were all killed in that rebellion."

With that, Qin Suguang began to tell Chen Yuan the details of the Red Lotus Sect's rebellion from twenty years ago.

The rebellion was initially sparked by the tyrannical taxes and levies imposed by King Qin Zhao Ding, who ruled Qin Province at the time, leading to widespread civil unrest.

The Princes of the Great Xia Royal Family didn't actually have permanent fiefdoms. The Princes enfeoffed in each generation were almost always the Emperor's brothers.

When an Emperor died, the next Emperor would naturally need to enfeoff his own brothers, so he had to reclaim the fiefdoms from his uncles.

Unless a Prince managed to curry favor with his emperor nephew and greatly please him, only then could he keep his fiefdom for one more generation.

But two generations was the absolute maximum. By the time of the third-generation emperor, the fiefdom would definitely be reclaimed.

This led these Princes to treat the common people in their fiefdoms as less than human, ruthlessly exploiting them to amass as much wealth as possible before their land was taken back, so they could retire comfortably in the Capital City.

The core cause of the current rebellion in Yan Province is also King Yan Zhao Pan's tyrannical exploitation, which led to the rise of the Sun-Swapping Alliance.

It was in this environment that the Red Lotus Sect rose in Qin Province. Their slogan was: "The Red Lotus blooms, shining for eternity; a candle in this life to realize the true self."

Its Sect Leader called herself the Red Lotus Saint Mother, claiming to be an incarnation of the Daoist Ancestor, a disciple of the future Maitreya Buddha, and that she carried the Red Lotus under the decree of Maitreya Buddha to save all living beings.

Hearing this, Chen Yuan really wanted to retort. 'An incarnation of the Daoist Ancestor becoming a disciple of Maitreya Buddha? How much do you look down on the Daoist Sect?'

If he were one of the patriarchs of the Four Daoist Courts, he would have immediately come to annihilate the Red Lotus Sect upon hearing their doctrine.

Although the Red Lotus Sect's teachings were absurd, a large number of people in Qin Province joined at the time, and the sect swept through half the province in an instant.

But while King Qin Zhao Ding was no saint, the Red Lotus Sect was even more sinister and bizarre.

The people of Qin Province had essentially escaped the tiger's den only to fall into the wolf's pit.

The Red Lotus Sect took the Buddhist practice of burning a finger as an offering to Buddha and called upon its followers to burn their bodies as an offering to the Red Lotus Saint Mother.

One had to burn a finger just to be eligible to join. The more devout you were, the more you burned.

It started with a hand, then an arm, then all four limbs, and finally, some would even throw their entire bodies into the Red Lotus Sacred Fire, contributing their very being to the Red Lotus Saint Mother. Their souls could then enter the Lotus Pure Land—a place without birth or death, sorrow or worry, an earthly paradise created by the Red Lotus Saint Mother for her devout followers.

But in reality, whenever a follower burned themself, the Red Lotus Saint Mother and the upper echelons of the sect would harvest a portion of Incense Fire Will Power—the same power Chen Yuan had just touched.

This power was different from True Qi; it was more like a combination of Spiritual Power and the Power of Heaven and Earth, making it very strange.

So, when the Red Lotus Sect swept through Qin Province, many common people were swept up and joined. Most of them ended up disabled from burning their bodies as offerings to the Red Lotus Saint Mother, while some burned themselves completely, becoming fuel for the Saint Mother to gather Incense Fire Will Power.

In the later stages, the Red Lotus Sect even began forcing its followers to burn their bodies. If you didn't offer yourself to the Red Lotus Saint Mother, you were considered impious, a traitor to the faith.

This act led to countless deaths and injuries among the people of Qin Province. Those who remained in the Red Lotus Sect were basically all fanatical believers.

Later, the Red Lotus Sect rebellion was quelled by Grand General Yuwen Tai of the Vigorous Martial Army, but the damage caused by the sect was hard to recover from.

Although Qin Province is still prosperous today, it is actually less than half as prosperous as it was twenty years ago.

Qin Suguang never expected that the Red Lotus Sect, which had seemed like a flash in the pan, would reappear now. This was no ordinary trouble.