"Xiaoyao, Si Jun, Aunt is here to help you!
Leave that snake woman to Aunt!"
Hua Jing's figure shot across the ruins like an arrow loosed from the bowstring, and the shattered stones beneath her feet were swept into the air by the rushing current.
She clenched the cold-glinting longsword tightly, her gaze burning like sparks of starlight as it locked onto Medusa, who stood atop the throne of snake bones ahead.
"Demoness! Today, this Grandaunt will uphold justice on Heaven's behalf!"
Before her sharp cry had faded, Hua Jing kicked hard off the ground and soared into the air, her longsword letting out a piercing shriek as it stabbed straight for Medusa's heart.
The blade carved a silver arc beneath the setting sun, its edge still holding the faint glow left behind from slaying monsters earlier. It was about to touch Medusa's crimson robes.
Yet Medusa merely raised her eyes. The vertical pupils within them narrowed slightly, and a cold curve lifted at the corner of her lips.
She did not move. She merely raised her right hand and lightly tapped forward with her slender fingertips.
In an instant, the small snakes coiled amid her black hair all lifted their heads. Their scales gleamed blue-black in the light, their forked tongues flickering rapidly as they hissed in warning.
"Whoosh—whoosh—"
More than a dozen venomous snakes shot from her hair like arrows, their fangs gleaming with an eerie blue light as they pounced at Hua Jing in midair.
The snakes twisted nimbly through the air as though they had grown eyes, closing in from every direction. Their foul stench could be smelled from several yards away.
Hua Jing's pupils contracted slightly, but she did not retreat in the slightest.
With a flick of her wrist, her longsword traced a circular