Chapter 65
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 64
Chapter Title: Transformation - 1
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While the Sword King's group halted amid tragic news to catch their breath, the Girl was walking along a wide official road.
It was early summer now. The sky was clear and the sunlight bright. Delicate white fogflowers bloomed along the roadside, fragile and beautiful.
A perfect day to kill martial artists.
She glanced back casually. No one was following. She had left them far behind.
The people who had come with Zhang Ping's letter, insisting they would help her from Fire Mountain onward. They had been a great aid on unfamiliar paths, but she no longer needed them.
"From here to Guipan, it's a straight road all the way for two full days."
"Then it won't matter if I go alone."
"Pardon?"
"Come slowly."
She ran with all her might.
The Divine Cult had no divine movement techniques. She alone could imitate them to some degree, allowing her to shake off the cultists effortlessly.
Since encountering the old man who had feared her on Fire Mountain, her emotions had been impossible to pin down. She found herself missing those solitary days just a little.
Suddenly, she spotted houses lined up in the distance. She stepped into a small village reduced to piles of ash.
An acrid stench hung in the air. Ashes and smoke still held some warmth. No one remained.
The destruction was recent; when she brushed a gray wall, black soot stained her hand. The dark smudges stood out starkly against her pale skin.
"You bastard! Die!"
"Aaaack!"
The Girl turned. From deep within the village came the brutal sounds of fists thudding into flesh—thwack! Thump!
As she drew closer, she saw three men in ragged clothes savagely beating an elderly man. Their blows showed no mercy.
"Heh heh, Brother Pak. Look at him cowering like that. Even at his age, he clings to life."
"Old lust for life, that's what it is. Hrah!"
"Aaaah!"
Her hand shot out. With a sharp clack, it blocked one man's fist.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Urgh! Who the hell are you to talk down to us like that?!"
The man struggled fiercely to shake her off, but her slender jade hand held firm.
He scowled deeply before spitting out his words. One of his companions chimed in.
"Don't you know who we are, you wench? Daring to interfere with the Divine Cult's affairs? You're a martial artist, aren't you?"
"Haven't you heard? Those hotshot Mount Hua Sect elites in Guipan couldn't handle a single Sword Demon and got massacred! Your good days are over!"
The Girl's dark eyes fixed on the man who spoke. Though he flinched under her lifeless gaze, he soon puffed out his chest.
He was a proud member of the Divine Cult—what was there to fear?
"I-If you touch us, the Saintess won't let it slide."
"This old fool got caught trying to collect martial artists' corpses without fear. If you don't want to die, scram!"
"I see."
The man who had collapsed in agony convulsed on the ground, covered head to toe in blood. His face was swollen, reduced to nothing but groans.
Ignoring the men snarling beside him, the Girl simply watched. There was no mistaking it.
He had no qi.
The old man had never cultivated internal energy. The three attackers, however, had practiced demonic arts.
The reverse heavenly passage from the crown of his head to his heart was laid bare before her eyes.
That was enough.
With a soft rustle, her hand extended like a willow branch swaying in the breeze—more a courtesan's gesture than an attack.
The man didn't react. It didn't feel threatening, so he just watched to see what the girl would do.
Until that hand pierced his chest like soft clay.
"Huh?"
Pain came slowly. So did realization. In the utterly unreal scene, his mind rejected reality.
A girl whose slender fingers could barely snap a blade of grass. Skin as pale as a sickbed patient's. A frail hand devoid of any visible strength.
And blood. Red blood. Turbid crimson ran down the Girl's arm.
It belonged to no one else but him.
As he raised his club to fight back, the Girl clenched. She squeezed his heart.
"Gaaahhh!"
A chilling scream echoed. His strength was being sucked away.
The power from the demonic art he had bought at great expense in a back alley, his vital energy—it all flowed back to its original owner. Even the internal energy embedded deep in his meridians was forcibly yanked out.
Drip drip. The sticky, coarse qi didn't leave cleanly on its own. It tore wounds in his channels as it was dragged free.
"Aaaack! My body! My body!"
Blood leaked from his seven orifices as his body withered pathetically.
The Girl didn't blink. The others hesitated, stepping back.
Freakish. Demonic. Divine punishment. They didn't know what to call it. This was no normal girl.
Once more, her pale hand reached out. Crack—another man's arm snapped with a gruesome sound.
He was pulled to her in an instant and dismantled while still alive.
"Spare me! Please! Aaaaack! I, I was wrong—"
First, his left arm was torn off with a snap, like a child discarding a toy.
Next came his other leg. The Girl rummaged through the burly man's body, then methodically plucked out limb after limb.
His screams faded, and in death, he too was left shriveled like dried fish.
The last man bolted the moment he could. He didn't look back as he fled. The warriors of the local clan, the demonic art that could block even iron—it was pierced without resistance.
Immortals trained in the Nine Sects, Sword King level for sure. Deep-seated terror spurred his legs onward.
Until his nape was seized.
"That power wasn't meant to be used like this."
The Girl thought to herself.
She hated those with internal energy. This power was created to repay the suffering of the oppressed. Not to give to scum like these.
There was no hatred or resentment in their hearts. Only foul, ugly emotions—sense of superiority, pleasure, and the like.
The Girl examined the turbid qi flowing into her body.
Tributaries merged seamlessly into the main stream. A few drops in the ocean left no trace. As if it had always been that way...
"It was made for those who truly need it."
If they had desperately wanted power, they wouldn't have acted like this.
She waded through the pool of blood from the three men, splashing with each step. The old man remained prostrated. Begging for his life? No.
He was struggling to rise.
Her hand lifted him up. Staggering, he shuffled toward somewhere.
To a wooden pillar in the village ruins, where a young man's corpse hung. There, he faced the Girl.
He clenched his fists as if to fight, saying nothing.
He had been shielding the young man's body from her.
"What are you doing this for?"
"That's not for the Saintess to know."
Silence.
Observing him, the Girl approached. Ignoring his futile resistance, she reached for the hanging corpse.
Snap. Her fingers, at the pinnacle of perfection, effortlessly snapped the sturdy pillar. The half-rotted body fell free.
"Take the body and flee. The cultists will come soon."
The Girl passed the old man by. She never looked back again.
Upon arriving in Guipan, Zhang Ping greeted her. As always, his posture was impeccably deferential.
"My Lady."
"Where is the Sword King?"
"Regrettably, the time has not yet come."
Her steps halted. The letter had clearly stated to come, as they would go to confront the Sword King.
Those who brought it had said the same. With the plan underway, a decisive battle with the Martial Alliance was imminent.
The Girl peered into Zhang Ping's heart.
The emotions surfacing were unlike his usual self. Amid immense faith flickered slight unease and bewilderment.
"Something happened."
"This is not the place to discuss it. Please come to the command tent. On your way here... did you encounter any martial artists?"
A thick metallic tang of blood clung to her clothes. No martial artists nearby, yet Zhang Ping seemed fearful of any variables.
This, too, was unlike the man she knew.
"No. I killed three beasts."
"What kind of beasts?"
"Beasts pretending to be cultists. So, what happened?"
The reason he couldn't guide the Saintess to the Sword King.
Zhang Ping glanced around warily before hesitating. He opened his mouth, then closed it... as if unsure how to begin.
By rights, they should have struck the demoralized Martial Alliance now and ended it. But they could no longer. The picture had changed.
All because of an enormous loss of forces. Inconceivably.
"The Protector has vanished."
Bai Hui was gone.
"Hui?"
"I assigned him a mission near Guipan, but he hasn't returned."
At first, they thought him dead. Perhaps mutual destruction.
But the Martial Alliance was too quiet for that. It was true they had slain countless peak experts.
Rumors said no one in the Alliance even knew of Bai Hui's swordsmanship. Not a soul who faced him that night had survived.
Yet Bai Hui had not returned to the Divine Cult.
At dawn, cultists found fragments of human flesh, a small campfire.
And footprints leading into the mountains.
"He entered the nearby mountains, then his trail vanished. Please keep this between us for now, my Lady. It won't take long to find him. I will bring him back and convince him myself..."
"No. It's fine."
The Girl thought.
The three cultists she met on the way. Bai Hui's sudden disappearance. The qi flowing into her heart like wildfire. Unfamiliar pain and agony.
Images flashed of those on Fire Mountain trembling in fear at the sight of her. Her mind felt cluttered.
Would slaying the Sword King dispel this feeling? At least one part of it could be resolved now.
"I know where he is."
Far off, she faintly sensed a powerful aura. Zhang Ping hadn't noticed, but she was different.
She felt the familiar fluctuations of internal energy emanating from the mountainside. Its owner was unmistakable.
Bai Hui was calling to her.