“Quiet down and stop moving. Going up there is just going to cause trouble for no reason. It's pointless.”
Originally, Lin Wenyu had only intended to save a life. But once she did and got a closer look, she realized too late exactly what kind of creature she had just held back.
But what could she do now?
She had already saved her anyway; she couldn't very well just let her go on the spot, could she?
Besides, she—and the rest of them, for that matter—didn't have much longer to live anyway.
While all sorts of bizarre thoughts were racing through Lin Wenyu's head, Madame Xu was still struggling.
Her tears cascaded down in a mix of terror and panic, and her voice sounded raspy, as if some crow-like creature had possessed her throat.
“Let me go! My son is up there! I am his mother, and I should be the one suffering this for him! O heavenly thunder, if you must strike, do not strike him! Strike me dead instead!”
What a wonderfully self-sacrificing mother.
The only problem was her questionable intelligence.
Even at a time like this, she still regarded the Cult Leader as a great benefactor who was helping resurrect her son.
As for the heavenly thunder, in her mind, it was a trial her son had to endure to be reborn.
Thus, in her eyes, the Cult Leader had suddenly transformed into a saintly figure who was braving the lightning tribulation on behalf of her son.
On the high platform, the situation was changing in the blink of an eye.
The thunderbolt that should have struck Bai Ci directly suddenly veered off course the moment it was about to touch the tips of her hair.
The Cult Leader had assumed that by pulling Bai Ci over to share the brunt of the heavenly thunder, he would be safe.
Little did he know, he had subconsciously overlooked a very important fact.
For instance, where did the lightning come from? And what had summoned it?
The lightning in the sky seemed to have eyes, capable of precisely distinguishing the victim from the culprit.
So here was the question: since it could lock onto a specific target, why couldn't it just bend mid-air as it fell, striking only the intended individual?
The answer, of course, was that it absolutely could.
A sharp, blinding arc of electricity carved a jagged path through the air, perfectly dodging Bai Ci—who had been pulled forward to serve as a shield—and slammed violently into the Cult Leader's back.
The Cult Leader's body convulsed. A mouthful of blood sprayed out, staining his pristine white robes red. He stumbled back several paces, teetering on the edge of collapse.
He looked up at the sky in disbelief, his eyes filled with resentment and sheer malice.
Below the platform, Madame Xu stared blankly at this scene, her entire body freezing in place.
Seeing the thunderbolt bend with her own eyes made the vague doubts in her heart grow clearer and sharper.
Yet, after months of agonizing suffering, she refused to admit under any circumstances that she had been entirely wrong.
Her breathing grew rapid. She turned and gripped Lin Wenyu's sleeve like a drowning woman clutching at a straw. With a pathetic, desperate hope, she asked in a trembling voice:
“Is it... is that it?”
“This thunder... it is supposed to be the tribulation my son must face to reverse life and death. It is incredibly perilous. The Cult Leader has profound cultivation, so he is blocking the lightning tribulation on my son's behalf, bearing the divine punishment for Huaining, right?”
She was lying to herself, desperately trying to justify her choices and find a logical excuse for this absurd sacrifice.
As long as the Cult Leader was taking the hit for Xu Qinghe, she wouldn't have to face the fact that she had misjudged him completely, and her sacrifices wouldn't be a total, tragic joke.
Hearing this, Lin Wenyu couldn't help but roll her eyes. Looking at the obstinate, self-deluding woman before her, she felt a wave of sheer exasperation. She spoke with blatant sarcasm.
“Are you truly blind, or do you just refuse to see?”
“Things have already reached this point, and you still think he's a good guy? That he's taking the fall for your son?”
“Don't make me laugh.”
“This heavenly thunder was never your son's rebirth tribulation. It's his.”
“This Cult Leader is a wild, ambitious wolf. He coveted Xu Qinghe's Wenqu Destiny and wanted to use this array to deceive the heavens, stealing his fortune and foundation in the Scholar's Dao.”
“But unfortunately for him, the truth cannot be faked, and lies can never become reality.”
“He's being struck because his evil deeds were exposed. No matter how much divine retribution he suffers, it has absolutely nothing to do with your son.”
Lin Wenyu did not sugarcoat her words at all, delivering them with raw, unfiltered aggression that slammed heavily into Madame Xu's heart.
Madame Xu swayed violently. Every drop of color drained from her face, and her fingertips trembled.
Countless doubts she had deliberately ignored, anxieties she had forcibly suppressed, and logical flaws she had self-hypnotized herself into ignoring now surged to the surface, piecing together into a freezing, harsh reality.
She gasped for air, her throat bobbing. She opened her mouth, wanting to argue, wanting to defend herself, but a thousand words clogged her throat, and she couldn't utter a single sound.
She couldn't find a single reason to refute it.
Only after a long while did she squeeze out a sentence: “So... I was wrong?”
“I was blind and couldn't see people for who they were. I invited a wolf into my home and pushed my own son into danger. I... I trusted the wrong person?”
In her mind, her greatest mistake was merely putting her trust in a cult leader, falling for someone else's sweet talk.
When Lin Wenyu heard this and realized what Madame Xu was implying, her temper flared.
“Do you still not understand where you went wrong?”
“Your greatest mistake was never trusting the wrong person.”
“The only one at fault is you.”
“It was you who, from the very beginning, was calculating how to secretly sacrifice an innocent person's life to forcibly resurrect a child who was already dead.”
“Xu Qinghe never begged you to defy heaven and change his fate. He never said he wanted to steal someone else's body to cling to life.”
“It was your own wishful thinking, your own self-pity, and your attempt to soothe your own guilt that drove you to ruthlessly rob others of their lives.”
Pierced to the quick by these words, as if unable to accept the total collapse of her lifelong moral compass, Madame Xu shook her head violently and argued back in a frenzied, shrill voice.
“No! It's not like that!”
“My son wanted to live! He clearly wanted to live!”
Her eyes were bloodshot, her mind completely frozen on the last scene of Xu Qinghe she had witnessed a few months ago.
“Before he died, he held my hand tightly and told me clear as day, 'Mother, I don't want to die!' He wanted to live! How could he possibly be willing to let ashes return to ashes and dust return to dust!”
“The person on that platform... is not my Huaining at all! Absolutely not!”
At this moment, Madame Xu had not rationally recognized that Bai Ci was an imposter. Rather, under the weight of self-denial and terror, she had forced a new obsession into existence.
She could not accept that her sacrifices—for which she had given everything and stained her hands with evil—were nothing but a joke that went against her son's true wishes.
So, she had no choice but to force herself to believe that the person currently on the platform, who refused to be reborn and insisted on letting go, was a fake.
The real Xu Qinghe would definitely want to live, would definitely be willing to accept this sacrifice, and would definitely understand her painful devotion.
On the high platform, the rumbling of the heavenly thunder gradually subsided.
Having been heavily battered by several consecutive bolts of lightning, the Cult Leader was covered in wounds and his vitality was severely depleted. He knelt on one knee, panting heavily, his eyes burning with cold rage.
After going through this, he finally began to understand why things had escalated to this point today.
This had never been an accident. Someone had interfered, causing the ritual to fail and even triggering a backlash.
Just what kind of person was the one who had acted?
The Cult Leader looked around him.
Rate on N.U.
