Xiao spoke with an intimidating smile, "Who are you exactly, and why did you come to the village? Know this. if I find out you're lying, I will kill you."
Yan's expression didn't change; he showed the same fear as before, which made Xiao suspect he could be acting, but he chose not to act on this instinct just yet.
"You have to believe me! I'm innocent in all this, and I don't know what you mean about coming to the village. You have to believe I'm the real Yan," Yan said, sounding desperate.
Xiao didn't buy the act for a second.
"Oh? Then I guess you won't mind if I check for myself," Xiao replied, reaching his hand toward Yan's head.
Yan maintained the pretense of innocence just until Xiao's hand made contact with his forehead. At that moment, Xiao opened his spiritual sea, a risky technique that allows one to see into another's spiritual consciousness. However, doing so also leaves one's own spiritual sea vulnerable to attack.
Xiao remained unfazed by the danger because Xiao knew that Yan didn't have his spiritual sea open so he couldn't defend against attacks even if he tried.
The moment his spiritual sea opened, he shot a ball of qi directly into Yan's spiritual sea and immediately closed his own, minimizing exposure.
The effect was instantaneous. Yan screamed in agony.
"Aaahhh! Stop! Please, make it stop!" Yan begged, struggling to clutch his head, but the restraints kept him from moving.
Xiao didn't release the ball of qi, allowing it to run rampant inside Yan's spiritual sea for nearly a minute before finally withdrawing it.
As Xiao retracted his qi, he noticed something peculiar. 'Is my qi… purer now?' he thought, confused. Exhausting one's qi doesn't purify it upon replenishment because if that were the case, everyone's qi would become incredibly pure over time, which would break the natural balance.
Still, Xiao put the mystery aside for now. After withdrawing his qi from Yan's spiritual sea, he resumed his interrogation.
"Now, let's try this again. Who are you, and why did you come to this village?" Xiao's voice held no fear, only cold determination, as if ready to make Yan suffer again if he didn't cooperate.
Terrified of enduring more pain, Yan quickly responded.
"I'm Lin Jing, and I came to the village because I needed a route to the Veil of Thorn Forest, which lies just beyond this place. Please, let me go. I swear I won't cause you any more trouble."
Xiao ignored the last plea and instead began to think about why someone would want to go to that forest. He also recalled Meilin's actions and wondered if she had lied about what she was doing there. 'Why would her master really be in that place?' he mused.
But he knew he would get the answers he sought from Jing, the one who had possessed Yan's body.
"What's in that forest?" Xiao asked, his curiosity piqued, especially regarding Meilin's true motives.
Jing hesitated, visibly sweating, clearly reluctant to speak. Xiao didn't let up, releasing a faint pressure of qi to frighten him.
Sensing the threat, Jing sighed and finally answered, "I don't know exactly. It could be anything, from a ruin to an ancestral power. But what I do know is that whatever's hidden in that forest, if someone manages to obtain it, they could very well be on their way to becoming the strongest in this world."
Xiao, now suspicious, pressed further. "How do you know this?"
Jing sighed again before replying, "I was sent here by my sect."
"What sect?"
"The Sheanmen Sect."
Xiao frowned in confusion. 'Sheanmen? I've never heard of that sect—not even from the memories of this body,' he thought.
"Is your sect unknown or something?" Xiao asked.
"Well, we're on the verge of becoming an orthodox sect, but for now, we're still considered unorthodox. Which… kind of explains why I'm a demon," Jing admitted, trying to gain favor with Xiao by offering a bit of humility.
Realizing he was getting sidetracked, Xiao redirected the conversation to the critical matter.
"Why did you possess Yan?"
Jing's expression turned sorrowful as he began to explain.
"If you really want to know, there's no point in hiding it. I came to the village just to get some rest and food, but there's something you may have noticed and that was a strange altar in the middle of the village. That thing isn't good. It was controlling the people, including me, for some reason.
No matter how hard I tried to leave, it kept drawing me back to the village, influencing me at times. And that's dangerous for someone like me who is a demon because it could make my emotions go out of control.
It even made me feel guilt toward the villagers, pushing me to help them. By the time I realized what the altar was doing, it was already too late for me to save myself.
I'm guessing you thought that what they called the Infinity Hallway was some kind of treasure brought by a demon. But that assumption would be wrong."
Jing paused, giving Xiao time to absorb what he was saying before continuing.
"The so-called 'Infinity Hallway' is nothing more than a connection to the altar. You're probably wondering why I had to possess Yan.
Well, it's because my previous body's life force was depleted, and Yan was the only one I could possess or it could be the alter controlling me but still. His body had some resistance to the altar, which, I'm not sure if you've realized yet."
Xiao, who had been listening quietly, decided it was the right time to ask a question.
"So, when did you possess Yan?" he asked.
Jing chuckled. "A few moments before you met me. The altar had finally made its move, trying to use me as its main source of power. I'm guessing you found Yan walking away from the Zhu family house, right? Well, at that point, the altar was already controlling him. It started when he touched that pendant and it was made from the altar's essence."
Xiao's eyes widened for a moment. He recalled how the broken pendant had reacted when touched, and how it caused the altar in the patriarch's room to explode.
Before Jing could continue, Xiao interrupted, "Who was the demon that Zhao kept talking about and the one he believed was all-powerful?"
Jing laughed again. "Zhao? That fool didn't even realize he was being controlled by someone who was already under the altar's control. He was too dim-witted to see the truth and believed everything that happened without question."
Xiao thought to himself, 'He was pretty dumb, easily manipulated from what I saw of him.'
Xiao then asked the last question that had been on his mind.
"Why did everyone go toward the altar on the day of the anniversary?"
Jing's expression darkened. "I don't know. And I'm not lying to you just for the sake of it. When I was in that village, all my actions and thoughts were being controlled. It's a mystery to me how you weren't affected and how I was able to leave.
It seems that whatever you did to the ritual, which affected the altar, is what set me free for now and whatever you did I'm curious about but then again, you must have some secret protection you're not revealing."
Xiao pondered this for a moment. 'I don't know what kept me from being controlled either, but it's certainly a good thing.' He considered whether the Yang family medallion could have been the reason. After all, Meilin had passed through the village without being affected.
Xiao made a mental note to be even more cautious in the future. He finally understood why the village was called the Lost Soul Village—it truly was a place of lost souls.