Chapter 10: Soul-Shattering Needle Part 1

Those who lived by the blade naturally didn’t dare touch Hu Cheng’s corpse, fearing they would be tainted by his misfortune.

The inn’s staff didn’t dare to either; they were ordinary folk who knew no martial arts. Why would they wade into such murky waters?

The Taoist priest, however, was a man of bold character. He went so far as to strip the clothes from Hu Cheng’s body, discovering a total of fifteen nails driven into the flesh. Without exception, every single one had been hammered in after death.

Then, the priest found a faint, bluish needle mark on the back of Hu Cheng’s skull. He gasped, his voice trembling as he called out, “Is there anyone here who knows the trade? Come and see what this is!”

The priest was not a man of the martial world, but the inn was packed with wanderers. Someone was bound to see the anomaly.

A voice suddenly rang out from the crowd. “If I remember correctly, those nails are a dark art of the Sun Chasing Cult. They used this exact method of nailing to torment their victims. As for that poison… it looks a bit like Spirit-Awakening Powder!”

The moment the name “Sun Chasing Cult” was uttered, the room broke into a cold sweat. The nails and the poison on Hu Cheng’s body indeed matched the sinister techniques the cult was once known for.

“The Sun Chasing Cult did this?” someone asked, eyes darting around the room. “Are there remnants of that cult among us?”

The Sun Chasing Cult had been annihilated years ago by Feng Rong. However, the battlefield had been chaotic; it was highly likely that many cultists had managed to escape with their lives.

“But if the Sun Chasing Cult is still clinging to life in this world, why kill Hu Cheng?” Sang Chencao asked leisurely. “Shouldn’t the person they want to kill most be Feng Rong?”

Though Hu Cheng was famous and possessed a boorish, arrogant temperament, he was a lone wolf. He hadn’t even participated in the annihilation of the cult back then.

Feng Yun’ai’s hand, resting on the table, tightened slightly.

Sang Chencao answered her own question. “Could it be… they’re killing the chicken to warn the monkeys?”

If the Sun Chasing Cult was truly returning, it would be an omen of a great catastrophe for the Central Plains.

The crowd’s expressions shifted drastically. They became increasingly suspicious of the people sitting next to them; some didn’t even dare to meet their neighbors’ eyes.

At that moment, one of the escort agency’s guards spoke up with absolute certainty. “Before we arrived at the inn, there were definitely no nails in his body!”

Sang Chencao’s eyes flickered. She took in the entire room with a slow, sweeping gaze before saying tonelessly, “All of you are experts in martial arts. If any of you wanted to hide your presence to kill someone, I imagine it would be quite easy.”

As expected, she didn’t immediately point out Lin Yaoyao’s excursion the night before. She simply wanted to sow seeds of mutual suspicion among everyone.

But what benefit did she gain from this?

Feng Yun’ai’s expression grew cold. She felt more and more that this woman was highly suspicious, but she didn’t want to throw Lin Yaoyao into the fire just yet, so she remained silent.

Someone shouted, “It definitely wasn’t me! I have no grudge against Hu Cheng!”

“It wasn’t me either. All my life, I’ve loathed such underhanded, treacherous acts.”

“I have an irreconcilable blood feud with the Sun Chasing Cult! There’s no way it could be me!”

The martial artists in the inn began to offer their opinions, each one trying to clear their own name.

“Why don’t we start with the earliest guest in the ledger?” Sang Chencao suggested, her voice laced with hidden anticipation. “Everyone can tell us where they’ve gone and what they’ve done these past few days.”

She sounded like someone trying to stir up trouble. Normally, no one would be so detached as to watch the drama unfold while the stakes were so high.

Yet, that was precisely the issue. To catch Hu Cheng’s killer, they needed to know the guests’ movements.

Feng Yun’ai immediately caught the deeper meaning behind the woman’s words. To kill Hu Cheng, one would have to lie in wait for a long time. The killer must have gone out for several days in a row; otherwise, they never would have caught the elusive, ghost-like Hu Cheng.

“I’ll have to trouble the innkeeper,” Sang Chencao said, glancing toward Lin Yaoyao.

Lin Yaoyao brought the ledger over. She looked up toward the top of the courtyard, staring at the azure sky. “But if someone has high enough martial arts, couldn’t they just leap directly into this courtyard? Whether they stayed at the inn or not doesn’t seem to matter much.”

“It matters a great deal,” Sang Chencao said meaningfully. “Everyone here possesses martial skills. Unless the killer knew every guest like the back of their hand and was certain their own martial arts surpassed everyone else’s, they would never dare to enter or leave so boldly.”

Lin Yaoyao lowered her eyes and quickly flipped through the ledger, having no choice but to read out the names of the current guests one by one.

The people whose names were called, no matter how reluctant, could only answer seriously. Otherwise, even a slight slip-up would leave them covered in suspicion.