"What a useless piece of trash! I knew he couldn’t be trusted!" Lotus cursed.
"What now?" Red Tiger asked, his expression blank.
"’What now?’ Assassinating a Seven Stars Gang Elder is impossible. They’re on high alert, we haven’t found the Black Abyss Flesh, and if we go back, won’t the Sacrificial Minister peel our skin off?!" Lotus’s voice rose sharply.
The more she thought about it, the more furious she became, and she began frantically kicking Sacrificial Envoy Li’s body. The corpse was soon even more mangled.
Red Tiger was silent for a moment, then he crouched down and began searching the ground for anything of value.
"Found something!" Red Tiger said suddenly.
"Found what?!" Lotus asked, startled.
"A Soul-locking Worm!"
Lotus was delighted and hurried over to look.
’If we have a Soul-locking Worm, there’s hope of finding the Black Abyss Flesh. That way, we won’t be punished too harshly when we go back!’
She saw Red Tiger pinching something small between the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
Lotus leaned in for a closer look and saw that it was just a squashed black bee.
Lotus stared at Red Tiger, speechless.
"Hm, it seems to be a little dead," Red Tiger said.
Lotus leaped up, smacked Red Tiger on the head, and shrieked:
"If it’s dead, why did you say anything?! Huh?!"
Red Tiger tossed the dead bug aside and went back to searching.
A moment later, he spoke up again.
"Found something!"
"You had better have actually found something this time!" Lotus said through gritted teeth.
She walked over and saw Red Tiger holding a silver waist token.
She took it and saw the two words "Seven Stars" inscribed on it.
"A waist token from the Seven Stars Gang?!" Lotus was surprised. "So it was the Seven Stars Gang who took the Black Abyss Flesh!"
"So, what do we do?" Red Tiger asked.
"’What do we do?!’ You sneak into Seven Stars Castle and steal back the Black Abyss Flesh!" Lotus snapped.
"I’ll die," Red Tiger said, shaking his head.
"So this blockhead does know he can die! Then what else can we do? We have to hurry back and report to the Sacrificial Minister!" Lotus grumbled.
She then pulled a small porcelain vial from her hip pouch.
𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶
After uncorking the wooden stopper, she sprinkled some black powder from the vial onto Sacrificial Envoy Li’s corpse.
The moment the powder touched the body, it began to dissolve. In moments, the entire corpse had melted into a pool of reddish-black ooze.
Next, she took out a flint and steel and set the ooze alight.
The ooze ignited, burning fiercely. Soon, all that was left was a patch of scorched earth.
"Alright, that should leave no trace. Let’s go."
After ensuring they had left no other traces linking them to the Blood Spirit Sect, the pair used their Qinggong and departed swiftly.
Not long after the two had gone, a figure wearing a black, ghost-faced helmet and a black cloak slowly emerged from the shadows.
He watched the direction they had fled, then with a flicker of movement, he began to weave through the shadows like a phantom, quickly disappearing from sight.
...
...
...
In the days that followed, Jiang Che waited for the results of the investigation while also serving as Zhang Jinghuai’s guinea pig.
And Jiang Che, with his Rejuvenation Talent, did not disappoint Zhang Jinghuai.
He could test all sorts of medicines on him without restraint, never worrying that Jiang Che’s body couldn’t handle it.
On the rare occasion that Zhang Jinghuai accidentally administered too large a dose and Jiang Che couldn’t recover on his own, Zhang Jinghuai would quickly give him a neutralizing agent, and he would be fine in no time.
Jiang Che had been a little worried at first, but after seeing that Zhang Jinghuai really knew his stuff, he relaxed.
One day, Zhang Jinghuai decided to have Jiang Che test a new drug he had developed to replenish Qi Blood.
It was a medicine made by combining Exotic Beast Meat with highly poisonous substances.
He wanted to use the poison to amplify the Qi Blood-enhancing effects of the Exotic Beast Meat.
However, the side effects were so severe that he had never dared to test it on a human.
He had only ever used it on animals.
Unfortunately, any animal that came into contact with it dropped dead instantly.
Thus, Jiang Che was to be the first human to "enjoy" this medicine.