Chapter 123: Investigation of the possibilities!

The night after the memorial was strangely quiet. The Red Talon Hall, once overflowing with laughter, clashing swords, and beast roars, now felt hollow. The cold mountain breeze passed through the crimson maple trees, carrying only the faint ring of the bells in the central courtyard.

Lin Yuan returned to his quarters without speaking a word to anyone. He closed the wooden door.

He stood there still in the darkness for a long moment, his fists clenched tight. That name echoed through his mind like a curse. ’Noir.’

"Come out, turtle," Lin Yuan muttered, extending his hand which has the turtle ring.

A faint green glow lit up the dark room. The turtle slowly crawled out from Lin Yuan’s ring, landing onto the wooden table with its casual sluggish, sleepy expression.

It let out a wide yawn.

"Why are you looking like someone just stole your cultivation?" The turtle beast murmured, nodding its head.

Instead, he pulled up a wooden stool and sat opposite to the turtle beast. For the first time since opening his eyes in this world... He decided to speak the truth.

"The real Lin Yuan is dead," Lin Yuan boasted, his expression sharp.

"...What?" The turtle blinked its tiny eyes once.

"The Lin Yuan everyone knows... died long ago on that mountain," Lin Yuan lowered his head, staring at his palms. The eerie silence settled over the room. "I am not him."

The temperature in the small quarters suddenly felt much colder.

"My real name isn’t Lin Yuan," Lin Yuan slowly raised his eyes, looking straight into the Turtle’s gaze. He took a calm, steady breath. "My name is Noir."

The turtle remained still on the table.

"I came from another world." Lin Yuan continued before the turtle could interrupt. "I wasn’t born in Green Hollow City, or in this cultivation world. "I died... and woke up inside Lin Yuan’s dying body."

"I inherited Lin Yuan’s memories," His voice was quiet, calm, and almost stripped of emotion. "His family, life, and face. But I still have Noir’s consciousness."

The turtle stared at him in silence. Then, the small beast let out a long, dramatic sigh. "What another weird thing from a weird boy."

"That’s your only reaction?" Lin Yuan stared blankly across the table.

"What else should I do?" The turtle smeared its nose across the table lazily. "Scream? Faint? Call the heavens to strike you down?"

"I just told you I’m a dead soul from another world," Lin Yuan rubbed his forehead with a calm scoff.

The turtle nodded with a serious expression. "And I just told you you’re weird."

A few seconds of silence passed between them. Then, the playful expression slowly melted away from the turtle’s face. Its small eyes became unexpectedly profound.

"So... That demonic cultivator looked at you and called you Noir," the turtle beast muttered, walking slightly toward him.

"Yeah.." Lin Yuan groaned, nodding firmly, his voice turning cold. "How the fuck is that even possible?"

The turtle slowly began pacing in small circles across the wooden table. "There are only a few possibilities."

Lin Yuan leaned forward, his senses sharp.

"The first possibility," the turtle said, "is simple coincidence. A freak similarity in pronunciation or a demon language."

"No," Lin Yuan instantly shook his head. "He locked his eyes onto me, and started calling me Lin Yuan, stopped himself, and corrected it by calling me Noir."

The Turtle stopped mid-stride and nodded. "Then pure coincidence is removed from the possibilities."

The Turtle tapped its claw against the wood.

"The second possibility is that he possessed an advanced soul-searching technique."

"A demonic technique?" Lin Yuan asked, frowning slightly.

"Perhaps," the turtle continued its explanation. "Certain forbidden demonic methods allow a high-tier cultivator to dive into the opponent’s sea of consciousness and see the few fragments of memory."

"If he read my soul, he only spoke that name. He didn’t mention my old life, my magic, or anything else from before," Lin Yuan understood the words, but his expression remained frantic.

"Which means," Lin Yuan continued after a brief pause, "even if it was a demonic art, he seemed familiar with it. Not surprised by it."

The turtle nodded again. "Correct!"

"The third possibility is that he has ties to someone else who crossed over between worlds," The turtle turned to face him, its raspy voice slowly turned into a whisper.

Lin Yuan’s heart gave a sudden thud. "Another transmigrator?"

"It is not impossible," the turtle murmured. "Someone who crossed the world before you, or maybe someone who knew the name Noir."

Lin Yuan immediately pushed the thought aside.

"There was nobody. In my previous life, I was involved with my experiment secretly. When my heart gave out, I died alone in an abandoned cellar. Nobody accompanied me."

The room fell into silence once more. The turtle slowly lifted its head, its gaze locking onto Lin Yuan with an intensity it had never shown before. Its voice turned solemn. "What if..."

Lin Yuan’s eyes narrowed. "What?"

"What if you didn’t randomly come here at all?" The turtle grunted, its eyes gleaming with a faint green light. "What if... they are the ones who summoned you?"

Lin Yuan’s hands quivered in pain.

"Maybe with a forbidden ritual which can reach across the worlds," the turtle boasted, its voice cracking in shock while explaining to Lin Yuan.

Lin Yuan’s mind rapidly stormed with fragmented, suppressed memories. A dark cellar under a crimson moon. A star encircled by forbidden pentagrams, the black candles flickering, and the dried beast blood on the stone.

And at last his dying breath groaned in his chest while his soul-binding ritual failed again. His fingers began to tremble against his knees.

"The forbidden ritual..." he whispered, the realization striking him. "The moment I died... I was performing a forbidden soul-binding ritual."

The turtle gave a slow, grave nod. "If that ritual triggered the breach of the boundary between worlds, it may have acted as an anchor, allowing another ritual on this side to drag your soul into Lin Yuan’s dead vessel."

"And that demonic cultivator..." Lin Yuan’s chest heaved, his breathing turning difficult as the turtle beast concluded its explanation, "belonging to the faction that performed the other part of my summoning ritual."

"No," Lin Yuan stood up abruptly, the wooden stool fell loudly against the floor. "I need proof!"

He snatched his outer dark robe from the bed.

"The demonic cultivator’s corpse," Lin Yuan said to himself. "If his body is still in the morgue chambers, I can inspect his body for any clues."

"Don’t do anything reckless inside the sect," the turtle warned him.

Lin Yuan had already walked out of the door. The midnight lingered vehemently over Red Talon Hall.

The medical disciples had already gone to their quarters, leaving only a few dim spirit lanterns flickering along the veranda of the medical pavilion.

Lin Yuan moved quietly onto the tiled floor.

Using the lingering agility of the white tiger, his legs touched the roof tiles without producing a whisper of sound. He dropped down behind the rear courtyard of the pavilion. And there were no guards.

He reached out, his fingers smearing along the wooden latch of a low window before easing it open.

The suffocating smell of bitter medicinal fluids, alcohol, and dried gore brushed over his face.

Lin Yuan slid through the window, landing silently on the wooden floorboards. The main hall was filled with rows of cots, long white linen sheets draped over the fallen disciples awaiting burial rites tomorrow morning.

"I’m sorry," Lin Yuan paused, lowering his head for a quiet breath.

He stepped past the rows, moving into the isolated western corridor where high-priority corpses were stored for elder investigation.

The demonic cultivator had been killed by the sect master, and his scorched remains had been brought here under heavy guard.

Lin Yuan reached the reinforced iron door at the end of the hallway. He pushed the door inward, and the room was empty.

Lin Yuan froze in his path. A stone examination slab sat in the center of the room, thick iron suppression chains lay coiled across the surface, and the dried, blackened blood stained the slab and the floor.

But the body was gone.

"What...?" Lin Yuan groaned under his breath.

He darted his eyes across the chamber, checking the corners, the supply chests, and the ceiling rafters.

But there is nothing. The iron chains were not snapped, the spiritual talismans on the wall had not been destroyed. There was not a trace of an elder’s inspection or a struggle.

The corpse had simply vanished into thin air. A fearful dread crawled slowly down Lin Yuan’s spine.

The turtle’s warning lingered in his head like an echo. ’They are the ones who summoned you.’

Lin Yuan took two slow, cautious steps backward toward the exit. "Impossible..."

Someone within the sect had secretly taken the body away, or far worse, the corpse had stood up and walked out on its own.

Lin Yuan slipped back through the side window, landing on the ground of the rear courtyard. His mind was racing, pieces of a terrifying puzzle refusing to fit together.

The second his legs touched the earth, a hand dropped onto his right shoulder. Lin Yuan’s body quivered in fear.

The white tiger’s lethal beast essence surged toward his fingertips, an inch away to blow off the intruder’s face.

"Got you," Chen Ming’s familiar, mocking voice broke the silence.

Lin Yuan’s strike stopped inches from release. He forced his aura back down into his aperture. He turned his head slowly.

Chen Ming was standing there with his arms folded across his chest, a cocky grin lingering across his bruised face.

Beside him stood Lian Nichang, chewing a warm steamed bun while holding another wrapped in paper.

Both of them stared at Lin Yuan with suspicious eyes. Chen Ming raised an eyebrow, tilting his head. "Where the hell have you been running off all day?"

"W-we checked the outer training grounds," Lian Nichang muttered, taking a slow bite of his bun and nodded. "We checked the mission hall and the dining hall twice. Even Bai Ning stopped us near the pavilion asking if anyone had seen you since the memorial."

Chen Ming leaned forward, his eyes flicking from Lin Yuan’s dark clothes to the open window of the medical pavilion right behind him. His gaze returned to Lin Yuan’s face.

"...Mind telling us why you’re sneaking around the dead bodies in the medical hall in the middle of the night?"

Lin Yuan parted his lips to speak, but he couldn’t tell them, because they will think he was just fucking crazy. The silence lingered on for three suffocating seconds.

Chen Ming’s playful smirk slowly began to wither away. Lian Nichang scratched his chin slightly. "Lin Yuan?"

The chilly night wind lingered through the alley between the buildings, rustling their robes.

Lin Yuan slowly lowered his eyes, his hands tucked into his sleeves, offering no explanation.