Chapter 96

"You wouldn't dare!" Zhao Cheng spat. "You always act like you're better than everyone else!"

"Who are you trying to fool with that saintly act?" Zhao Cheng roared, his voice hoarse. "You're a healer—saving lives is your duty. Do you think you're special just because you've saved a few people?"

"And you only saved them because they paid you, didn't you? If a patient had no money, would you still treat them? Would you? In the end, it's all for yourself. You only care about your own interests!"

Zhao Cheng panted heavily. "You've saved so many people, yet you refused to save me. Why? Why! Was my eye really that hard to treat? No—you were just incompetent, and that's why I went blind!"

"Do you have any idea how much injustice and contempt I've suffered because I lost an eye?"

Lin Yu was momentarily taken aback. In her memory, the frail boy from that rainy night years ago gradually overlapped with the man now screaming at her. It seemed she had never truly known Zhao Cheng at all.

Back then, Zhao Cheng was seventeen. He had escaped from the slave fighting pits, where life had nearly devoured him whole. Though he was actually a year older than Lin Yu, he looked as skinny and small as a child of thirteen or fourteen.

That was how Lin Yu had first seen him—Zhao Yi had found him by the riverbank and, taking pity on him, brought him home. He had been covered in blood and filth, not a single patch of unscathed skin on his body. On top of being poisoned with several different toxins, a steel needle had been driven into his left eye.

The needle had penetrated too deeply, almost piercing halfway through his skull. A single inch deeper and it would have killed him instantly, beyond any cure.

His eye could not be saved. Even if it were preserved, it would never see light again. She had told Zhao Cheng all this long ago, and she had assumed he understood.

Lin Yu frowned, baffled but mostly helpless. "I told you—it was either your life or your eye. And with how deeply poisoned you were, even saving the eye would have been useless. It had to be removed."

"I don't believe you!" Zhao Cheng's remaining eye was shot through with bloodshot veins as he glared at her. "I asked someone later, and he said my eye was dug out for nothing—it could have been cured! You ruined me!"

"Do you know that you destroyed me?! You think taking me in was charity? No, it was humiliation! You never cared about me! Everyone in the pharmacy treated me like I was expendable. Why? Didn't you say we were all family? Then why didn't any of you care about me?"

Lin Yu: "We didn't care about you? We saved your life, helped you escape the fighting pits, gave you a stable home—and this is how you see it?"

"Don't talk to me about the fighting pits! Living with you lot, I might as well have stayed there. If I'd known it would turn out like this, I never would have run. I'd rather have been beaten to death in the ring!"

Ting He, hidden within Zhao Cheng's shadow, could no longer hold back. She materialized from the darkness and delivered a vicious slap across Zhao Cheng's face!

A surge of furious demonic energy slammed into him, sending him sprawling to the ground. Zhao Cheng coughed up a mouthful of blood!

Ting He: "Pah! You're the villain here, and you dare to turn it around on her?! Screw you!"

After hitting Zhao Cheng, Ting He turned to look at Lin Yu. She could sense Lin Yu's emotions—being betrayed and abandoned by everyone was not an easy thing to bear. But unfortunately, she couldn't reach Lin Yu. Her demonic energy could only touch physical things when she was attacking; when not in attack mode, Ting He was nothing but a phantom.

Lin Yu's fingers curled at her sides, and she said nothing. Ting He's hand passed through Lin Yu's body like a wisp of smoke. She sighed as she watched her own fading form. The phantom was about to dissipate.

But that was fine. When she had set out on this path, she had not expected any other outcome. Now, only one enemy was left alive.

The phantom grew sharp claws, pitch-black and wreathed in icy killing intent. Ting He drifted lightly toward Zhao Cheng. "Not knowing gratitude, killing the people who were once your family, killing my family too—climbing over so many corpses to get ahead. You really do impress me!"

"You... what are you?!" Zhao Cheng's pupils dilated in terror. The sight before him was horrifying—a thing shaped like a person but not human floated toward him. It had no face, and its black head was riddled with gaping holes.

And now those holes seethed. When the thing spoke, every pit on its body seemed to be talking at once, with no way to tell where the voice came from.

Wisps of black miasma seeped from the thing's body and swirled around Zhao Cheng, closer and closer!

Zhao Cheng's heart nearly leaped out of his throat. The Ghost Realm would never have something so bizarre!

It hit him. "You... you're Demon Tribe!"

Lin Yu beside him showed little reaction, as if she tacitly allowed a demon to be present here.

Zhao Cheng stared at Lin Yu in disbelief. "You're in league with the Demon Tribe! Do you have any idea what kind of crime that is?"

Zhao Cheng trembled all over, instinct screaming at him to flee. He couldn't die here. The only thought left was escape.

Get out!

Zhao Cheng struggled to move his arms, but lying flat on the ground, he could barely push himself up. He finally managed to raise his body when a heavy weight pressed down on his shoulder, slamming him back to the floor!

Zhao Cheng screamed and looked up, meeting Lin Yu's face. The emotions from moments ago had been cast aside, and she had resumed her usual calm expression. Now she looked down at him with cold indifference, like a fish about to die on a chopping board.

There was no point explaining anything to someone consumed by hatred. They wouldn't listen, wouldn't believe, and would even bite the hand that fed them.

What she hated most in life was betrayal. And what she hated second was being schemed against.

Those who betrayed her—she would simply kill them.

Lin Yu lifted her foot and stepped on Zhao Cheng's shoulder, nearly crushing his bones. But she didn't seem to notice his pain; instead, she smiled at him. "What kind of crime is it, exactly? Tell me."

Zhao Cheng gritted his teeth and glared at Lin Yu. "If the Xianzun finds out that someone in the Ghost Realm is colluding with the Demon Tribe, he'll wipe out your entire Ghost Tribe!"

Zhao Cheng said bitterly, "You think that just because you've latched onto the Ghost Tribe and teamed up with the demons, you're safe? Let me tell you—among the four realms, the Ghost Tribe and Demon Tribe are the lowest of the low! They rank even below us Humans. You had the chance to be a decent person, but instead you choose to entangle yourself with these inferior races. You'll never amount to anything! Once the Xianzun learns of this, you'll be smitten by heaven sooner or later!"

"Oh, is that so?" Lin Yu's tone was flippant, utterly unconcerned. She ground her heel hard into Zhao Cheng's shoulder. "Then do you think he'll ever find out, hmm?"

"Will he even have the chance?" Lin Yu's smile widened.

"Ahh!" Zhao Cheng cried out in pain. He heard the sound of his own bones cracking and realized Lin Yu truly meant to kill him!

"No... no!" Something struck him suddenly. Wasn't Lin Yu just an ordinary healer? Where did she get cultivation?!

But Lin Yu's expression didn't change, and she seemed to be using barely any power at all to pin him down. Zhao Cheng had no strength to fight back.

Zhao Cheng was finally terrified. Lin Yu was no longer the person he had known. She was in league with the Demon Tribe, she had cultivation—she was a traitor to the Heavenly Dao, an utterly vicious criminal!

"Where did you get your cultivation... You're a cultivator? No, that's impossible—absolutely impossible—no..." Zhao Cheng could barely speak through the pain.

"Cultivation... no, you're definitely not..." Zhao Cheng shook his head desperately. He had spent so much effort and so long trying to become a cultivator, and he still hadn't succeeded. Why should Lin Yu get everything so easily? He refused to believe it!

Lin Yu didn't want to hear any more of his nonsense. Expressionless, she snapped his neck. A crisp crack rang out.

The sound of clean bone breaking echoed through the empty hall. The world before him began to blur, and Lin Yu's voice drifted to Zhao Cheng's ears, word by word, like a final sigh before death.

"Cultivation?" Lin Yu looked down at Zhao Cheng from above. "Didn't you come looking for me? Why didn't you first verify who your Divine Maiden really is before rushing in?"

Zhao Cheng's unfocused pupils trembled. He strained to look up at Lin Yu, seemingly unable to grasp the meaning of her words. "No... impossible... how could you..."

Lin Yu had spoken aloud the truth he could not accept. Zhao Cheng's thoughts were in chaos. He couldn't believe it, and he didn't want to. "How could..."

Agonizing pain and the terror of dying brought tears to Zhao Cheng's eyes—the first time he had ever cried in his life.

Not regret. Resentment.

Why was she the Divine Maiden while he was just the most insignificant disciple of Heaven's Mandate Tower?

Why? What made her better than him?

Was it because he was blind in one eye? Yes, that was it—because he was missing an eye, everyone looked down on him.

Zhao Cheng's lips trembled as he stared at Lin Yu and laughed contemptuously. In truth, he couldn't see anything anymore; his vision was a haze of white, as though everything was receding further away. "You... you're just... lucky..."

Before he could finish, Zhao Cheng coughed out one final mouthful of blood as a heavy blow struck his back!

Ting He stood behind him. Black miasma pierced through Zhao Cheng's chest, leaving a gaping hole through which his slowly beating heart was visible.

Ting He crushed Zhao Cheng's heart!

"Heh, now I see—your heart is black," Ting He sneered. "You deserved to die. After death, you'll fall to the eighteenth level of hell, suffer every torment, and in your next life, you'll be reborn as a beast—cursed to die horribly for all eternity!"

Zhao Cheng never closed his remaining right eye. Ting He's curse echoed through the cold palace until Zhao Cheng's chest stopped rising. Black miasma surged up and swallowed his body, erasing every trace of him from existence.

The delayed underworld emissaries arrived at the Ghost King's Palace. Before they could even knock, the doors swung open on their own. Startled for a moment, the emissary met Lin Yu's gaze. "Your Excellency, the task you assigned is done. The surviving prisoners have all been locked in the underground chamber."

His gaze drifted past her; the great hall was spotless, with none of the bloody scene he had imagined. "What about the ones who broke into the Ghost King's Palace? They're not here?"

"I didn't see them," Lin Yu said calmly. "Come—let's go to the chamber."

The emissary followed behind her, scratching his head in confusion. "What do you plan to interrogate them about?"

"Aren't you the Divine Maiden? Is there anything about Heaven's Mandate Tower that you don't know, that you'd need to ask them?"

"Things I don't know..." Lin Yu thought for a moment. "Quite a lot, actually."

Ting He was curious too. "What are you going to interrogate them about?"

Lin Yu: "No interrogation. I plan... to plant some gu in them instead."