Loyal Servant...

Qiao and Ding cried out, screamed, and leaped up violently.

Purple-black smoke clung to their skin, relentlessly forcing its way into their bodies through their pores. Even more of it had entered through their mouths as they greedily sucked Grandma Hong's life essence.

Their skin rapidly turned purple-black. Great patches of flesh festered and peeled away, blood seeping from their ruined flesh. The droplets that first emerged were still bright red, but once they hit the ground, they turned into black, pus-filled blood.

Having learned the Essence Stealing Secret Art from Shi Lingqing and cultivated the Longevity Cult's vile technique, Qiao and Ding screamed hoarsely as the powerful life energy within them churned and boiled, constantly counteracting the poison's erosion.

Their skin visibly rotted away, yet tender new flesh continuously grew beneath the patches that had festered and fallen off—only for that new flesh to rot and peel away once more.

Qiao and Ding screamed in fury and humiliation. Qiao, who had only grown half a thigh, could barely move. Sitting where he was, he gritted his teeth and pulled out more than a dozen delicate throwing knives, glaring viciously at Shi Dian.

Ding, meanwhile, charged out in great strides. With both hands flicking, dozens of triangular spikes shot through the air, tracing eerie arcs as they flew toward Shi Dian.

Shi Dian chuckled. He viciously planted the wooden staff in his right hand into the ground, and dozens of hair-thin silver bolts burst from its tip, striking the triangular spikes with perfect accuracy.

The lightning was immensely powerful. The triangular spikes, forged from fine steel and tempered by secret methods, were blasted apart by the current. Amid piercing explosions, fragments of iron sprayed everywhere. Ding, who had been charging forward, suddenly let out a strange cry. Tiny sparks flickered over his body as he convulsed and collapsed to the ground.

As the lightning shattered the triangular spikes midair, a thumb-thick current silently slithered along the ground like a venomous snake and struck Ding's foot. Sparks crackled sharply. Ding desperately tried to struggle to his feet, but he could not control his body at all.

Qiao, still wrapped in purple-black smoke, cursed under his breath.

When Ding had rushed out just now, he could have grabbed Qiao and carried him out of the poisonous smoke's encirclement. But Ding had not done so. He had only escaped the smoke himself, offering Qiao no aid.

The poison continuously invaded his body, rapidly consuming the life essence Qiao had just stolen from Grandma Hong. Vast pools of filthy blood flowed around him, while more freshly produced foul blood kept pouring from his body. The sight was utterly horrifying.

Shi Dian staggered forward step by step toward Ding, who lay on the ground unable to move.

Qiao suddenly tore his throat raw with a scream. "Lingqing... save me... Shi Dian, he... he... he's gone mad!"

Shi Lingqing, who had been madly venting the negative emotions in her heart, shuddered. She sprang out of the large pit she had violently blasted open and landed lightly atop a crystal cluster several meters high, more than ten meters away.

Seeing Shi Dian ambush Qiao and Ding with poison, display overwhelming might and grievously injure them, and now stand beside Ding with his wooden staff raised high to kill him...

Shi Lingqing angrily shouted, "Shi Dian... what are you doing?"

Shi Dian turned back and smiled at Shi Lingqing. The wooden staff in his hand came crashing down, piercing through Ding's skull.

"Miss, I have protected you for nearly ten years already." Shi Dian smiled gently at Shi Lingqing. "Over these ten years, you grew from an ignorant little girl into a grown woman, becoming so beautiful..."

Ding let out a shrill scream as he was killed.

Shi Lingqing stared at Shi Dian, her face twitching as all ten fingers convulsed violently.

"Do you remember the seed I gave you on your twelfth birthday?" Shi Dian spoke in a limp, sticky voice that made people intensely uncomfortable, while walking step by step toward Qiao beneath the purple-black poisonous smoke.

"You disliked that inconspicuous little seed back then." Shi Dian smiled at Shi Lingqing. "You tossed it away without a second thought... You did not know that I had spent all my savings to buy that seed from a secret merchant."

"You threw it away, but I picked it back up. Carefully, secretly, I raised it until it sprouted. I watched it grow, form buds, bloom..." Shi Dian's smile was extraordinarily gentle. "The secret merchant told me that flower was called a sunflower... The flowers were tiny, but beautiful, with many colors I had never seen before."

"Delicate, beautiful, fragile, making one cherish it... just like you, Miss." Shi Dian's smile twisted slightly. "So, after it bloomed, I pulled out the entire plant, washed it clean, and ate it bit by bit."

Within the poisonous smoke, Qiao screamed hoarsely. He slapped both hands against the ground, used the force to spring up, then scrambled and rolled as he fled outside.

Shi Lingqing screamed. Scarlet flames ignited around her body, and she transformed into streaks of afterimages as she charged at Shi Dian.

Shi Dian swept out his right hand, releasing great clouds of purple-black smoke from his palm. They formed a wall of smoke before Shi Lingqing. Having witnessed the poison smoke's viciousness, Shi Lingqing hurriedly leaped up, soaring a hundred meters into the air to evade its frontal assault.

Just as Qiao rushed out of the poisonous smoke, Shi Dian suddenly let out a shrill cry of pain.

His sunken, shattered left chest wriggled violently as threads of lightning flickered. Great quantities of clotted blood and bone fragments sprayed from his wound. Countless flesh buds erupted from the wound where his left shoulder had completely vanished. In the span of a breath, bodily fluids splattered everywhere, and his left arm grew back with a swish.

In a single breath, a completely shattered and severed left arm was fully regenerated.

Shi Dian swept out his left hand and grabbed Qiao by the neck. Qiao's eyes flew wide. He had just managed to spit out the words "spare my life" when lightning burst from Shi Dian's palm. Qiao's body abruptly lit up. Countless extremely thin arcs of electricity bounced and crackled over his surface. He convulsed violently a few times, and his body swiftly turned into a lump of charcoal barely a foot across.

Shi Dian tossed Qiao's charred remains to the ground and crushed them to pieces beneath his foot.

He raised his head and looked at Shi Lingqing, who was rapidly descending from the sky. His smile grew ever wider. "Miss, what I did to that pot of sunflowers is what I want to do to you... I want to, bit by bit, little by little... taste you!"

"Of course, I do not mean I want to kill you and truly eat you whole... That would be far too disrespectful to you, Miss..." Shi Dian's body trembled violently, and his originally gentle smile suddenly became incomparably savage.

"I want you. You are mine... In this life, you are mine... Thousand Fish City was destroyed. The old master and the masters were all killed... Only I protected you and escaped with you... It truly was the Fish God's blessing. You were destined to be mine." Shi Dian grinned so broadly that the corners of his mouth nearly reached the back of his neck.

"I know my status is not high enough. I know I am merely the lowly leader of the Lineage guards. So I could only watch you secretly, observe you, think of you at night..." Shi Dian burst into laughter. "But now, I can have you. I can possess you..."

As he violently ground Qiao's ashes beneath his foot, Shi Dian shrieked, "Do you know? The day you lured them into betraying Mist Blade and selling out their brothers, I was nearby... I could see what they did to you, and I could hear your moans!"

Shi Dian gritted his teeth and laughed. "That is why they had to die. They could not be allowed to live... But you, I do not mind. Though you have already been bitten by two wild dogs, I do not mind. Who made me... love you so much?"

Shi Dian was like a demon possessed. His speech came incredibly fast; he had taken only the briefest moment to finish that long string of mad, deranged words.

Shi Lingqing dove down from above, her palms crossing. Palm imprints forged from scarlet flames howled down from the sky one after another, falling upon Shi Dian like a fiery cloud overhead.

Looking at the palm imprints Shi Lingqing had unleashed, Shi Dian suddenly roared, "Miss... don't you think that me, who awakened an innate divine ability at the brink of life and death, am far more useful than those two pieces of trash? They could have you, so why can't I?"

Shi Lingqing's body clearly froze in midair for an instant, and the dozens of scarlet flame palm imprints abruptly dispersed.

Bare in her exquisite body, Shi Lingqing slowly descended from the sky and landed lightly before Shi Dian. Swaying her graceful figure, she walked slowly up to him, reached out, and gently stroked his chin.

Shi Dian, his body filled with Killing Intent and his eyes brimming with sinister evil, was like a little dog receiving its master's caress. The aura around his body suddenly deflated, and even his straight posture hunched slightly. He bent at the waist a little, smiling broadly at Shi Lingqing.

"Miss... this is wonderful. Thousand Fish City has been destroyed. No one can possibly stop us from being together anymore... I have power now. I have awakened power. I can protect you now. Never again will anyone treat you as shamelessly as those two damned bastards did."

Tears slid from the corners of Shi Dian's eyes.

He gazed deeply at Shi Lingqing's lovely face and said each word with the force of cutting nails and slicing iron, "I will protect you. Never again will anyone be able to harm even a single hair on your head."

Shi Lingqing sighed softly. She looked at Shi Dian, studying him for a long while, before finally nodding gently. "So this is how you have felt about me all along... It truly has not been easy for you..."

With a faint smile, Shi Lingqing pointed at Wu Tie, who had jumped out of the pit, and said lightly, "I want the Ancient Treasure in that hall—the treasure that looks like a piece of Bone Crusher—as well as this Ancient Sage's corpse."

Lightning immediately flashed from Shi Dian's eyes. He abruptly raised his head and glared viciously at Wu Tie.

"Kill him and offer me all the treasures I want... After that, you will be my most trusted, closest confidant." Shi Lingqing smiled like a blooming flower and lightly cast a flirtatious glance at Shi Dian.

Shi Dian's face reddened, veins bulging along his neck as his breathing grew much heavier. His gaze was like a blade as it swept viciously across Shi Lingqing's exquisite body. Then he strode toward Wu Tie.

Wu Tie had just climbed onto the ground.

He had heard the recent upheaval clearly.

Qiao was dead. Ding was dead. Those two traitors whom Shi Lingqing had used and deceived into bringing the Nine Palm Commander and Grandma Hong here had actually died at Shi Dian's hands.

Throughout this, the deceitfulness of human hearts, the ugliness of human nature, the treachery and viciousness of worldly affairs—things Wu Tie had never encountered before—struck his heart again and again like bolts of heavenly thunder.

It was like a pond, with drops of ink falling into it little by little until the water gradually changed color.

After being suppressed by Shi Lingqing's fierce assault, his internal organs shaken by the blows, Wu Tie struggled somewhat to straighten himself and took a heavy breath. Looking at Shi Dian striding toward him, Wu Tie considered for a moment, then laughed a few times.

Even Wu Tie himself thought his laughter sounded awful. Though there was no mirror, he imagined his smile must have been ugly as well.

"I never expected that the two of you would be the ones to survive in the end." Wu Tie's thoughts were somewhat muddled. He looked at Shi Lingqing, whose clothes had been burned away by the scarlet flames he had unleashed, then at the bedraggled Shi Dian. A thousand words filled his heart, but in the end he only asked three. "Was it worth it?"

Shi Lingqing and Shi Dian froze for a moment, then began laughing at the same time.

Shi Lingqing laughed so hard that she doubled over and nearly fell to the ground. Pointing at Wu Tie, she laughed wildly. "I want to live... I want to go on living, to live loftier than everyone else, in boundless glory. And you ask me whether it was worth it? Are you joking with me?"

Shi Dian, meanwhile, laughed as he advanced on Wu Tie. Threads of extremely thin lightning constantly burst from his body, gradually forming thumb-thick currents that surged over his skin. Dull thunder continuously rumbled from within him as he shouted, "Worth it? For Miss, I can sacrifice everything!"

Wu Tie still wanted to say something, but Shi Lingqing's eyes suddenly became a sea of blood. Soundlessly, she drifted behind Shi Dian like a ghost, her hands like blades as they viciously plunged into the vital point at his back.

Shi Dian's body abruptly stiffened, and all the electricity around him instantly vanished.

He turned back in disbelief, gurgling sounds constantly issuing from his throat.

Shi Lingqing looked at him gently and serenely, saying softly, "You were right. You are merely a lowly Lineage guard. I can let anyone enjoy my body, but you house slaves are the one exception."

"Do you know the characteristics of the Essence Stealing Secret Art?" Shi Lingqing smiled happily. "Besides stealing life essence from Grandma Hong, who shares the same origin as me, at my realm, I can also seize an innate divine ability and make it my own."

"The power of lightning is quite a fine innate divine ability. Since it awakened within you, why did you not offer it to me?" Shi Lingqing's laughter gradually grew louder as strands of lightning continuously flowed from Shi Dian's body into hers.

"You are the house slave of my Shi Family in Thousand Fish City. Therefore, everything you have belongs to me. Shi Dian, would you not say that is the truth?" Shi Lingqing sighed softly. "As a house slave, you actually harbored lustful thoughts toward me from childhood. Tell me, do you not deserve to die?"

Shi Dian's body convulsed violently. His right hand gripped the wooden staff tightly. Several times, he raised it, wanting to attack Shi Lingqing.

Shi Lingqing looked at Shi Dian with a smile like a blooming flower.

Shi Dian tried several times, yet he never struck.

At last, Shi Dian looked at Shi Lingqing and sighed softly. "May you remain beautiful as a flower for all your life, and live forever without aging... Longevity Cult... ha... Miss, to die for you, I truly have no regrets even in death... You must live well."

Shi Dian turned around and looked at the silent Wu Tie, saying softly, "Never again... let these filthy boys defile you..."

Shi Dian's body exploded, becoming a cloud of blood mist.

Within it, a head-sized mass of blood mist was wrapped in countless extremely thin arcs of electricity. Shi Lingqing opened her mouth and swallowed that ball of lightning in one gulp.

Very soon, extremely thin arcs of lightning began flowing from Shi Lingqing's body, and low thunder rumbled through the air.

Wu Tie looked at Shi Lingqing in distress and muttered, "Why do you people have to make things so complicated?"

Shi Lingqing took a deep breath, then smiled at Wu Tie. "If everyone who blocks me and hinders me dies, would not everything in this world become much simpler?"

Amid her laughter, Shi Lingqing transformed into a bolt of lightning wrapped in blazing flames and howled as she crashed toward Wu Tie.