Lu Sheng sat cross-legged atop the cliff, his long hair whipping wildly in the wind.
His twin sabers were embedded in the ground to his right, crossed neatly against one another. The cliff was otherwise empty, silent but for the rushing air.
Below him, on the river cutting through the valley, several silhouettes clashed violently, their movements blurring as they exchanged blows.
Lu Sheng recognized the scene at once. This was Wandering Heart Society’s ambush on Scarlet District Mistress. Yet from the unfolding battle, it was clear that Deputy Head Chao Hu was already nearing his limits. Within only a few exchanges, he had been driven firmly onto the defensive by Scarlet District Mistress.
The saber in her hand, inlaid with the glowing red shard, radiated overwhelming might. Each time it carved through the air, the single-eyed titan retreated with visible caution, clearly unwilling to meet its edge head-on.
As the fight dragged on, Wandering Heart Society’s forces dwindled one by one, until only Chao Hu remained, forced to face Scarlet District Mistress alone.
Both combatants were fighting at full strength. Terrifying as Scarlet District Mistress’ speed and power were, they still fell slightly short of Chao Hu’s raw might. Had it not been for the saber in her right hand, there would have been no chance for her to seize the upper hand.
With his cudgel already shattered, the single-eyed titan grew increasingly ferocious. His movements became savage and unrestrained. From time to time, beams of pale golden light burst forth from his lone eye, forcing Scarlet District Mistress to evade rather than press the attack.
Lu Sheng also noticed something else. Between exchanges, she would occasionally clutch at her chest, her movements tightening, as though sharp pain were flaring within.
“Looks like I can’t rely on Wandering Heart Society… they can’t even defeat an enemy who’s already been hexed. Just a pack of brash demons.” Lu Sheng remained calm, entirely unsurprised by how the battle was unfolding.
To him, the outcome was irrelevant. Whether Scarlet District Mistress won or lost, she would not be leaving this place.
KABOOM!!
Another thunderous explosion erupted from below.
Columns of river water blasted skyward before crashing down like torrential rain.
Scarlet District Mistress’ chest rose and fell sharply as she raised her saber, barely blocking another beam of golden light fired straight at her.
The beam of light had erupted from Chao Hu’s lone eye. Whenever that pale golden radiance struck the river, the water vaporized into steam in an instant. When it touched rock, the stone disintegrated as though cleaved cleanly by an incomparably sharp blade.
Unlike before, however, this beam did not fade. It poured forth without interruption, an unbroken torrent of destruction.
Maintaining the golden beam, Chao Hu advanced step by step, forcing his way closer.
“You won’t have a chance!” He had anticipated this outcome long ago. This golden radiance was known as the Light of the Evil Eye, an innate ability he had been born with. Through years of relentless cultivation, its power had grown until it evolved into his true mutant ability.
“To think you’d force me to use the Light of the Evil Eye!” Activating it drained his lifespan. Unless driven to desperation, he would never have unleashed it so readily.
Yet he had not expected that a mere Black Snake, once utterly beneath him, would now show signs of stepping into the top three grades of the Snake realm.
“A mere tiger demon… and yet you’ve pushed me this far…” Chao Hu strode across the river’s surface, closing the distance to Scarlet District Mistress.
The golden beam grew denser, brighter, almost blinding.
Scarlet District Mistress clenched her teeth and endured. The Scarlet Dragon Tribulation shard embedded in her saber hilt flared with crimson light, pushing back stubbornly against the golden radiance.
Red sparks flickered within her eyes. Her body had reached its limit. Every muscle fiber and every last drop of strength was being forcibly condensed and driven into the saber hilt to resist the beam.
“Sis…” Umbrella girl’s fragile voice trembled from behind her.
“I won’t lose.” A sharp glint flashed across Scarlet District Mistress’ eyes as she roared, “I WON’T!!”
“Spirit Transformation Phantom Shadow!!”
In that instant, her right arm and saber blurred, then dematerialized into translucence.
The ethereal arm and blade sliced straight through the golden beam and came crashing down toward Chao Hu’s head.
The strike was impossibly fast. Chao Hu had no time to react. By the time he realized what had happened, a shrill scream tore from his throat as he staggered backward and fell heavily into the river, landing squarely on his backside.
At the same moment, a scream of searing agony burst from Scarlet District Mistress’ throat. With her body in a dematerialized state, she could no longer block the golden beam. It pierced straight through her chest, blasting open a horrifying hole.
“HA… HAHAHAHA!! DIE!” Ignoring the gaping wound, Scarlet District Mistress lunged savagely at Chao Hu.
The saber strike to his eye had left Chao Hu drenched in blood. He howled in pain, his vision reeling. Sensing her charge, he forced out every last shred of strength and swung a brutal punch toward her.
By this stage, neither of them had any techniques left to employ. There were no stances, no finesse, only the crudest form of combat. Power, speed, and endurance collided head-on.
Unlike humans, with their layered techniques and refined forms, their battles were stripped to raw essentials. Martial arts, if any remained, were reduced to the most primitive motions. To beings like them, intricate techniques were meaningless.
Spirit Transformation Phantom Shadow was Scarlet District Mistress’ innate mutant ability, no different in nature from Chao Hu’s Light of the Evil Eye. As demons, each of them was born with a unique power.
These mutant abilities could be refined through the cultivation of mantras and demon skills, growing stronger, broader in application, and even undergoing drastic transformations.
That was the true purpose of demon skills.
Though Scarlet District Mistress possessed outstanding talent, the mantra she cultivated was unremarkable. That deficiency was precisely why she longed so desperately for higher-level mantras.
Chao Hu, however, suffered no such limitation. The terrifying might of his Light of the Evil Eye stemmed directly from the superiority of his mantra. Had it not been for the Scarlet Dragon Tribulation shard, the outcome of this battle would have mirrored their previous encounter, ending with Scarlet District Mistress fleeing in humiliation.
Raindrops began to fall.
In moments, the drizzle thickened into a downpour, and then into a raging storm.
They continued fighting, unaware of how much time had passed.
By the time Scarlet District Mistress finally wrenched her saber free from Chao Hu’s massive body on the riverbank, two deep wounds had been torn open across her chest and neck.
Her flesh struggled desperately to regenerate, but a thin layer of faint golden light clung to the wounds, sealing them shut and denying any healing.
“Hoo… hoo… hoo…”
Scarlet District Mistress landed heavily on the riverbank and dropped to one knee. Rain splashed against her face and streamed down her battered body.
Suddenly, a thought struck her.
Her eyes widened as she looked around in panic.
“Yingying! Yingying!!”
She forced herself upright and staggered toward umbrella girl, who lay motionless on a nearby stretch of shore, seemingly struck by the aftermath of the battle.
“Yingying, what happened to you?!” Scarlet District Mistress pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Splat!!”
Without warning, a blood-soaked dagger plunged straight into Scarlet District Mistress’ abdomen.
Her body stiffened.
Slowly, she released Yingying and stared blankly at her own stomach. Blood and flesh around the wound rapidly disintegrated, dissolving into nothingness.
“You…!!” She staggered backward, disbelief flooding her face. “Yingying…”
“Sis…”
Umbrella girl burst into tears. Her eyes were stained with the dark-blue sheen of the Yin Crane Web. The dagger in her trembling hand, coated with jade ring powder, quivered violently. She tried with all her strength to fling it away, but another force seized her arm, compelling her fingers to tighten instead.
She rose unsteadily to her feet and began walking toward Scarlet District Mistress, one step at a time.
“Splat!”
The second dagger strike drove mercilessly into Scarlet District Mistress’ left shoulder.
It had been aimed at her forehead.
Umbrella girl shook her head frantically, struggling with everything she had, managing to divert the blow at the last instant. Even so, the dagger still plunged deep into Scarlet District Mistress’ body.
“AHHHHHH!!!!”
Scarlet District Mistress screamed toward the heavens. Her once snow-white hair was rapidly soaked and stained crimson.
A violent backlash erupted, flinging Yingying backward and sending her crashing to the ground, where she fell onto her butt.
The storm intensified, rain pounding down in sheets.
A silhouette appeared silently behind Scarlet District Mistress.
It was Lu Sheng.
He had been waiting for a long time.
Twin sabers gripped in his hands, his aura was entirely suppressed, so still and unassuming that he resembled nothing more than a slab of stone. Even standing directly behind her, he had gone completely unnoticed.
It’s about time.
Lu Sheng slowly raised his sabers.
“Swish!!”
The razor-sharp blades cut through the rain as they slashed abruptly toward Scarlet District Mistress’ back.
CLANG!!
In that instant, a figure flashed into existence before Lu Sheng, intercepting the twin sabers with a violent clash.
“Ye Moling?” Lu Sheng raised an eyebrow slightly.
“Swish.”
The collision sent Ye Moling skidding backward several paces. The sheer, unfathomable force drove the breath from his lungs, and disbelief surged across his face.
“It’s you!?” His voice faltered. Never had he imagined that the one to appear at this moment would be Lu Sheng.
How could the leader of a mere mortal organization dare to raise his blades against a Manor Lord–ranked expert of the Snake realm?
Only then did Scarlet District Mistress sense that something was wrong. She turned sharply and saw Lu Sheng standing there. Yet no understanding surfaced in her eyes. Her mind was still drowning in the agony of betrayal by the person she cherished most.
“I didn’t expect you to show up as well,” Lu Sheng said, regarding Ye Moling with faint surprise.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Ye Moling replied coldly. “I never thought you were the one pulling the strings behind all this chaos. You killed the Officiator, didn’t you? And the Emissaries too. That was you, wasn’t it? And the umbrella girl… all of it was your doing.”
“…So what if it was? And so what if it wasn’t?” Lu Sheng stepped forward unhurriedly. “Do you really believe any of you can still leave this place alive?”
“Because of you?” Ye Moling sneered.
“That’s right… because of me.”
SWISH!
Ye Moling vanished and reappeared before Lu Sheng in the blink of an eye. His claws shot forward in a straight line, aimed directly at Lu Sheng’s forehead.
Just as the strike was about to land—
“BAM!!”
A formless tongue of searing flame erupted in midair, halting the attack for a fleeting instant.
“A meaningless struggle,” a deep, guttural voice rumbled.
Dense white smog surged outward, swallowing the battlefield whole.
A sharp slap echoed through the mist. From within the swirling haze, a greenish-black arm emerged, its surface resembling layered armor, and clamped down firmly on Ye Moling’s arm.
“Who do you think this kind of soft attack can kill? Yourself?”
With one hand gripping Ye Moling, Lu Sheng slammed him brutally into the ground.
“BAM!!!”
The riverbank shuddered violently. Cracks spiderwebbed outward as a massive pit, several meters deep, was smashed into existence.
The smog slowly dispersed.
At last, Scarlet District Mistress saw Lu Sheng as he was now.
The once human-shaped Lu Sheng now stood transformed into a towering monster over two meters tall, his entire body sheathed in thick, mirror-like armor.
Two massive ox horns curved from his head. Razor-sharp claws gleamed at the ends of his fingers, and a long, heavy tail lashed behind him like a living whip.
This greenish-black humanoid monstrosity was encased from head to toe in dense metallic plating. Black, knife-edged spikes jutted from his shoulders, elbows, and spine, lending him an incomparably savage presence.
His physique was perfectly streamlined, as though every inch of excess flesh had been stripped away, leaving behind nothing but lethal efficiency.
As he stood there, he radiated a strange contradiction: calm and unhurried, elegant and brutal, all at once.
“KILL HIM!!” Ye Moling roared, his face smeared with blood as he sprang back to his feet and charged at Lu Sheng.
Scarlet District Mistress’ eyes flashed. She shot forward as well, her movement lightning-fast.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!
Their combined assault crashed down in a storm of blows. Fist, claw, saber, and cudgel rained toward Lu Sheng in a relentless frenzy. Yet every single strike was met and neutralized with precise, effortless blocks.
“BOOM!!”
In the blink of an eye, Lu Sheng’s saber flashed. The flat of the blade smashed into Scarlet District Mistress’ head, hurling her far through the air.
At the same moment, Ye Moling threw himself forward, desperately intercepting Lu Sheng’s next slash.
“CLANG!!”
A horizontal arc of silver light swept through him. His arms were severed instantly, and the blade nearly split his body in two at the waist. He was sent crashing into the river below, throwing up towering waves of water.
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