Otherworldly Affairs Office-Chapter 712 Li Songtao’s Testimony (Subscription Requested)

To prevent Li Songtao from falling into a state of unconsciousness due to excessive pain, accidentally triggering the restriction in his body and dying, Pei Yan deliberately controlled the pace of his pain. He kept him awake at all times, making him feel that death would be a relief. After this cycle continued for over ten minutes, Pei Yan paused to let him catch his breath. Li Songtao, whose body was in such agony that he lost control over his bodily functions, drooled with his head against the ground, looked at Pei Yan with twitching lips and mocked, "Do you feel anger over those innocent people who died? Hahaha, cheap sense of justice! No matter how you torture me, those people are... uh uh uh!"

Before he finished speaking, a new round of torment from Pei Yan began again. Without any expression on his face, with a cigar in his mouth, blowing smoke rings, he said calmly, "Did any of those innocent people include those from the Foundation Plane?"

In extreme pain, Li Songtao shook his head and then nodded again. Pei Yan was a bit surprised by this action, asked casually without expecting a definite answer, and stopped his actions, puzzled, "What do you mean by shaking your head and then nodding?"

At this point, Li Songtao had been tormented into a state of living death. The look he gave Pei Yan carried less malice and more fear, his pale lips trembling as he replied, "Our magic mostly uses mortals from the Daoist Realm. Here, no one cares about these people's lives, so there's no need to cause trouble by going to the Foundation Plane. But I heard that those guys from Shenyu use people from their own plane for experiments."

Upon hearing this, Pei Yan suddenly recalled what Shangxing told him about the inhumane treatment he suffered after being captured by Shenyu, which infuriated Pei Yan. He raised his fingers at Li Songtao again!

Upon seeing his action, Li Songtao broke down, crying, "Don't torture me anymore, I can't take it! Just kill me! I wasn't the one doing these things, I was just one of those madmen's test subjects!"

"Don't make yourself sound so innocent. What's your true aim?" Pei Yan hesitated for a moment but still stopped his actions and scolded.

"Huff, huff, huff." Li Songtao, lying flat on the ground in the shape of a large character, gasped for air, closed his eyes as if hopeless, and said, "Just kill me! The restrictions I mentioned are true! I really can't say it!"

"I'm not asking about the objective of your mission! I'm asking what your ultimate goal is! What's your purpose for existing?" Pei Yan squatted down in front of Li Songtao, looked at him and asked puzzledly, "What drives you to harm so many people, harm even yourselves to achieve this goal, what exactly is it? Don't tell me it's a secret that can't be revealed either!"

"Hehehe, are you asking this?" Li Songtao opened his eyes and weakly asked in return, "If you were asked to give up your current powers and go back to being an ordinary person, away from the conflicts of the Cultivation World, living a peaceful life until the end of your days, would you choose to give it up?"

"No, I wouldn't!" Faced with this question that he had pondered many times before, Pei Yan, thinking he would hesitate, retorted firmly without hesitation. Having seen the vastness of this world, returning to being an ordinary person was more painful than death for him.

Li Songtao nodded and chuckled lightly, "Exactly! Whether it's the craving for power or the pursuit of strength! Once you've tasted the peak, you won't let go and return to the mundane. In this regard, we are the same! Cough cough cough!"

Seeing Li Songtao pulling at his wound and coughing fiercely as he spoke excitedly, Pei Yan didn't interrupt, listening quietly until he resumed his normal breathing and continued, "We were once the top power in this world. Our prestige back then was even greater than today's Immortal Palace! Why now are we hated by everyone like rats in the street? Just because of one mistake, the invasion of the Foundation Plane back then? Hehehe! Pei Yan, others might not know you're the Child of Origin from the Foundation Plane, but you surely know! Weren't the high-up Origin Bodies the ones pushing behind the scenes of that invasion? After it failed and they realized their foolish actions triggered a chain reaction, leading to the collapse of space barriers, they hurriedly patched the plane's loopholes, then picked a scapegoat and pinned all the blame on us! What have we done wrong! Huh! We were only following orders! But what did we get in return? Lost our former glory and status, reduced to ghosts in the Underworld, hunted and besieged! Would you be willing to accept that?"

Faced with Li Songtao's soul-baring questioning, Pei Yan fell silent for a moment. Putting himself in their shoes, if he was similarly abandoned after making significant contributions under orders, he would undoubtedly choose revenge. Considering this, Pei Yan sighed deeply, "But those are things of the distant past, for our world, that's thousands of years ago, and for your world, it might be over ten thousand years ago, what kind of hatred lingers for so long that you can't forget it?"

"Have you ever hated someone? Do you think hatred would fade with time? It's like the person who killed your captain, could you forgive him?"

After asking this, seeing Pei Yan fall into reflection again, Li Songtao knew he had stirred some thought in him, and without disturbing, turned his head to the ceiling, murmuring, "Love is like a strong wine. After drinking it, it makes you passionate and obsessed, but the intoxication eventually fades, leaving only emptiness and pain. I've lived longer than you, even the most loving Daoist partners can only last ten or a hundred years? Hmph, I've yet to see or hear of anyone lasting more than five hundred years together."

At this point, Li Songtao turned his head to look at Pei Yan again, raised an eyebrow in self-mockery, and continued, "And hatred is like aged wine, the longer it's left, the richer it becomes, stirring desires through generations, with each generation adding a fresh layer, continuing to brew. You wait until the day revenge is served and then savor it thoroughly. You can say my life is dictated by hatred, but as I mentioned before, some matters aren't lived as one wishes, that's my destiny."

After hearing Li Songtao's confession about destiny, Pei Yan did not want to delve deeper into discussing it with him. After blowing out the smoke in his mouth, Pei Yan extinguished the ember of his cigar, sat back on the ground with curiosity, "So how do you plan to take revenge? By destroying the present Immortal Palace? What use is that, really? Other sects will quickly be propped up to replace them. What's the point of this cyclical process?"

"Hahahaha! Pei Yan, I thought you were smart, yet still, you don't get it? Or are you really afraid to think in that direction?"