Seeing Xu Zhentai fall silent, his aura suddenly soaring to the heavens, Xu Ke couldn't pretend he wasn't panicking.
It looked exactly as if the side effects of the Sorrowful Heart Art were kicking in!
If Xu Zhentai had come over to kill Ye Yunfeng and then succumbed to a qi deviation, killing himself in the process, Xu Ke could have accepted it.
But for him to succumb to a qi deviation now, after only slapping Ouyang Ping twice, and then turn around and slap *him* into a grave... That was something Xu Ke simply couldn't accept!
As Xu Ke cried out in alarm, Xu Zhentai slapped him and growled, "Shut up!"
"I didn't make a real move just now, so there's no way I could succumb to a qi deviation. Besides, if I had, would I have told you to send the others away? I would've just slaughtered everyone!"
"And here you were, so worried!" he added. "Do you think I'm a lunatic?"
The slap actually calmed Xu Ke down considerably, but hearing Xu Zhentai's words, he couldn't help but mutter under his breath, "Well, aren't you?"
Xu Zhentai's voice sharpened. "What did you say?"
Xu Ke chuckled and waved his hands. "Nothing, nothing. So, Second Uncle, why did you ask me to stay? Do you have some deep, dark secret to tell me?"
Hearing this, Xu Zhentai didn't reply immediately. Instead, he bent down and scooped up a handful of grassy soil. He stood up and held his open hand out to Xu Ke.
"What is it?" Xu Ke asked, startled. He studied the handful of earth but found nothing out of the ordinary.
"Tell me what you think," Xu Zhentai said.
Xu Ke pondered for a moment before saying, "The grass is nice, the soil is nice... fertile and natural. Looks like Ye Yunfeng hired a gardener..."
"I didn't ask about that," Xu Zhentai interrupted, exasperated. "I want you to feel it. How is this soil different from normal soil?"
"AHEM. Just kidding." This time, Xu Ke got serious. He took the soil and held it for a moment before making his judgment. "There's Demonic Qi in it!"
Ye Yunfeng had said that this mountain had one day mysteriously become suffused with Demonic Qi, which was why he had moved here to study it. Therefore, Xu Ke wasn't surprised to find it in the soil.
Xu Zhentai, however, fell silent for a moment before asking, "Ye Yunfeng calls this power Demonic Qi, correct?"
"Yes," Xu Ke nodded.
Xu Zhentai fell silent again. After a moment, he said, "Tell me everything you know about this Demonic Qi."
Seeing Xu Zhentai's strange demeanor, Xu Ke's heart began to pound. He immediately recounted everything Ye Yunfeng had just told them, including how Ye Yunfeng and Yin Ping had begun researching the Demonic Qi, their conclusions on how to use it, the drugs Ye Liang and the others had taken, and so on.
After listening to it all, Xu Zhentai didn't ask any more questions. Instead, he changed the subject. "So, this Ye Yunfeng killed his own brothers, parents, and son? And for him, this is just business as usual?"
"Pretty much," Xu Ke said. "I certainly didn't see any sign of remorse."
Hearing Xu Ke's reply, Xu Zhentai let out a long breath and then couldn't help but start laughing. "HAHAHA..." His laughter was thick with derision.
"This Demonic Qi... why is it so damn similar to the Sorrowful Heart Art!"
At these words, Xu Ke's head shot up. He stared at Xu Zhentai in disbelief. "Second Uncle, what do you mean?"
"I'm saying the power I've gained from cultivating the Sorrowful Heart Art *is* Demonic Qi." Xu Zhentai stopped laughing. He stared at his fist, his face turning as black as ink. "If I'm not mistaken, I was set up!"
"But I don't feel any Demonic Qi from your power!" Xu Ke exclaimed in shock. If Xu Zhentai were suffused with Demonic Qi, he was certain he would have sensed it.
"Nonsense. Once I suppress it, you can't feel the Demonic Qi at all! Forget Demonic Qi, can you even sense my True Qi right now?"
"No." Xu Ke shook his head, but then reconsidered. "But you just intimidated everyone with your aura. Isn't that a form of your True Qi as well?"
In the world of Martial Artists, an aura wasn't some inexplicable, mystical thing; it was a form of externally projected qi, similar to Vitality Essence Release.
"That's because the Sorrowful Heart Art allows me to borrow power from this mountain," Xu Zhentai said in a low voice.
Xu Ke's pupils shrank.
Xu Zhentai continued, "Do you remember when I told you I nearly succumbed to a qi deviation when I glimpsed the path to the peak?"
Xu Ke nodded.
"The power inside my body back then was identical to this Demonic Qi," Xu Zhentai said. "And it was because that Demonic Qi was running rampant that I had the unrelenting, repetitive urge to kill people, even after injuring myself over and over."
"Heh. You just told me that Ye Yunfeng can absorb the flesh and blood of Martial Artists to obtain Demonic Qi... So now I understand. That line in the Sorrowful Heart Art about how 'killing allows the cultivator to progress faster and experience greater pleasure'..."
"It's all bullshit!"
"This cultivation technique is clearly absorbing the dissipated True Qi of dead Martial Artists, secretly strengthening it inside my body."
"It eventually grew to a point that even I didn't notice!"
So that's how it is, Xu Ke muttered in shock. He had never imagined that the malevolence of the Sorrowful Heart Art wasn't due to the technique itself being evil. It was because the very power Xu Zhentai cultivated was the inherently evil Demonic Qi!
He also understood why Xu Zhentai was so furious. From the moment he'd first picked up the Sorrowful Heart Art, he had been caught in a scheme!
"Someone set this trap for me. They must have slipped up somewhere at the beginning."
"I need to think carefully... what happened before and after I obtained the Sorrowful Heart Art..."
"After I got the technique, I went back to Jiang City, met Yin Li, then went to Tianhai..."
As Xu Zhentai muttered to himself, his expression suddenly changed. He whipped his head around to look at Xu Ke. "Wait, what did you say was the name of that person with Ye Yunfeng?"
Hearing this, Xu Ke's expression changed as well. "Yin Ping!"
He instantly realized what Xu Zhentai was getting at.
"Which 'Yin'?" Xu Zhentai pressed.
"I... I don't know..." Xu Ke thought for a moment and realized that Ye Yunfeng had never specified which character was used for the 'Yin' in Yin Ping's name.
Xu Zhentai ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. "There's no way something could be this coincidental. Those two have to be connected."
After a moment of thought, Xu Zhentai couldn't restrain himself any longer. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Only after finishing it did he manage to suppress his agitation. "Where is this Yin Ping now?"
"He ran away!"
"Can we find him?"
Xu Ke shook his head. "No, but we've sent people to investigate."
Before, Xu Ke had considered Yin Ping an insignificant member of the Ye Family and hadn't paid him much mind. Now, it seemed this whole business with the Demonic Qi was deeply bizarre, and Yin Ping was likely a key figure. If a person like that wanted to disappear, he would be harder to find than a ghost.
