Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1465 - Truth Revealed

Chapter 1465 – Truth Revealed

Everyone wore a different expression as hundreds of gazes fixed on the black box.

“Liu Wuxie, you dare deceive us!” Elder Yu rose to his feet and berated Liu Wuxie.

Inside the box, there was no Bodhi Fruit at all, only a black sphere that merely resembled one in shape. The sphere was no treasure, just a lump of charred wood coated with a thin layer of black residue.

Many elders’ faces darkened with fury at Liu Wuxie for daring to trick them all.

“That’s right. I did deceive everyone, and the Bodhi Fruit can’t do anything to the Serpent Insect,” Liu Wuxie admitted openly, his confession dropping into the hall like a stone into a still lake and stirring waves of outrage.

It turned out that Liu Wuxie had fabricated everything about the Bodhi Fruit being the Serpent Insect’s nemesis.

“You are taking this too far! You fooled so many elders like us!” Many people glared at Liu Wuxie in anger, and even Ding Yuan, who had never shown hostility toward him, couldn’t help looking furious.

“Everyone, calm down for a moment. I did deceive everyone, but that’s to find out who the traitors are,” Liu Wuxie said, lifting his hand in a calming gesture. His words steadied the hall somewhat, but that didn’t mean they had forgiven him.

“Liu Wuxie, don’t blame us for what happens if you don’t give us a proper explanation today. Who’s the traitor?” Ding Yuan asked. Even Shi An glared at Liu Wuxie in fury, demanding an answer as well.

Meanwhile, the palace lord’s smile only deepened, and he almost wished he could drag Liu Wuxie back as his own disciple.

“If you want to know who the traitors are, you just have to raise your right hand,” Liu Wuxie said as he closed the black box with a soft click.

Everyone stared, bewildered, then instinctively looked down at their right palms.

“What’s going on? Why is there black residue on my palm?” The elders who had touched the black sphere cried out. The dark residue clung stubbornly to their skin, impossible to wipe away.

However, several elders’ faces changed as they instinctively drew their right hands back, trying to hide them.

“Palace Lord, you can take it from here. Anyone who doesn’t have any black residue on their palm is a traitor,” Liu Wuxie said as he turned and walked back to his seat, his role finished.

Right then, Elder Xue suddenly shook off his restraints.

“That was stifling. It wasn’t easy to act out this little play with you, Liu Wuxie,” Elder Xue said, and the sudden reversal left everyone stunned. Just earlier, hadn’t Elder Xue been openly hostile toward Liu Wuxie? How had his attitude changed so suddenly?

“Elder Xue, you…” Several elders stared blankly at him, their minds struggling to catch up.

“You’ll know soon enough,” Elder Xue replied with a mysterious smile and retreated to stand at the side.

At that moment, the palace lord stepped forward toward the gathered elders.

“Those who have black residue on their palms move to the left, and those without can stay on the right,” the palace lord ordered. A powerful restriction dropped from the ceiling at once, splitting the main hall into two.

The main hall naturally contained countless spiritual arrays that only the palace lord could activate. Now, he left a single doorway open, and Elder Xue stood guard beside it.

“I have black residue on my hand,” Ding Yuan said as he stepped out. After the palace lord checked his hand, he moved to stand on the left.

One after another, over a hundred elders crossed to the left side.

The main gate remained tightly shut to prevent anyone from escaping, while layers of restrictions sealed the interior and locked the space into a massive spiritual array.

Right then, a figure suddenly lunged toward the palace lord, striking out with his palm. Lightning rumbled around the blow, which contained the full might of an expert at the pinnacle of the Heaven Gaze Realm.

The palace lord snorted coldly. He had long since begun accumulating power in case someone attacked. With a light sweep of his hand, a strange bell manifested above and dropped over Elder Yu, sealing him inside.

“An immortal artifact!” Liu Wuxie narrowed his eyes, a flash of green envy flickering through them at the sight of the immortal artifact. If he could obtain such a treasure, he could use it to push his cultivation to the Heaven Gaze Realm.

Unfortunately, immortal artifacts were the core treasures of every sect, and no one would willingly let him refine one.

The sudden strike left everyone inside the hall shocked, and no one could understand why Elder Yu had suddenly launched an attack on the sect master.

Inside the bell, Elder Yu thrashed violently, trying to break free from the immortal artifact’s confinement.

“I advise you to give up and surrender quietly,” the palace lord said, his face terrifyingly grim as murderous intent swept through the hall and pressed down on everyone.

The elders with black markings on their palms quickly moved to the left as ordered. By now, even those who were a little slow had fully understood the situation.

In the blink of an eye, only eight elders remained on the right. Every one of them possessed formidable cultivation, and even the weakest stood at the first-level Heaven Gaze Realm.

“I didn’t expect the Nine Dragon Palace to have so many traitors,” the palace lord said, his voice bleak as he stared at the group of eight.

Among them, the oldest had lived for more than seven thousand years. They were undeniably core figures of the Nine Dragon Palace.

“Yan Guichou, stop pretending. Since you’ve exposed us, you can make your move now,” one of the eight elders said. If all eight joined forces, they could form a fearsome power, strong enough to contend even against a Quasi-Immortal.

The elders on the left all turned their eyes to Elder Xue, who clearly understood more than anyone else.

“Elder Xue, what’s going on?” the elders asked as they gathered around him.

“They’re the cause of our withering spiritual herbs. We swiftly narrowed down the suspect to Chang Wu, and someone could’ve assassinated him before he revealed the mastermind. This is why we came up with this plan,” Xue Qiu explained.

If Chang Wu had publicly named the mastermind, the other party could have denied it, as there would be no solid evidence. There was also the risk that some traitors would’ve slipped through the net. The only proper solution was to force them to expose themselves and capture them in one stroke.

Many elders rolled their eyes. “So, you’re saying that your conflict with Liu Wuxie was just an act?” They hadn’t expected so many layers of scheming, and Liu Wuxie had practically dug a pit for the traitors to leap into. Still, the trick also won him their reluctant admiration.

“How else could we have diverted everyone’s attention if we hadn’t done that? By making everyone think that I’m the traitor, it made the real traitors lower their guard,” Elder Xue chuckled. The palace lord had spoken with him after entering the main hall to arrange the act he would be putting on with Liu Wuxie.

“I understand now. Liu Wuxie bluffed that the Bodhi Fruit is the nemesis of the Serpent Insect and put a black sphere in the box instead. Anyone with a guilty conscience naturally wouldn’t dare to touch it,” the surrounding elders said, wearing looks of dawning realization as they finally understood Liu Wuxie’s painstaking strategy.

He had gone through all that trouble to uproot the Nine Dragon Palace’s traitors, enduring their mockery in the process.

“That’s right. I was the first to touch the black sphere and screamed, making everyone believe that touching the Bodhi Fruit would bring unimaginable pain,” Elder Xue continued. He turned toward Liu Wuxie, his eyes filled with evident admiration.

As for the eight elders who remained on the right, including Elder Yu trapped beneath the bell, none of them had truly touched the black sphere when they reached into the box. Their guilty conscience had made them avoid contact, so no black residue had stained their hands.

With a series of sharp whooshes, the elders on the left swiftly formed a ring around the eight traitors.

“Elder Zhang, Elder Shui, the Nine Dragon Palace hasn’t treated you poorly. So why have you betrayed the sect?” Elder Xue asked, his chest tight with rising indignation as he forced himself to hold back his killing intent.

“Hahaha! We’ve hidden ourselves for so many years only to be fooled by a brat,” laughed the old man called Elder Shui. They had prepared countless countermeasures, and even if Chang Wu had named them before everyone, there was nothing the palace lord could have done as long as they refused to admit it.

Yet Liu Wuxie had used such a simple trick to force them into exposing themselves.

Through Ghost Eye, Liu Wuxie saw that among the eight elders, only four carried Serpent Insects in their soul seas, while the other four did not. That meant the four without Serpent Insects were the true traitors who had willingly betrayed the Nine Dragon Palace.

The remaining four were victims, just like Chang Wu, forced into treachery against their will.

“Kill our way out!” Elder Zhang roared, launching the first strike as he dashed toward the gate. They would be safe as long as they escaped the main hall, and the power unleashed by four Heaven Gaze Realm experts at once made the entire hall tremble.

If this battle had taken place outside, no one would have been able to contain them. But just as they reached the gate, a tyrannical force slammed down on them as space rippled and an expert at the Quasi-Immortal Realm stepped out from the void.

“It’s the old palace lord!” The previous palace lord had emerged from seclusion. He was the master of the current palace lord, Yan Guichou, and he already stood at the edge of the Immortal Realm.

The moment he strode into the main hall, his face turned terrifyingly grim as murderous intent rolled off him. With two Quasi-Immortals striking together, their combined power could shake the very heavens, and all eight elders felt an immense pressure bearing down on them.

“Still not going to surrender?” Yan Guichou asked, hoping they might submit, which would at least give them a chance to live. At the same time, the spiritual arrays in the main hall roared to life, unleashing a potent suppression that intensified the pressure on the eight elders.

“Stop putting on an act. We won’t surrender even in death,” Elder Zhang shouted as he made a second attempt to break out, charging toward the gate with even greater force.

“You’re courting death,” the old palace lord said as he struck. A massive palm descended from above, shattering space along its path. The hall remained intact only because countless spiritual arrays reinforced it, preventing it from collapsing.

Elder Zhang was blasted backward, blood spraying from his mouth mid-air, despite his pinnacle Heaven Gaze Realm cultivation. The other elders also attacked, and an unprecedented battle erupted inside the hall.

Yan Guichou summoned the bell back to his hand with a wave, and Elder Yu lay unconscious on the floor, knocked out by the immortal artifact.

Liu Wuxie stood quietly to the side and watched. With his current strength, there was no way for him to intervene in a clash of this level.

When the immortal artifact struck again, it unleashed a terrifying force that enveloped all eight elders at once. In front of an immortal artifact, even Heaven Gaze Realm experts could not resist.

They gradually shrank as the bell’s suppression pressed them down against the floor.

With a casual wave of his hand, Yan Guichou abolished the nine elders’ cultivation, and they slumped powerlessly to the ground. Without the immortal artifact, subduing them would not have been so easy.

As the restrictions lifted, the main hall slowly returned to its previous appearance, but the spatial rift in the air stubbornly refused to close, as if silently proclaiming the ferocity of the battle they had just fought.

“Speak. Who exactly are you people, and why have you infiltrated my Nine Dragon Palace?” Yan Guichou said, fixing his gaze on Elder Yu’s face.

When Elder Yu finally woke, a sharp pain tore through his lower abdomen, and he quickly realized he had lost all his cultivation. His expression twisted into vicious hatred at once.

“I can’t accept this! Our plan was already on the verge of success, and we ended up losing to Liu Wuxie!” Elder Yu said, ignoring Yan Guichou as he turned to look at Liu Wuxie instead. If it wasn’t for the latter, how would he have been exposed?