The perfectly good divine statue suddenly shattered, causing another wave of panic and confusion among the devout men and women, who speculated about what divine omen this might be.

Xiaoxiao felt Wei Jie was being too childish and pulled him by the hand out of the temple: “Why destroy the statue for no reason? As far as I know, even immortals hope for flourishing incense to consolidate their divine status.”

Wei Jie raised his thick eyebrows: “Where is there any Emperor Gu Yan now? I’m just a young man in the mortal world. Those people all look like fishermen—their food and clothing aren’t wealthy, yet they insist on offering incense, oil, wine, and meat to a useless clay sculpture. Better to disperse early and go out to sea fishing for something more practical.”

Remembering how Wei Jie’s face had turned black as a pot bottom when that lady asked him to possess her husband, Xiaoxiao couldn’t help but laugh and whispered, “So many devout women are still waiting for you to possess their husbands!”

Wei Jie lowered his head close to her earlobe and said softly: “I only possess your body…”

Xiaoxiao’s cheeks immediately flushed red again. How had she never noticed before that this disciple she’d taken in was so lustful—daring to say such double-entendre nonsense in broad daylight!

Wei Jie laughed and hugged the puffed-up Xiaoxiao, letting her pinch his arm, then looked toward the distant seaside and thought for a moment: “But the temple’s incense is so flourishing, it seems related to the ghostly incidents in nearby villages and towns. Do you think it might be connected to the demon island?”

Xiaoxiao had thought the same when she heard those people discussing earlier.

So after leaving the temple, she, Wei Jie, and Tang Youshu turned to go to the teahouse—here, they could always hear more gossip.

Sure enough, they ordered a pot of fragrant tea, and before they’d even drunk a cup, they heard the whole story.

Ever since the pillar of light shot up from the sea island, many fishermen began spreading rumors that a sea dragon had ascended to heaven that day.

They said that when a sea dragon ascends to heaven and enters the heavenly court, many dragon scales fall from its body, and these scales can turn into gold.

Otherwise, why would that day’s pillar of light look so brilliantly golden?

With such rumors spreading, the villagers were all eager to go to sea to salvage golden dragon scales.

And those fishermen who went to sea really did bring back gold. Perhaps fearing their wealth would leak out, they all returned at night, and after getting home, they shut their doors and wouldn’t come out. Then chickens, ducks, geese, and dogs in nearby villages began disappearing one after another. Some people saw those fishermen who had gone to sea breaking the necks of these animals at night and drinking their blood.

At first, villagers went to their doors to make trouble, demanding compensation for the chickens and ducks.

But when one villager went to their door and was bitten by a sick fisherman, he also fell ill. Within a few days, he began crying out for blood to drink and even bit his own wife.

This was just like rabies—it could be transmitted.

Now, the doors of those sick households had all been sealed with wooden boards by the villagers, preventing them from coming out.

But subsequently, more fishermen who had gone to sea returned with similar symptoms.

This led to widespread rumors about the Dragon King’s punishment and the spread of an evil disease. Some even reported to the authorities, begging the government to send fleets to investigate at sea.

These people began praying to gods and buddhas everywhere, begging for divine protection to quickly dispel the epidemic poison.

Hearing this, Xiaoxiao and Wei Jie silently exchanged glances. Those villagers’ symptoms seemed like they had been poisoned by some evil heat toxin, requiring blood drinking for relief.

If they didn’t receive timely treatment and were just locked up, people would likely die.

Sure enough, after some inquiry, they learned this disease had already killed four or five people, leaving everyone in panic. Those with money searched everywhere for famous doctors.

After finishing their tea, Wei Jie called Tang Youshu and had him use his medical practice as a pretext to examine those villagers’ specific symptoms.

Tang Youshu’s medical practice everywhere always opened doors with his Ten Complete Tonic Pills. His medicine wasn’t expensive, and his pulse diagnosis was precise, so he was quickly regarded as a famous doctor by villagers seeking treatment.

Thus he was led around until he reached a large courtyard in the village.

This household was a wealthy family in the area. Logically, the people in the mansion hadn’t gone to sea fishing and shouldn’t have contracted that evil disease.

Unfortunately, the family’s fifth-generation only son loved watching excitement and insisted on taking the household servants to see the commotion.

As a result, while watching the excitement, he was bitten by a sick patient who rushed out, also contracting this heat-craving, blood-drinking disease.

Because it was a wealthy family with many chickens and ducks, this young master had been drinking blood from almost one chicken daily these past days.

When Tang Youshu led Wei Jie and Cui Xiaoxiao into the inner room, the young master was biting a chicken’s neck, blood streaming down from his mouth like a river—it looked terrifying.

But when Tang Youshu and the others walked in, the young master suddenly stopped his actions, stared at Cui Xiaoxiao, then like the water yaksha on the demon island, excitedly pounced toward Xiaoxiao.

How could Wei Jie let this boy get near Xiaoxiao? He lifted his foot and kicked him away.

The family naturally cried out in alarm. Tang Youshu took the opportunity to scrape some blood the boy had spit out with a small bamboo piece, examined it carefully, then said in a low voice: “He’s been poisoned by water yaksha…”

Hearing Tang Youshu say this, Cui Xiaoxiao’s heart tightened.

Though she had long suspected these strange behaviors of villagers returning from the sea were related to the demon clan, once confirmed, she still felt somewhat sad.

When she left, she had clearly instructed Fu Niang not to do any more harm to people, but unexpectedly she had intensified her efforts, harming the villagers who worked so hard fishing…

Just then, Wei Jie’s sharp eyes suddenly noticed shadows moving outside the residence.

He flew out in pursuit, with Xiaoxiao following. When they reached the deserted woods, the person ahead stopped, turned around, and removed the hood covering their head, revealing a rotting half-face.

Xiaoxiao immediately recognized this person as Fu Niang! She had been poisoned by Qin He’s flesh and blood toxin, so her face had rotted.

Wei Jie looked at her coldly: “What? Not satisfied with harming people at sea, you’ve followed them to the fishing village?”

Fu Niang seemed not to have expected to encounter the Demon Saint in this place and excitedly knelt before Xiaoxiao: “Saint, I knew you wouldn’t abandon us!”

Xiaoxiao now only wanted to clarify one thing: “Were you responsible for those poisoned villagers in the village?”

Fu Niang shook her head, somewhat excitedly: “Saint, please understand—water yaksha toxin requires extracting the blood from the heart meridian. Though I’ve committed countless sins, I would never deliberately kill demon clan warriors just to harm people! After you awakened the water yaksha, someone somehow infiltrated the island, killed over ten water yaksha, and stole their poisonous blood off the island. I also exhausted my vital energy to leave the island to investigate the culprit, tracking all the way here.”

Originally, when the demon clan was exterminated by heavenly soldiers, though they received the temple’s protection and were moved to the sea, once the temple activated its self-protection, it would restrict the demons on the island from leaving, to avoid greater disasters.

Fu Niang also felt her life was short and risked her remaining lifespan to leave the island to investigate this matter, which was why she had ventured off the island.

Leaving the island this way had consumed what little life Fu Niang had left, so after saying all this, she collapsed on the ground exhausted.

Seeing her barely breathing, Xiaoxiao finally stepped forward and placed her hand on Fu Niang’s head.

Ever since the demon clan’s sacred blood in her body had been awakened, she had naturally learned to soothe her people’s pain. When her hand touched Fu Niang, Fu Niang felt a clear spring flowing through her, making her much more comfortable, and even the festering on her face suddenly reduced considerably.

Though Xiaoxiao knew her past, she felt no identification with her identity as the demon clan saint.

According to what Tang Youshu had found in ancient texts, originally, the demon clan saint was a heartless, emotionless existence. Though she could control the entire demon clan, she was more focused on providing the demon clan with sacred power for reproduction. She herself had no particularly sharp thinking and was the demon clan’s spiritual leader, maintained in the temple to receive the demon clan’s offerings.

While Fu Niang, as the daughter of the former demon city lord, was the demon clan’s actual power holder.

So a demon clan saint like Xiaoxiao, who was shrewd and full of cunning, was truly unprecedented and unique.

Fu Niang didn’t know how to deal with a saint who had grown so clever.

After confirming Fu Niang was telling the truth, Xiaoxiao didn’t need to think carefully to guess who was behind this.

Among those who had learned the demon island’s secrets and safely left the island, besides their talismonger sect and a few fox clan members, only that bastard Dong Yuan remained. He had truly put in effort.

But he wasn’t an evil demon after all—bearing the title of immortal, why would he go to such trouble to extract water yaksha poison to harm innocent people?

“He’s accumulating popular resentment. Dong Yuan previously descended privately, so even if he discovered the demon clan’s resurgence, he couldn’t directly report to the Heavenly Emperor. But if the demon clan ravages again, bringing disaster to living beings, then popular resentment would accumulate and could reach the heavenly court directly without his report,” Wei Jie slowly said at this time.

Xiaoxiao felt Wei Jie had hit nine out of ten points correctly—this was indeed Dong Yuan’s scheming style: always borrowing others’ hands to kill, harming lives without leaving infamy.

Thinking of this, Xiaoxiao actually smiled. She looked back at the newly built tall temple in the village, then turned to Wei Jie: “How about it? You received so much incense from the people during the day—you can’t accept offerings for nothing. Want to manifest and give guidance to the confused people?”

Dong Yuan had been high above for too long and probably didn’t understand the rule of “feng shui turns” in the martial world.

He was always so high and mighty, casually changing others’ fates—it was time someone pulled him down from his divine pedestal!

In any case, that day, this traveling doctor Tang who had suddenly arrived in the village made quite a show. After examining those afflicted with the strange disease, he applied just a few needles and had them drink a wine cup of medicine as thick as blood, and those people actually recovered completely.

This delighted the previously helpless villagers, who quickly asked where this doctor had studied to have such divine abilities.

Tang Youshu lifted his forehead cloth and pointed to the divine seal of Emperor Gu Yan drawn on his brow: “I am Tang Youshu of the Lingshan Talismonger Sect, devoted to honoring Emperor Gu Yan and making subduing demons my mission.”

Recently, due to subduing demon beasts, worshipping the previously obscure immortal Emperor Gu Yan had become quite popular.

So when Tang Youshu revealed the seal of the Underworld Lord, everyone suddenly understood and became even more respectful.

But when asked why these people became poisoned after going to sea, Tang Youshu looked troubled: “This… do you all understand that divine statues also have mutually generating and restraining relationships? In ancient times, Emperor Gu Yan once battled Emperor Dong Yuan. This fight was like the Yellow Emperor battling Chi You, or Zhuan Xu fighting Gong Gong—basically a fight to the death. That Dong Yuan, relying on being the Heavenly Emperor’s son, was used to bullying men and women in the heavenly court. Our Emperor Gu Yan is also a righteous god who tolerates no evil. Since then, to win, Dong Yuan has used any means necessary—wherever people worship Emperor Gu Yan, he tries every way to send down plagues and disasters, waiting for people to worship and seek him, eating his offerings to eliminate disasters…”

Hearing this, those people were completely fooled by Tang Youshu’s nonsense, while Tang Youshu himself was running out of things to make up.

Con artist Xiaoxiao took over: “So Emperor Gu Yan, with his compassionate heart, to prevent Dong Yuan from becoming jealous, always makes his statues in temples crack when his incense becomes too flourishing. He’d rather not receive the incense he deserves than let Dong Yuan send down plagues…”

When Xiaoxiao said this, she even had tears in her eyes, completely portraying Emperor Gu Yan’s endurance and heavy burden for the people’s sake.

As soon as she said this, someone immediately exclaimed: “Heavens! During the day today, the statue of Emperor Gu Yan in the temple cracked and shattered. We were wondering what divine revelation this was—so that’s what it was!”

Then some young hothead, not knowing better, said: “There’s such a god who gets jealous of others’ flourishing incense and sends disasters? Isn’t that just a plague god… mmph…”

The young man’s words weren’t finished before his timid mother covered his mouth.

But once someone started, others chimed in: “Recently, Dong Yuan statues everywhere have had divine omens of bleeding from their foreheads. Could it be he’s displeased again and wants to send down disasters to trick us into worshipping him?”

So everyone began discussing this way, one person after another. Some who had family members die from the disease recently because they couldn’t afford to buy chickens and ducks for blood drinking were especially furious.

That night, Dong Yuan statues in nearby temples were all smashed to pieces by unknown persons.

After this, none of the surrounding people proposed repairing Dong Yuan’s statue, and mischievous children even secretly threw dung balls at Dong Yuan’s broken statue.

After all, Da Qi’s national character had always been practical—if you could bring blessings to the people, you were an immortal. But if you harmed people, you were a plague god whom everyone should spit upon.

Some talented but down-and-out scholars even created various stories within a few days about Emperor Dong Yuan using his status as a divine son to oppress other immortals and act tyrannically, telling them to children.

After all, there were too many powerful people in the folk world who bullied others with their influence, and Emperor Dong Yuan’s actions were similar to those privileged people who acted tyrannically relying on ancestral protection. For a time, this stirred up countless people, all vented on the clay statues in temples.

Though these common people’s actions couldn’t reach the heavenly court, the popular anger Dong Yuan had stirred up was still somewhat known to his colleagues.

Though they didn’t know the cause and effect, having one’s temple offerings destroyed by mortals was hardly a glorious matter. For a time, there were many who wanted to see Dong Yuan’s joke.