Chapter 49: 049

“I smell the scent of a massive scandal.”

“The High Priest’s old flame is Chief Jie’s mom, the wife of the Old Chief?”

“I’m just saying, given the way the High Priest treats Chief Jie, isn’t it possible that Chief Jie is actually the son of the High Priest and that lady?”

“Chief Jie: Somebody please calculate the size of my psychological trauma.”

“Old Chief: Why the hell is there a green glow coming from the depths of the ocean?”

The bullet comments flew by in a frenzy. Viewers in the live stream room bounced around like prairie dogs in a melon patch, ears perked and desperate not to miss a single juicy detail of the family drama.

Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, the High Priest made no reply. His face abruptly turned ashen, his eyes threaded with blood, a flicker of anguish crossing them—mingled with shock, guilt, regret, and resentment.

His reaction drew varied looks from the Kaka Tacha clanspeople.

The younger generation, Chief Jie included, wore blank expressions, utterly baffled by Song Guiya’s words.

The elders shook their heads with quiet sighs.

They knew the truth: before Ji Shi had married the Old Chief, she and Wu Qi—who was not yet the Tribal High Priest—had been childhood sweethearts, growing up side by side.

Ji Shi was the granddaughter of the Former Tribal High Priest. From birth, she had stood out from the other children, her skin fair and dewy like the bud of a narcissus flower on the verge of blooming.

Wu Qi, meanwhile, was the tribe’s fiercest warrior. The moment he was old enough to join the adults on hunts, he presented Ji Shi with the first rabbit he ever caught.

From that day forward, whenever Wu Qi brought down game, he would select the finest piece and deliver it straight to her.

The elders often remarked that once they grew up, Wu Qi would surely take Ji Shi as his bride and fill their home with children.

No one could have foreseen what happened next. The Old Chief, young and vigorous at the time, had only just inherited the role of tribal leader when he marched to the Former Tribal High Priest’s thatched hut and claimed Ji Shi as his wife.

Wu Qi was out hunting to provide for the succession feast’s blessing when the news reached him. He raced back in a mad sprint, vomiting blood several times by the time he stumbled onto the Sacrificial Altar—exhausted from the frantic pace and distance—but he was still too late.

That night, he stood vigil outside the chief’s thatched hut, rooted in the night’s thick, inky darkness until dawn.

Everyone in the tribe expected him to snap. Yet from that evening onward, Wu Qi carried on as if nothing had changed—tending fields when it was time to farm, hunting when it was time to hunt. He was simply quieter than before.

Time wore on. Chief Jie was born, the Former Tribal High Priest passed away, and Wu Qi ascended to become the Tribal High Priest of the Kaka Tacha Tribe.

He poured out his heart and soul, burning away his very life force for the tribe’s prosperity and survival.

The entire tribe came to believe those innocent childhood affections were ancient history, that Wu Qi had moved on from Ji Shi.

Thus, when the Old Chief succumbed to illness and Ji Shi followed him into death, Wu Qi could support the Old Chief’s sole son, Chief Jie, without a trace of bitterness.

Not until this day—when Ji Shi, who should have died years ago, appeared before them scarred and broken—did they realize the truth.

Wu Qi had never let go.

The events of that year likely hid secrets of their own.

“Wu Qi, you never imagined I’d still be alive to stand before you, did you?” Worn down by the ravages of time and endless torment in pitch blackness, Ji Shi’s voice had lost its girlish lilt, replaced by a gravelly tone that was calm on the surface but seething underneath. “The dungeon was so dark… so dark I lost track of the years.”

“Three? Five? Or ten?”

Her words fell like embers swollen with venomous hatred, finally igniting.

They could blister skin in silence, then erupt into flames that consumed everything.

Clang!

The scepter slipped from his grasp and crashed to the ground.

The tide had turned. It was over.

Confronted by the accusations of the woman he had once loved, the High Priest remained impassive, his aged eyes lowered in silence.

Chief Jie, standing nearby, felt his eyes burn red. He approached the woman—familiar yet a stranger—and reached out with his clean hands to clasp her filthy, trembling ones.

“How… how can this be? I thought you…”

Ji Shi flinched at first, but Chief Jie held fast. The hatred in her gaze softened, giving way to a flicker of blood-deep longing.

“Jie,” she murmured, “you’ve grown so much… How old are you now?”

A single tear from Chief Jie splashed into the gap between their fingers. His voice broke as he replied, “Seventeen.”

“Seventeen…” Ji Shi let out a sudden laugh. “So seven years have passed.”

She had been imprisoned in the dungeon for seven years.

She spent her days without ever seeing sunlight, surviving only on leftover scraps and rotten leaves. She longed for death, but it eluded her, leaving her to live a life worse than a rat skulking in the gutters.

“What on earth happened? How did you end up like this?!”

“How did I end up like this? I want to know too.” Ji Shi let out a self-mocking laugh, turning her venomous gaze toward the sanctimonious High Priest.

“Wu Qi, why don’t you tell everyone what happened?”

“Why did you get the Old Chief drunk the night before Chief Jie took power and tell him how beautiful I was?”

“Why did you feign deep affection by vomiting blood on the Sacrificial Altar and gazing at the moon through the night?”

“How did you strangle my father to death to claim the position of High Priest, then poison the Old Chief with mandala juice to fake his illness? And afterward, using the pretext of ritual suicide, you locked me away in that dark dungeon for a full seven years!”

Ji Shi’s accusations hit like water dropped into boiling oil, exploding with a thunderous roar.

The entire Kaka Tacha Tribe fell into stunned silence.

What?!

It wasn’t the Old Chief stealing another man’s love—it was Wu Qi stirring things up from the shadows?!

What?!

The Former Tribal High Priest had been strangled alive?!

What?!

The Old Chief hadn’t died of illness—he’d been poisoned by Wu Qi?!

What?!

The Old Chief’s wife hadn’t committed ritual suicide—she’d been imprisoned in the dark dungeon for seven years!

After hearing the full story, the bound Elder Si Zhan still couldn’t believe it. He shouted, “Why?! Why would the High Priest do such things?!”

“What else could it be? In his eyes, nothing mattered more than that towering ambition for power. Childhood sweethearts, blood ties like a father’s love, sworn brothers who bared their hearts—all were mere pawns to him, disposable tools for his schemes.”

As long as the original High Priest lived, how could he rightfully inherit the position?

As long as the Old Chief lived, how could he hold the tribe hostage through his son and become the true wielder of power?

If Song Guiya and the others hadn’t been locked in the dungeon—if Ji Shi hadn’t sent out that distress signal, and if Song Guiya hadn’t devised the plan to rescue her and expose the plot—Chief Jie probably wouldn’t have escaped an early grave much longer.

At that point, with the tribe leaderless, anyone could have been thrust to the pinnacle of power.

It was obvious.

The facts lay bare before them, and the High Priest offered no defense. The tribespeople erupted in outrage, their hearts filling with resentment at having been deceived and fury over the murder of their beloved Old Chief at this man’s hands.

One by one, they surged forward to surround the High Priest.

A barrage of hysterical roars and near-breakdown emotions made Ji Shi, whose body was already frail from weakness, sway unsteadily. She was like a wilted flower on the verge of crumbling to dust.

Her body went limp, and she nearly collapsed to the ground.

Chief Jie didn’t even notice the stench clinging to her. He rushed forward to steady her, then fixed his bloodshot eyes on the High Priest with murderous intent.

“You beast in human form!”

“Kaka Tacha Warriors, seize this murdering villain! We’ll sacrifice him alive another day to appease the gods!”

“Uka kaka!”

The High Priest, who had stood tall and proud just moments before, was instantly reduced to a prisoner despised by all.

His neatly combed white hair and beard became a disheveled mess, stripping away his air of dignified authority and leaving only pathetic ruin.

Even as they bound him hand and foot and shoved him toward the dungeon, he kept twisting his head back for one last glance at Ji Shi.

No one could tell if it was hatred for the woman who had brought him low, or guilt and regret that left him too ashamed to face her.

With the dust settled, the long-buried truth laid bare, and the culprit facing his due punishment, the scepter in the High Priest’s hands would soon return to Chief Jie. He would become the true ruler of the Kaka Tacha Tribe.

While Chief Jie handled the aftermath, Song Guiya sat back down beside Xi Tongyue. The two women exchanged a silent look, their faces showing no trace of triumphant joy—only a heavy weight in their hearts.

Li Xingruo had already buried her face in Qin Yi’s embrace, sobbing her eyes out. Chi Huo stood quietly to the side, cradling the Husband Rooster.

Only Du Difeng, ever carefree, let out a sigh of relief. Starved for two days, he was utterly spent. He mustered his courage, squatted down in front of Xi Tongyue, pointed at the food before them, and flashed a fawning grin. “Teacher Xi, I’m starving to death here. Can I borrow a bit to fill my stomach first?”

Xi Tongyue had no intention of touching the food anyway, so letting Du Difeng have some to tide him over was no big deal.

But she calmly extended two slender fingers, pulled the large leaf holding the food back toward herself, then fixed her dark, bottomless eyes on him and said coolly, “No.”

Du Difeng: ???

Du Difeng, who had been certain Teacher Xi wouldn’t refuse him, froze mid-reach, his hand hovering awkwardly in the air.

He retreated to Chi Huo’s side with a thoroughly aggrieved look on his face, hoping Chi Huo would step up and fetch him something to eat.

But Chi Huo kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, nose to the grindstone, completely ignoring the winks and meaningful glances Du Difeng was throwing his way.

Du Difeng’s face twisted into a grotesque mask of frustration, but since Chi Huo wasn’t paying him the slightest attention, the faint ache returned to his recently healed sausage lips.

He had no idea why Xi Tongyue was deliberately withholding food from him, but the lingering trauma from the thrashing she’d given him a few years back kept his mouth firmly shut. He didn’t dare complain, much less ask.

His stomach, however, was staging a full-scale revolt. Du Difeng bowed his head, ready to sweet-talk it into holding out just a little longer.

A quick glance revealed a clay jar of milky-white liquid sitting by Song Guiya’s feet—probably some kind of porridge.

Seizing the moment while the others were distracted with conversation, he sidled up behind her and snatched the jar with the speed of lightning, gone before anyone could blink.

A sniff at the rim revealed the truth: rice wine.

Better than nothing.

It was low-proof, brewed from grains, and perfect for quenching his thirst.

Decision made, Du Difeng hoisted the jar and chugged away.

Less than a minute later, half the jar was gone. With something solid in his belly at last, Du Difeng finally felt a measure of relief.

But the instant he lowered the jar, he found five pairs of eyes fixed on him, their expressions defying description.

Du Difeng: “I just took a sip to tide me over. What’s the big deal?”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a thunderous belch erupted from his throat.

Chi Huo, his face a mask of complicated emotions, asked, “Did it taste good?”

Du Difeng: “Pretty good. Nice and sweet.”

“As long as it was good.” Chi Huo clapped him on the shoulder, ultimately deciding against revealing the truth.

Du Difeng: ?

That reaction only fueled Du Difeng’s curiosity. He pressed on relentlessly. “What’s going on? Out with it—what’s that look for?”

With Du Difeng showing every sign of hounding him until he cracked, Chi Huo had no choice but to relent. “What you just drank is a specialty of primitive tribes: chewed wine.”

Du Difeng: “What do you mean?”

Chi Huo: “Exactly what I said.”

Du Difeng: ???

Everyone: ……