The single drop of blood trailing down Elder Mo's neck seemed to fall in agonizing slow motion. It hit the polished floorboards of the grand hall with a soft, wet tap that sounded louder than a thunderclap.
The four elite silver-armored Enforcers drew their sabers half an inch, but they couldn't move any further. The sheer, suffocating weight of Tantai Zhi's killing intent had physically locked their joints. Sect Master Zhao had already quietly fainted, slumped uselessly behind his throne.
Elder Mo did not dare to breathe. The cold, crystallized edge of the crimson sword rested perfectly against his pulse.
"Saintess," Elder Mo choked out, his voice stripped of all its previous arrogance, reduced to a raspy, trembling whisper. "If you sever my head... the Patriarch will issue a heavenly decree of extermination. A hundred Nascent Soul Grandmasters will descend upon this mountain. You will burn."
Tantai Zhi's golden eyes did not waver. The swirling madness in her gaze was like a chaotic storm, utterly devoid of reason or mercy.
"Then I will build a new mountain out of a hundred Grandmaster skulls," Tantai Zhi stated, her voice a terrifying, melodic hum. "And I will plant peach trees over your graves so my husband has a nice place to drink his tea."
She twisted her wrist a fraction of an inch. The crimson blade bit deeper.
"Wife," a calm, lazy voice drifted through the heavy air.
Yan Shuo stepped forward, casually stepping over the fainted Sect Master Zhao. He didn't look worried about the Righteous Alliance's army. He looked mildly annoyed.
"Don't cut his head off here," Yan Shuo sighed, snapping his paper fan shut and tapping it against his palm. "The floorboards in this hall are made of thousand-year spiritual bamboo. Blood stains are terribly difficult for the outer disciples to scrub out. It's very inconsiderate."
Tantai Zhi's hand froze.
The chaotic, feral storm in her golden eyes instantly paused. She looked at Yan Shuo, her lips forming a small, hesitant pout.
"But Husband, he raised his voice at you," she murmured, sounding genuinely aggrieved. "He tried to crush your meridians with his aura."
"I know, Wife. But a dead envoy is bad for the sect's karma," Yan Shuo said smoothly, reaching out to gently touch her shoulder. "Lower the sword. Let the old man take his five spirit stones and go home."
Tantai Zhi hesitated, glaring at the trembling Grandmaster one last time. Finally, because her husband asked nicely, she huffed a small breath and lowered the crimson blade.
For a moment, Elder Mo thought he was saved. He felt the murderous pressure slightly recede.
But in that fleeting fraction of a second, Elder Mo's terror violently warped into absolute, venomous humiliation. He was the Sword Punisher! He had been brought to his knees by a lunatic woman and lectured by a mortal boy! If he returned to the Central Continent like this, his Dao heart would shatter from the disgrace.
He needed to inflict a wound. He needed to strike the boy to restore his honor.
Elder Mo's hand blurred.
He didn't use a sword technique. He bypassed his meridians entirely and crushed a hidden jade talisman hidden deep within his sleeve.
It was the Nine-Venom Karmic Nail—a supreme, single-use assassination artifact granted to him personally by the Patriarch. It carried no physical force, but it launched an invisible, unavoidable needle of highly concentrated, soul-rotting poison directly at the target's spiritual sea.
He aimed it point-blank at Yan Shuo's chest.
"Die, you soft-rice eating trash!" Elder Mo roared, his face twisting into a demonic sneer.
Yan Shuo's dark eyes narrowed. His Abyssal Core instantly spun to life, ready to swallow the poison whole. He could easily absorb it without taking a scratch.
But he didn't account for his wife.
Tantai Zhi didn't think. She didn't calculate the trajectory or identify the supreme artifact. Her body simply reacted to the absolute, biological imperative that governed her entire existence: Protect Him.
With a panicked, entirely ungraceful gasp, Tantai Zhi threw herself squarely between Yan Shuo and the Elder. She didn't have time to raise her sword or summon a Qi barrier. She just lunged, thrusting her bare left hand out to catch the invisible attack.
PCHUK.
A sickening, wet sound echoed through the hall.
The invisible Nine-Venom Karmic Nail slammed directly into the center of Tantai Zhi's soft, pale palm.
A burst of foul, blackish-green smoke erupted from her skin. The supreme karmic poison instantly tried to burrow into her bloodstream, violently burning her flesh.
"Wife!" Yan Shuo's eyes widened, his lazy demeanor instantly shattering.
Tantai Zhi didn't scream in pain.
She looked at her bleeding, burning hand. Then, she slowly turned her head back to Elder Mo.
The sweet, doting wife Yan Shuo had been manipulating for the past few weeks was gone. In her place stood the absolute apex predator of the mortal realm—a woman who had spent a century bathing in blood, surviving the harshest winters, and slaughtering anyone who stood in her way.
"You threw a poisoned nail," Tantai Zhi whispered. Her voice sounded like two rusted swords grinding together in the dark. "At my husband."
Elder Mo scrambled backward, his mind completely breaking. The Nine-Venom Karmic Nail was supposed to instantly melt a cultivator's soul! How was she still standing?!
She was still standing because her sheer, unadulterated obsession was heavier than the Heavenly Dao itself. The karmic poison tried to attack her spiritual sea, but her spiritual sea was an impenetrable fortress built entirely out of a hundred years of psychotic devotion to the boy standing behind her. The poison simply couldn't find a crack.
Tantai Zhi slowly raised her uninjured right hand. Her crimson sword ignited with a blinding, apocalyptic light.
"RUN!" Elder Mo shrieked, his voice cracking like a terrified child's.
He didn't even try to fight.
For a single, fleeting moment, his eyes met Yan Shuo's.
Then he flinched.
He didn't dare look a second time.
He burned a century of his own lifespan, converting his blood into a forbidden escape art. He erupted into a streak of bloody light, smashing straight through the bamboo ceiling of the grand hall and rocketing toward the golden warship waiting in the sky. The four enforcers snapped out of their paralysis and fled right behind him, completely abandoning their dignity.
Tantai Zhi raised her sword to cut the sky in half and bring the ship down.
"Zhi'er! Stop!"
Yan Shuo's voice cracked through the hall. He didn't call her 'Wife'. He used her name.
Tantai Zhi froze. The blinding light of her sword instantly died. She quickly dispersed the weapon, her terrifying aura vanishing as she hurriedly turned her back to the hole in the ceiling.
She quickly hid her left hand behind her back, her face instantly morphing into a panicked, deeply worried expression as she looked at Yan Shuo.
"Husband! Are you hurt?!" she asked frantically, stepping toward him, completely ignoring the foul-smelling black blood dripping onto the floor behind her. "Did the bad man's Qi touch you? I should have killed him! I'm so sorry, I was too slow!"
Yan Shuo stood completely still.
He looked at the beautiful, overpowered woman apologizing to him. He could smell the rotting scent of the karmic poison. He could see the slight tremble in her shoulders as she desperately tried to hide her burning hand from him so he wouldn't worry.
For the past few weeks, Yan Shuo had treated this marriage as a highly entertaining, comfortable vacation. He was a Demon Lord eating soft rice. He let her pamper him, he let her fight his battles, and he used her as a convenient shield against the world. He thought he was the one in control. He had mistaken devotion for convenience.
But seeing her physically throw her body in front of a supreme assassination artifact—taking a poisoned nail to the hand just to keep his pristine white robes clean—sent a violent, unfamiliar earthquake through his ancient soul.
She wasn't just a shield. She was the sixteen-year-old girl he had left in the snow, and she had just bled for him again.
Yan Shuo stepped forward. His face was entirely devoid of his usual lazy, charming smile.
"Show me your hand," Yan Shuo commanded. His voice was quiet, heavy, and ancient.
Tantai Zhi flinched, looking down at the floor guiltily. "It's nothing, Husband. Just a little scratch. I will go wash it—"
"Show me your hand, Zhi'er."
Reluctantly, she slowly brought her left hand out from behind her back.
It looked terrible. The center of her palm was pierced through, the edges of the wound blackened and bubbling with the foul, greenish karmic venom. The poison was actively trying to spread up her wrist, restrained only by her massive ocean of Yin Qi fighting it off.
Yan Shuo gently reached out.
His hand stopped.
Just a fraction of an inch away from her wrist.
His eyes lingered on the blackened wound, on the way the poison pulsed beneath her skin, on the faint tremble she was trying so hard to hide.
Then, silently, he closed the distance and took her wrist.
His touch was incredibly light.
"Does it hurt?" he asked softly.
"Only a little," she lied, forcing a bright smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I am strong, Husband. I will just meditate and push the venom out. Please don't be angry with me for making a mess on the floor."
Yan Shuo stared at the wound.
Deep inside his dantian, the violently dense, pitch-black Abyssal Core began to spin. It didn't spin with the chaotic gravity of a breakthrough. It spun with the cold, calculated, absolute wrath of a Demon Lord who had just watched his property get damaged.
He didn't say a word. He placed his right palm directly over her bleeding, poisoned wound.
"Husband, wait! The poison will transfer to you!" Tantai Zhi gasped in panic, trying to pull away.
"Let it try," Yan Shuo whispered.
He activated the Heaven-Swallowing Abyssal Art.
A terrifying, localized vacuum formed between their palms. The supreme karmic venom—a poison designed to rot the souls of Grandmasters—was violently, brutally ripped out of Tantai Zhi's flesh. Yan Shuo sucked the foul green energy directly into his own arm, filtering it straight into the black hole in his stomach, where the crushing gravity instantly crushed the supreme poison into harmless, nonexistent dust.
In three seconds, the black veins on her wrist vanished. The wound on her palm stopped bubbling, leaving only clean, red blood.
Tantai Zhi stared at him, completely stunned by the impossible, heaven-defying feat he had just performed.
"Husband..." she whispered, her golden eyes wide. "How did you..."
Yan Shuo gently wiped the remaining blood from her palm with his own pristine white sleeve, completely ruining the expensive silk.
He looked up at the hole in the bamboo ceiling, where the golden warship was already a tiny speck fleeing toward the Central Continent.
The lazy, pampered soft-rice eater was dead. The pragmatic opportunist was gone.
"Wife," Yan Shuo said, his voice carrying the heavy, chilling weight of an ancient sovereign declaring an execution. "I think our vacation on this mountain is over."
Tantai Zhi blinked, her heart racing at the dark, dangerous light in his eyes. "Where... where are we going?"
Yan Shuo wrapped his hand gently around hers, his thumb brushing over her healed palm.
"We are going to the Central Continent," Yan Shuo stated, a terrifying, bloodthirsty smile slowly spreading across his face. "The Righteous Alliance Patriarch owes you an apology. And I am going to make sure he delivers it on his knees."