The sphere of destructive energy was scant centimeters from impacting his forehead when Shen Tian’s posture changed abruptly and unnaturally.
All the agonizing tension in his shoulders, the pathetic trembling of his torn muscles, and the crushing weakness of his spine disappeared in a silent exhalation. The young man’s shattered body stopped leaning pathetically on the dagger. He straightened slowly, with a fluidity that ignored broken bones, relaxing into a posture of absolute elegance, haughty, disdainful, and supremely lethal.
When Shen Tian’s body raised its face to look directly at the approaching sphere of death, his cold, calculating gray eyes had completely extinguished, instantly replaced by a golden glow, icy and of such unfathomable arrogance that it seemed to disdain the heavens themselves.
The necrotic attack destined to pulverize his skull stopped dead. The dense gray energy that formed the sphere began to tremble and fray, dissipating like smoke caught in an invisible hurricane.
FWOOM...
Before him, the false envoy felt the air of the gorge become infinitely heavier. The suffocating Qi of his own Golden Core, which moments before dominated the environment with the tyranny of death, was crushed in a microsecond. A new energy emerged from the body of the young man in the straw hat. It was a scarlet Qi, thick as old blood and vibrant with an aura so ancestral that it made the very fabric of space creak around it. The basaltic stones beneath Shen Tian’s feet began to levitate and disintegrate into red dust.
Lin Tiexin, the monster who had disguised himself as the envoy, halted his advance completely. His mind, forged in centuries of cultivation and slaughter, crashed against a wall of pure instinctive terror.
What is this energy signature? his internal voice screamed, as his pupils contracted until they became pinheads. This power dwarfs Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and even Nascent Soul... It is an abyss. A damn bottomless ocean.
Cold sweat beaded on his cadaverous forehead, a sensation his mummified body had almost forgotten over the decades. The arrogant monster who played with human lives as if they were insects suddenly understood his own insignificance. His survival instinct howled. He retracted his aggressive aura in a reflex act, smothering his own Qi until he nearly suffocated, so as not to be perceived as a threat by the titan that had just awakened.
Lin Tiexin’s legs gave way. He fell heavily onto his knees, making his bone armor creak against the rock, and bowed his head until his forehead touched the damp ground. His voice, previously raspy and dictatorial, now trembled with pathetic submission.
"Forgive me for offending you by attacking, Ancestor. This humble one failed to recognize an Immortal."
The silence that followed his plea was more deafening than any explosion. Shen Tian’s body, now inhabited by the absolute sovereignty of Xue Huang, simply observed him from the heights of her own superiority. The golden eyes exuded lethal boredom.
"This humble servant is Lin Tiexin," the prostrated cultivator hurried to babble, his forehead still pressed to the ground. "I was a Supreme Elder of the Barren Lands three hundred years ago, now affiliated with the underground Black Market. My actions were the fruit of an unforgivable blindness. Please, allow this insignificant worm to pay for his insolence!"
With trembling, frantic hands, Lin Tiexin tore the spatial ring from his index finger. It was an artifact of the highest grade. He offered it forward with both palms.
"Here are the accumulated treasures of my entire existence! Refinement pills, millennia-old spiritual herbs, earth-grade artifacts, and the complete inheritance map! It is all yours, Ancestor!"
Xue Huang, controlling Shen Tian’s movements with a grace the clone had never possessed, extended a hand and accepted the ring. Her fingers closed around the cold metal. She stored it in Shen Tian’s tunic.
"I accept your offering," Xue Huang said, using Shen Tian’s vocal cords, though the voice resonated with a spectral duality, as if a thousand ancient voices spoke in unison. "But this is a simple tithe. Your very existence is an offense to my sight, and the toll for raising your hand against my vessel... is not yet paid."
Lin Tiexin looked up, confused, with panic making its way up his throat. His mouth opened to plead.
In a blink, a movement that defied the limits of physics and time, Xue Huang closed the ten meters of distance. She simply ceased to be there and appeared directly in front of Lin Tiexin.
SHING!
A wet, horrendous sound resonated in the clearing.
SPLURT!
Lin Tiexin blinked, disoriented. He looked to his left. His entire left arm, from shoulder to fingertip, wrapped in its hard bone armor, was falling to the ground. It crashed against the rocks with a dull noise.
THUD!
The shock anesthetized his nervous system for an entire second. Then, pain swept over him like an avalanche of liquid fire.
A geyser of hot, dark blood gushed from the open stump, splattering the ground, the rocks, and Shen Tian’s boots.
SPLASH!
Lin Tiexin let out a guttural shriek, bringing his right hand to the open wound, but the arterial pressure was unstoppable. He collapsed on his side, writhing in the dirt like a run-over animal, his facade of invincible expert crumbling before raw agony.
AAARGH!
Through Shen Tian’s face, Xue Huang contemplated him. Her golden eyes narrowed in a smile that dripped with ancient, sadistic pleasure. Watching suffering, savoring the terror of those who believed themselves invincible, was a nectar long absent from her lips.
In absolute silence, she activated a fraction of her true essence.
The scarlet Qi swept the gorge like an imperceptible breeze. The drops of blood still floating in the air after the dismemberment, as well as the thick pools forming beneath Lin Tiexin’s convulsing body, began to change. The vital liquid boiled and twisted, solidifying and opening perfect, velvety, brilliant petals.
All the spilled blood turned into scarlet roses.
Hundreds of them bloomed on the living rock, on the branches of the shattered pines, and on Lin Tiexin’s own garments. The ferrous smell of the slaughter was suddenly masked by a deep, sweet, intoxicating floral perfume.
Lin Tiexin stopped screaming, his eyes wide open. His mind reeled before the profane beauty surrounding him. And then, reality itself fractured.
CRACK!
The rocky gorge, the night sky, and the corpses of the Thousand-Colored Lizards disappeared like paint dragged away by a torrent of water.
The environment changed completely. When Lin Tiexin looked around again, gasping from pain and blood loss, he found himself kneeling in the center of a royal hall of colossal proportions. Great columns of black marble veined with red supported a ceiling that was lost in an abyssal darkness. The polished floor reflected his own pathetic figure.
What destroyed the last vestiges of his sanity was what he saw at the end of the hall.
The young man in the straw hat had vanished. In his place, seated majestically on a gigantic red throne composed entirely of fused human skulls, was the true owner of the power.
She was a woman of supernatural, oppressive beauty, dressed in a blood-red silk hanfu that flowed like an infinite river down the steps of the throne. Her jet-black hair framed a pale, perfect face, dominated by those same golden eyes that looked at him as if he were less than dust.
The atmosphere of the hall was so dense that Lin Tiexin felt his bones would pulverize just from breathing that air. He had fallen into an absolute domain, the mental and spiritual space of a deity of slaughter. That domain carried the weight of its own laws, a fragment of reality subjugated to her will. What happened inside it, also happened in the physical body of the condemned.
Xue Huang rested her chin lazily on her right hand. She moved her index finger in a languid gesture.
In an instant, all the beautiful scarlet roses that adorned the floor of the hall and floated around her returned to their true form. Petals and stems liquefied, becoming spherical masses of floating blood once more.
Lin Tiexin recognized the power. He recognized the forbidden art, the ancient texts he had read in the ruins of his sect centuries ago. Absolute terror chilled his blood, paralyzing even the pain of his stump. This was a terror reserved for one being alone.
"Y-You..." he stammered, trembling uncontrollably. "The Blood Empress..."
He looked around, identifying the nightmare architecture and the macabre majesty of the place. His memories of ancient history clicked.
"State of..."
He cut off what he was going to say. He wanted to prostrate himself again, he wanted to offer his own soul as an eternal servant, he wanted to beg for mercy with an intensity that tore at his throat.
Xue Huang denied him even the honor of finishing his prayer. From the height of her throne of skulls, she simply snapped her fingers.
SNAP!
The sound was crystalline. Immediately, the thousands of floating blood spheres surrounding Lin Tiexin solidified and transformed into thin, sharp, deadly blades. With a deafening whistle, they converged toward the center.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Thousands of scarlet blades pierced the cultivator’s body simultaneously from all possible directions. Flesh was separated from bone, organs were pulverized, and the bone armor splintered like cheap crystal.
SQUELCH! CRUNCH! SHATTER!
Lin Tiexin was completely torn apart in an instant. His last act in this world was a choked scream of total and absolute helplessness, drowned by a red mist that rained upon the cold black marble of the domain.
Silence returned to the hall. Xue Huang closed her eyes and her true form began to fade into the shadows.
Xue Huang’s domain vanished like a soap bubble. The throne room of skulls dissolved into shreds of scarlet mist, and Shen Tian felt his consciousness being dragged back to the physical world.
When he opened his eyes, he was on his knees in the gorge, with the taste of blood in his mouth.
Immediately, the young man fell to his knees and vomited a large amount of fresh red blood.
COUGH! SPLAT!
His lungs burned and his meridians pulsed with stabbing pain. Retaking control of a physical vessel that had just channeled an infinitesimal fraction of the Blood Empress’s true power was like trying to contain a volcanic eruption in a clay vessel. His Qi Condensation cultivation level had protected his life, but the physical stress was atrocious.
The System emitted a pulse of blue light.
"[High-Value Target Eliminated: Lin Tiexin (Golden Core).]"
"[Reward: +800 Suppression Points.]"
"[Current balance: 800 Suppression Points.]"
Ten meters from him, the massacre was evident. The ground was covered with a formless pool of viscera, ragged cloth, bone armor fragments, and blood. Lin Tiexin’s body had been pulverized into a macabre puree that stained the gorge’s rocks beyond any possible recognition.
"I took care of the problem," Xue Huang’s voice said in his mind. She sounded satisfied, though somewhat dimmed, as if the brief use of power had consumed part of her spiritual energy. "The insect will not bother you again."
"What the hell did you do to him?" Shen Tian asked mentally, wiping the blood from his chin as he observed the red pulp.
"I killed him. Perhaps I went a bit overboard with the force, but insolence must be punished. Do not ask boring questions, brat. You have his things, heal your body, and move before the smell attracts more beasts."
True to his pragmatism, Shen Tian let the matter drop. He sat in the lotus position, ignoring the stench of death surrounding him, and began channeling the Mud Lotus Breathing Art to stabilize his three broken ribs and purge any necrotic residue from his meridians.
It took him a full hour of deep meditation to stop the damage and recover his Qi. When he stood up, the pain was manageable. He walked toward the scattered remains of the Zhao Clan elders. They had succumbed to their wounds during the battle against the Void Being; their bodies lay shattered among the shadow lizards. Shen Tian dismissed them with a glance. Their corpses had surrendered all their secrets. Then he walked toward Lin Tiexin’s pool. Using a wooden stick, he rummaged through the remains until he recovered the Immortal Dagger lying intact a few meters away. The spatial ring was already in his possession, stored in his tunic.
By infusing a thread of his Qi into the ring, Shen Tian verified the loot. Herbs, crystals of the highest grade, but above all, the complete map of the Sword Elder’s secret cave.
The System emitted a second pulse.
"[Mission Completed: Seize the map from the Lin Clan.]"
"[Reward: +300 Suppression Points.]"
"[Current balance: 1,100 Suppression Points.]"
At the moment he extracted the fused parchment, the System emitted a familiar hum.
VWOOOM...
[Scanning topographic artifact...]
[System function updated: Radar Mode → Holographic Minimap (Level 1).]
[Geographic data successfully integrated.]
[Main Mission route has been marked.]
A small blue interface unfolded in his peripheral vision, displaying a three-dimensional virtual map with a golden line marking the safe path through the treacherous mountainous terrain, evading beasts and anomalies.
"Excellent," Shen Tian murmured, adjusting his straw hat. He resumed his journey under the pale moonlight, following the System’s arrow.