Chapter 62: My Lin Family Was Also Slaughtered!

As Lin Chen walked back toward the sect, many outer sect disciples cast looks of renewed dread his way.

A disagreement led straight to the slaughter of an entire family.

What a merciless individual!

Crucially, Elder Zhao's death was also inextricably linked to him.

Who would dare to provoke him?

Doing so would be tantamount to courting death!

Meanwhile, Liu Yuan headed to the Zhao residence to investigate.

More than twenty lives, without a single exception, had met a tragic end in their own home!

Had he not known in advance that the Zhao family had committed countless evils and thoroughly deserved their fate, simply witnessing this scene of complete familial annihilation would have been genuinely infuriating.

"The hand was far too ruthless."

With a complex look in his eyes, Liu Yuan sighed once more.

If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, who would believe this was the work of an eighteen-year-old youth?

Just how cold-blooded must one be to treat human lives as if they were mere blades of grass!

After leaving the Zhao estate, Liu Yuan prepared to make a trip to the Great Cang Nation to investigate the annihilation of the Lin family.

There was no help for it; with the sect master currently in seclusion, all matters great and small were being handled by their group of inner sect elders.

While Lin Chen's complete extermination of the Zhao family was undoubtedly ruthless and vicious, strictly speaking, he hadn't broken the rules.

Liu Yuan didn't want to get involved either, but with so many people in the sect, failing to investigate thoroughly would make it impossible to silence the gossiping tongues.

Since the sect master had delegated authority to them, everything required a proper explanation!

This trip to the Great Cang Nation for the investigation took a full three days.

Upon returning to the sect, a furious Liu Yuan headed straight for Lin Chen's residence.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

Liu Yuan knocked on the door, a look of annoyance on his face.

After all that exhausting dust and fatigue from the journey, he had actually arrived at an unimaginable conclusion!

The brat looked so honest and unassuming on the surface, yet his mind was ruthlessly calculating.

When Lin Chen opened the door and saw Liu Yuan, he quickly made a gesture to keep quiet. "Elder Liu, my sister just fell asleep. Let's take our conversation outside."

"Hmph, let's see how you plan to spin your excuses now."

Liu Yuan let out a cold snort.

The two of them left the courtyard and arrived at a secluded bamboo grove where no one else was around.

"Elder Liu, hasn't the matter already been settled? Why are you coming after me in such a furious rage?"

Lin Chen scratched his head, feigning complete bewilderment.

"Keep pretending, go right ahead and keep pretending!"

Liu Yuan took a deep breath and asked in an icy tone, "Let me ask you this again: how do you explain the total extermination of the Zhao family?"

"Explanation? Elder Liu, I've already made it quite clear before. Elder Zhao had a gloomy and vindictive personality; after finding out that I originated from the Lin family of the Great Cang Nation, he actually took action directly and slaughtered my entire family!"

Lin Chen's voice trembled slightly, making him look as though he were bearing boundless agony. "And what am I? Just an ordinary inner sect disciple with mediocre talent and no backing... Facing someone as vicious and heinous as Elder Zhao, what could I possibly do to him? My family was murdered, dozens of lives from top to bottom—who is going to voice their grievances?"

By the end, Lin Chen's voice involuntarily rose a notch, his emotions surging with intense agitation.

"My parents passed away long ago, and everyone in the clan treated me as their own flesh and blood. After Elder Zhao slaughtered them all, he even severed the head of my family's elder and brought it right in front of me! Faced with such fierce and ruthless intimidation, what could a powerless inner sect disciple like me possibly do?"

By the end of it, Lin Chen was practically shedding tears of grief.

"Enough!"

Liu Yuan felt his scalp tingle.

Where on earth did this brat learn such acting skills?

If he hadn't been stubborn enough to make the trip to the Great Cang Nation to investigate personally, he really would have been fooled by him.

"Lin Chen, I went to Cloud-Flocking City to investigate. You had long since broken ties with your family! The two sons of the family's grand elder, Lin Hongbin, were killed by you, and everyone in the clan viewed you as an enemy. That was the real reason you rebelled and left the family!"

Liu Yuan ground his teeth, speaking every single word with intense vexation.

Lin Chen was stunned for a brief moment; Elder Liu certainly had a strong sense of initiative to have made a special trip all the way to the Great Cang Nation.

However, his reaction was extremely quick. "In previous years, I performed countless meritorious deeds for the family and won boundless glory for them. Even though they treated me poorly later on and tried to kill me multiple times, I didn't stoop to their level. We were still a loving family after all!"

"You are truly shameless!"

Liu Yuan was incandescent with rage.

"Elder Liu, Elder Zhao wiped out my entire family; I retaliated using the exact same methods. Could there possibly be anything wrong with that?"

Lin Chen retorted with a righteous and confident expression.

"True, but the Lin family was already your mortal enemy to begin with. Given your vindictive personality, even if they hadn't died at Elder Zhao's hands, sooner or later they would have been killed by you anyway, wouldn't they?"

Liu Yuan clenched his teeth tightly and said in a deep voice.

"That still doesn't change the fact that he wiped out my entire family!"

The expression on Lin Chen's face remained entirely unchanged. "And since I retaliated using the exact same methods, what wrong did I commit?"

"Among the twenty-odd people you killed, two of them were not members of the Zhao family at all. They just happened to be visiting as guests that day!"

Liu Yuan stepped forward, pressing aggressively. "You indiscriminately slaughtered the innocent; shouldn't you face punishment for that?"

He wasn't deliberately trying to pin a crime on Lin Chen; he had simply been played by this brat twice and felt a lingering irritation in his chest that he wanted to vent.

"The Zhao family committed countless evils. Anyone who goes to visit them as a guest while knowing what kind of morals they hold cannot possibly be a good person either! Birds of a feather flock together!"

Lin Chen argued with absolute conviction. "Everyone I killed was a guilty person with a clear conscience, but what about my family? How innocent were they? Elder Zhao wiped out my entire clan, so I retaliated. What on earth was wrong with that?"

His logic was simple: no matter what you say, the fact remains that my Lin family was exterminated by Elder Zhao!

"You... you brat..."

Liu Yuan felt dark spots dancing before his eyes with rage.

How could there be such a brazen and shameless person in this world!

After a bout of retaliation like this, you didn't lose a single thing, and instead managed to cross off two enemies.

It was quite literally killing two birds with one stone!

Clearly, he had profited immensely, yet he still put on such a deeply aggrieved act.

This wretched brat truly needed a lesson.

"Hah."

Liu Yuan finally managed to calm his emotions down with great difficulty.

He sighed and said softly, "Lin Chen, I know you've experienced major ups and downs, but you must be careful. Never slaughter the innocent or stray onto the demonic path; your current mindset is genuinely dangerous."

When all was said and done, Liu Yuan was merely stubborn by nature and had no intention of deliberately making things difficult for Lin Chen.

This entire performance was merely to provide an explanation to the other disciples of the sect.

On the contrary, he thought very highly of Lin Chen!

On the very first day Lin Chen entered the sect, he had even wanted to take him on as a disciple.

It was only because Su Yuwei had rejected the idea.

"Many thanks to Elder Liu for discerning right from wrong and restoring justice to me."

Lin Chen cupped his fists, his expression solemn.

"Alright, don't put on such an act in front of me from now on, or I'm afraid I won't be able to stop myself from beating you!"

Liu Yuan waved his hand dismissively. "From this moment on, this matter is completely concluded."

Leaving the bamboo grove, Liu Yuan returned to his room, sat at his desk, and pondered for a long time before finally recording the incident in the case files.

No matter how many antecedent causes, complications, or developments there were, it all boiled down to a single sentence in the end—

Following the annihilation of his family, an inner sect disciple's act of vengeance!