Granny Si!

The smooth cut was as flat as a mirror polished countless times.

A light breeze blew past, and half of the enormous mountain peak collapsed with a thunderous roar, sliding down the mountainside and kicking up clouds of dust that blotted out the sky.

At that moment, Liu Dao, lying flat in the grass, felt his scalp go numb, and even his breathing nearly stopped.

And outside the light screen, on the Douluo Continent, it was so quiet that even a pin dropping could have been heard.

Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, inside the main hall.

Sword Douluo Chen Xin, who had been resting with his eyes closed, suddenly snapped them open and rose straight from his chair.

Those eyes of his, usually as still as an ancient well, were now filled with shock.

As the publicly acknowledged pinnacle of swordsmanship on the Douluo Continent, his perception of blade and sword aura far surpassed that of ordinary people.

"No soul power fluctuations. No soul rings flashing."

Chen Xin's lips moved slightly, his voice carrying a tremor he could not hide.

"With just a casual swing, that pure blade intent severed a mountain peak from several thousand meters away. What realm is this, exactly?"

Bone Douluo beside him also sucked in a cold breath and instinctively glanced at the defensive bone armor he was so proud of.

He felt that if he had been the one to block that slash, his end would probably have been exactly the same as that mountaintop's, sliced perfectly flat.

Heaven Dou Imperial City, Shrek Academy.

Dai Mubai wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and turned to look at Yu Xiaogang as well.

"Grandmaster, didn't you just say the Great Ruins were no different from our Star Dou Forest?"

Yu Xiaogang opened his mouth, his stiff face flushing the color of pig liver.

He very much wanted to say a few more theories to explain it, but faced with that mountain that had been shaved flat, all the arguments he had prepared in his head refused to come out.

At this moment, the scene in the sky was still continuing.

The boy of about ten was humming a cheerful tune as he shifted that exotic beast leg, weighing tens of thousands of jin, more comfortably onto his shoulder.

"Grandpa Butcher, I'll head back first, then."

The boy waved with his free hand and, with brisk steps, followed a small dirt path by the riverbank back the way he had come.

Before long, the boy's figure disappeared around a bend in the woods ahead.

Butcher on the large bluestone still did not raise his head. He continued holding the butcher knife, fully focused on chopping the minced meat on the chopping board.

In the grass, Liu Dao lay on the ground for a full incense stick's worth of time. Only after confirming that the terrifying crippled butcher had not noticed him did he carefully climb to his feet.

Because he had been tense for so long, the clothes on his back were completely soaked through with cold sweat.

A gust of wind blew past, chilly against him.

"I can't stay here any longer. That legless man is too damned strange."

Liu Dao swallowed, his mind rapidly calculating.

As an experienced old hunter, he knew that in a completely unfamiliar, high-risk environment like this, being alone was the greatest taboo.

"That kid just now has the build of an ordinary human. And since he said he was bringing meat back to eat, that means there must be a village or town where people live up ahead."

"As long as ordinary people live there, the danger level will definitely be much lower. There might even be a safe inn for outsiders to stay in."

At this thought, Liu Dao gritted his teeth and made his decision.

He restrained every fluctuation of soul power on his body, even slowing his breathing, and relying on the tracking skills he had honed over years of hunting, he silently followed in the direction the boy had left.

Outside the light screen, everyone saw Liu Dao's actions and nodded one after another.

"This Liu Dao's head is still clear enough. He knows to follow a local and look for a village."

"Yeah. As long as he finds a place with lots of people, that's better than wandering blindly in the wilderness. Maybe he can even ask around about some opportunity to become a god."

In the scene, Liu Dao kept an absolutely safe distance of two or three hundred meters the whole time.

The boy up ahead did not seem to notice at all. As he walked, he kicked small stones by the roadside, his steps very light and brisk.

The trees on both sides grew denser and denser. Sunlight was blocked by the broad leaves, and the light on the little road became somewhat dim.

Liu Dao lowered his body, moving swiftly along the shrubs beside the road.

Just as he went around a thick, sturdy tree, another person suddenly appeared in his line of sight up ahead.

It was a young woman in a floral cloth dress, carrying a bamboo basket in her hand, her back to him as she stood in the middle of the path.

The woman had a graceful figure and a slender waist, looking so delicate and soft that she seemed like an ordinary village girl who had come out to pick wild fruit.

Liu Dao's heart lurched, and he quickly stopped.

Having spent years on the edge of life and death, his instincts told him that a beautiful woman suddenly appearing in deep mountains and old forests like this was absolutely not normal.

He instinctively took a step back, preparing to go around her.

Just then, the woman in the floral cloth dress slowly turned around.

It was a very beautiful face, with fair skin and smiling, curved brows and eyes, looking very gentle.

She looked at Liu Dao, who was hiding in the bushes dozens of meters away, and the corner of her mouth suddenly curved into a beautiful smile.

The woman did not speak. She only raised that fair, delicate little hand, aimed it in Liu Dao's direction, and lightly flicked a finger.

A tiny motion.

Liu Dao did not even see what she had flicked out.

He only felt a faint chill suddenly brush across his neck, as if a strand of spider silk had lightly grazed him.

Liu Dao froze, wanting to speak, only to find that not the slightest sound would come from his throat.

Immediately after, his vision began to tilt, and the scene before his eyes spun beyond his control.

"Thud."

A muffled sound rang out. Liu Dao's head had also fallen to the ground, rolling a long way with a rumble.

And his headless corpse, still fixed in the posture of retreating, instantly sprayed a half-meter-high column of blood from its neck before crashing stiffly into the grass.

Clean and efficient, without the slightest drag.

At the same time, the image on the screen froze instantly, and several lines of large golden words surfaced once again.

[Participant: Liu Dao (Star Dou Forest Soul-Hunting Group, Rank 35 Battle Soul Elder)]

[Current Status: Deceased]

[Cause of Death: Followed a villager from Crippled Old Village of the Great Ruins; after being discovered, died from thin-thread cutting.]

When those lines appeared across the sky, the entire Douluo Continent was completely dumbfounded.

Many people rubbed their eyes hard, their faces looking as if they had seen a ghost.

That Rank 35 Battle Soul Elder had just died like that?

Instantly killed by a pretty village girl who looked so soft and delicate, from dozens of meters away, with just a flick of her finger?

No one had even seen clearly what weapon that village girl had used!

"What the hell is this place...?"

On the streets of Heaven Dou City, a soul master's legs went weak, and he dropped onto his backside on the ground.

If that disabled Butcher who could chop through a great mountain could barely be understood as some hidden expert...

Then casually running into a village girl picking mushrooms by the roadside who could instantly kill a Soul Elder with one move completely overturned the understanding of everyone on the Douluo Continent.

At this moment, the image in the sky lit up again.

Not long after Liu Dao's corpse fell, a hurried sound of footsteps came from the small path ahead.

It turned out that the boy carrying the ten-thousand-jin exotic beast leg had noticed the movement behind him and had turned back.

The boy carried the leg and looked at the corpse on the ground, its head and body separated, then raised his head to look at the beautiful woman standing in the middle of the road.

He showed no fear at all. Instead, he frowned and sighed somewhat helplessly.

"Granny, why did you follow me out again?"

The boy muttered a complaint, a bit of grievance in his tone.

"Didn't Grandpa Village Chief say there was no problem with me coming out to hunt alone?"

The people of Douluo outside the screen were utterly baffled.

Granny?

She was clearly a beautiful young woman who looked only in her early twenties. Why was this little brat calling her Granny?

Just as everyone's hearts filled with confusion...

In the image, that gentle, beautiful woman suddenly laughed.

The laughter was somewhat hoarse, sounding completely at odds with her youthful appearance.

"You silly boy. You were followed the whole way and didn't even notice. If Granny hadn't followed you, you'd have been sold off long ago."

As the woman scolded the boy in that hoarse voice, she raised her hand and touched the back of her neck.

Then, under the gaze of countless eyes across the entire Douluo Continent, the woman's slender fingers suddenly exerted force.

There came a tearing sound, and the skin on the beautiful woman's back actually split open like a piece of clothing being unzipped, tearing straight from the back of her neck down to her waist.

Immediately afterward, a withered hand covered in age spots reached out from that split human hide.

Then came a hunchbacked body, and a head covered in wrinkles.

Before long, an old woman who looked to be in her seventies or eighties, frail and decrepit, slowly walked out from that young, beautiful female corpse's skin.

The old woman casually shook out that flawless human skin, folded it as if folding clothes, and tucked it into her robes.