Dark crimson demon clouds blanketed the sky, a black cloak billowing above Qingzhou City.

The woman held a longsword at a slant, its guard fashioned in the shape of a pale jade-green flower.

Several gashes now marked her shoulder, frost slowly melting away across them.

Her lithe figure hung suspended in midair.

Beneath her, the sprawling grounds of the Demon Suppression Division offices had collapsed by more than half, the many officers in cloud-patterned black robes gathering together into what looked like a thick, gathering storm cloud.

Yet these men, ordinarily so imposing and fearsome, looked unbearably small beneath that dark crimson sky.

Within the ruins, a girl with cold light rippling across her body lay buried beneath splintered timber and shattered brick.

Whoom—

Jiang Qiulan gently shoved aside a massive section of roof beam, doing her utmost to keep her expression calm as she tried to rise — but the faint tremor in her hand, and the white mist slowly scattering apart within her dark eyes, gave away her true condition.

The moment she staggered upright, she drew every eye.

Ordinary townsfolk huddled in their homes, where one flimsy wooden door had become, in their minds, the sturdiest shelter there was.

Countless members of the great clans and sects had poured out into the long street, staring helplessly, lost, at the figure they had once feared above all others.

That same figure had once carried out a slaughter in Yushan Prefecture so severe it had kept people awake at night for ages after.

And yet now, with demons descending on them, she was the only one who could stand in the way at all... and from the look of things, even she could no longer hold the line.

"Ancestor! Do something!"

Li Xinhan strode into the opulent residence, a fierce wolf-pelt cloak across his shoulders, a gleaming silver blade clenched in his hand.

His face was covered in blood, and still he shouted at the top of his lungs.

A withered old man stepped out, a crowd of terror-stricken family members trailing behind him, and snapped, "What are you…