“...”
Qiu Feng's blood froze in an instant.
Pinned to the stone wall, he was completely unable to move. His pupils trembled violently, dilating and contracting. All color drained from the half of his face that was not covered in feathers, and even his drooping wings behind him trembled uncontrollably.
His Adam's apple bobbed several times before he finally squeezed out a broken, raspy whisper from his dry, tight throat, every word shaking out of tune: “Y-you... You are Song Yao!”
There was no mistake.
Only Song Yao possessed such an overwhelming spiritual pressure that could suppress all living things.
Only Song Yao had such a tricky, ruthless, and decisive swordplay.
And only Song Yao dared to call him that.
He still remembered back when he lived in the Nine Phoenix Palace in the Earth Realm. He had captured a few minor demons to serve him. String and wind instruments had played decadently in the hall, and the scent of wine had filled the air. He had been living a life of sheer pleasure.
Yet, Song Yao, dressed in plain robes and holding a sword, had inexplicably beaten up his eighteen layers of demon guards outside the palace. She had marched straight into the hall, stepped onto his table, and demanded to know where Qianhuang lived.
He had never seen such an arrogant person before. Finding it amusing, he had teased her with a few words, only for her to break half of his wings in just a few moves.
The sword scar she had carved into his chest and abdomen had still not healed to this day. The hall full of minor demons had all been released, leaving him alone to be tortured by her for most of the day before he barely managed to escape with his life.
She was not a normal person at all.
She was a madman among madmen.
Right now, the sword light that had shattered the decadence of the hall back then overlapped perfectly with the green light piercing through his chest at this moment.
He had never suffered such humiliation before and had sworn that if they ever met again, he would grind her bones to dust and tear her corpse into ten thousand pieces.
Yet now that she was standing right in front of him, he did not even have the strength to raise a hand in resistance.
The sword was still embedded in his flesh, its sword qi sealing his demonic power and causing even his wings to tremble uncontrollably.
He could not understand.
Back then, her soul had clearly been shattered to pieces by Qianhuang's own hands, with not even a shred of a remnant soul left behind. How could she be standing here, completely fine?
Even if she had somehow survived by a stroke of luck, how could her cultivation not have declined at all? In fact, she was even more terrifying than she had been back then.
His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he spoke in a terribly shaky voice, “W-what do you want?”
Song Yao's pale face was tightly knit in a frown, cold sweat sliding down her temples.
Having just forcibly broken the seal inside her body, her meridians felt as if they were being scraped by countless blades. She relied entirely on the pain of biting her tongue to hold onto her last thread of consciousness.
The metallic taste of blood spread in her mouth. She spoke in a hoarse, airy voice, taking out a recording talisman as she asked, “How do you undo the puppetry?”
Qiu Feng stared at her slightly trembling hand. Seeing her swaying figure, a hint of calculation slowly crept into his eyes.
It seemed she was not completely as reckless and invincible as she had been in the past.
Enduring the excruciating pain in his chest, his fingers silently snuck behind his back, attempting to pluck a feather. He rasped in a negotiating tone to buy time, “I'll tell you how to undo it, and you let me go. How about it?”
Song Yao cast a cold glance over. His hand shook violently as he plucked the feather, and he quickly changed his tune: “...You just need to return the extracted love threads to their place and chant the Heart-Clearing Spell for seven consecutive days to undo it. However...”
He suddenly shifted his tone, a smirk spreading across his face. “You're already in this state, yet you still have the mind to worry about others?!”
Song Yao paused. She immediately looked down and saw a faint blue flame suddenly erupt from the feather between his fingers.
Her eyes sharpened. She raised her hand to blast a wave of spiritual energy, but she was still half a step too late.
The feather burned into fine ashes, and specks of light drifted toward the void along the ceiling of the hall.
A transmission feather!
He was sending a message to the Great Demon of Qianhuang?!
The temperature in the hall suddenly plummeted.
The air above the high platform warped for no reason, as if some gargantuan entity were tearing open a spatial rift, preparing to step out of the void.
Cold air crawled up from the floor tiles, and even the bloodstains on the ground froze into a thin layer of frost.
Oh no, she thought.
If Qianhuang truly descended, no one in this hall would survive.
Not just this hall—no one within a hundred-mile radius would be spared!
But there was no time left.
She couldn't care less anymore.
Song Yao pursed her lips. She casually tossed the recording talisman into the Twelfth Elder's arms. With a twist of her wrist, the Bishui Sword was pulled out of Qiu Feng's chest with a sharp shring.
Then, condensing all her spiritual energy onto the blade, the light green sword light flared up as she thrust it straight toward his face.
Qiu Feng's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He had never expected that even when she was clearly at death's door, she could still strike to kill.
Even if she still had some strength left, shouldn't she have dealt with the spatial rift first?!
Ignoring the blood gushing from his chest, he scrambled on all fours toward the high platform, his wings dragging a long trail of blood across the ground. His shrill cry cracked: “Save me! Venerable One, save me!!”
“Squish.”
The blade entered from the back of his head, piercing straight through his skull and pinning him firmly to the ground.
Song Yao holding the hilt, leaned over and coughed up a large mouthful of blood, the spray splattering onto his broad wings.
She let out a soft chuckle, her voice trembling but still carrying a hint of her usual playfulness. “We agreed to die together, so together it is. Your sister is probably coming for nothing anyway—I wasn't going to live much longer regardless.”
Her spiritual energy had already been depleted and her meridians shattered. Forcibly breaking the seal to use her cultivation just now meant she was only a blink away from death.
Qiu Feng crawled forward another half-foot, the pool of blood beneath him spreading wider and wider.
A rattling gasp escaped his throat. His eyes bulged as he stared toward the high platform, filled with nothing but resentment and terror.
In the next moment, his human form suddenly dissolved, transforming into a giant, dark purple bird with lush feathers. Its wings fell heavily, completely silent.
The moment he drew his last breath, the surging spiritual energy in Song Yao's body also receded completely like a tide. Bleeding from her seven facial apertures, her legs gave out, and she collapsed forward.
Alright.
She could finally die now.
As for that Great Demon of Qianhuang, let her come or not, let her kill whoever she wanted. She really couldn't care less anymore.
However, she did not make the intimate contact with the floor that she had expected.
A pale, slender, well-defined hand steadily caught her.
A familiar, extremely gentle spiritual energy enveloped her, instantly soaking into her limbs and bones that had already gone numb from the pain.
Her twisted, compressed internal organs felt as if they were being smoothed out by a pair of invisible hands, and the pain rapidly subsided.
Kneeling on the ground with her head hanging, Song Yao blacked out for a moment before waking up in a daze.
Why wasn't she dead yet?
Who was healing her?
The Great Demon of Qianhuang?
Did the Great Demon of Qianhuang see that she had killed her brother, repent, turn over a new leaf, and become a saint on the spot?
She struggled to open her eyes, but a layer of dried blood had formed over them, making everything blurry and hard to see.
She could only barely make out the outline of a figure.
It was so familiar.
She subconsciously raised her hand to rub her eyes, but her hand was caught. A familiar, slightly cool voice sounded in her ear: “Don't move.”
“...”
Shen Queshan's voice.
She really was dead.
Otherwise, why would Eldest Senior Brother appear here and heal her?
Ignoring the advice, Song Yao rubbed her eyes hard with her sleeve, only for her face to be gently turned back.
The person opposite her gently wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. “It has dried. It might hurt a little to wipe off. Bear with it.”
Song Yao found it amusing.
She had endured that kind of excruciating pain just now; this little bit of discomfort did not even compare to an itch.
After a moment, her vision finally cleared. She looked up, and in the next instant, her gaze met Shen Queshan's usual calm and indifferent eyes.
Rate on N.U.
