Chapter 100 Perfect Concealment

Chapter 100 Perfect Concealment

“Not bad.” Gu Lianyong looked at Wang Sumo: “We’ve been trapped here all these years, and we’ve been thinking about the purpose of the person behind us who led us to this secret room.”

"After much thought, there's only one possibility—the other party knows this is an extremely dangerous technique, and that it requires constant monitoring with different medications. So it's very likely that no one has ever successfully tried this technique before, and we don't know what the outcome would be if they continued practicing it."

"The other party must have spent a lot of effort to find this technique. They don't want to give it up, but they also don't want to take any risks themselves, so they thought of having someone test it. But one or two people simply can't test it. It requires many people with martial arts knowledge, of varying quality, to test it."

"The other party set a trap to lure these skilled people from the martial arts world, trapping them here. Starting with the sweetness of martial arts manuals, they gradually made everyone addicted, believing and relying on this treasure land left by predecessors, which had been buried and suddenly discovered. Because they had tasted the sweetness and made progress, when they later discovered the techniques in the deepest part of the secret room, they skipped rational judgment and directly started to use them."

“This was a carefully orchestrated trap,” Gu Lianyong said, his voice choked with emotion. “We’ve been trapped here for years, without seeing the light of day or a glimmer of hope. We once thought that escaping behind that mechanism would give us a way out, but we gradually realized that even those who managed to get out might not survive.”

"The mechanism suddenly opened today, and everyone fled together, including those who had lost their minds. These eyes are already afraid of light, but they still want to chase the light. But the surroundings are pitch black and desolate, without even a single house, completely different from the Bewitching Town we had been before, as if it were a place we had never been before."

"We were the only ones who still had our senses intact. We were scattered by those irrational monsters, and the surroundings have become the way I remember them. But apart from you, this place seems lifeless, and no one else has ever been here... Has something happened?"

Gu Lianyong had been trapped here for more than ten years and had long since lost track of what the Enchanted Town had become.

Upon hearing Gu Lianyong's question, Wang Sumo, the old man, and even the old man driving the carriage and Jiang Yutang fell silent. No one knew how to tell him that in recent years, the Bewitching Town had become, in the eyes of outsiders, a place teeming with ghosts and monsters, devoid of any living beings, a place where no one dared approach…

In the brief silence, Gu Lianyong seemed to have guessed something.

In the end, Wang Sumo briefly mentioned it in two sentences.

In his shock, Gu Lianyong realized that more than ten or twenty years had passed.

There is no time in the dark cage.

There was only endless darkness, and a glimmer of hope within that darkness...

“When we first arrived in Bewitching Town, we thought it had been used as a hiding place for disaster relief grain; but now,” Wang Sumo said in a deep voice, “it must have been a long time before it was used to hide disaster relief grain. But with so many twists and turns in Bewitching Town, the person who could build such a clear and safe grain transport ramp must have been the same person.”

"He first set a trap to lure you to Bewitching Town, using you as a test subject for his martial arts techniques. To prevent others from knowing about the strangeness of the place, he deliberately spread rumors about ghosts and monsters in Bewitching Town throughout the martial arts world. Although some people came after that, no one ever left. The only person who did leave went mad, which only confirmed that ghosts and monsters haunted Bewitching Town. Since then, Bewitching Town has become completely desolate and deserted."

Wang Sumo continued, "This happened outside of Bewitching Town. Several years later, within Bewitching Town, he experimented with various medicines until one person learned the technique and recovered, thus achieving his goal. After that, Bewitching Town became a place for hiding disaster relief grain..."

After Wang Sumo finished speaking, the whole story became clear.

Wang Sumo asked softly, "What kind of cultivation technique is this that's worth doing all this for?"

Wang Sumo was completely baffled.

This treacherous force hidden behind the scenes not only used fellow martial artists to test their skills with insidious methods, but also colluded with the imperial court to participate in the concealment of disaster relief grain.

“No wonder Old Master Weng said he felt someone had rallied marginal sects like the Eagle Gate and Phoenix Yang Gate together, and with all this behind the scenes, they must have quite a few henchmen,” Wang Sumo sighed. “To go through so much trouble, this technique must be incredibly powerful. He already knew how to master it back then. With so many years gone by, the entire martial arts world must be in danger…”

After Wang Sumo finished speaking, silence fell over the surroundings once again.

The old man, who hadn't said much until now, suddenly spoke up: "No, he didn't master it back then."

The old man's words once again broke the silence in everyone's hearts.

"Old man?" Wang Sumo asked in surprise.

The old man took a deep breath: "When Zhu Yu told me about the Kunlun thumb ring, he mentioned the person who held it—that person wore a human skin mask, and beneath the mask was a red and ferocious face..."

ah? ! !

Everyone was shocked. This...this is...?!

The old man continued, "Zhu Yu's description of this person is quite profound and unfathomable. He has a perverse personality and ruthless methods, just like the person Gu Lianyong described. If I'm not mistaken, he is the one who set up a trap in Bewitching Town to lure martial arts practitioners to this place to search for treasure, and then used these people to test their skills."

"This set of skills must be dangerous, so I dare not be careless. It wasn't until someone actually learned the skills and healed himself after several years that I believed it and then practiced the skills. But there must still be problems with this set of skills. After he finished practicing, he also turned into a red-faced monster, so he always wears a human skin mask on his face and is still going around going into tombs to look for things."

Gu Lianyong was slightly surprised: "Senior, what do you mean..."

The old man looked at him and said, "Yes, this technique is not perfect. Perhaps the fact that he was the only one who could heal himself made him think he was safe, but after actually practicing it, he found that something was wrong."

Gu Lianyong suddenly realized: "It's possible, because a long time has passed since then, but the years are hard to calculate in the dark room. I only know that a long time after the self-healing person disappeared, a new person was put into the dark room again."

The surrounding area: "!!!"

“That makes sense.” The old man’s mind became clearer: “He set up the trap to lure you to the Bewitching Town twenty years ago, and the man Zhu Yu mentioned, who was overjoyed when he discovered the other half of the remaining manual in the underground palace, that was ten years later…”

The old man looked at Gu Lianyong and said, "In other words, ten years later, he found the other half of the martial arts manual. He was eager to know if this other half of the manual could reverse his red face and ferocity, so he put in new people again and let them practice the complete manual."

It must be said that after the old man's explanation, everyone around gasped in shock.

Wang Sumo also said in astonishment, "Yes, just now at the piranha site, the bloodstains varied in depth. The newest bloodstains were left by the group of people from ten years ago. They realized something was wrong, but couldn't escape, so they could only write a warning in blood on the wall for future generations..."

Wang Sumo asked nervously, "What about those new recruits who were later put into the dark room? Did they complete their training?"

Gu Lianyong said in a deep voice, "We have been in the dark room for too long and know very well how to ensure our safety, so we did not get close to them. Actually, we did, but you should find it hard to understand the fervor of these people who were originally desperate when they suddenly discovered a peerless secret manual."

"Have any of them mastered it?" Wang Sumo asked.

Gu Lianyong nodded: "It should be."

That means the person behind it should have also mastered the skills...

"What kind of technique is that?" Old Master Qu didn't actually have much hope.

Gu Lianyong thought carefully about how to describe it, and then said, "It's strange. We saw it from a distance and didn't dare to get too close. We only saw two people. I remember one of them. He was a fat man with a birthmark on his neck, so I recognized him. But later I saw a similar birthmark on another person's neck, but that person had become a tall and thin man."

Marrow Cleansing Method?

Wang Sumo was surprised.

When Gu Lianyong first mentioned that some of the red-faced people had changed in appearance and figure, she was indeed surprised; but this time, she was quite certain that it was the marrow cleansing method that Zhao Tong had mentioned, which could change a person's meridians, appearance, and even figure!

You can't be wrong!

Gu Lianyong continued, "There have been other red-faced monsters like this before, but I don't know if it's because their techniques are incomplete, but they didn't appear often, and they were all very ferocious and painful. But this time, after these people changed their appearance and body shape, some of them were overjoyed, as if they had found a treasure; while others suddenly became powerless, couldn't accept it, and ended their own lives."

Grandpa Weng and Jiang Yutang were both shocked. What kind of technique was this? It was far too bizarre!

Wang Sumo understood: "This is the Marrow Cleansing Technique, which can completely change a person's meridians, appearance, and physique. This change might reshape the meridians, turning a useless person into a martial arts genius with exceptional aptitude; but it's also like a high-stakes gamble, turning someone with martial arts aptitude into someone with absolutely no talent..."

this!

The old man looked at her and asked, "Girl, where did you hear that?"

Wang Sumo thought for a moment, but didn't mention Zhao Tong: "I saw it in a book. I read it when I was bored, and this part left a particularly deep impression on me. I never expected that I would actually run into him."

"The Marrow Cleansing Technique?" Gu Lianyong scoffed, as if suddenly enlightened, his understanding becoming crystal clear: "I heard that the Marrow Cleansing Technique has been lost for over a hundred years, I didn't expect someone to actually find a fragment. But it's just a fragment, I don't dare to try it myself, so I set up this scheme to bring so many people here!"

Gu Lianyong laughed, but felt increasingly bitter and ironic: "So that's how it is! We've been kept here for twenty years, all to benefit others!"

Jiang Yutang wondered, "Since the Marrow Cleansing Method is risky, and we only know that it will completely change a person's meridians, face, and appearance, but we don't know whether it will change things for the better or for the worse, then why take this risk?"

Weng and Shen Sheng said, "This means that either there is no situation worse than not changing it, or the marrow cleansing has a use that we don't know about, and this use is what he cares about most."

Old Master Weng's words did indeed remind everyone, but once the method of marrow cleansing is revealed, the entire martial arts world will likely be plunged into another bloody storm.

The old man looked at Gu Lianyong: "Is the martial arts technique in the secret room still there?"

If it were still around, it would definitely become a source of trouble!

This caused a catastrophe and conflict in the martial arts world.

Gu Lianyong shook his head: "They're gone. Like the person who healed himself before, those who successfully cleansed their marrow among this group also disappeared into the dark room very quickly. From then on, the cultivation techniques on the three walls of the dark room were completely destroyed."

Grandpa Weng sighed softly, "That means you've mastered it and can't stay here anymore."

For a moment, everyone fell silent, unsure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing!

A thought suddenly flashed through Wang Sumo's mind: "This happened ten years ago. That means the person hiding behind the scenes, with a completely new identity, a completely different appearance, and a different physique, has perfectly disappeared into the underworld. Perhaps he is among the people we know, but no one will ever know him again. He has perfectly escaped and become someone else..."

After Wang Sumo finished speaking, everyone felt a chill run down their spines.

[Author's Note]

See you tomorrow, we're leaving town tomorrow!