Crossing Blades

Watching the element spin rapidly, Feng Xue immediately realized what was happening. Without the slightest hesitation, he pulled up his hood and sprinted for the door, using the movement techniques he had learned from the Assassin Tag.

At the same time, he didn't forget to turn around and aim his Golden Finger panel at the remaining corpses. As he repeatedly pressed the Smelt button, the few corpses that hadn't yet suffered at his hands turned into handfuls of drifting ash.

[Smelting successful. Obtained Element [Death] and 25 units of [Shi].]

[Smelting successful. This smelting...]

...

The rare run of successful smelts did nothing to catch Feng Xue's attention. He strode forward with all his might, darting out of the abandoned building in just a few quick bursts of speed.

The Stitched Monster had left him with an impression so overwhelming that he couldn't even bring himself to think about fighting it.

But although he wanted to run, the monster behind him wasn't necessarily willing to let him go. A furious, venomous howl rang out, and Feng Xue felt a chill crawl across his back!

"Danger!" The intense sense of peril made his scalp tingle. Feng Xue twisted with all his might, but still felt a sharp pain graze his left side. If he hadn't been training as an assassin according to the methods provided by the Tag, and if he hadn't just unlocked the Reforge Element, that strike would have pierced straight through his back.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Feng Xue rolled across the ground. He scrambled to his feet and kept running. His clothes weren't torn, but the pain beneath his ribs and the slippery wetness there told him he was bleeding.

Pressing a hand near the wound on his left side, Feng Xue tried to stop the bleeding while running as hard as he could. Unfortunately, after he'd been attacked, the speed boost from the Boots of Silence had been cut down considerably. Otherwise, he felt he could have gone even faster.

But that thought barely had time to form before he slammed on the brakes and stopped dead. Someone was blocking his way.

It was a beautiful woman. Apart from her bloodless skin, she looked no different from an ordinary person. She wore only a ragged piece of cloth that could hardly be called clothing, and held a pale short sword in her right hand. A powerful, venomous hatred poured from her entire body.

In appearance, this woman looked more like a pitiful victim of violence than an Omen. But Feng Xue had no intention of speaking with her. Above her head, in his field of vision, a sphere packed with mosaics and chaotic data was rolling wildly. Within it, he could make out four elements—

[Death], [Female], [White Bone], [Hatred].

"I can understand the rest, but where did this White Bone Trait come from? Is it because I dissected her?" For the first time, Feng Xue felt he might have gotten what he deserved. He silently promised himself that from then on he would observe the proper respect due to cadavers and, after he finished studying them, do his best to restore their original state before reforging them. But the Omen before him clearly had no intention of giving him a chance to repent. In what seemed like no more than a flicker, her bloodless body reappeared in front of him. In the blink of an eye, the pale, bone-white dagger would plunge into his chest.

No, it wasn't bone-white. That dagger was, in fact, a real bone!

The many days of assassin training finally paid off. Just in the nick of time, Feng Xue raised his right hand. As his middle finger curled, a short blade sprang out from beneath his wrist. Bone and blade clashed, sparks bursting between them—but even though he'd successfully blocked the attack, blood still seeped from his sleeve.

"An attack that ignores blocks? Or some kind of energy attack?" Enduring the pain, Feng Xue swung his arm and shoved the female Omen back. She was incredibly fast, but her body was so light that he pushed her away without much effort.

Still, her unblockable attacks were far too tricky, and Feng Xue didn't dare engage her head-on. But judging by his earlier attempt to flee, he was nowhere near as fast as she was.

"Haah... Nighttime, a woman... At least there's no fog tonight." Feeling the pain beneath his ribs and in his forearm, Feng Xue took a couple of shallow breaths. His gaze sharpened. He no longer had any intention of running. With a twist of his wrist, he launched the Blade of Suffocation at the Omen before him.

This Omen was clearly more intelligent than the Stitched Monster. Seeing the short blade fly toward her, she immediately swung her bone dagger and knocked it aside. Feng Xue didn't care that his weapon had failed to hit its mark, because in that brief moment, his right hand had already drawn the weapon hidden in the sleeve on his left arm.

It was a large black dagger, about twenty centimeters long, with a vicious curve and serrated edge. Cold gleams glimmered along its grim blade.

That wasn't just a figure of speech. The blade was literally shining!

It wasn't a white light or a ghostly glow, but a cold, ominous aura, as if it were wrapped in endless resentment. It brimmed with menace.

The instant the dagger left its sheath, the Omen before him stiffened for a moment. Seizing that opening, Feng Xue—his stance adjusted—erupted into action!

A chilling blade-light traced a cold arc through the night sky. But he still couldn't outspeed the Omen. When he was half a meter away, the sharp bone sword was already in front of him—and the dagger in his hand swung at the same time!

"Clang!"

With a crisp ring like metal striking metal, the bone sword in the Omen's hand snapped. Its cut was smooth as a mirror, as though a freshly sharpened kitchen knife had sliced through a slab of meat jelly.

But the Omen had no time to be shocked. As the sword broke, Feng Xue's sharp blade had already cut into her right shoulder, cleaving diagonally through her entire body as easily as a hot knife through butter.

Feng Xue didn't stop there. He had no idea whether this Omen could revive, so he kept swinging his dagger until the mosaic-covered sphere in his vision began to dissipate. Only then did he finally stop. To be safe, however, he opened the Smelt function and aimed it at the scattered remains.

[Smelting successful. Obtained 5047 units of [Shi].]

"No Tag or Element? Wait, a corpse that would've yielded at most 40 units of Shi gave this much after turning into an Omen?"

Feng Xue looked at the notification from his Golden Finger, unsure what the reason could be. But at least it proved that the Omen wouldn't come back to life.

Once the tension left him, the pain in his body surged back. But now that he was out of combat, the Boots of Silence's ability to heal external injuries slowly began to take effect.

Feeling the itch at his wounds, Feng Xue looked at the dagger in his hand with lingering fear. It was the main weapon he'd accidentally created while using another blade to test its edge—

Name: Phantom · Dissection Madonna

Elements: [Weapon], [Female], [Night], [Fog], [Cutting], [Dissection]

Description: A weapon that holds the resentment of countless fetuses who were never born after being aborted. When all three conditions are met—"the time is night," "the target is female (or female of another species)," and "there is fog"—it can pull the target's internal organs out of their body regardless of any conditions, turning them into a dissected corpse. When not all the conditions are met, it is merely a fairly sharp weapon, but its power increases as more conditions are fulfilled.

Note: Mommy...