My cultivation disguise has been exposed by Xiao Sizi.

Little Sizi cheered excitedly, jumped off the stool, and hugged Li Chen's leg, jumping and hopping around.

"From now on, they won't be able to bully the people of our Great Tang anymore, right?"

"Absolutely."

Li Chen lowered his head, smugly hummed, and rubbed Xiao Sizi's head, "Those bad guys who would bully others in the future have all been sent to the afterlife by your sixteenth brother, me."

"Salvation?" Little Sizi tilted her head, somewhat unfamiliar with the term.

"Salvation is sending them to meet the King of Hell."

"Let them never have the chance to be human again in this life, the next life, and the life after that, and never be able to do bad things again for all eternity."

Li Chen explained with a smile.

but.

The voice just fell.

The smile on Li Chen's face suddenly froze without warning.

A cool breeze swept through the backyard, swirling up two withered yellow leaves that rolled past his feet.

Li Chen's eyes twitched violently twice, as if something in his mind had suddenly snapped.

An indescribable sense of annoyance and embarrassment instantly shot up my spine and to the top of my head.

Holy crap.

Li Chen mentally uttered a string of swear words.

A ritual to deliver the deceased?

What kind of salvation is this?!

He suddenly slapped his forehead with a loud crack, startling the little ox clinging to his leg.

"That was too hasty! Absolutely too hasty!"

Li Chen gritted his teeth and cursed himself in his mind.

During his month on that island, he was preoccupied with slashing sword energy and blasting with lightning, enjoying the physical impact of each strike and the thrill of venting his anger.

He hacked people to pieces, blasted the earth's veins into deep craters, and burned the buildings to the ground.

but.

He forgot to perform rituals to annihilate the remaining souls!

As a powerful cultivator at the Golden Core stage, how could one kill without destroying the spirit and soul? This is simply a grave taboo among all military strategies in the cultivation world!

When a mortal is killed, their soul leaves their body. If they harbor too much resentment before death, they will surely become a wandering ghost, or even condense into a vengeful spirit.

Those Japanese must have died with resentment in their hearts. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of their vengeful souls piled up on that wasteland. Heaven knows what disgusting monsters they might breed.

What if the reincarnation mechanism in the underworld has a loophole, allowing these bastards to be reincarnated with resentment, and then come out to cause trouble again hundreds of years later?

"Still too young..."

Li Chen looked up and sighed deeply, his face full of heartache and indignation.

What is the standard killing procedure in the cultivation world?

Murder, burn the body, scatter the ashes, destroy the soul, and finally erase all traces of the other party's existence.

Only by following this assembly line can we truly eradicate the problem at its root; the situation of the weeds sprouting again after the spring breeze must never be allowed to happen.

As a result, he completely forgot the most crucial step of "soul annihilation," leaving behind a ground full of potentially mutated, wandering ghosts.

If this gets back to my fellow cultivators, I'll be laughed at! I'll be too embarrassed to say I'm a cultivator when I go out and greet people.

"Your Highness, what's wrong?"

Seeing Li Chen's face, which looked as if he had swallowed a whole dead toad, Qin Wan'er quickly put down her fan and stood up with concern.

"Did you suffer some hidden injury at sea that aggravated your internal energy? Should Wan'er brew some medicine for you?"

"I wasn't injured, but I feel that my professional skills still need improvement."

Li Chen waved his hand irritably, slumped back into the rocking chair, grabbed a palm-leaf fan next to him, and fanned himself vigorously a few times, trying to dispel the depression in his heart.

He couldn't explain the mistake of destroying the soul to Qin Wan'er and Xiao Sizi; it would be too embarrassing to say it.

He could only force himself to regain his composure and steer the conversation back to his own glorious and great image.

He cleared his throat twice, pinched Xiao Sizi's cheek, and forced a bright smile.

"In short, your sixteenth brother has become a force to be reckoned with this time, and they don't even have a chance to turn things around."

Li Chen raised his eyebrows and looked at his younger sister with anticipation.

"How about it? Holding two watermelon knives, cutting through enemy lines seven times, isn't your sixteenth brother's style cool?"

"So handsome! Sixteenth Brother is the most handsome! The most handsome man in the whole world!"

Little Sizi answered loudly and enthusiastically, her eyes curving into two cute little crescents.

Hearing this undisguised praise, Li Chen felt a little better.

He smiled smugly, just about to pick up another piece of chilled melon to moisten his throat, which had become a little dry from bragging.

Just then.

Little Sizi held her chubby chin in her hands, tilted her head to the side, and slightly furrowed her delicate eyebrows.

She seemed to be thinking very seriously and rigorously about a huge academic flaw.

then.

She stared into Li Chen's eyes and spoke in a clear, crisp voice, as clear as a silver bell and as pure as if it were unadulterated.

"But it's Sixteenth Brother."

Little Sizi pointed to his big eyes and blinked twice.

"You just said that you chopped for a whole month without even blinking."

"Won't your eyes get dry if you don't blink for a month?"

Xiao Sizi's face was full of sincere thirst for knowledge.

"Won't it hurt?"

The wind in the courtyard seemed to have completely stopped at that moment.

A withered yellow willow leaf twirled and slowly drifted down onto the bluestone slab, making a barely perceptible rustling sound.

Little Sizi cupped her chubby chin in her hands, her large, dark eyes sparkling with a pure, sincere, and inquisitive light. She stared intently at Li Chen, awaiting a rigorous answer.

Qin Wan'er stood to the side, holding a cup of freshly brewed tea.

She bit her lower lip hard, her cheeks turning bright red, and her shoulders began to heave uncontrollably.

She tried desperately to maintain her composure, but all her composure crumbled instantly in the face of Xiao Sizi's soul-searching question.

"Pfft—"

Qin Wan'er quickly turned around, her back to Li Chen, the tray in her hands trembling as if it were being tossed about in the wind.

She covered her mouth tightly, but muffled laughter still escaped through her fingers.