The more Xie Lian thought about it, the more confused and complicated he felt. He asked, “General, why did Ban Yue Imperial Master open the gates and lead the army to massacre the city?”

Unexpectedly, Ke Mo said, "You killed my brother. I will not answer you. I will fight you!"

San Lang said, "I killed him, he didn't do it. You can answer him and then fight me."

“…”

Xie Lian thought, this is so reasonable that there is no way to refute it. Ke Mo said angrily: "You are all the helpers hired by that bitch, you are all the same!"

Xie Lian immediately said, “General Ke Mo, you must have misunderstood something. We originally came to this desert to eliminate Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor. How could we be the helpers she invited?”

When Ke Mo heard that he came to eliminate Ban Yue State Master, he fell silent. After a while, he said, "If you were not sent by her, why did you kill my brothers? Only she would want to do this!"

Xie Lian reasoned with him: “Isn’t it because you threw us down that we had no choice but to protect ourselves?”

Ke Mo was furious and said, “Nonsense! I didn’t mean to throw you down at all! I clearly caught you just now, and it was you who insisted on jumping down!”

“…”

There was really no way to respond to this. Xie Lian was almost confused by him, so he could only say, “Well, even if we weren’t thrown down, someone else would have been thrown down. We can’t just watch this happen. You’re cannibalizing people.”

Ke Mo seemed to feel hatred when he thought about it, and said, "I was made to eat people because of that bitch!"

It seems that he really hated Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor. Xie Lian said, "General, we are all trapped in this pit now. You should stop cursing and think of a way to get out. What is going on with Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor?"

Ke Mo said coldly: "You two are so cunning and despicable. If you attack me together, I won't be able to defeat you. But I won't answer any more questions from you."

Xie Lian felt a little depressed, rubbed his brows, and said, “I only slapped you once. Really just once.”

He didn't mind being called mean and cunning. If the situation was critical, let alone two against one, he wouldn't be ashamed to let a hundred people beat one person, so who would fight you one against one? But just now, Sanlang was clearly thinking that he had the upper hand, and he also told Xie Lian not to fight, but Ke Mo seemed to think that he could beat him alone. Xie Lian was really depressed for him. Sanlang was not depressed at all, and said cheerfully: "Well, I beat him. What do you think?"

Ke Mo was still stubborn and said, "You two just teamed up to beat me up, and now you teamed up to criticize me. This is too despicable. I won't answer you."

He was extremely uncooperative, but Xie Lian was not in a hurry. Judging from Ke Mo's personality, it should be relatively easy to persuade him. Take your time. There will be no problem. However, San Lang was not very patient. He said leisurely, "For your brother, you'd better answer him."

Ke Mo said, "You have already killed them. Don't try to threaten me with them."

Sanlang said: "He is dead, but the body is still there."

Ke Mo seemed unable to lie still, and asked cautiously, “What do you want?”

San Lang smiled and said, "Then I have to ask you, what do you want?"

Just by listening to the voice, Xie Lian could already imagine the way he narrowed his eyes when he said this: “Do you want them to be healthy in the afterlife, or do you want them to be a pool of blood when they are born?”

Ke Mo was stunned at first, then he realized what he meant. He seemed to explode and roared, “You?!”

The Banyue people attached great importance to funeral rituals. They believed that the appearance of the deceased's body would determine their appearance in the afterlife. For example, if one died with one arm missing, then they would be born with one arm in the next life. If the body at the bottom of the pit was really crushed into a pool of blood, wouldn't it be worse than not having any afterlife?

Judging from the attitude and actions of General Ke Mo just now, he is a very pure Banyue person. These customs and ideas must be deeply rooted in his heart, and he values ​​these "brothers" very much. Using this to threaten him is not a bad idea. Sure enough, Ke Mo held his breath for a while at the other end of the darkness, suppressing his anger. After a long while, he finally said helplessly: "Don't touch the bodies of my brothers! They are all brave and good soldiers. It is unfortunate that they have stayed in this sinner pit for so many years. I don't know if it is a relief for them to be killed by you today. But their bodies should never be insulted like this again."

After a pause, he continued, "Are you really here to kill that bitch?"

Xie Lian said in a gentle voice, “I am not lying. As the saying goes, knowing yourself and knowing your enemy will lead to victory in every battle. Outsiders know very little about the deeds of Ban Yue Imperial Preceptor, so it is difficult to know where to start if we want to deal with her. But General Ke Mo, since you have worked with her before, you should be able to give us some pointers.”

Perhaps it was because they had a common enemy, Ban Yue State Master, that made him feel a sense of solidarity against the enemy. Or perhaps it was because he had fallen into an abyss from which he could not climb out. Sitting on the pile of corpses of his soldiers, he seemed to have temporarily put away his intention to attack the murderer and said, "Don't you know why she opened the door and let the Central Plains people in to destroy the country? Because she just wanted to go against us. She hates us! She hates Ban Yue State!"

Xie Lian asked, “What do you mean by Half Moon Imperial Master…”

Ke Mo corrected, "Demon!"

It seemed that he was no longer willing to acknowledge that the black-clothed girl was the country’s national teacher. Xie Lian said, “Okay, demon. What do you mean she hates you? If she hates you, how did she become the national teacher?”

Amid Ke Mo's words, which were punctuated with curses, Xie Lian finally understood the general context.

The Ban Yue State Master was born to a Ban Yue woman and a Central Plains man. In this border area, the people of the two countries hated each other, and this interracial couple had a very difficult life. After a few years, the Central Plains man could no longer bear this kind of life, so he left the border and returned to the Central Plains. Although the two separated by agreement, the Ban Yue woman died of depression not long after.

They left behind a six or seven-year-old daughter, who was left alone to wander the streets and grow up hungry. The couple was looked down upon, and so were their offspring. The Ban Yue people were all tall, and both men and women considered being strong and lively to be beautiful. This girl was a mixed-race girl, so she looked very thin and weak among the children of the Ban Yue people. As a result, she was often bullied since she was a child. Gradually, her personality became more and more gloomy and eccentric. The children of the Ban Yue people would not play with her, but some children from the Central Plains were willing to pay attention to her.

When the girl was twelve years old, a riot broke out on the border, and the two armies fought again. After the battle, the girl disappeared. She didn't have many relatives and friends in Ban Yue Country, and no one asked about her after she disappeared for several years. However, when she appeared again, the situation was very different.

It turned out that in the past few years, she had traveled thousands of miles alone through the Gobi Desert to the Central Plains. I don't know what adventures she had there, but she learned a set of extremely evil magic skills and was able to control the most feared poison of the Half Moon people - the scorpion-tailed snake.

Seeing her return, some of the Banyue people were not only impressed, but also terrified. Because the girl's personality had not changed at all, she was still so gloomy and withdrawn. Many Banyue people had bullied her in the past, but now she had entered the palace to serve and became a high-ranking mage. If she wanted to take revenge on them one day, wouldn't she cause trouble for them?

So, these people reported to the palace, saying that the girl was a messenger sent by the vicious scorpion-tailed snake to harm the Half Moon Kingdom and should be hanged.

At that time, Ke Mo was already a famous and brave general of the Ban Yue Kingdom. He worked with the girl several times and felt that she acted in a way that suited his taste, was steady and well-behaved, and had no intention of harming the country, so he made a strong guarantee and rejected all those malicious voices. In addition, Ke Mo was bullied by his peers because of his weak body when he was a child, so he could empathize with the girl and naturally paid a lot of attention to her. The more he paid attention to her, the more he found that the girl had great abilities, so he recommended her all the way and sent her to the position of national teacher. As recorded by later generations, she became the most loyal supporter of the Ban Yue National Teacher.

Who knew that this national teacher was actually harboring evil intentions and was just disguising herself very well. She hated the Banyue Kingdom so much that she came back from studying martial arts just to take revenge on this country, and her way of revenge was to suddenly open the city gates at the most intense moment of the war!

Ke Mo, who was fighting hard with the enemy, became furious when he heard that the imperial teacher had opened the city gate.

No matter how brave he was, he was powerless to save the situation. But even if he was destined to die in battle, he had to kill the traitor before dying!

So he led a team of soldiers to the city wall, dragged down the imperial teacher, and hanged him on the prisoner pit.

When the army passed through, the entire Banyue Kingdom turned into a dead country. The national teachers and generals who died in the war were also trapped in this dead city and turned into "evil spirits".

Neither side could leave the ruins, but they still hated each other. Ke Mo led his Half Moon Army to search for the Imperial Master everywhere. Whenever he caught her, he would hang her to death on the Sinner Pit again. The Half Moon Imperial Master also searched for the Half Moon soldiers in a mysterious way and pushed them into the Sinner Pit. She set up a very powerful formation around the Sinner Pit. If you fell in, you couldn't climb out. The soldiers who died in the battle were very resentful. Only by eating the flesh and blood of the dead could they dispel the hatred in their hearts. Otherwise, they would cry every night and could not be relieved.

Seeing the once brave soldiers become like this, Ke Mo was naturally in great pain. Fortunately, the scorpion-tailed snake of the Ban Yue State Master was very aggressive, crawling out of the ancient city from time to time, biting people everywhere. The caravans injured by the scorpion-tailed snakes came into the city to look for the Good Moon Grass, and would be caught by Ke Mo and thrown into the Sinner Pit to feed the soldiers who could not come out.

Xie Lian was mesmerized by the fragmented narration. After a long while, Ke Mo fell silent, and then he asked, "Did you grow the Shanyue grass in the palace? Did you bury that person?"

Ke Mo said, "That's right. The man buried in the soil wanted to steal the treasures of the imperial palace. But all the treasures of our country were looted two hundred years ago. He didn't find any treasures, but wanted to use them as fertilizer for us."

Hearing this, Xie Lian fell silent again.

He felt that Ke Mo was lying.

Or, at least, Ke Mo was hiding something.

Since this group of Half Moon soldiers took the initiative to plant the Good Moon Grass and even used living people as fertilizer to grow it, it means that even though they are no longer human, their fear of the Scorpion Tailed Snake has not diminished in the slightest. So, when they were alive, this fear must have been even greater.

However, since Ban Yue State Master could control the scorpion-tailed snake that they feared the most, how could he be dragged down from the city wall and hanged by a group of soldiers? Moreover, according to Ke Mo, in the past two hundred years, he had captured the State Master again and again, and the State Master had been hanged by him again and again.

The scorpion-tailed snake that crawled out of the ancient city to bite people was also of concern. Was it an accident? Was there really such a coincidence? Was it intentional on the part of the Imperial Master? But if so, wouldn't it be like paving the way for Ke Mo to capture people alive and feed them to his soldiers? Aren't the hostile statements of both sides contradictory?

The formation around the Sinner's Pit was set up by the Ban Yue State Master. If she could set it, she could also break it. In other words, even if she swept a group of soldiers down, she could still let them out. But, if that was the case, what was their purpose in pretending to be hostile?

And before all these confusing clues, there is still a mystery - the identity of the lady in white and her companions.

After thinking for a while, Xie Lian decided to ask a few more questions to judge how credible Ke Mo’s words were. He said, “General Ke Mo, when we entered the city just now, we saw two people, one black and one white, walking on the street…”

At this moment, Saburo whispered, "Shh."

Although he didn't know what was going on, Xie Lian immediately stopped talking. A strange intuition made him look up.

It was still the same square dark blue night sky, and the same cold white half moon. However, next to the half moon, he saw a person in the distance, a small figure in black sticking out, looking down.

After watching for a while, the man's half body suddenly turned into the whole body - and jumped down.

As they fell, Xie Lian could see clearly that this man had long hair and a thin body. He was none other than the Ban Yue Imperial Master who had been hung on the long pole before!