He made a point of glancing at Xiao Ling as he said this. The latter immediately understood what the captain was implying and nodded. Then, Xiao Ling gently nudged Xiao Tan, who was sitting next to her, with her elbow.

When Xiao Tan turned to look at her, Xiao Ling had already picked up the bowl in front of her and put it to her lips…

"I've decided!" Xiao Ling stared at the disgusting meat soup, gritted her teeth, and stomped her foot. "Drink it, then!"

Before she finished speaking, she opened her mouth, pinched her nose…and began pouring the soup down her throat.

Seeing this, Xiao Tan naturally understood Xiao Ling's intention in touching him earlier, so he also gritted his teeth, stomped his foot, picked up the soup bowl in front of him with both hands, and swallowed the soup, enduring the physical and psychological disgust.

And so, within a minute of Feng Bujue's appearance, the three bowls of meat soup served by Oink were wiped out by the three members of Hell Front. Moreover, when Xiao Ling finished drinking, she imitated Jue-ge and smashed the bowl; when she smashed it, Xiao Tan followed suit.

When the sound of smashing bowls subsided, Fei Kou Wei Wang, who was sitting on the side, realized something belatedly…

"That's not right…" Fei Kou Wei Wang thought to himself as he looked at the soup residue and broken pieces of porcelain on the ground. "Doesn't that mean…I can't even drink it if I want to?" Thinking of this, he immediately looked up and glared at Feng Bujue, and said in a deep voice, "You…you schemed against me!"

"Hahahaha…" Feng Bujue laughed up to the sky. "That's right~ I just schemed against you~" He replied with a hateful expression, "What can you do to me?"

Fei Kou Wei Wang was no pushover either. Before Jue-ge finished his sentence, he had already darted out and pounced toward the stove…

However…

Bang!

The next second, a dull thud of a pig's trotter hitting flesh rang out.

Oink instantly appeared next to the stove, knocking Fei Kou Wei Wang, who was about to reach out to lift the lid of the soup pot, to the ground with one punch.

"Ugh—damn…" Fei Kou Wei Wang wanted to curse, but before the word could leave his mouth, he realized that he couldn't catch his next breath. Clearly…Oink's seemingly simple punch was far more powerful than he had imagined.

"How impudent…" Oink looked at Fei Kou Wei Wang, who was lying on the ground, struggling to catch his breath, and said coldly, "Who allowed you to touch the soup pot? Don't you know the rules of the kitchen?"

"Well said~" Feng Bujue interjected self-importantly, stood next to Oink, put one hand on his hip, and pointed at Fei Kou Wei Wang arrogantly. "Someone like you wants to get on the stove in ten or eight years?"

"Shut up!" But Oink turned his head and cursed at Jue-ge.

"Hey, hey…I'm helping you speak." Feng Bujue looked at the other party innocently and replied, "And I'm not wrong…" He immediately started counting on his fingers. "Wash the toilet for a year, wash the dishes for a year, wash the vegetables for a year, then cut the vegetables for a year, prepare the dishes for a year…"

"Go, go, go…" Oink pushed Jue-ge, interrupting the shameless man's nagging. "Who asked you to speak for me?" As he spoke, he picked up the kitchen knife on the cutting board and waved it in front of Jue-ge's eyes. "I'm telling you, this is just for now…if it were five hundred years ago, with my temper, daring to interrupt…I'd stab you to death!"

Hearing this, Feng Bujue instantly looked suspicious: "Five hundred years ago…weren't you using a rake then?"

Ding ding ding ding ding ding—

As soon as Jue-ge's retort came out, Oink swung the kitchen knife in his hand at him, his strike as fast as the wind and as powerful as thunder… However, Jue-ge was also prepared. He spun and retreated, unscathed, causing all of Oink's strikes to land on the stove, making crisp sounds of metal hitting stone.

"I haven't seen you for a while, kid, and your skills have improved…" After a round of attacks, Oink did not continue with follow-up moves, but stopped and said to Jue-ge.

"You flatter me, you flatter me~" Feng Bujue replied hypocritically. "When it comes to skills, Brother Oink is still better."

"Hmph…don't try to get close to me." Oink said, turning around and slashing down at Fei Kou Wei Wang, who had not yet gotten up.

This rising star of Corpse Blades was cleanly beheaded before he could even stand up from the ground. Soon after his head rolled off, he turned into white light and disappeared…

"So…the 'rules' here are…" Feng Bujue calmly looked at the scene in front of him. "If you don't drink the 'soup that was served to you'…you have to die, right?"

"Not necessarily." Oink took the blood-stained kitchen knife and carefully rinsed it by the stone sink used for washing vegetables. "'If you can't beat me' you will die…isn't that right?" He paused. "Of course, if you obediently drink the soup, you don't have to fight me."

Their few words basically explained all the events and flags here.

So, it was time for Feng Bujue to be smug again: "See~ I came at the right time, right?" He looked at his two teammates. "I knew Brother Oink's cooking must be good stuff."

"Tsk…you just 'saw' it…" Xiao Ling squinted and responded softly. But she didn't say anything more, lest she expose the captain's intelligence.

In fact, with Xiao Ling's wisdom and her understanding of Feng Bujue, she had naturally deduced the ins and outs of what had just happened…

First of all, the moment Feng Bujue entered the Xiangji Kitchen, he had already directly 'seen' the function of those soups using the means of data observation.

Then, he quickly formulated a strategy, and before everyone could recover…he took the lead in drinking Fei Kou Wei Wang's soup, forcibly setting up a death flag for the other party…

Then, after drinking the soup, Jue-ge immediately gave the quick-witted Xiao Ling a look, telling her to quickly drag Xiao Tan to drink the soup.

In this way…all three bowls of soup "served by Oink" were gone.

Even the "smashing the bowl" action was calculated by Feng Bujue… He had already thought that if the bowls were still on the table after the three of them had finished drinking, then Fei Kou Wei Wang might still be able to avoid triggering the death flag of "not drinking the soup" by eating the leftovers in the bowl; but Feng Bujue and his teammates smashed the bowls, cutting off Fei Kou Wei Wang's path to survival…

Although Little Fei realized that he had to drink the soup after seeing the actions of the three members of Hell Front, it was obviously unwise to touch the soup pot himself… Here, players could only accept "the soup that Oink served you"; taking it yourself was another matter, so it was still death…

"Alright, stop talking nonsense." Oink interrupted them. "I'm in a hurry, ask whatever you want to ask quickly."

Hearing this, Feng Bujue and his two teammates exchanged glances slightly and reached a consensus.

"How did the town become like this?" Jue-ge was obviously the best candidate to negotiate with the NPC, so he asked without hesitation.

"The night before yesterday, three people entered the temple to steal treasure." Oink didn't talk nonsense, and went straight to the point. "They killed the abbot, stole the key, broke into the pagoda in the stone courtyard, and broke through the ninety-nine eighty-one Zen gate seals, causing the *Liuhe* Mirror to break free."

"*Liuhe* Mirror?" Feng Bujue repeated the three words in a questioning tone (because the pronunciation was the same, Jue-ge thought Oink was saying "和" *he*, meaning "harmony").

"More than a thousand years ago, there was a demonic Taoist…" Oink continued to explain. "This person had high magical power and was sinister and vicious… He actually spent decades collecting the blood of tens of thousands of people to forge a great evil and ominous magic weapon…" He paused for half a second. “…That is the *Liuhe* Mirror.”

At this point, Oink had washed the kitchen knife in his hand, slowly walked to the side of the stove, and stood leaning against the stove: "The so-called *Liuhe* is the heaven and earth, all living beings, the six paths of reincarnation. Now, the *Liuhe* of this *Liuhe* Temple is a misreading by later generations."

"Then how was this *Liuhe* Mirror (Jue-ge knew which character it was this time)…" Feng Bujue continued, "…sealed into *Liuhe* Temple?"

"Simply put…a virtuous monk sacrificed himself to save the world and perished together with that demonic Taoist." Oink replied, "Later, the disciples of that virtuous monk placed the magic weapon [Kasyapa Stone Pagoda] that he used during his lifetime here, using layers of seals to suppress the *Liuhe* Mirror in the pagoda, and built a temple around the pagoda, so that future generations could guard this thing for generations."

"I understand…" Feng Bujue nodded and asked, "Um…tell me about the three treasure thieves, what are their backgrounds? Where are they now?"

Oink thought for a few seconds and replied: "Strictly speaking, the three of them are not all human… The leader among them is the great-grandson of that demonic Taoist, Taoist name *Miao Xuzi*. This guy is half human and half demon, and he usually likes to transform into a young monk; he is not only proficient in Taoist magic and demon magic, but also studied many Chan Buddhist methods."

"Oh…no wonder the eighty-one seals didn't stop him…" Hearing this, Xiao Tan shook his head and swayed his head.

"The second person…" Oink then said, "…is a woman, a famous thief known as Hong Ying. This is a very strange fellow. From your human perspective, she is undoubtedly a beauty, and she has high martial arts skills and is not short of money… But she just likes to be a thief…"

"Kleptomania, maybe." Xiao Ling interjected.

"If she just likes to steal, it might be kleptomania…" Oink continued, "But…she doesn't just like to be a thief, she also likes to be a prostitute." He shrugged. "A person who can buy an entire brothel with a wave of her hand actually demeans herself in the lowest-class brothel. Is that kleptomania?"

"That's [beep] then." Feng Bujue blurted out, but his words were blocked by the system, and no one knew what strange noun he had said.

"Whatever it is, she has already been killed by that kid over there." Oink said, turning to look at Wang Tan Zhi.

"Huh?" Xiao Tan was stunned for a moment, and reacted two seconds later, "Oh~ you mean that red-clothed big-mouthed monster?" He scratched his head. "Uh…are you sure that's a person?"

"She was human when she came to steal the treasure." Oink replied, "But…she wasn't after the *Liuhe* Mirror broke free."

"Let's talk about this later." Feng Bujue brought the topic back. "Let's continue with the third person."

"The third person… is called Lu Bufu, a notorious bandit famous for being 'delicious'…" Oink sneered, and looked at the soup pot on the stove. "Ironically…now he himself has become a pot of meat soup."

His words were like an invisible emetic, causing Xiao Tan and Xiao Ling's stomachs to feel an unspeakable discomfort.

"Of course, I didn't kill him. It was that kid called So-and-So-Wei-Wang who killed him." Oink said. "I just didn't want to waste the ingredients."

"It doesn't matter what kind of thing it is…" It seemed that Feng Bujue didn't care about eating Brother Bufu at all. He continued to ask, "I'm concerned about what happened when they stole the treasure."

"Hmph…what good can a few clueless small fries do?" Oink shook his head and replied in a helpless tone. "When the seal was broken, the magic power of the *Liuhe* Mirror appeared in the world, enveloping the entire Lotus Moon Town in a 'Blood Evil Barrier', and summoned the 'Six Paths of Evil Spirits'; then, the people of the entire town died quickly under the influence of the barrier, and they were still suffering from the Blood Evil Curse after death, unable to be reborn; as for those three unlucky fellows…because they knew nothing about the mirror's power, their souls were immediately captured by the mirror and turned into hosts for the evil spirits."

"I see…" Xiao Tan nodded. "In other words, all three of them were possessed by those 'Six Paths of Evil Spirits'?"

"No, it's not possession." Oink replied. "The so-called 'Six Paths of Evil Spirits' does not refer to six specific individuals, but…" He thought for a few seconds, then said, "To put it in a way you can understand…they are six relatively extreme symbols of consciousness. These six can be entities that exist somewhere in this universe, or things that do not exist in the physical plane…" He paused. "To use an analogy…like the 'Tao' that you humans often talk about. The Tao can be a person, a book, a passage, or an idea."

"Then what are the Six Paths of Evil Spirits currently in this Blood Evil Barrier?" Xiao Ling tentatively asked.

"Lu Bufu is the 'Path of the Hungry Ghost', Hong Ying is the 'Path of Humanity', both of which have been eliminated." Oink replied.

"Not only eliminated, but also being digested." Feng Bujue seized the opportunity to spit out a retort.

"And *Miao Xuzi* is the 'Path of Heaven', he should be active in the abbot's room right now." Oink ignored Jue-ge and continued, "In addition…there is another poor worm who was 'swallowed' by the mirror forty years ago, named Zhang Ke, he is the 'Path of Hell', and he and the mirror are still in that pagoda."

Speaking of this, Oink paused for a few seconds, then continued: "The above four are all hosts of the evil spirits 'illuminated' by the mirror, they basically still retain their original personalities and memories, but in essence, they are already another kind of creature." Saying this, he raised his finger and pointed at himself: "The remaining two…one of them is me."

"Oh…'Path of the Animal', right?" Feng Bujue interjected.

"That's right." Oink replied, "I was summoned by the *Liuhe* Mirror as a 'representative' of some kind. Unless the Blood Evil Barrier absorbs enough living beings or is broken, I really can't leave."

"Then…" At this point in the conversation, Feng Bujue's expression changed slightly, and he asked in a deep voice, "What about the last one…the 'Path of Asura'?"