"Senior brother, be careful—"
Ye Shutong’s tears still clung to her face.
Her water-blue dharma robe had already slipped halfway off, revealing a breathtaking expanse of snow-white skin exposed to the biting wind. She had no idea what was happening, acting only on instinct, wanting to use her frail, delicate body to shield Ye Chen from this strike.
Her stunning face was filled with unreserved love and the desperate resolve of a sacrifice.
Ye Chen looked at her.
There was no emotion, no pain. In those usually gentle eyes, there was only an ice-cold calculation and the purest will to survive.
He lunged out, grabbing hold of Ye Shutong’s slender, supple waist with brutal force.
The strength in his fingers was savage, instantly leaving livid bruises on her pale skin.
"Senior brother?"
Ye Shutong froze for a moment, a flicker of confusion in her clear eyes.
The next moment.
"Get out of my way!"
A guttural roar, like a wild beast’s, tore from Ye Chen’s throat.
Instead of protecting her, he ruthlessly and mercilessly hurled her burning, fragile body forward—like a lifeless shield—
Straight into the falling black palm imprint and the icy giant sword from midair.
Bang!
Using this inhumanly violent thrust, Ye Chen’s body slid backward across the ground for dozens of zhang.
He didn’t even glance back at his beloved junior sister he had just thrown away.
His hands moved with practiced speed, crushing a bloodstone talisman reeking of gore.
A blood escape talisman.
Pfft! He spat out a mouthful of his own vital blood, his body transforming into a streak of bloodlight.
Like a complete coward, he plunged headfirst into the intricate maze of the Thousand Wall Stone Forest, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye.
Midair.
Ye Shutong was like a white butterfly with broken wings, flung into a meat grinder.
The raging palm wind and the piercing icy sword qi tore through what little remained of her protective true qi.
Crack!
The sickening sound of bones breaking echoed.
Ah——
Blood mixed with fragments of her internal organs burst from her pale lips.
Her water-blue dharma robe, already half-slipped, shattered into countless tragic cloth strips.
She landed like a discarded rag, crashing heavily onto the muddy, ice-littered shore.
The freezing mud instantly coated her trembling curves and fragile neck.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to the catastrophic collapse within her sea of consciousness.
Ye Shutong lay sprawled in the mud, her body convulsing uncontrollably.
Frost clung to her eyelashes, mixed with blood, blurring her vision.
She stared at the direction where Ye Chen had fled, her pure, beautiful face frozen in an expression more hopeless than death itself.
Why?
That warm, jade-like senior brother, who said he would protect her for lifetimes—the same one who had just moments ago "fought desperately" to block a strike for her—
Had personally thrown her into hell?
Cough... cough...
The collapse of her absolute faith made the core of her exquisite heart—her Seven Apertures Exquisite Heart—tremble violently.
She curled up in the mud, her chest heaving heavily, the skin flushing red from sheer terror and despair.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. So this is your Righteous Alliance's so-called 'Haoran Sword Immortal'?"
A harsh, mocking, gravelly voice sounded above Ye Shutong.
The three assassins from the Hidden Abyss Pavilion had stabilized the half-step Core Formation sword spirit and surrounded her in a triangular formation, landing with icy cruelty.
The glow of their formation pinned the severely wounded Ye Shutong to the frozen mud.
The black-robed leader looked down at the half-naked beauty in the mud.
There was no lust in his murky eyes, only greed and longing for a rare medicinal ingredient.
"Using your own dual cultivation partner as a meat shield—even I, a demonic cultivator, am impressed by such low tactics," he said.
Another assassin let out a sinister chuckle, the stench of blood wafting from the "Soul Severing Needle" in his hand as it gleamed eerily in the moonlight.
"Little girl, your lover ran away. But no matter; leaving that Seven Apertures Exquisite Heart inside a fool like you is a waste."
As he spoke, he crouched down slowly.
His rough, cold assassin’s boot ruthlessly pressed down on Ye Shutong’s delicate ankle.
"Mmph..."
Ye Shutong let out a pained groan, her mud-stained foot tensing to its limit.
The enormous force pinned her down, helpless as a fish nailed to a chopping block, waiting to be butchered.
The assassin’s icy, bloodstained Soul Severing Needle glided slowly across her collar bone, smeared with filth.
The cold metal pressed against her soft, heaving skin.
"Don’t blame us for being heartless. Blame your good senior brother."
The assassin’s lips curled into a cruel grin.
"Hold still. This will hurt. Don’t move, or your beautiful body will die for nothing."
The tip of the Soul Severing Needle slowly pierced the snow-white, tender skin over her heart.
A single drop of bright red blood slid down, tragically beautiful along the curve of her skin.
Ye Shutong closed her eyes in despair.
Two streaks of bloody tears flowed from her eyes. She no longer struggled.
When grief surpasses all, the heart dies.
Clang—
Just as the Soul Severing Needle was about to fully pierce her chest,
Amid the roaring wind and clashing steel by the Cold Water Pond, an unusually crisp sound of collision rang out.
It wasn’t deafening.
But it made the three Hidden Abyss Pavilion assassins’ hair stand on end, like falling into an icy abyss.
The Soul Severing Needle aimed at Ye Shutong’s heart stopped dead in midair.
No matter how much the assassin channeled his spiritual power, the high-grade magic tool seemed rooted in place, unable to advance even a fraction.
Because.
His wrist had been caught, light as a feather, between two calloused fingers.
Dark red stone pillar shadows stretched like a tide, silently covering the muddy bank.
Gu Yang wore a cheap gray rogue cultivator’s hemp robe, his deep black eyes like ancient, unchanging ice.
He stood quietly beside the assassin, looking down at the man’s terrified face.
There was no sharp sword aura, no violent pressure.
Only an extreme coldness, as if from an abyss, viewing all living things as dead.
"Ye Chen’s wretched life, I want to keep."
Gu Yang’s thin lips parted slightly, his voice calm without a ripple.
His gaze swept past the sweat-drenched assassin, casually glancing at Ye Shutong lying in the mud, half-naked, her face frozen in despair.
"As for her."
The wisps of dark-golden flames at his fingertips flickered silently again, dyeing the Soul Severing Needle and the assassin’s wrist a glaring dark gold.
"She’s mine."
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ver to a world of cultivation and returned invincible. Modern medicine is child's play compared to elixirs; technological might crumbles before true cultivation. My name is Qin Ning, Earth's sole cultivator!
