Lu Gui's words were met with nods of agreement from everyone present. At the same time, Mei Shi, who was outside the game monitoring the players' performance, couldn't help but nod along.

"Indeed, every family has some troublemakers."

As she said this, Mingmei glanced out of the corner of her eye at her "annoying younger brothers." Yan Hui and Ruan Xun responded with completely professional fake smiles.

What else could they say?

What *could* they say?

"So, what does that bug want to do?" Ming Yi had stopped watching the players' performances. Rather than focusing on the few players interacting with his daughter, like Mei Shi and the others, Ming Yi was more interested in the players who were marginalized from the start.

Compared to the players who became disciples of prestigious sects, those in smaller, less significant sects lived quite peacefully. Either nothing happened, and they spent their days cultivating and gossiping with fellow disciples, or they suddenly disappeared overnight.

They died even faster than the Hundred Herb Sect, giving no one time to react.

But because they were geographically isolated and their sects weren't affiliated with famous immortal sects like the Azure Ripple Jade Mountain, news of their extermination didn't cause much of a stir.

There was also another type of player who became demonic cultivators. Compared to righteous cultivators, their lives were inherently less stable, and death was commonplace.

The law of the jungle was even more pronounced, to the point that no one noticed anything amiss when a player suddenly died.

The deaths of a few players didn't seem like much.

It wasn't until Lou Jia, the Heguang Palace Protector, was found again by Qing Mian and questioned about the recent disappearance of many disciples that Lou Jia realized the severity of the situation.

"The last time I let a friend of yours join our Heguang Palace's team to the Far North City, and I haven't even settled the score with you for almost getting us into trouble. But how do you explain this now?"

Lou Jia didn't consider himself a weakling, but Qing Mian's soft, numbingly low voice, laced with murderous intent, still made his legs go weak.

Especially when he saw that many of the Heguang Palace disciples' life tablets were broken, he gasped.

"Reporting to the Palace Master, this subordinate is unaware. These days, the disciples have been taking on missions and are active in various places. The disciple in charge of watching the life lamps didn't report..."

"Because the disciple watching the palace lamps is also dead."

"What?"

Now it was Lou Jia's turn to be dumbfounded.

The disciple watching the life lamps was none other than his classmate.

No wonder he hadn't seen him these past few days.

Because demonic cultivators had more freedom than righteous cultivators, they often appeared and disappeared mysteriously, so everyone was used to it. Even if he hadn't seen the other person for a few days, and Lou Jia himself was also running around, he hadn't realized that something had happened.

"It's this subordinate's fault!" Lou Jia didn't care about anything else and knelt down to admit his mistake. Qing Mian's unpredictable nature wasn't good, and although he didn't have the habit of killing indiscriminately, he had the ability to cripple people at will.

"Since you've admitted your fault, why don't we carefully calculate... what mistakes have you made?"

Qing Mian squatted down to look at Lou Jia, smiling as if mocking him—"You walked right into this~"

Lou Jia: "..."

What was this?!

The matter of the Azure Ripple Jade Mountain female disciple, the evil cultivator, and the Lotus Flower Temple monk colluding to kill innocent people was eventually suppressed. However, the biggest victims of this story, the Wan Jian Sect, were the first to leave. Although no one knew how much compensation Yuehua had given them, judging from their not-so-somber expressions, Mingmei secretly guessed it must have been considerable.

As for Mingmei and her group, they were in the second batch to be released. Among them, the Tianyi Pavilion people who had come to deliver cloth, including Lu Gui, also went down the mountain after being given a "gag order."

As for why the Azure Ripple Jade Mountain and the Lotus Flower Temple were still entangled on the mountain for so long, Mingmei soon heard Mei Jiu share firsthand gossip from Luo Yao.

Both sides were negotiating how to release the information in a way that would save face.

Then, during the negotiation process, both sides understood one thing: you can't have both fish and bear's paw.

Thus, the Azure Ripple Jade Mountain insisted that the deceased Qi Lan was love-struck and would do anything for the person she liked.

The subtext was—"You Lotus Flower Temple monks are really bad! You take advantage of girls' feelings."

The Lotus Flower Temple representatives insisted that their disciple was deeply devoted to love and could do anything for it.

The subtext—"Our disciple is very pure, just seduced by you bad women."

Sure enough, the two sides discussed for a long time without reaching an agreement.

At least, when the news came back, the two sides had not yet reached an agreement.

Was it so difficult for two people who had formed a Daoist couple to take the blame for their partner?!

After hearing this, Mingmei's mouth couldn't help but twitch. The shattered filter in her heart couldn't be pieced back together.

These immortal cultivators with their otherworldly airs—they were really something else.

After receiving this news, Mingmei and Mei Jiu went to Lu Xiaoyao's residence as if they were "delivering a story."

She planned to get more information from Lu Xiaoyao.

Wasn't her information more accurate than hers?

So, when they arrived at the entrance of the Spirit Food Restaurant, they saw a large group of Pure Cloud Mountain disciples gathered there.

Then, the sound of a gavel echoed from inside the house. Before Mingmei could observe carefully, Lu Xiaoyao's familiar, high-pitched voice came from inside.

"In the blink of an eye, my friends from Linjing City and I were attacked by that evil spirit and had to fight back! Friends! You don't know how terrifying that mutated evil spirit was, with eight legs and dozens of feet long!"

Mingmei was a little confused, this description sounded familiar.

"Who would have thought!"

Lu Xiaoyao suddenly raised her voice, scaring everyone standing outside, including Mingmei and Mei Jiu. Then, they heard Lu Xiaoyao shout: "Who would have thought there would be an evil cultivator on the side! My goodness! That evil cultivator, in order to prevent people from seeing his true face, guess what he did?!"

"What did he do?"

Someone actually played along.

"That evil cultivator directly turned into someone else's face to do evil! When I saw that it was a Bu Tian Sect disciple, my heart was filled with so much emotion! How could a righteous disciple fall into the ranks of evil cultivators?! If that person hadn't been outside fortune-telling at the time, this matter would have been impossible to clear up even by jumping into the Yellow River!"

Lu Xiaoyao became more and more excited as she spoke, and the louder she got, the clearer Mingmei heard—Lu Xiaoyao was bragging again!

Wasn't she putting the events of that night in the Original Demon Realm onto herself?

"Sister, don't I remember that she was at the time... Mmm!"

Mei Jiu never hesitated to expose her, but fortunately, Mingmei covered her mouth in time. Otherwise, with so many people present, in less than two days, Lu Xiaoyao's reputation for this wave of antics would definitely resonate throughout Pure Cloud Mountain.

Still, give her some face.