Merciless and Decisive

"How dare you? You actually dared to attack me!" Lan Chan'er sprawled on the ground, her voice hoarse and mixed with bloody froth. Her body trembled with agony and rage.

"Are you betraying the Yingui Sect?! The Sacred Gate will never forgive you!" Her eyes brimmed with disbelief and venom.

"Tch." Zhu Yingxiong sneered as he got off the bed, bent down to pick up the fallen Muscle-Tendon Transformation Scripture, and casually dusted it off.

"Are you really from the Yingui Sect?" He walked over to Lan Chan'er and looked down at her. "Why not obediently tell me who you are? Who sent you?"

Lan Chan'er's pupils suddenly contracted. She still forced an aggrieved, indignant expression onto her face. "Naturally, I was ordered to—"

"No, you weren't." Zhu Yingxiong cut off all her subsequent acting with absolute certainty.

Lan Chan'er opened her mouth, the color draining entirely from her face. "How did you see through me?" The panic in her voice could no longer be suppressed.

"I'm the one asking questions." Zhu Yingxiong slowly crouched down until his gaze was level with hers, carrying an unquestionable pressure. "Who sent you?"

Lan Chan'er gasped heavily several times. Panic flashed through her eyes before transforming into a pitiful plea.

She struggled to prop herself up, allowing her already disheveled collar to slip open and reveal more of that breathtakingly pale flesh. Looking at Zhu Yingxiong through tear-filled eyes, she spoke in a mournful, despairing voice:

"I was wrong. Spare me, and from now on, I'll let you do whatever you want with me. I'll be your servant, your maid..." Her voice trembled, blood and tear stains mingling on her face. She was a sight that would stir anyone's pity.

Zhu Yingxiong watched her quietly for a moment, then reached out and brushed his fingertips across her cold cheek, stained with blood and tears.

A flicker of hope burst into Lan Chan'er's eyes. Her tragically beautiful smile carried an alluring charm, mixed with tears to form a strange, fragile temptation. She slightly raised her slender neck, as though awaiting his forgiveness and mercy.

"Stubborn to the end." Zhu Yingxiong sighed.

But his hand did not linger. His palm slid down and firmly gripped that swanlike neck.

Lan Chan'er's expression instantly froze, turning into utter terror.

"No! You can't kill me! I'm from the Destiny Sect, under the Dharma Empress! If you kill me, the Dharma Empress will never let you go! Not even the Yingui Sect can protect you!"

She shrieked and struggled with every last ounce of strength, her expression collapsing as she finally brought out her last support.

Yet the only response was the irresistible tightening around her throat, along with Zhu Yingxiong's unfathomable, utterly emotionless eyes.

Crack.

A soft sound, clear and brief, clean and decisive.

Lan Chan'er's delicate body convulsed violently. The light in her eyes, her seductive charm, terror, resentment... every emotion instantly went out, leaving behind only hollow gray emptiness.

Her delicate body collapsed limply, devoid of all life.

Zhu Yingxiong released his hand and slowly rose to his feet. A trace of warmth still lingered on his fingertips—the touch of a living thing—but it was rapidly fading away.

Ruthlessly crushing a flower seemed to feel like nothing special.

He glanced at the corpse on the floor. The Destiny Sect... Shan Yuru. She truly was trouble.

The Destiny Sect had been founded over a century ago by Fu Yaohong, a former member of the Yingui Sect. It inherited part of the Yingui Sect's core teachings, and its members were especially skilled in yin-yang harvesting, seduction, and manipulation. Its current leader and Dharma Empress was none other than "Jade-Sleeve Ring" Shan Yuru.

Crackle.

The flame atop the candlestick suddenly sputtered softly.

That cloying warm fragrance still lingered in the room, now mixed with the stench of blood. It had turned murky, with not a trace of its former sensuality remaining.

Without further thought, he bent down, preparing to lift the increasingly cold body and find some secluded place to thoroughly dispose of it.

Just as his fingertips were about to touch that icy silk—

His body suddenly froze!

The hairs on his back stood on end without warning!

An extremely faint yet bone-chilling sense of being watched swept over him.

"Who's there?!"

Zhu Yingxiong's cold shout rang out like thunder, but his body had already moved before the words left his mouth.

His waist and back arched, and his entire body shot forward like a fully drawn bowstring suddenly released, pouncing toward the darkest northwestern corner of the room!

His right index finger shot out like lightning as the inner force in his dantian surged.

His qi struck the Guanyuan Acupoint, passed through the Shimen Acupoint, and in an instant flowed to the Laogong Acupoint in his right hand.

True qi condensed at his fingertip.

Before his finger even arrived, an incomparably fierce finger force had already solidified within inches, locking onto that barely perceptible anomaly within the shadows!

This pounce and this finger strike were swift, ruthless, precise, and utterly without reservation.

Puff.

Zhu Yingxiong's index finger, powerful enough to pierce bluestone, struck squarely into the palm of a pale, bony hand that had silently extended from the shadows!

Yet at the point of contact, he felt no force to push against.

His ferocious strike was dissolved into nothing by a soft, yielding force of yin.

Then, a cold and sinister stream of true qi instead entered through the Shangyang Acupoint at his fingertip and flowed backward along his meridians!

The candlelight in the room suddenly flickered!

"Urgh—!"

Zhu Yingxiong grunted as though struck by lightning, half his body instantly going numb!

Within the meridians of his right arm and the entire right side of his body, countless icy needles as fine as ox hairs seemed to be writhing and stabbing.

The flames of the three arm-thick red candles in the room suddenly swayed violently at once, flickering erratically and casting enormous, constantly shifting, clawing shadows across the walls!

At the brink of life and death, the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Scripture surged into motion!

A warm, harmonious current abruptly arose from the Yongquan Acupoint on the soles of his feet, rapidly flowing upward along the Lesser Yin Kidney Meridian of the Foot and barely holding back the invading chill.

Whoosh...

As though pushed by an invisible hand, Zhu Yingxiong glided swiftly and smoothly more than a foot to the side and back, opening the distance between himself and that shadowed corner.

The sleeve on his right arm moved without wind, subtly billowing and trembling. A sickly flush uncontrollably rose to his face, while a bloody sweetness surged into his throat, only to be forcibly swallowed back down.

"Very good."

A dry, hoarse voice slowly sounded from within the impenetrably thick shadows.

"Your martial arts have improved greatly."

As the words fell, a small, thin figure wrapped in a loose gray robe seemed to slowly peel itself away from the deepest shadows in the corner, stepping into the edge of the dim candlelight one step at a time.

Zhu Yingxiong's pupils abruptly shrank to pinpoints. Fine tremors spread across his skin, and cold sweat had already silently soaked through the clothes on his back.

When had this person entered? He had not sensed a thing.

He had even secretly felt proud after mastering the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Scripture and gaining innate true qi, thinking he finally had some means to rely on.

But this man before him... in terms of cultivation, Zhu Yingxiong was absolutely no match for him at present. Though the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Scripture was wondrous, he had practiced it for far too short a time.

The old man in gray kept his head lowered, his face almost entirely concealed beneath the deeper shadows cast by his large hood. Only a shriveled chin and several sparse, dull gray-white strands of hair were visible.

His entire aura was obscure and gloomy, like a stone statue from an ancient tomb.

It was him!

Though he had seen him only a few times, and many years had passed, that distinctive aura and voice made the memories of the original body vividly resurface. He instantly recalled that this was the very man who had sent him step by step into Shaolin back then!

Deng Yin, elder of the Yingui Sect.