"What is this, flogging a dead body?" Li Qianxia glanced at the tortoise.
"Let's leave this place first," Yang Qinglan said, wiping around them to erase the traces.
Meanwhile, the vortex representing "teleportation" slowly spun open behind Li Changzhou.
"What is this?" Xiaoqing was on guard, and then the gravity shifted, unexpectedly pulling her into the vortex.
"Xiaoqing!" Bai Suzhen reached out to grab her.
"Sister!"
The two experienced a dramatic separation as if facing death—this was the importance of information; they believed the other side of the vortex led to the abyss of Hell.
Back in her own courtyard, ignoring the surprised snakes, Li Qianxia asked in confusion, "Why on earth would you flog a dead body?"
"It's not flogging; it's framing," Turquoise Pool explained as she sat down, pouring herself tea.
"Framing?"
"In Mount Putuo, how many can wield the 'Primordial Spirit Wisdom Sword' at the Human Immortal Level?"
"Not many," Li Qianxia pondered, "the Dragon Girl, Child of Wealth, and also Guanyin... Oh!"
She realized something.
"Are you trying to frame the Dragon Girl and the others? But the murderer is—"
She paused, waiting for the walls to be covered with ivy-like plants before continuing:
"—the murderer is the Child of Wealth; why go through the trouble of framing someone else, isn't that just increasing the risk of being exposed?"
She had a point; tampering with the turtle's body would actually help the Child of Wealth clear suspicions.
The premise was, one could identify the Child of Wealth as the murderer from the body beforehand.
"Without Qing Lan, could you tell who the murderer was?" Turquoise Pool took a sip of tea. "Now with the 'Primordial Spirit Wisdom Sword' in the corpse and the real perpetrator being the Child of Wealth, how could he possibly argue?"
"This is like dirt in your pants, whether it's poop or not, it looks like poop," Li Changzhou summarized.
Yang Qinglan and Turquoise Pool both glanced at him.
"Crude words, but not crude reasoning; that's exactly the point," Yang Qinglan nodded.
Li Qianxia nodded, indicating she understood.
"Bodhisattva Guanyin has boundless magical power, no matter who the killer is, the tampering you did will be seen!" Xiaoqing suddenly said.
"Counting the time," Li Changzhou said, "your poison should be acting up today."
As soon as his words fell, Xiaoqing's body trembled, emitting a scream.
The familiar sensation surged up; she clutched her throat, feeling as if a sharp pair of scissors were cutting from her throat down to her stomach, snipping down relentlessly.
Heart-wrenching, gut-spilling, she rolled on the ground, transforming back into her original form as a green snake.
Li Qianxia looked at her with some sympathy, but she was no longer the 21st-century college girl who would feel pity simply from screams.
She turned to Li Changzhou, asking, "What Sister Xiaoqing said does make sense, after all. Guanyin Bodhisattva is an Earth Immortal, and this is her Daoist arena; it's very possible she could discover us."
"Then why would the Child of Wealth dare to make a move?" Turquoise Pool smiled and counter-questioned, "This proves that although the Earth Immortal is powerful, she is not the all-knowing, all-powerful God."
In the meantime, a disturbance started outside; the discovery of the tortoise demon's corpse seemed imminent.
Killing one or two monsters honestly wasn't a big deal; just like at Wind Wave Cliff, where no fewer than hundreds of monsters died, what matters is where they die.
This place is Mount Putuo, the Daoist arena of Guanyin Bodhisattva; how could deaths be allowed here?
Turquoise Pool had Li Changzhou employ the 'Primordial Spirit Wisdom Sword' not merely to frame someone but also to dent the reputation of Guanyin Bodhisattva—that even the Bodhisattva couldn't ensure safety.
Such a ploy was not something Li Changzhou and his team would have used before.
The siblings and Yang Qinglan, though their lives differed from those who grew up in love, were still ordinary people; schemes and conspiracies were far from them, only Turquoise Pool would naturally think of such a trick.
After a while, the disturbance didn't explode as Li Changzhou and his team had imagined; rather, it subsided as quickly as it came, like a stone cast into a lake.
"Was it suppressed?" Li Qianxia curiously said.
"With a major enemy at hand, it's normal to suppress it," Turquoise Pool responded with a knowing look; "But one instance can be suppressed, not two, the more people die, the more obvious it becomes."
"Forget it," Li Changzhou suddenly said.
Turquoise Pool looked at him.
"If it weren't for the fact that the killer was actually the Child of Wealth, I wouldn't have 'framed and trapped' anyone. Although our mission is to kill Guanyin, she is after all a good person, and she deserves a dignified, honorable death," Li Changzhou explained.
Li Qianxia nodded repeatedly; she had initially disagreed with 'framing and trapping,' but for the sake of the bigger picture, she hadn't spoken out.
Now with her brother leading the charge, she naturally wanted to express her true feelings.
Turquoise Pool looked at Yang Qinglan: "Is this how you used to handle missions?"
"A gentleman remains steadfast in poverty, a petty man panics and stoops to any level when in poverty," Yang Qinglan quoted the "Analects."
"Sister, what does that mean?" Xiaoqing, having recovered from her affliction, discreetly asked Bai Suzhen, not wanting to miss a word of the conversation among the four demons.
Bai Suzhen, being a millennium-old demon, although lacking nine years of compulsory education, had read some books to achieve immortality.
"A gentleman maintains his integrity in adversity, while a mean person, faced with difficulties, resorts to unscrupulous methods," she explained softly.
"Fine, I'm the mean person; when we deceived Emperor Jiajing together before, I didn't see you folks being too strict with yourselves," Turquoise Pool rolled her eyes at Li Changzhou.
Li Changzhou smiled, "I never said you were mean, nor do I care if you are; all that's needed is sincerity amongst ourselves. As for outsiders, look at Xiaoqing, a delicate 500-year-old lady, yet I still torture her to death and back."