Treating Mortal Lives Like Blades of Grass, the Holy Maiden Descended in a Cold Gleam to Sever Dust

The Azure-Water Qilin opened its fanged maw.

A low roar exploded in midair.

The sound wave smashed head-on into the muddy alley. The crumbling earthen walls on either side could not withstand such force; their yellow mud bricks instantly cracked across wide stretches.

Large clumps of rotting mud and broken stones came pattering down.

"My ears!"

"Help!"

The mortals clutched their ears tightly with both hands, their screams blending into one. Their eardrums had been violently ruptured, red blood trickling through their fingers and down their necks.

Everyone lay prone in the filthy puddles, not daring even to raise their heads for a glance at the sky.

Several streaks of white sword-light slid out from the side of the spirit vessel.

A few outer disciples of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect, dressed in white, descended on flying swords. Their robes were pure, luminous white, utterly untouched by dust. Their wide sleeves drifted in the air as they hovered five feet above the ground.

Steward Zhao had been lying in the mud outside Old Zhang's courtyard. The moment he saw those streaks of sword-light, his expression changed at once.

He casually wiped his face with a mud-caked sleeve, bent his fat waist, and hurried forward in a jog.

His whole body nearly pressed against the ground. He squeezed an incomparably fawning smile onto his face and bowed again and again.

"Oh my! Immortal masters, you have labored to grace us with your descent! Black Mud City is truly honored from top to bottom!"

Steward Zhao rubbed his hands together, his face full of ingratiating smiles.

"This humble one already had men clear out both sides of this muddy alley! These lowly commoners have all been driven against the walls, and the road has been completely cleared. They will absolutely not obstruct the immortal masters' feet!"

The leading outer disciple was named Li Changfeng.

He frowned and raised a hand adorned with a jade thumb ring to cover his nose and mouth.

He lowered his head and glanced at the flying sword beneath his feet.

A tiny speck of dust stirred up from the muddy alley had landed on its blade.

"Disgusting." Li Changfeng flicked his wide sleeve with a face full of disdain, his tone steeped in extreme irritation.

He did not even spare Steward Zhao a proper glance as he casually complained, "Too many ants. Even the air stinks. A dump like Black Mud City makes me sick just stepping into it."

Another disciple named Wang Xuan leaned over to chime in.

"Bear with it, Senior Brother. The Holy Maiden insisted on making this trip for the Dust-Severing Rite when she returned home." Wang Xuan swept his gaze over the ruined mud walls around them. "This muddy alley is the old site of that worldly bond. Once the Holy Maiden severs this mortal karma, we will not have to come back to a place like a pigsty ever again."

"Finish this quickly and leave quickly." Li Changfeng urged impatiently. "Go notify the flying vessel. They can lay out the red carpet now."

Steward Zhao stood beside them, nodding and bowing repeatedly.

"The immortal master is absolutely right! For these mortals to pave the way for the Holy Maiden's dust-severing, that is a blessing cultivated over ten lifetimes!"

Just as Steward Zhao busied himself with flattery.

High above, upon the spirit vessel.

The clouds were torn open by a hole. A blurry figure stood at the prow.

He was an accompanying elder of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect.

He had no interest in even glancing below. He merely casually swept a sleeve toward the ground.

"An eyesore."

There was no spellcasting gesture. No incantation, no hand seal.

A thirty-foot azure sword aura pierced straight through the clouds and slashed toward the muddy alley.

There was no warning whatsoever.

Nor was there any reason.

He simply found the crowd kneeling in the mud and water below unpleasant to look at.

With a piercing shriek through the air, the sword aura compressed the surrounding atmosphere until it burst apart.

The mortals raised their heads, their faces blank with confusion. Their instinct to flee had not even had time to arise.

Before the sword aura hit the ground, the sharp gale it whipped up had already swept across the area.

Wind blades sliced open Lu Chen's cheek, spraying beads of blood into the air.

Lu Chen's pupils contracted violently.

Without hesitation, he spun around, spread his arms, and lunged forward, wrapping A-Nan, who was not far away, into his embrace.

He pressed A-Nan beneath him, using his broad back to shield her from above.

The inner force of his Iron Cloth Shirt surged to its limit. Every muscle in his body tensed, ready to take the blow head-on.

"Boom—!"

The sword aura cleaved into the middle of the muddy alley.

Azure light exploded.

Mud, bricks, and the underground sewage pipes were all overturned by that single strike.

A deep trench was instantly plowed into the ground.

Several mortals caught directly in its path did not even have time to scream before they turned into clouds of blood mist on the spot. The red mist scattered through the air, leaving not even scraps of flesh behind.

Lu Chen only felt as if something weighing ten thousand jin had slammed viciously into his back.

His flesh tore open at once.

Great sprays of blood burst forth. His spine gave a chilling crack, and stark white shards of bone stabbed straight through his skin.

"Urgh—!"

He clenched the scream tightly between his teeth. His arms bent under the immense impact, his elbows smashing heavily into the muddy ground as the bones dislocated outright.

The overwhelming force bore down on his back, pinning him firmly against the shattered mud.

Lu Chen thought he had endured this sweep of destruction.

But he had underestimated the sharpness of an immortal sect's sword aura.

After exploding against the ground, the sword aura shattered into hundreds upon thousands of tiny broken blades that flew wildly in every direction.

A tiny azure fragment shot over close to the ground.

Lu Chen was pressed flat against the earth. The fragment slipped directly into the gap beneath his ribs.

Carried by tremendous momentum, it pierced through A-Nan's chest without the slightest resistance.

The immense force flung A-Nan's tiny body away.

She broke free from beneath Lu Chen and traced an arc through the air.

Then she crashed heavily into a sewage pit five or six meters away.

Mud and filthy water splashed everywhere.

The rag doll with half an ear missing flew from her hand and rolled aside. It had once been washed pale, but now half its body was soaked through with bright red blood.

In the muddy sewage pit.

A-Nan lay there.

She did not cry. Nor did she scream.

A glaring patch of red spread across the chest of her thin padded jacket. Blood ran from the hem of her clothes, continuously flowing into the filthy water beneath her.

The gray cloth strip over the little girl's blind eyes had come half undone, dangling beside her ear.

Pain curled her entire body into a ball, and she trembled uncontrollably.

Yet the first thing she did was not cover her wound.

Instead, she laboriously raised her little hand, smeared with mud and blood, and blindly groped through the air. Her fingers reached weakly ahead, toward Lu Chen.

"Brother Chen..."

Her voice was exceedingly faint, bloody foam spilling from her mouth.

"It hurts..."

Lu Chen lay on the ground. Blood flowing from his head had blurred his vision. He stared fixedly at that small hand extended in midair.

His eyes nearly split open.

In the distance.

Steward Zhao wiped the mud off his face, not even looking at the severed limbs scattered across the ground.

He turned to the disciples of the Azure Firmament Sword Sect, and that ingratiating smile returned to his face.

"That sword strike from the immortal master was truly mighty! Those things that did not know whether they were alive or dead deserved exactly this fate!"

Li Changfeng brushed away a trace of blood stench that had drifted over with his sleeve.

"So noisy. Throw those not quite dead farther away. Do not let their filthy blood soil the red carpet to be laid out next." Li Changfeng casually gave the order.

Wang Xuan stood beside him with his flying sword in his arms, joining in with a cold laugh.

"These bugs cause us trouble even when they die."

From beginning to end, they had never regarded the mortals in the muddy alley as living human lives. In their eyes, it was no different from crushing a few ants on the ground.

Lu Chen lay in a pool of blood.

Everything before his eyes had turned completely crimson.

As he watched A-Nan's body gradually lose its warmth, the taut string in his mind snapped.

His reason collapsed completely.

Forbearance, scraping out an existence, the difference between immortals and mortals—fuck it all.

Deep within his body.

The blood that had lain dormant and unawakened suddenly grew scorching hot under the dual stimulation of near-death and extreme grief and fury.

The sound of his heartbeat changed.

It was no longer the heartbeat of an ordinary person.

"Thump!"

Dull. Enormous. Like the muffled boom of war drums on an ancient battlefield.

"Thump, thump!"

The heartbeat made the scattered stones around Lu Chen tremble faintly upon the ground.

The Ancient Desolate Forbidden Physique hidden in the deepest part of his body finally produced its first thread of resonance amid utmost pain.

His blood boiled. The exposed white bones at his wounds rasped with a piercing sound.

Lu Chen's fingers, covered in mud and blood, slowly dug into the cracks between the bricks. His nails broke apart, blood seeping into the soil.

His dislocated arms were forcibly twisted back into place. He grabbed the overturned half of a broken iron pot from the ground.

His five fingers abruptly clenched.

Five deep finger marks were crushed directly into the thick chunk of raw iron.