The Gold Bug’s antennas twitched, and with a flash of light, an image appeared before Ling Yun as if projected, showing a figure with blood oozing from its seven orifices.
Desiccated and withered.
It was Ling Yun’s mother.
Despite being reduced to such a ghastly state, Ling Yun recognized her at once.
"Run! Yun’er! Your father is already dead, there’s no ti, don’t look back! Hurry and run! Find a chance to escape!"
Her mother’s image pleaded within, her voice mournful as if a cuckoo bleeding from the heart.
"Mother, what’s happening?"
Ling Yun cried out loudly.
At that mont, a sudden change occurred.
A blaze of fire suddenly appeared on her mother’s legs, and the flas spread rapidly.
As if gripped by so mysterious force, the image of her mother was dragged toward the antennas of the golden bug and absorbed.
"Mother, what’s wrong? What’s happening? Don’t go!" Ling Yun beca frantic.
There was a snap, as if sothing had broken into two pieces.
The ancestral hall was plunged back into the darkness that preceded.
—
"Mother! Mother! What on earth happened!!!"
"Say sothing, will you!"
Whoosh!
Ling Yun suddenly struggled to rise from where she lay next to the window on the desk.
Looking around bewilderedly, she realized that she had sohow fallen asleep without noticing.
The voodoo doll she had been holding before was lying under the table, ablaze with fierce flas, having burned away most of its length.
Inside the doll was a golden bug, very similar to the one from her dream, snapped into two pieces.
A tall figure stood by her side—her father, Linglong.
"Yun’er, what’s wrong, had a nightmare?" Linglong said with a gentle smile.
Facing that familiar smile—whose upward curve of the mouth was identical to her father’s in her mory—Ling Yun still felt a chill down her spine, an icy sensation rushing up to her crown.
"Father, why are you here?"
"I ca to check on you. Ever since your mother passed, you’ve been not quite yourself, and I have been worried." Linglong reached out his large hand, intending to pat Ling Yun’s head but missed.
Startled as if frightened, Ling Yun suddenly stepped back three long steps, her body abruptly tilting back as if she would fall.
Fortunately, at that mont, a hand large as a palm-leaf fan steadied her shoulder, helping Ling Yun regain her balance.
A deep, powerful voice emanated from behind her.
"Miss Yun, be careful, at tis like these you can’t afford to fall!"
Ling Yun turned around to see it was the Daoist she hated, the one who had been inappropriately touching i Ji’s leg during the day.
Yi Chen, dressed in tight black night clothes, appeared suddenly, his outfit still sared with a bit of mud.
Seeing this unexpected developnt, Linglong’s pupils contracted sharply.
"Ah, Brother Linglong, also not asleep, perhaps planning on a fishing trip?"
"The Daoist couldn’t sleep at all, and suddenly felt like finding soone to go night fishing with, so I took the liberty of coming over. You wouldn’t take offense, would you, Brother Linglong?" Yi Chen said, half-smiling in his night clothes.
"Taoist Yi, you ate at my banquet during the day, yet co uninvited at night, entering my daughter’s boudoir—isn’t that a bit too disrespectful?" Linglong spoke coldly.
"I ate at that banquet on my own rit. If you can enter your daughter’s boudoir, why can’t the Daoist? What kind of logic is that?"
"Aren’t you talking nonsense?" Yi Chen puffed out his chest, replying with righteous indignation.
"You..." For a mont, Linglong found himself speechless.
"Brother Linglong, aren’t you curious why I’ve shown up here?"
"After all, you had so many people watching enter the courtyard of the duck egg house, there might even be soone monitoring with a magic artifact."
Without waiting for Linglong to speak, Yi Chen continued.
"That’s naturally because the Daoist has plenty of storage rings." Yi Chen flaunted the four storage rings on his hand.
"The Daoist has plenty of energy, not needing to use any mana, so what can you use to monitor ?"
"I first did so vertical work, digging a hole, and put the excavated earth into a storage ring. Then I dug and dug deep underground, backfilling as I went."
"That’s how I got out here."
"Ling Daoist, you’re quite steady, but you’re not steady enough," Yi Chen tossed a mud-caked modified Luoyang shovel to the ground, sneering.
He had originally planned to wait until the duck’s dream before making a decision, but the mont he discovered soone was surveilling his residence, Yi Chen imdiately changed his mind.
A certain devil nad Rong Fang who had the habit of listening in from the corners and then striking back like a ghost, Yi Chengzi could do it as well.
"Ha ha, in the end, man’s plans are not equal to Heaven’s plans, Heaven’s will ah!"
"Who would have thought Miao Xiuer, the top genius of the Miao Ethnic Group’s previous generation, would still have an ace up her sleeve even after death, outsmarting with a twin-spirit illusion Gu."
"However, Daoist friend, how did you discover my flaw? How did you happen to co to my daughter’s place?" Linglong asked with puzzlent.
"Heh, take a guess," Yi Chen moved Ling Yun behind to protect her.
He had felt sothing was amiss since the day.
From the brief two sentences Ling Yun said during the day, he detected the contradiction.
From Ling Yun’s words, one could infer that before her mother died, the love between her parents must have been very strong. The well-aning person from the sect he later inquired about even ntioned that this man was henpecked.
But during the banquet, this person’s groping was no less than his... This was a doubtful point.
However, if we sowhat reason that Linglong wants to ingratiate himself with Yi Chen, it could be explained away, considering that Yi Chen is now a hot topic on the Dragon Tiger List, having forcefully killed Bazhao.
But if he wanted to curry favor, another problem arose.
How would a hero who throws a party right after his wife’s demise pay such close attention to his daughter’s behavior, to the point of even getting up to send guests away? That’s hardly polite. Normal logic would have him invite the guest to stay overnight and go so far as introducing his daughter for a marriage match, right? That would be the real way to curry favor.
If he really cared about his daughter, if he were truly a good father, he wouldn’t do sothing that would so obviously hurt his daughter’s feelings, unless the only thing he cared about was the person his daughter was.
His many behaviors and strange actions were ant to prevent himself from focusing on his daughter.
Yi Chen didn’t understand either, but if the enemy didn’t want him to do it, then it proved he was doing the right thing.
Based on various information and doubts provided by the kind people from the sect during the day, Yi Chen quickly locked onto the Ling family’s previous henpecked Family Head—there was a problem.
"Father, did you kill mother?" Ling Yun, standing behind Yi Chen, was about to lose control of her emotions as she cried out hoarsely.
"Stop howling, that’s not your father."
"If I’m not mistaken, your dad probably died even before your mom."
"So things can’t be hidden from one’s bedfellow, so your mom had to die too."
"Daoist friend, am I guessing right?"
Hearing Yi Chen’s words, Ling Yun’s eyes widened as she felt a mixture of emotions.
Her joy stemd from the fact that her father hadn’t had a change of heart and was not the murderer of her mother, while her sorrow ca from the loss of both her parents…
Linglong clapped his hands and laughed: "Taoist Yi really is observant to the finest detail; I admire you."
"But even if I have been planning this for nearly three hundred years, and even if tis have slipped and it’s not perfect, I’m not afraid."
"The only blood kin I have in the world, I entrust to you now, ha ha."
’Linglong’s’ facial muscles twisted, revealing a strange, old face.
Seeing this man’s face, Ling Yun couldn’t help but cry out in shock: "Great-Grandfather!"
She had seen this man’s portrait during ancestral worship in the family temple; it was none other than her long-deceased great ancestor.
Yi Chen couldn’t help but feel a sense of solemn respect upon hearing this.
He had thought it was a foreign demon possessing the body with superb skills that he couldn’t detect, but it turned out to be a relative’s body possession instead.
Body possession by soone of the sa blood lineage makes sense.
All of a sudden, Yi Chen couldn’t help but think of another piece of information.
That was the mysterious accidental deaths of the direct descendants of the Ling family in Lingyang City over the past two hundred years.
Damn!
The great ancestor killing off his entire lineage?
It really is... the early morning sun and the late dusk’s intent.
At that mont, Yi Chen once again gained a deeper understanding of the diversity of the human species.
Zhu Buqun could throw himself into the pit for the sake of his son, suffering the consequences.
The old Ling family ancestor could also annihilate his lineage for so purpose, making his clan mbers suffer the most.
"Miss Ling, step back a little."
"True Yang Spirit! Open for !!!" Yi Chen’s killing intent surged, and he roared furiously.
A pale golden light shone, piercing through darkness, revealing itself to the world.
In the sky, a giant figure of a dragon and tiger with a nacing appearance appeared, the virtual shadow of a tall, tattooed Daoist burst through the house beams and into the night sky, like a deity descending to the mortal world.
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