The Sect Master's voice was sharp as an executioner's axe. "What do you have to say in your defense?"
It was clear. Even the Sect Master was leaning towards believing the accusations or he was not worth fighting against the demonic taint accusations.
The pressure of the entire hall was now on Lin Fan.
He, however, was silent, he stayed like this for a long moment. It was not panic. His mind, trained for years of debugging impossible buggy code and analyzing game balance, was running with cold, detached programming and gaming min-max logic.
It processed every accusation not as an attack, analysing the flaw in their reasoning. Elder Chen's case was built on fear, the fear of Demonic Taint.
Elder Wu's on outdated knowledge. The disciples' testimony was born from confusion & pressure or even threats from these same Elders and peers.
He had wasted half his life on Earth binge-reading thousands of chapters of shitty wuxia webnovels. Back then, it was just a way to kill time between projects.
But now? Now, that mountain of useless knowledge was a goldmine. He knew the script. He knew the lines. He understood the language these cultivators respected: pure, high-grade, philosophical-sounding Dao bullshit. And its about time to cash it all in to absolutely wreck these fuckers.
He was already building his counter-attack, running through possible words and arguments in his head like lines of code.
The elders, the disciples, even the Sect Master…each one had a role in his script, his performance, as he analyzed the crowd too, their reaction and mood because they are playing a part too in it, when suddenly his eyes saw someone and he froze.
It was Ning Xinyi. She was half-hidden behind a massive stone pillar, her beautiful face pale behind her veil. She wasn't standing with the elders, she was back with the disciples, and the look in her eyes was a storm of conflicting emotions. He could see the doubt winning, Suspicion was eating her alive.
Suddenly a chill hit him. In that moment, all the strategies, all the clever lines, all the showmanship felt worthless.
What did it matter if the Sect Master or the crowd believed him, if she didn't? His milf mommy! If she started to believe them, he would lose more than he could gain by winning this trial.
And then he saw who was standing right beside her. Bai Qing'er. Smug, upright, leaning in close to whisper poison into her Master's ear.
In an instant, everything clicked.
'That cold-faced little bitch,' his mind snarled. 'She's the one poisoning my milf mommy's mind against me.'
The game changed. This was no longer just about survival. It was no longer about proving his innocence to the sect. It was about her. He had to utterly annihilate every shred of doubt in Ning Xinyi's mind.
He needed to social engineer and gaslight her perception of him, transforming himself from a suspected demon into a righteous, misunderstood grandmaster making an unbearable sacrifice.
His entire posture shifted. He was no longer a defendant. He stood taller, his shoulders back. A calm, almost sad disappointed smile as he looked not at his accusers, but towards the heavens.
"Demonic arts?" He whispered and yet every person in the hall was able to hear. "Ignorance and fear."
He turned to Elder Chen. He didn't glare at him but looked down on him, looked down at someone pitiful. That was enough to make the old man's face twist with anger. He would have lashed out but it was Lin Fan's turn to speak.
"Elder Chen! You claim my cure defies logic," Lin Fan's voice resonated with the walls but he was purposely aiming it at a certain corner of the hall, aimed at the figure behind the pillar.
"He is correct. It is not logical. The Dao is not about logic, it is about balance. For years, the Azure Flame Continent has been sick. The very Qi of the world grows unstable. The Dao itself is wounded. Heaven's silent. You all feel it. You see it. Disciples failing. Elders declining. Even in yourselves."
His voice grew louder, more passionate, somewhat romanticised heroic.
"You call my Secret Realms a 'cure'? How arrogant. I am no Saint. I am a humble seeker of the Dao just like you everyone, who found a small, untainted corner of cosmos where the balance of heaven and earth still remains pure."
"I do not 'cure' anyone," he declared. "I simply open a door and allow a fellow Dao seeker to breathe pure air, to let their own foundation remember what it feels like to be whole. Is seeking a single drop of clean water in a poisoned river a demonic art?"
He paused, letting his poetic and philosophical style question echo in everyone's mind. The elders frowned as they struggled with this sudden twist of philosophical angle. He then turned to the Formation Elder.
"And you, Elder Wu. You call my runes sinister and otherworldly because they are not in your books. Does a frog in a well call the sky sinister because it cannot comprehend its vastness?"
"Your knowledge is based on the formations of Our world and too limited. Tell me, Elder Wu, do your books contain all the knowledge of the Dao that has ever existed since the dawn of time? Are you some grand hidden sovereign of formation?"
The crowd snickered and Elder Wu's face turned red with humiliation.
"Then is it not possible," Lin Fan's volume dropped, becoming profound and mysterious, "that my formations are not new and heretical, but are in fact ancient and primordial?…That they are based on a purer understanding of the Dao from a time before our world grew sick, a knowledge your modern scrolls have long since lost? …Are you accusing me of heresy, or are you simply admitting the incompleteness of your own library?"
Elder Wu's face turned purple. He has always claimed to be an expert in formations, not a philosopher. He had no answer.