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 shouting for.”

“Help her!”

When the nest fell, no egg came out whole — Li Xinhan tightened his grip on the blade’s hilt, his composure beginning to crack.

In a thousand years of Qingzhou’s stability, when had demons ever invaded this far?

This was a place with four renowned great clans, the largest contingent of Demon Suppression Division constables in the province, and the province’s one and only Martial Immortal.

“Help her…”

The withered old man, in a rare lapse of composure, looked at the ignorant young man with bitter resignation. “Before strength like that, this old man is no different from you.”

At those words, Li Xinhan froze in place, the blade in his hand drooping limply.

The Ancestor was the strongest person he’d ever known, the very foundation the entire Li clan stood on — and yet, against this, the man could only stand and watch helplessly, just like him?

He turned and charged back out.

The Li clan’s Ancestor frowned, but made no move to stop him.

This demon king had blanketed the entire city in towering demon power; the only thing left to decide was where one would die. There was no escaping it, not a chance.

With that thought, he sighed and looked up at the sky.

It wasn’t out of mercy that Lady Qinghua had let Jiang Qiulan catch her breath — it was simply that a treasured sword had suddenly appeared before her.

The sword was wrapped entirely in accumulated faith, and yet there was nothing peaceful about it at all — it was saturated instead with slaughter and madness.

She said flatly, “I’ve never seen a Martial Immortal quite like you.”

With his physical body destroyed, his only chance of survival lay in finding some vessel to lodge himself within — a beloved sword he’d carried close to heart, perhaps, becoming a sword soul to slow his own dissolution, or, with good fortune, finding his way into a golden dharma form, where the chance to keep cultivating might yet remain.

Until then, any expenditure of strength at all would only hasten his end.

Let alone throwing himself willingly at a demon king who far surpassed him.

“…”

The treasured sword offered no answer at all. In a place no one else could see, Jiang Yuanhua stood with sword in hand, its light surging forward like a great river, flowing toward Lady Qinghua with no thought of retreat.

Within the ruins, Jiang Qiulan’s breathing grew steadily slower.

Deep gashes split her flesh, revealing the cold white killing-force of Mysterious Ice beneath, and her entire body became a streak of light, shooting straight toward the sky.

She was said to be Qingzhou’s sharpest blade — and yet her hands had always been empty.

Now, that white current of cold surged forward like a single blade vast enough to shatter rivers and split seas, slashing toward Lady Qinghua in an instant!

Shk-shk-shk—

Lady Qinghua swung her blade in a horizontal arc, meeting the cold current head-on.

At the same time, without the slightest hurry, she raised a treasured blue-flower parasol, its seemingly fragile canopy slowly turning, deflecting every trace of the faith-laden sword light.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to break through.”

She glanced sideways. The edge of her own blade had been caught quietly in a hand smeared with blood and torn flesh — half of Jiang Qiulan’s face had been scoured bare of skin by the demon power, while the path infant condensed from the Mysterious Ice Seven-Kill force radiated a deep, biting chill.

That one remaining eye was like white jade, still and unmoved as a well of ancient water.

“If you already knew something would go wrong, you should have gotten out early — you might still have had your chance at revenge.”

Lady Qinghua tried to draw her blade back, but found the girl, even having forced her way through her breakthrough, somehow still carried a foundation far beyond what any freshly-minted Mixed Origin Grandmaster ought to have — the Condensate-stage method she’d cultivated must have been one of the most punishing kinds there was.

Had the breakthrough come naturally, the woman thought, even she herself might not have been able to take this girl down so easily.

Add to that talent like hers, and there was no doubt she would have gone on to accomplish something, given time.

“…”

Jiang Qiulan gazed quietly at the blade’s edge in her grip, her fingers slowly tightening, until it shattered between them. Her voice came soft. “Revenge is a rather pointless thing.”

Once the dust had already settled, nothing could change it anymore.

Chasing after time was only ever meant to keep you from meeting the same old regrets again.

She really was tired.

Truly, she had no wish to chase after anything again.

She made a blade of her own hand and slashed it abruptly across Lady Qinghua’s throat. A deep gash opened across that delicate neck, blood welling up at once, only to be frozen solid by the cold.

Whump!

In almost the same instant, Lady Qinghua’s palm slammed into her chest, and cracks spread visibly across the path infant Jiang Qiulan had manifested.

“I’m a demon, you know.”

The Lady watched her plummet, raising a hand to press against the wound on her throat — an injury that would have killed any ordinary person outright, and yet for a demon king of this strength, it couldn’t even rattle her composure.

In that same instant, the sword’s light on the other side finally tore through the blue-flower parasol, shattering its ribs, and drove straight toward the hand she had pressed to her throat.

Schk!

The longsword pierced clean through her hand, and with the same stroke, drove on through her throat as well.

Jiang Yuanhua’s face twisted savagely as he swung the sword in a horizontal arc, meaning to take her head off in a single stroke.

“I already told you. I’m a demon.”

Lady Qinghua wrenched her hand free without hesitation, half of it sliced clean through in the process, then closed her grip around the sword, holding it utterly motionless.

She had carried sword in one hand and parasol in the other, before.

That had never meant she was some cultivator.

Once all of that was stripped away, her own formidable demon body remained her greatest asset of all.

And Jiang Yuanhua’s divine spirit, by now, had already begun to waver badly, the accumulated faith filling the sky thinning out around him.

The Thousand Demon Den’s Demon King Qinghua and this realm’s Howling Moon Demon King might share the same title, but they were nowhere near the same tier of existence.

With one careless flick of her hand, she shattered the last sliver of hope held by every soul in Qingzhou City.

What was more, the crimson cloud overhead had grown noticeably thicker still.

At the edges of the dark crimson sky, an even more savage shade of scarlet came surging in like a tide.

It blotted out sun and sky alike, plunging the whole of Qingzhou City into a silent, suffocating dread.

(End of Chapter)