"It's nothing." Song Wanníng waved her hand. The storage pouch filled with spirit stones flew neatly into her palm.
A quick sweep with her spiritual sense confirmed a generous amount of mid-grade stones. Probably more than forty thousand.
Pleased by Yun Jinyue's tact, she gave a faint smile, then placed Bai Yang onto a flying carpet and departed swiftly.
The flying carpet shrank to a black speck in the distance, vanishing from sight.
Yun Jinyue gripped the pill bottle tightly, still moved by what had just happened.
"We hurt her disciple, and yet Song Zhēnjūn chose to help us regardless. She's not the kind of person the rumors say she is at all…" Everyone said Song Wanníng was narrow-minded and reckless, caring nothing for her fellow cultivators.
But those rumors were clearly lies.
Even strangers like them had received her help. How could she ever abandon someone from her own sect?
Clearly, if someone was left to die under her watch, it must have been because they deserved it.
Yun Jinyue quickly secured the pill in her storage ring and led her group in haste back toward Xiangyun City.
—
Boom—!
Ye Chuxue tumbled down into a narrow ravine, the impact sending stars across her vision.
"Hss—!"
Pain shot through every limb. She sucked in a breath, struggling to her feet.
Where was she?
She frowned, scanning the unfamiliar surroundings.
The Thousand-Mile Teleportation Talisman had sent her to a random location—and this one was a defective version. She had no idea where she had landed.
Without thinking, she pulled out a transmission talisman, hoping to contact the sect and have someone come save Bai Yang. She had escaped first, but who knew how Xiangyun City would treat him afterward?
"Xiangyun City… I'll remember this. Once Master wakes up, you'll all pay." Ignoring her injuries, she channeled spiritual power into the talisman and sent it flying.
But before it could travel more than a few meters, a flash knocked it out of the air.
"Who's there?!" Ye Chuxue froze, immediately falling back into a defensive stance.
A figure emerged from the underbrush.
Mo Yuan.
He wore a half-mask, hiding the markings on his face, leaving only the exposed half—a face of breathtaking beauty.
Ye Chuxue's eyes widened. She recognized him instantly. The host from the auction house.
"You?! What are you doing here?!" She instinctively tightened her grip on her storage ring. Her entire body tensed like a hedgehog's spines. He was the one who had delivered the pill to them. Now he was here?
He must be after the Heavenly Origin Heart-Nourishing Pill too.
Ye Chuxue bit her lip. She never imagined that a single pill would draw in this much trouble. Back at the sect, Song Wanníng had plenty of these. Getting one was never difficult. She hadn't realized it was so precious in the outside world.
"Hand over the pill, and I'll let you live." Mo Yuan's tone was icy. A sickly gray hue rose on his skin, strange and unsettling. Dark demonic energy leaked from him in thick tendrils, curling through the air.
"You're a demonic cultivator? And the Shénxíng Tiānxià Auction House dares to shelter someone like you?!" Ye Chuxue's heart sank. Her eyes widened in horror.
A demonic cultivator.
She was in serious danger.
"You talk too much." Mo Yuan lifted his gaze lazily. Bloodlust flickered in his eyes. "If you won't take the kind offer, don't blame me for doing it the hard way."
He struck.
Ye Chuxue was already wounded from the earlier fight, and the poison she had been struck with still hadn't cleared. At the moment, she was little more than a walking corpse.
After just a few moves, Mo Yuan had her cornered and bleeding.
In desperation, she pulled out several old talismans and spiritual tools from her storage ring. With gritted teeth, she detonated them.
The blast was tremendous.
Mo Yuan was wounded instantly, while Ye Chuxue was blown away like a rag doll.
"Guh—!"
Blood burst from her lips as her body slammed into the ground.
Mo Yuan, too, flew back dozens of meters, smashing against a cliff face before tumbling down in a heap.
The shockwave had rattled his organs and stirred his soul. He could barely breathe. Still, he struggled to his feet, hatred seething in his bloodstained eyes.
That little worm had dared to injure him?
Dragging his obsidian-black spear, Mo Yuan limped forward. The spearhead scraped against stone with a screech that made Ye Chuxue's heart sink. She forced herself upright, eyes burning with defiance. Even if she died, she would never let this monster walk away unharmed.
She'd take him with her.
Fierce resolve burned in her gaze. From her ring, she drew out a chaotic pile of low-grade talismans. On their own, they were weak, but detonated together, they could still cause real damage.
Alongside them, she reluctantly summoned the last of her spiritual weapons and hurled them at Mo Yuan with full force.
Mo Yuan flinched.
"Where had this wretch gotten so many artifacts?"
He had thought she was just a common cultivator, but she was proving to be a serious headache. Still, it was too late to retreat. He had no choice but to charge ahead.
Boom—!
Boom—!
Boom—!
Explosion after explosion shook the entire ravine. The land itself trembled, craters caving in and debris flying high.
Both Ye Chuxue and Mo Yuan were blasted back, unconscious before they even hit the ground.
As darkness closed in, a single thought surfaced in each of their minds.
"If I survive this… I'll make sure you don't."
—
When the dust finally settled, the ravine lay in shambles. Trees uprooted, stones cracked apart, and a long blackened crater burned at the center of the devastation, as if the earth itself had been split in two.
High above the wreckage, Song Wanníng reclined sideways on her flying carpet, head propped on one hand. Her other hand gently rubbed the shell of her ear, brows drawn together in faint irritation.
"So loud…" she murmured, voice lilting with lazy disdain. "That explosion nearly shook my eardrums loose."
She let out a breath, then glanced down.
Two figures sprawled unconscious in the ruins below. One in bloodied white, the other barely recognizable from the soot and debris. A slow, amused smile crept onto her lips.
She descended.
The carpet floated down with all the silence of a falling feather. When she touched ground, her gaze swept across the scene, taking in the result of her plan with icy satisfaction. Mo Yuan's little trick—marking the pill with a hidden tracking seal to trace Ye Chuxue across a Thousand-Mile Teleportation—had backfired beautifully. A foolish gamble from a self-assured man who thought he had control of the game.
Now, both of them were lying in ruins.
Exactly as she had wanted.
Song Wanníng stepped lightly through the broken earth, her white boots untouched by dust. Her expression remained neutral, calm. But her eyes… her eyes burned.
She stopped beside Ye Chuxue. The girl's long lashes trembled faintly, her breath shallow and erratic. That once-flawless face was streaked with ash and blood. Her delicate neck was exposed, pale and fragile like porcelain.
"So vulnerable.
So easy to snap."
For a long moment, Song Wanníng stared down at her. Her fingers twitched. The idea of ending it here, of wrapping her hand around that swan-like neck and feeling it give way, danced across her mind like a flame licking dry paper.
She exhaled, slow and thin. Her control held—but just barely.
Instead, she squatted down and grabbed Ye Chuxue's wrist. She wrenched the storage ring free with little ceremony, letting the skin tear as it resisted her spiritual force. Still, something inside her felt unsatisfied. Hollow.
The anger hadn't left.
She gritted her teeth.
Crack—
The sound echoed through the empty canyon as she snapped both of Ye Chuxue's wrists in a single, merciless twist.
"Still not enough."
A bitter wind stirred the dust. Song Wanníng stood again, then drove her boot hard into Ye Chuxue's stomach. Once. Twice. Three times. The dull thud of flesh and bone, the spasmodic twitch of an unconscious body beneath her heel—it brought no guilt. Only a grim, growing relief.
Her strikes grew more methodical, like chipping away at a stone until the edges became smooth.
Each blow whispered with a buried frustration, the kind that never showed on her face but lived deep in her chest.
Whatever she did, she could blame it all on Mo Yuan later. No reason to hold back.
Her lips curved in a sweet, gentle smile. After a few more kicks, the frustration in her chest finally began to dissipate.
She turned away from the ruined girl and approached Mo Yuan next.
His body was limp, face caked in blood. Pathetic. Disgusting.
She reached into her sleeve and retrieved a black cloth sack. With a flick of her wrist, it unfurled in the air and floated over his body like a shroud. The moment it touched him, the sack expanded and wrapped around him with a hiss, swallowing him whole in one smooth motion.
A twist of her fingers, and the bag rose into the air, drifting toward the flying carpet like a captive cloud. It settled at the edge of the seat.
Song Wanníng followed and sat down again, her posture relaxed, legs crossed. Her hand propped up her cheek as her gaze lingered on the motionless bundle.
This time around, would Mo Yuan still become Ye Chuxue's loyal little lapdog?