Chapter 369: Reports from the Wolf Head

Cao Yun was now working on the seal within Lang Shou's ghost. His will had been completely broken after realizing what he really was. However, the seal was still well ingrained in his soul, no matter how fragmented it was. With his recent experience with soul seals, Cao Yun was able to discern many things. This Evil Qi had been conscientiously woven into a giant web. Getting rid of it without hurting the soul was as difficult as extracting the nerves of a human body without causing pain.

This Evil Qi had been created artificially. Indeed, Evil Qi was made of two things, pure Qi and remnants of lingering negative emotions, resentment, hatred, fear, pain, and many others. When it was formed naturally, there was still more Qi than emotions. Cao Yun wasn't too sure but those emotions seemed to also be some kind of deformation of the soul. Maybe they were just tiny fragments of the soul mixed with Qi. He was starting to understand that everything was made of the same substance but slightly different.

Qi was a form of this universal substance, but the souls were too. No one really agreed on the souls. Some thought that human beings only had one soul but that it was artificially subdivided into different roles, hence birthing the concepts of Hun and Po. Others believed that there were indeed different kinds of souls acting together, and communicating with one another. They were like organs. But then the first ones would claim that the organs were all contained within a body. If the souls were like organs, what was the equivalent of the body for the souls? The body itself did not seem to be an answer because the Po was responsible for the creation and growth of said body.

Those questions were not really useful in the end. Cao Yun needed to understand how they worked, not what they were, not for now at least.

Right now, he could feel that there was indeed both a difference and a similitude between Hun and Po though. But not just between them, Qi also felt similar in some more distant manner. Slowly, Cao Yun was getting convinced that everything was in fact made of the very same elusive substance. Somehow, it had gained different properties through ways Cao Yun knew nothing about. Now that he was facing a corrupted Hun, he could compare it with the corrupted Po that was the Drop of Wrath. They were closely related but also strangers to one another. The Drop of Wrath had digested the Soul Embryo of Lang Shou while Cao Yun was working on the seal within the remnants of his ghost.

This Evil Qi was special because there was almost no Qi at all. In fact, there was just enough of it to keep it from collapsing. Those lingering emotions needed Qi to endure, they were neither Death Energy nor Ghost Energy, but something in-between Qi, thoughts and soul fragments. To unravel the seal, Cao Yun had to reel the myriad of strands away from the actual Qi. But they were anchored into the soul as well.

It was just like working on his own Po of Jing. When he was working on his very soul, he could relive the moments associated with his emotions. But this Evil Qi was a mixture of thousands of fragmented emotions. There were no memories attached to those, just raw emotions. And each one was absolutely devastating. Just by feeling the strands around, Cao Yun was flooded with pain, terror, misery. Without his mind cultivation, he would have been overwhelmed very easily. Thankfully his Chamber of Medicine Field was protecting him by promoting positive emotions and rejecting negative ones.

Cao Yun spent several hours that turned into days while working on this seal. In the end, he was unsuccessful. At some point, he lost control over a single strand of Evil Qi and it sent some kind of stimulus into the entire tapestry of misery. Lang Shou's last soul fragments were completely annihilated in an instant. However, Cao Yun was not too frustrated. He had learned a lot from the experience. Besides, Lang Shou would not have been able to help him at all since he had been dead for three years already.

-

Now that the ghost matter had been resolved, Cao Yun decided to focus his attention on the documents he had found in the secret trap. They were all papers of average quality. Some were in very poor condition. When he began to read, Cao Yun realized that they were all using the same kind of code the symbols in the tunnels were. Dian Mo could help him out, but even without him, Cao Yun could decipher most of what was written.

Those were mostly written reports from the disciples of the Wolf Head Sect. But there were also documents which had been written with much more care. They had probably been written by Lang Shou himself to send to his superiors, namely the Demon King. Cao Yun was convinced that Mo Tian had not been the Demon King, just a powerful member of his organization. The real Demon King was probably still out there, planning something else.

Anyway, Cao Yun began to read. Almost immediately, he was immersed in the reports. They were almost all about Baziyun City. The most ancient ones were from five years ago. More than that, they were all describing the women of Baziyun City in great details. The Wolf Head Sect had been monitoring the city for a long time, right under Matriarch Huang and Governor Leng's noses. Among the reports, mortal women and cultivators were both monitored. They were clearly searching for very distinctive traits. Most of the reports concluded that this wasn't the woman they were looking for.

The more he was reading, the tighter Cao Yun's heart was becoming.

Then he found another report that was several decades old. He had not seen it at first as it was buried lower in the pile of papers. This one had a different handwriting.

"The Traitor made his move! He's attacked tonight. At first glance, everyone got killed. But the Traitor's forces missed an essential point. Two young children were able to run away, a boy and a girl."

If someone had read this to him, he would have thought about his own tragedy, but this report was way older than that.

"The Shui family is gone and the Traitor did not find what he was looking for. Most likely, the girl is the key he was after. But we've failed to locate her as well. We've barely seen her or the boy who took her with him."

Then, Cao Yun read a description that completely froze his blood. He had known as soon as he had begun reading, but as he was deciphering the text, the realization was dawning on him. The description of the girl was very poor, however there were a few signs as the color of her eyes, of her hair, or even a birthmark on one of her shoulders, that were clear. This woman was his mother, Cao Shui.

Like he had thought, she had escaped the massacre of her own family. Someone had been after her then and he had come back for her now. Amidst this turmoil, there was a piece of good news for Cao Yun, two actually. The first one was that he might have a relative living in peace somewhere. That boy, whoever he was, might have survived to this day. But then, the second one was that they wanted to capture his mother. There was a possibility that she was still alive. Although all the corpses had been found, he had not identified them himself. Cao Yun wanted to cling to the possibility that she had survived.

The report kept on talking about the Traitor and how he would ultimately be annihilated by the Demon King.

"Mankind will see the truth of the Demon. The Traitor failed tonight and he will fail tomorrow. The Piaolu planet will submit before the Demon King!"

Reading other reports, Cao Yun did not find any description of his mother, but she was mentioned by name. She had been on the list of potential targets. There were also a few other women with the name Shui or even the surname Shui all around the Hongchen Kingdom. Cao Yun did not know how they had pinpointed her presence in Baziyun City. Apparently, they had looked at the movements of the Traitor. So this Traitor, whoever he was, had been able to find his mother. The demonic cultivators had just been following him to prevent him from getting to her. But why? Why was he after his mother?

Finally, Cao Yun read the letter that Lang Shou had written. It was addressed to the Demon King.

"Venerable King, the Traitor has raided the household of the target. Our operatives have been found and put to the sword. We do not know whether he got the woman or not. We know that we have failed you, Venerable King. Please be magnanimous. We are ready to give our lives to fight the Traitor. Our allegiance will always be to you. Only the Venerable King can bring our human race out of the darkness of this Forsaken Dao Era.

"The Traitor did not come in person. We think that he is still weak from the great battle with the Venerable King. Although we have failed, we can confirm that Luo Jiang is in position in Yinmen City. Gu Song has already departed back for the Golden Flowery Fragrance Institute. They will be able to bring the Venerable King the treatment he needs. As our forces are regenerating, the Traitor's power is only fading away.

"Victory will be ours. Mankind will prevail!"

The Wolf Head Sect had truly been acting for the Demon King and had been behind some of the schemes of the demonic cultivators. However, it was clear that they were not behind the death of the Cao family. In fact, they were not even responsible for the death of the Shui family. But more than that, the Demon King was not behind it either. From the beginning, Cao Yun had been fighting the wrong enemy. Still, the demonic cultivators under the Demon King were an existential threat to mankind.

They wanted to finally break out of the Forsaken Dao Era by any means possible. Maybe they could indeed produce a new Sage, but the cost would be too high to imagine. How many humans would have to die agonizing deaths in order for their experiments to bring fruition?

What questioned Cao Yun now was the identity of this so-called Traitor. Was he another demonic cultivator on par with the Demon King? They had clearly fought against each other several decades ago and they still had stigmata from the fight. That almost meant that Mo Tian was really different from the Demon King. Mo Tian had not been injured at all. Otherwise, Xiao Xuefeng would have felt it right away. She would have clearly felt that he was hurt. But more than that, if he had consumed the fruit of the Heavenly Silver Peach Tree, she would have noticed right away. After all, the Heavenly Silver Peach Tree was a sacred tree of her Golden Flowery Fragrance Institute.

Although he didn't have a lot of information, this helped Cao Yun a lot. He now knew what the murderers were after. They had always been after his mother. And they had eradicated his entire family just to get to her. When he was back in Baziyun City, he would try to be certain about the body. But he couldn't even be sure whether they had wanted her dead or alive... According to what the reports said, she had always been the target, not the Shui family. Thus, they were not trying to silence her during the assault, they truly wanted her.

This news reignited a dead hope in Cao Yun. Maybe others from his family had been captured. Some bodies had been devoured by wild and demonic beasts. There was still a possibility that some corpses had been wrongly identified. As much as he didn't want to cling to false hopes, Cao Yun needed to believe that he wasn't the last one of his family. And there was maybe yet another one, that boy who had fled with his young mother.

Cao Yun would do everything he could to try and find anyone from his family, no matter how distant they were. If that boy had been as young as his mother back then, he should be around forty to fifty years old today.

As Cao Yun was reading those documents, Dian Mo was doing it too. He didn't know everything about Cao Yun, but he had seen glimpses of his memories. Indeed, each time he was working on his mind cultivation, his Po of Jing would cause memories related to anger to appear. Of course, the massacre of his family had created a lot of wrath in him. Thus, Dian Mo had seen this happen again and again before his eyes. Thus, he knew that Cao Yun's family had been completely wiped out except for him. And by reading those documents, he also recognized a few details about the woman who had given her life to allow Cao Yun to run away. It was obvious for Dian Mo that this woman had been his mother.

Since this Gu Song was also mentioned, he might have more information on all of this. Finding him and making him talk was important. From what Cao Yun knew, he originated from the Subei Province. He would need to check with the Myriad Cherry Blossom Hall first, but this destination seemed to be the right one for his investigation.

Finally, there was the question of who this Traitor was. Considering the name, it would make sense for him to be a former demonic cultivator who had betrayed the Demon King. But Cao Yun had doubts in his heart. Those doubts were very dark. When he thought about a powerful cultivator who could go toe-to-toe with a late Spirit Warrior - which was probably the Demon King's cultivation level - Cao Yun had only a handful of names in head. Matriarch Huang and Sect Leader Xuan were not injured at all. Thus, he only had one possibility left. Of course, maybe another late Spirit Warrior was hidden. After all, both Mo Tian and the Demon King were late Spirit Warriors who had hidden themselves from the public.

When he read those reports though, Cao Yun was forced to entertain the possibility. Could this Traitor be Emperor Weide himself?