CHAPTER 103 (2): SUSPICIONS

"Don't get all sarcastic with me!" Yin Shengong yelled. "Am I not correct in my assessment of the situation?"

All of a sudden, Mu Linyuan was struck by a sense of powerlessness, and he slumped down in his chair as he sighed, "Fine. In that case, all three of us are Protectionists as well. You should kill us as well."

"What's that supposed to mean? Are you rebuking me?!" Yin Shengong roared in a furious voice.

Mu Linyuan heaved a dejected sigh, and in this moment, he felt truly disappointed, so much so that he didn't want to speak anymore.

Qian Sanjiang and Hou Fang also had their heads lowered in silence, and the atmosphere in the room had become extremely tense.

Yin Shengong was becoming more and more enraged and agitated by the second.

"Say something!"

"I don't dare to speak."

"You have to speak! That's an order!"

"If I speak, you'll be angry."

"I won't! Go on now!"

"Are you sure you want to hear what I have to say, Pope Yin? It may not be to your liking."

"Let me hear it!"

Mu Linyuan immediately sat up straight in his chair again, and he looked ready to put his life on the line as he said, "I don't know how you've managed to convince yourself that Night Demon could be a mole from the Protectionists, but let's entertain that theory for a moment. When we first met Night Demon, he was still only a Warrior.

“Is it really plausible that the Protectionists placed their hopes in a Warrior to successfully infiltrate our church? Also, before we went to meet him, no one knew that the four of us would be visiting Green Wave City. Even Sun Yuan was caught completely unaware, is that not correct? Are these not all objective facts?"

"Correct," Yin Shengong replied with a nod as he pondered this sequence of events.

"If that's still not enough to prove that Night Demon isn't a mole, then how about the Five Spirit Parasite?" Mu Linyuan asked. "If he really were a mole from the other side, would he not already be long dead by now?"

An awkward look appeared on Yin Shengong's face.

Earlier, the more he thought about Hai Wuliang's imminent demise, the more agitated and uneasy he had become, and as a result, he had completely forgotten about the matter of the Five Spirit Parasite.

This was a knockout punch from Mu Linyuan, one that left him scratching his nose in a sheepish silence.

"Have you lost your capacity for rational thought because you're afraid of what's happened to Hai Wuliang? How could you suspect your own disciple when he's done so much for you? Maybe if Night Demon has already reached the Sovereign tier and possesses the power to try and usurp you, then perhaps these concerns would be valid, but right now, he's only a Lord! This is... It's..."

Mu Linyuan was at a loss for words, but Qian Sanjiang swooped in to save the day, finishing Mu Linyuan's sentence for him as he said, "It's a little absurd that you would think this, Pope Yin."

"Piss off! Get out of my sight!" Yin Shengong snapped.

Of course, Qian Sanjiang didn't actually leave. He was very invested in this matter, and there was no way that he could leave now. Thus, he put on an apologetic smile and remained in his chair.

Yin Shengong glowered at him for a moment, then turned his gaze back to Mu Linyuan as he prompted, "Continue!"

"Let's then think about the missions that Night Demon completed. Were any of them easy? Think about what cultivation base he was at before taking part in the Parasite Ascension Project! In order to reach the General tier, he was all but sleeping in the spirit qi gravity cultivation chambers! Do I need to tell you how dangerous that is?

“Even if we set aside the ease or difficulty with which he completed those missions, which one of them wasn't assigned to him by us? How is he wrong for following orders? If we didn't assign him all these missions, he'd still be studying in White Cloud Warrior Academy right now, would he not?"

"I suppose," Yin Shengong reluctantly conceded.

"What do you mean I suppose? Don't try to deny it just because you're embarrassed! You instructed him to go to the Hall of Protectionists, and you ordered him to establish a branch helm. You told him to attack the branch helms of the other factions, you implicitly told him to find a backer, and even in the wake of the recent attack, Night Demon didn't actually know who the culprit was.

“It was only after you told him that it was Hai Wuliang that he instructed his subordinates to report Hai Wuliang in their letters, and even then, it was only with your report that Hai Wuliang was brought to his knees!"

Yin Shengong cleared his throat with an awkward expression.

At this point, Mu Linyuan had well and truly driven his point home, leaving Yin Shengong utterly embarrassed.

"Yet after all of this, you say that Night Demon is suspicious? That he's a mole?" Mu Linyuan exclaimed with a bewildered expression. "I simply don't understand! He didn't even know who did it. It was only after you told him that he told his subordinates to include Hai Wulianig in their letters. That's the sequence of events, is it not?

“In order to vindicate themselves, they pinned the blame for everyone else that they killed on Hai Wuliang as well, but that's only to be expected, is it not? In fact, I daresay you would reprimand Night Demon had he not capitalized on such a golden opportunity! From there, the clans of the main church banded together to bury Hai Wuliang!

“The entire chain of events is extremely clear-cut, I simply don't understand what Night Demon did to deserve your suspicion!"

Mu Linyuan was truly going all-out here, both for Night Demon's sake and for Yin Shengong.

In Mu Linyuan's eyes, even though the One Heart Church was currently in a very passive state, the future was extremely bright with such a shrewd pope at the helm and an unprecedentedly bright rising star in the form of Night Demon.

Perhaps someday, the One Heart Church could even become a first-rank church, but if such a bright future were to be ruined in a moment of baseless paranoia from Yin Shengong, then Mu Linyuan would regret not saying anything for the rest of his life.

"I suppose you're right," Yin Shengong conceded with an awkward expression.

"I am right!" Mu Linyuan insisted. "This all boils down to the fact that Night Demon has taken down someone that was once your equal, and that has instilled fear in your heart. You're afraid that you'll be next, that your disciple will dethrone you and take your place!"

Mu Linyuan was already going too far here, but he was truly willing to put his life on the line here, and given that he had been friends with Yin Shengong for centuries, he felt like he had both the right and obligation to say this.

Sure enough, Yin Shengong's fuse was instantly lit.

"Bullshit! I'm afraid of my disciple dethroning me? That's utter nonsense! If he truly had the ability to take my place, then I would gladly surrender my position to him! Why would I fear something like that? You think I care that

much about my position as pope?"

The three elders collectively gave a cold chuckle.

Indeed, you clearly don't care about your position as pope at all! In fact, you care so little about it that you were on the verge of killing your Lord tier disciple!

"What the hell are you three chuckling about?!"

Yin Shengong had also come to realize that he had been excessively paranoid, and he had to hide his embarrassment with rage.

"Don't you know how loving and protective I am of my disciple?!"

The three elders rolled their eyes in unison.

They knew what Yin Shengong was like. Once he became overcome with paranoia, he would kill even his own mother in a heartbeat.

At this point, Yin Shengong's suspicions had mostly been assuaged, and he began pacing back and forth as he said, "Even so, it's still not right that Night Demon has only been killing church members."

Mu Linyuan had never felt so speechless in his life.

"He's an undercover agent, Pope Yin! An undercover agent! You sent him to infiltrate the Hall of Protectionists, yet you want him to kill Protectionists? In that case, you may as well get him to come back to our One Heart Church so he can make killing Protectionists his actual job!"

"Even so, he can't just get away with not killing even a single person from the other side!" Yin Shengong protested. "Even if you try to join a group of bandits, a demonstration of loyalty has to be made, let alone our One Heart Church!"

Mu Linyuan felt as if his head were about to explode.

"Is a Five Spirit Parasite not sufficient as a demonstration of loyalty?"

"No!"

At this point, it had become abundantly clear to Yin Shengong that he had completely overreacted, but he still had to argue his point in order to save face.

Furthermore, he firmly believed that this really was a valid cause for concern. No matter how much he trusted Night Demon, even if the latter were his biological son, he had to put him through the baptism of killing the enemy!

"But Night Demon can't kill any Protectionists right now! He's only just become a gold star administrator! Is he supposed to just let all that hard work go to waste?"

Mu Linyuan was practically wailing in despair at this point.

"I'll think of a way around that," Yin Shengong said. "Of course I can't instruct him to kill someone now, but I'll personally attend to this matter once the lockdown on our headquarters is lifted."