“But that was never the root cause.”
“The Li family's obsessive revenge, the Zhao family's desperate counterattacks, the endless blood feud spanning generations, and even the mountain bandit raid that dragged in countless innocent people and slaughtered entire households—none of it was a natural cycle of ancestral vengeance.”
“It was all the result of someone's step-by-step guidance, layer upon layer of instigation, and deliberate planning.”
Rather than hating the pawns who directly caused the tragedies, Ming Yi chose to hate the chess player behind the scenes who pulled all the strings.
That person was the one who truly benefited.
Bai Ci understood. The books she had spent time reading lately hadn't been in vain, but this realization sent a shiver down her spine.
The mastermind's scheming was chillingly profound.
He never committed evil deeds with his own hands, keeping himself completely free of bloody karma. Instead, he simply hid in the shadows, fanning the flames and manipulating events, driving the Zhao and Li families to slaughter each other for generations without end.
All the slaughter, resentment, hatred, and sin were borne entirely by the Zhao and Li families.
Meanwhile, he remained outside the chessboard, completely clean and untainted by any karmic backlash.
“I see,” Bai Ci said, slowly parsing out the mastermind's entire scheme to explain it to the others.
“His target of entangling the Zhao and Li families for a thousand years was never to seek revenge on either side.”
“He wanted to use the resentment and towering hatred generated by their generational slaughter to reap some kind of benefit. It's highly likely he used it to nourish himself or gain power, much like the self-serving methods of certain evil cultivators.”
“By deliberately instigating conflicts while never personally committing evil—and occasionally even pretending to step in to balance things or save lives—he evaded the eyes of the Heavenly Dao and kept karma from latching onto him.”
“With all the lives, sins, and karma divided between the Zhao and Li families, he sat cleanly at the top, reaping a thousand years of dividends.”
After hearing this, everyone in the private room reacted similarly to Bai Ci, their spines turning cold and their scalps tingling with dread.
Ordinary villains who killed and plundered would eventually accumulate karmic debt. Under the rules of this instance, committing too much evil would eventually bring down divine punishment in severe cases.
But this mastermind, who knew how long he had studied this method or what kind of audacious, bizarre ingenuity he possessed, had actually found such a loophole.
Treating the thousand-year rise and fall of two clans as a chessboard and using countless lives as nourishment, he benefited himself without harming his own standing, perfectly exploiting a bug to evade the Heavenly Dao's punishment.
“Is there any solution to this kind of scheme?” Wu Suowei pondered for a moment. Suddenly finding himself at a loss, he couldn't help but sigh softly.
“This kind of person is the craftiest. He hides outside of karma, using others' grudges to cultivate. The Heavenly Dao can't audit him, and he doesn't touch a speck of karma. He keeps his hands perfectly clean.”
This was also the most terrifying part.
You couldn't even find a weakness in your enemy, let alone have the right to seek revenge.
Bai Ci looked up at Ming Yi, her tone laced with gravity. “So, dealing with this guy is going to be extremely tricky, right?”
Ming Yi didn't try to put on a brave face. Before Bai Ci, there was no need to.
As his other half, how could Bai Ci not know his true condition?
He could put on an act in front of others, but before her, there was no need to play a part.
Thus, Ming Yi nodded candidly and admitted without reservation, “He is also in the Ghost Immortal Realm, but he has used the thousand-year resentment of the two clans to nourish himself with evil arts. His foundation, lifespan, and cultivation are all superior to mine.”
“If we were to fight head-on, I would be no match for him.”
“So you can't beat him...” Bai Ci summarized for Ming Yi, which also served as a conclusion for the others.
Hearing this summary, everyone's hearts sank.
Ming Yi was already the strongest combat power they could rely on. If even he admitted defeat, wasn't this a dead end?
Uh-oh, Bai Ci thought. This really didn't seem like the kind of opponent players could handle.
But since the Anomalous Infection had sent them here, it meant there had to be a solution other than brute-force combat.
With this in mind, Bai Ci asked, “So we have absolutely no way to eliminate him? What about finding someone even stronger than him?”
“Not just for the Zhao and Li clans who have been toyed with for a thousand years, but also for the many innocent lives that ended because of his schemes. Like the people consumed by the Foetal Feeder, or...”
Bai Ci didn't finish her sentence, but Ming Yi knew what she meant. Like us.
Ming Yici was also a pawn who had been needlessly dragged into this thousand-year chess game.
Ming Yi's eyes flickered slightly as he looked out at the clear sky outside the window. “The reason he can hide outside of karma and evade the Heavenly Dao's accountability is that no one has pierced his fig leaf.”
“The mortal world, the Heavenly Dao, and reincarnation—all they see is the endless blood feud between the Zhao and Li families, and the karma of two clans committing evils and slaughtering each other for generations.”
“As long as someone thoroughly tears away this disguise, exposes his true nature of cultivating through resentment, and allows the heavenly secrets to see the full picture of this thousand-year chess game...”
“Then, all the karma he shifted, all the resentment he absorbed, and all the sins of the living beings he wiped out will rebound upon him in full force.”
“The thunders of the nine heavens will naturally seal his doom.”
His words acted like a sudden wake-up call.
“In other words, we don't necessarily have to defeat him in a head-on fight.”
“We only need to find evidence of him personally acting and leaving behind a flaw. Once we completely expose his thousand-year layout, we can use the hand of the Heavenly Dao to obliterate him.”
Bai Ci tried her best to summarize, both to give the others a hint and to hopefully spark a brainstorming session.
Now that a concrete plan was established, their next steps became much clearer, saving them from running around like headless chickens.
Bai Ci herself was at a loss for the moment. Although they had gathered a lot of information, it was too cluttered. She planned to sort through it from the beginning; perhaps she would find new clues.
So, first, returning to the core main quest of this instance, it should be helping the Zhao family resolve their curse. This was also the catalyst for everything.
She might as well sort it out from this starting point.
In this instance, the beginning of everything was the Zhao family's generational curse.
Upon verification, the Zhao family's curse began in the Republican Era.
Prior to that, the Zhao family had suffered several near-extinctions and gaps in their genealogy, all caused by the Li family's rise, counterattacks, and the mutual slaughter between the two clans.
Yet, after the Republican Era, the Li family completely vanished, leaving no trace of any rise or counterattack. The gaps in the Zhao family's genealogy also ceased, replaced instead by an unsolvable curse where clan members could not live past thirty-five.
Combining this with the clues found earlier, it wasn't hard to deduce that the Republican Era, with its turbulent politics, rampant warfare, and displaced populations, was the most brutal and thorough reshuffling of the deck.
The sole survivor of the Li family, whom the mastermind had deliberately preserved to sustain the ancestral feud, failed to survive the torrents of those chaotic times. He died before he could grow strong enough to carry out his revenge.
This was likely the first time in the mastermind's thousand-year layout that things spun out of control, and the first time he faced a complete halt in production.
The pawns that maintained the balance and continuously produced resentment as nourishment were gone. The chess game that had spanned centuries almost broke completely.
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