The rain, like countless cold silver needles poured from the sky, seemed intent on stitching all the filth of the world into the soil.
Boom—!
A bolt of purple lightning tore through the dark sky, illuminating the long-abandoned ancient temple as bright as day, and illuminating Shen Qingqiu's deathly pale face.
Pain.
Pain surged like a tidal wave from her limbs to her brain. Shen Qingqiu abruptly opened her eyes, seeing only a dilapidated, leaky roof. Rain dripped from the moss-covered tiles, landing squarely on her brow, cold as a kiss from death.
She instinctively tried to raise her hand, but found herself powerless and heavy. Looking down, her pupils contracted slightly.
At that moment, her vision seemed to be stretched and sharpened by some strange force.
In her eyes, it was more than just a piece of clothing. She clearly saw that the phoenix embroidered in gold thread on the bright red wedding dress was broken, soaked with dark brown blood; the fabric's warp and weft were slightly swollen from the rain, every thread trembling.
Was this a wedding dress?
Shen Qingqiu's mind was a blur, her memories like shattered mirrors, leaving only countless sharp fragments. She vaguely remembered her name was Shen Qingqiu; besides that, there was only boundless darkness, and… a weariness and indifference deeply rooted in her soul, as if she had experienced ninety-nine deaths.
"...Where am I?"
She tried to sit up, but her fingers touched something cold and hard.
It wasn't stone, nor wood.
The touch was like a piece of jade that had slumbered for a thousand years in a deep pool—delicate, smooth, yet exuding a chilling stillness.
With the next flash of lightning ripping across the sky, Shen Qingqiu finally saw what "it" was.
It was a man.
He lay beside her, starkly clean in this decaying, musty-smelling mass grave and dilapidated temple. He wore a tight-fitting, jet-black outfit, the sleeves and collar embroidered with intricate, obscure cloud patterns in silver thread—no, in Shen Qingqiu's exceptionally keen eyesight, those cloud patterns were not ordinary decorations; they seemed like some flowing, solidified rule, presenting a dizzying geometric beauty.
He was an exceptionally handsome man.
Even amidst a pile of corpses, he was breathtakingly beautiful.
His skin was almost translucent, gleaming with a cold, porcelain-like sheen in the lightning. His brow bones were high and straight, his nose like a peak, his thin lips tightly closed, his features sharp as a newly drawn sword. Rainwater slid down his beautiful jawline, gathering in the hollow of his long neck, as if it were the last sanctuary in the world.
Looking at him, Shen Qingqiu had an absurd illusion: this wasn't a corpse, but rather an unfinished sculpture abandoned by the gods in the mortal realm. "Is he dead..." Shen Qingqiu stretched out a trembling finger, inexplicably checking his breath.
No breath.
Her fingertips touched his cheek; it was chillingly cold. No heartbeat, no temperature, not even a trace of pulse beneath his skin.
In that instant, a violent electrical crackling flashed through her mind, like a warning from another dimension, or perhaps a thrill of excitement.
[Warning: High-energy dormant entity detected. Danger level: Unknown.] Shen Qingqiu abruptly withdrew her hand, pressing it to her throbbing temples. Was it a hallucination? No, it was more like an instinctive intuition.
Just then, a strange noise came from the rain outside the dilapidated temple.
"Search! That little bitch is badly injured, she can't have gone far!"
"Orders from above: find her alive or dead. This is the sacrifice that can unlock the 'Heavenly Book,' it can't be lost!"
It was the sound of iron boots crushing rotting leaves, the scraping of a blade against bushes, and a nauseating murderous aura suppressed in the rain.
The sounds grew closer, mingled with heavy breathing, separated only by a rickety, dilapidated wooden door.
Shen Qingqiu's eyes changed in that instant.
The previous confusion and pain vanished instantly, replaced by an absolute, almost inhuman calm. Like a sophisticated instrument suddenly switched on.
She quickly looked around.
The dilapidated temple was drafty, offering nowhere to hide. She was now badly injured, even standing was difficult, her only "weapon" being the crooked gold hairpin in her hair.
A dead end.
This was a dead end with no suspense.
The footsteps outside stopped.
"Boss, there's a bloody smell in this temple."
"Go in and check."
'Creak—' The decaying wooden door groaned, a rough, large hand pushing it open. A damp, cold wind, mixed with rain, rushed in. The torchlight flickered in the darkness, casting several menacing figures onto the mottled walls.
Three assassins in black. The long knives in their hands gleamed with a bloodthirsty coldness in the firelight.
Shen Qingqiu leaned against the offering table, half her body hidden in the darkness, her blood-stained wedding dress like a burning flame. She tilted her head slightly, her clear, cold eyes gleaming with an unusual light in the firelight—no fear, only scrutiny.
She was scrutinizing these men's weaknesses.
In her vision, the world changed.
The three assassins were no longer people of flesh and blood, but structures composed of countless lines and blocks of color.
The leader had a dark red bruise on his left knee—an old wound, a point of instability from which he had lost his footing;
The man on the right was breathing erratically, his fingers gripping the knife slightly white—he was tense, or perhaps exhausted;
The man in the middle had a throbbing blue vein on his neck, the only fatal point.
But she could see it, she couldn't act.
Shen Qingqiu sadly realized that her muscle reaction speed couldn't keep up with her brain's calculations. If she moved even slightly, the knife would decapitate her in 0.3 seconds.
"Oh, found it." The leader of the assassins grinned maliciously, his gaze greedily sweeping over Shen Qingqiu's disheveled wedding dress. "I didn't expect this young lady of the Shen family to be so beautiful even on the verge of death."
He raised his knife, approaching step by step.
Shen Qingqiu's fingers gripped the soil beneath her tightly. Her gaze instinctively drifted to the "corpse" beside her.
If she didn't resist, she would die.
If she resisted, she would also die.
Unless… A mad thought exploded in her mind. She stared at the cold, perfect male corpse, the voice echoing in her mind again: [High-energy dormant body… requires energy to activate.] Energy?
Shen Qingqiu looked at the cut on her palm from the tile, bright red blood gushing out.
This was her last gamble.
"Don't come any closer!" Shen Qingqiu suddenly spoke, her voice hoarse yet strangely penetrating.
The assassins froze for a moment, then burst into laughter: "Little beauty, stop struggling, just come with us…"
In that fraction of a second of their relaxed vigilance.
Shen Qingqiu yanked the gold hairpin from her hair and plunged it into her palm without hesitation!
A sharp pain shot through her, blood gushing out. Without pausing, she grabbed the cold wrist of the male corpse beside her, pressing her scalding blood hard against the faint blue vein on the inside of his wrist.
"Wake up!"
She screamed silently in her heart.
Blood meandered down his pale skin, yet strangely, it didn't drip; instead, it seemed absorbed by a sponge, instantly seeping into his skin.
Tick-tock.
It sounded like the ticking of a clock.
The whole world seemed to freeze for a moment.
The rain stopped, the thunder faded away.
The three assassins maintained their menacing, approaching posture, but in Shen Qingqiu's eyes, their movements were as slow as a shadow play slowed down countless times.
She felt the body beneath her palm tremble.
It wasn't a muscle spasm, but a deeper, more profound tremor, as if it were deep within the earth's crust.
The man, who had been lying on the ground like a lifeless object, suddenly had raindrops roll off his eyelashes.
The next instant, he opened his eyes.
Boom—!!!
An aura more terrifying than any previous bolt of lightning instantly filled the small, deserted temple.
What kind of eyes were those?
No pupils, no whites of the eyes, only a bottomless, dark blackness. And in the deepest recesses of that blackness flowed countless tiny, eerie blue streams of light, like those from collapsed stars. These streams of light not only appeared in his eyes but also spread from the corners of his eyes to his temples, forming a strange and bewitching electronic pattern.
He made no movement to rise, yet his body defied the laws of physics and stood upright.
It was a truly "zombie-like" movement—stiff, yet faster than the limits of the naked eye.
"He...he's come back to life?!" The lead assassin screamed in terror, his knife instinctively slashing down.
The blade stopped three inches from the man's brow.
Two pale, slender fingers gently caught the longsword, powerful enough to shatter stone and cut through gold.
The man slightly tilted his head, his eyes, brimming with blue data, staring blankly at the assassin. His lips parted slightly, the sound not human, but more like the low-frequency vibration of metal rubbing together:
"...Interference...Eliminate."
"Crack." A crisp snapping sound rang out.
The longsword, forged from refined steel, shattered between his fingers like a crisp biscuit. Shards scattered, tearing through the rain.
Then, a black afterimage appeared.
Shen Qingqiu didn't even see how he made his move. She only saw a black sleeve trace an elegant arc in the air, like the scythe of death.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Three muffled thuds overlapped.
The three assassins froze. A thin line of blood appeared simultaneously on their necks. Two seconds later, blood gushed out like a fountain, staining the walls of the dilapidated temple red.
The sound of the corpses falling was dull and desperate.
In a mere breath.
Three second-rate experts, instantly killed.
The deserted temple fell silent once more, only the torrential rain outside continued to rage.
The man stood in the pool of blood, yet not a drop of blood stained his body. His face remained expressionless, his eerie eyes slowly shifting, finally settling on Shen Qingqiu in the corner.
Shen Qingqiu's heart clenched violently.
She could feel that overwhelming killing intent hadn't vanished; it was locked onto her.
He walked towards her step by step.
With each step, the blue light in his eyes intensified, the inhuman oppression grew stronger.
Shen Qingqiu had nowhere to retreat, her back pressed tightly against the cold wall. She looked at the monster she had awakened with her own hands, forcing herself not to tremble.
He stood before her, looking down at her condescendingly.
Pale fingers slowly extended, carrying the chill of death, reaching for Shen Qingqiu's slender neck.
Was she going to die? Shen Qingqiu stared intently into his eyes, eyes devoid of human emotion, containing only a strangely familiar, chilling sense of order.
Just as that cold hand was about to touch her throat, Shen Qingqiu smelled a faint scent emanating from him. It wasn't the stench of corpses, nor the smell of blood, but a chilling aura like that of a pine forest after rain, or perhaps… burnt metal.
As if possessed, Shen Qingqiu raised her blood-soaked hand and gently grasped his hand that was about to take her life.
Warm blood once again stained his pale fingertips.
The man's movements froze.
The frantically flowing blue data in his eyes paused and became disordered for a fleeting moment upon contact with her blood.
"Seventeen," Shen Qingqiu suddenly spoke, her voice trembling yet firm. She didn't know why she uttered that name; it was like a curse left over from ninety-nine reincarnations, slipping out of her lips.
The man's fingers froze in mid-air.
He tilted his head, his movements stiff like a puppet struggling to comprehend instructions. Blue light flickered intensely in his empty black eyes, as if engaged in some fierce struggle and judgment.
Finally, the blue light in his eyes faded, leaving only a pair of eyes as black as ink, as deep as an abyss.
The hand that had originally intended to snap her neck slowly lowered, finally landing clumsily and hesitantly on the top of her head.
Cold, stiff, yet carrying a barely perceptible…carelessness.
He looked at her, his lips moved, uttering his second sentence since waking up. His voice was still hoarse and shrill, but less murderous, more filled with a confused stubbornness:
"…Energy…Bound…." Before Shen Qingqiu could even ponder the meaning of those words, a strong wave of dizziness washed over her. Excessive blood loss combined with mental tension caused her vision to black out completely, and she lost consciousness.
In the last moment before losing consciousness, she felt herself fall into a cold, firm embrace.
That embrace, devoid of warmth, shielded her from the raging storm at that moment.
Outside the temple, thunder roared, as if the heavens were howling at the awakening of this forbidden entity. And within this dilapidated temple, battered by wind and rain, a transdimensional journey of god-slaying began.