Chapter 88: Die!

The slaughter in the village still raged on.

The villagers were being driven about like swine and sheep, every face twisted with terror. The cries of the old, the wailing of women and children, the curses of men, all rose together in a frantic uproar.

Those seven or eight fiends were like wolves that had burst into a flock, killing whoever they saw.

Yuan Family Village, which had been tranquil only moments before, had at once become a living hell.

Yuan Hao carried his aged father on his back and, casting one last glance behind him, was about to leave when a voice suddenly sounded by his ear.

“Where do you think you are going?”

“Who is there!”

Yuan Hao barked under his breath, drew the blade at his waist, and looked wildly around. Too tense to the point of strain, every muscle in his body was taut.

“Are you looking for me?”

The voice came again, and this time its source could be clearly discerned.

Yuan Hao jerked his head up, his pupils contracting.

There, a woman was seated on the village gate arch, looking down at him.

“Are you going to abandon your own kind and run?”

The girl tilted her head as though pondering something, then asked, “Is that what you humans are?”

At a time like this, with such a scene unfolding, the girl’s entire being exuded an eerie strangeness. Yuan Hao had no mind to deal with her.

“Father, hold on tight,” Yuan Hao said in a low voice.

Before the words had even faded, he had already rushed toward the village exit with his father on his back.

He had only run a few steps when a streak of blood shot in from behind him, piercing straight through his father’s body. The force still unabated, it then burst out through Yuan Hao’s chest.

The girl withdrew her right hand, rose to her feet, and looked at the father and son lying in the pool of blood. In a low murmur, she said, “What a pity. Food is not qualified to run away…”

...

By the time Ning Xiu arrived at Yuan Family Village, it was nearly dusk.

He stood at the village entrance, with the blood-red setting sun gradually sinking beyond the horizon behind him. Its cold light enveloped his entire figure in shadow, making his expression impossible to read.

Not far ahead, on that gate arch, two corpses had been nailed up there.

Light and shadow crossed and overlapped, making the scene resemble an unreal painting washed in cold tones.

A breeze passed through, carrying a faint stench of blood.

From ahead came weak cries of agony.

Ning Xiu drew his sword and swept it once. The gate arch split cleanly in two, and the two corpses fell at once from above. Just before they hit the ground, he lightly lifted his sword and flicked them aside.

The two bodies landed safely on the ground.

Ning Xiu looked at one of the corpses, fell silent for a moment, and then continued forward.

He recognized the owner of that body: Yuan Hao.

To say they shared a deep bond would be overly sentimental. In truth, Ning Xiu had not spent much time with him at all. Still, Yuan Hao had always left a good impression on him.

He was also remarkably reliable in his work, and could be counted among the few people Ning Xiu truly acknowledged in the Bamboo Grove Assembly.

The village was strewn with corpses, blending with the blood-red sunset. The ground underfoot was caked in mire.

What clung thickly there was not mud, but bright scarlet blood.

“Someone, please, help me!”

Hearing the cry for help beside his ear, Ning Xiu blurred and vanished from where he stood.

When he reached the source of the voice, his pupils contracted slightly at the sight before him.

By now, nearly everyone in the village was dead. Only a handful remained, still being toyed with by those fiends in a cruel game of cat and mouse.

A woman was being devoured alive by one of the fiends. The scene was ghastly beyond words, and shrill screams rang out without cease.

There was only utter despair in that woman’s eyes, yet the searing agony kept her consciousness painfully clear.

The fiend seemed to sense something and was just turning back when a fierce wind struck.

A palm flashed into view, growing larger and larger in its eyes. Before it could react, that sudden hand seized it by the head and slammed it brutally into the earth below with a thunderous crash.

Dust surged upward. Its head exploded at once, turning to powder.

In the blink of an eye, Ning Xiu drew the divine sword from behind him and pinned the headless corpse of the fiend directly to the ground.

Ninth-Sun true qi poured out in a torrent, and the fiend quickly turned to ash, vanishing completely from heaven and earth.

Ning Xiu pulled out the sword, raised his head, and looked ahead with grave eyes.

Amid the dust, a human silhouette suddenly appeared.

As the haze dispersed, a girl stood silently before Ning Xiu, staring at him with icy eyes. In disbelief, she said, “You killed Little Seven?!”

It was the same girl who had killed Yuan Hao and his father!

These seven fiends who slaughtered the village were all raised by her. She had already left, but after realizing that one of them had not followed, she turned back.

Just in time to witness what had happened moments before.

The girl murmured, “Little Seven was such a lovely child. He was only a little greedy. Why did you have to kill him?!”

“What right do you, a vile human, have to kill him!”

Her words grew more and more agitated, and her voice rose with them.

“You say greedy?”

All at once, a calm voice sounded, cutting the girl off directly.

It was calm, yet seemed to suppress a killing intent beyond control.

The girl looked at Ning Xiu and said matter-of-factly, “What, do you have some complaint?”

“Are humans not just food? Whether fed to noble clans or to us, what difference does it make?”

“You asked just now what right I had to kill him. Then I will tell you now.”

Ning Xiu lifted his head sharply. “Because I want you dead!”

The girl seemed to have heard the funniest joke in the world and burst into loud laughter.

Then the laughter stopped abruptly. Her face contorted as she pointed at Ning Xiu and shouted, “Kill him for me!”

Before the words had even faded, Ning Xiu felt a rush of wind coming from behind his head. Without even turning around, he spun and struck from the waist, cleaving the attacking fiend cleanly in two.

Though split in half, the fiend did not die.

With a shriek of agony, its upper body, still suspended in midair, lunged once more at Ning Xiu.

Its sharp fangs glinted with a chilling light in the air.

Almost at the same moment, three more fiends attacked from three other directions, sealing off every route of retreat.

Watching all this, Ning Xiu’s gaze gradually turned cold.

“Sword Eighteen!”

Sword qi swept across the air, weaving itself into a net.

Before those fiends could even close in, they were sliced apart, piece by piece, becoming smaller and smaller until they turned to dust.

At the cost of four fiends, one finally seized the chance to break through the sword net, extending its sharp claws into Ning Xiu’s embrace, its blade-like nails touching his abdomen.

It seemed about to pierce him through, but no matter how hard the fiend strained, it could not advance even a fraction further.

Ning Xiu lowered his head and looked at it, then let out a ferocious smile.

He reached out, seized its head, and crushed it in one squeeze.

The young man who had seemed harmless a moment before now appeared to have become a terrifying god of slaughter in an instant.