Walker's short body leaned forward, both arms hanging before him, his posture like a malformed beast about to pounce on its prey.
"I've changed my mind."
"I won't let you die quickly."
"I'm going to take you apart slowly."
"Starting with your fingers, snapping them joint by joint."
"Then your toes, crushing them one by one."
"I want to watch your spear path go out inch by inch, hear every faint crack of your bones, smell that rust-sweet scent in your blood."
"You'll lie there like that, half-dead, staring at me with those beautiful eyes, while I squat in front of you and savor you inch by inch."
As he spoke, his whole body had already lunged at Zhao Zhaoxue.
Without warning.
Without any opening move.
His short body was like a stone shot from a massive bow, trailing a dark green afterimage as it crossed thirty meters in an instant.
He pounced before Zhao Zhaoxue, spread his right claw, and pressed it toward her face.
The blood-red third eye in his palm flew open, and a thumb-thick beam of dark green light shot from within, stabbing straight toward Zhao Zhaoxue's brow.
That beam was too fast.
So fast that most cultivators in the stands only had time to see a thin green line appear out of nowhere before it reached three inches from Zhao Zhaoxue's brow.
Three inches.
For a beam powered by holy aura, it did not even require one-thousandth of a breath.
But Zhao Zhaoxue opened her eyes.
In that instant between closed and open, she did one thing.
Her right hand tightened around the red-tasseled spear and turned slightly, the shaft rotating half a circle in her palm.
The movement was extremely slight.
So slight that, to others, it looked as though she had merely adjusted