The compassionate smile of Elder Gāo lingered over the hot dust. His pale hand remained extended, offering the red earth of the volcano as a grave for Yù Méi.
The answer did not come in the form of words or screams of fury.
On the driver's seat of the carriage, beside Zhì Yuǎn's broad shoulders, pure boredom consumed Yù Qíng's patience. The girl could not stand speeches.
Yù Qíng raised her right hand. The air beside her distorted. A short, dense spear of Primordial Qi materialized next to her shoulder, glowing with a heavy golden light.
She extended her index finger forward.
Time seemed to stretch.
The spear shot forward in complete silence. To those watching from outside, it simply disappeared — so fast that even the cultivators who noticed it could not follow its movement.
For a full second, nothing happened.
Then, suddenly, Elder Gāo's head vanished.
There was no visible explosion at the moment of impact. It simply disappeared, leaving behind a neck stump that slowly began gushing blood upward. At the same time, a perfect, clean hole opened in the center of each of the twelve red-armored guards' chests. The holes were identical — as if a single force had passed through all of them at the exact same instant.
They remained standing for another fraction of a second, with the dark holes in their chests and the Elder headless.
Fwoooosh.
A strong, sharp wind swept across the square all at once, carrying dust and the smell of hot blood. The thirteen bodies that were still standing were violently thrown backward, crashing against the stone steps in a tangle of armor and perforated flesh.
On the driver's seat, Yù Qíng kept her spine straight beneath the navy-blue silk. She clapped her pale hands twice, brushing away dirt that did not exist on her fingers. The face beneath the dark veil displayed a cold, impenetrable calm.
— What a chatty old man — she murmured. Her velvety voice came out calm, carrying only the purest disinterest.
Dark blood began running down the steps.
On the stone staircase, the fourteen elders who had just arrived stepped back. Terror took hold of their wrinkled faces. The instinct for survival screamed far louder than any sect pride.
Zhì Yuǎn stepped down from the driver's seat. His leather boot struck the red dust. The limestone cracked beneath his weight.
He did not draw breath. His broad body shot forward, cutting across the square and climbing the steps with a heavy speed that the old men at the Eighth Mortal Stage simply could not follow.
Zhì Yuǎn reached the first elder. His right arm extended. His calloused hand struck directly against the side of the man's neck. The sound of cartilage and bone breaking was dry. The neck gave way at an impossible angle and the old man collapsed limply on the steps, completely dead before he even rolled.
The second elder raised his trembling hands. His Qi pulled rock from the ground and raised a thick shield of earth and stone in front of his own face.
Zhì Yuǎn did not slow his pace. His large hand struck the center of the shield. The earth barrier burst into dust and fragments, offering no resistance. His fist passed through and sank into the old man's chest. The sternum and ribs collapsed at once. The elder coughed up blood and flew backward.
Crack. Crack.
The sounds continued. Zhì Yuǎn walked up the steps and struck down whoever stood in his way. The desperate techniques of the elders shone brightly, but achieved nothing. The blood struck an invisible barrier around the man and fell to the ground.
The third elder took a punch that dislocated his jaw and broke his teeth. The fourth tried to turn his back and run, but Zhì Yuǎn's hand grabbed the back of the man's neck and smashed it against the edge of an obsidian step.
In just three breaths, eight of the greatest leaders of the Unique Path Sect were dead, sprawled across the granite and bleeding.
Terror pierced the spines of the six remaining elders. What little courage they had left turned to smoke. Their red robes fluttered. The six old men leaped from the edge of the staircase, trying to use their Qi in a crude manner to glide toward the roofs of the lower pavilions, desperate to escape the volcano.
Yù Qíng watched the old men attempting to ride the wind.
The young woman raised her pale hand. Her slender fingers moved. Six small needles of Primordial Gold formed in the air around her.
— Cowards — she murmured.
Her index finger snapped forward.
The six needles shot out. The golden darts crossed the square and sank directly into the napes of the six elders mid-flight.
The dry impact shattered their skulls from back to front. Dark blood sprayed into the hot air. The old men were extinguished before they even began to fall.
The six carcasses plummeted lifelessly, crashing against the roofs of the lower pavilions with a loud noise of crushed tiles and splintering wood. The remains slid over the eaves and fell with dull thuds onto the red dust of the square.
With the targets in the sky eliminated, Yù Qíng lowered her hand. She stepped down from the carriage, her navy-blue silk brushing the ground, and walked up the steps to stop beside her husband, who was already ascending toward the summit.
The sound of the destroyed roofs and the blood of the elite running down the limestone finished what remained of the Unique Path Sect.
Down below, in the main square, the remaining guards and disciples widened their eyes. The sight of the dead elders swallowed any loyalty. Panic erupted. Iron weapons fell to the ground. The crowd of men turned their backs and began running desperately toward the gates, trampling each other in an attempt to escape the volcano by any means.
A smaller shadow stepped onto the red dust of the square.
Yù Méi did not follow her brother-in-law's steps toward the top of the staircase. Upon seeing the crowd running with their backs turned, stumbling in panic to escape, the fear that remained in the girl vanished completely. She shot forward.
The first victim was a heavy patrolman wearing thick leather armor. Yù Méi leaped, grabbed the guard's collar with both hands, and drove her right knee directly into the base of the man's lumbar spine.
Crack.
The vertebrae broke inward and the guard collapsed onto the ground, paralyzed.
Yù Méi landed back on the limestone. The strike had not cost her any breath. With her unlocked pores swallowing the Qi of the square with every step, her muscles withstood the impact without demanding much from her lungs.
And with her body full of energy, her mind accelerated completely.
The panic of the crowd seemed to slow down. The world around her decelerated. In the girl's stretched vision, she could see the earth rising slowly beneath the guards' heels, see the leather of their armor stretching, and the enemy's shoulder rising before the attack even began. Fear disappeared, swallowed by a cold clarity.
She dove back into the fleeing crowd, heading straight for a group of three disciples.
One of them spun on his heels and swung a broad sword toward her neck. To Yù Méi's eyes, the strike was almost slow. She saw his weight shift to his back leg. Her body did not think; instinct pulled her legs one step to the left. She glided smoothly under the blade and raised her elbow, striking cleanly into the man's throat. His trachea collapsed. He fell.
Yù Méi felt the difference immediately. The first strike on the back had required her entire body. This elbow had consumed only a short movement of her arm and killed just as effectively. The enemy's anatomy was beginning to make sense.
The two remaining disciples advanced together, thrusting short spears. In the girl's slowed vision, she did not look at the iron tips — she lowered her gaze to their boots. She predicted the shift in weight, took a short step, and slid into the blind spot between the two weapons.
The first spear passed empty. She stepped on the shaft, pinning it to the ground, and grabbed the now-unarmed guard's arm. With a sharp, violent pull, she tore the limb from his shoulder. The bone snapped with a wet crack and the arm came off along with torn pieces of flesh and tendon. The man screamed.
Without stopping her advance, Yù Méi grabbed the guard by the neck with her free hand and twisted his body, using him as a living shield. The second spear drove directly into the back of his own ally. Before the third could pull his weapon free, she released the corpse and took a step forward, delivering a clean punch to the last man's temple. The bone broke with a dry crack. He fell dead.
The golden dress was soaked and heavy, but Yù Méi walked across the square cutting through the fleeing crowd without breaking a sweat. She anticipated their steps, read the tension in their muscles, and broke bones using only the necessary force. For the first time, she found her own rhythm in the slaughter.
From the top of the stone staircase, flanked by the corpses of the sect's lords, Zhì Yuǎn watched the red dust below.
Beside him, Yù Qíng's black eyes followed her sister working in the square. The face beneath the dark veil showed no shock, only a lukewarm boredom.
— She cleans the filth off the floor with quite a bit of enthusiasm — Yù Qíng murmured, her velvety voice laced with disdain.
— It's not enthusiasm, Qíng — Zhì Yuǎn's rustic voice cut through the silence. — It's anatomical understanding. The first strike she landed spent the strength of her entire body. Now, she barely had to move. Her body adjusts the next impact on its own so as not to waste effort.
Zhì Yuǎn rested his thumb on his belt, his eyes following the teenager below.
— I only opened the path — Zhì Yuǎn said, watching the girl down below. — The talent for killing was already in her. When we leave this volcano, I'm going to stop holding her back. It's time to sharpen that raw blade for real.
Below, the screams ended.
The thick dust began to settle over the destroyed square, revealing Yù Méi standing alone in the middle of the bodies. Her golden dress, now heavy and soaked in dark blood, clung to the girl's legs.
The base of the sect collapsed into blind panic. Slaves, miners, and servants abandoned their tools and fled through the cracks in the rocks. The few disciples who still had working legs committed the final heresy: they tore off their own emblems while running, throwing the silk into the red mud to blend in with the commoners. In the shadow of death, sworn loyalty weighed less than dust.
The Unique Path Sect had ended in a single afternoon.
In the square, Yù Méi turned on her heels in the red mud. She dragged her dirty shoes to the foot of the main staircase. The smell of slaughter dominated the air, but the girl's breathing remained calm. The youngest raised her face. Her almond eyes shone with euphoria, locked onto the tall, motionless figure at the top of the steps.
Zhì Yuǎn descended the staircase. His march ignored the bodies of the elders, his soles stepping over the trunks that littered the stone.
He stopped in front of the blood-covered girl.
His large, calloused hand rose. Zhì Yuǎn ignored the sticky layer of blood that soaked her blonde hair. The man gently stroked the top of Yù Méi's head with a calm, light weight.
— You did well — he said, his rustic voice sounding practical.
The praise widened the dirty smile on the young woman's face. Yù Méi raised both hands and slowly opened and closed her fists, feeling the friction of fresh blood against her palms.
— Their bones break so easily, brother-in-law… — she whispered, amazed by her own strength. — I didn't get tired at any point.
The rustle of navy-blue silk cut through the girl's trance.
Yù Qíng slid down the steps and stopped beside her husband. Her pale nose wrinkled beneath the veil in disgust at the stench of death. She raised her clean hand and pinched her nostrils through the veil with her fingers.
— You reek of blood and viscera — she said, her velvety voice dry and irrefutable. — Go wash yourself at some spring. Wash this crust out of your hair and bring the carriage to the entrance of the central pavilion.
Yù Méi twisted her lips into a pout of frustration. The euphoria of the slaughter wilted before her sister's icy authority. She let out a rough grumble, turned on her heels, and marched back into the square, dragging her shoes toward the springs.
The dry wind swept the dust over the corpses. The price for the burning of Qīngshān had been paid.
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his hand and turned his face toward the heavy limestone doors at the center of the dead metropolis. The summit had been purged. The great Central Pavilion of the sect, packed with centuries of plunder and spirit stones, waited in silence. The ancestral wealth of the Far South would now serve to thicken the gold in the family's veins.