Yun Qingyue suddenly bit through the tip of her tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood essence onto the Eclipsing Moon Ribbon!
Boom!
Violent spiritual power swept through the grand hall, freezing everyone in place for just an instant.
But that instant was enough.
Her body flashed like lightning as she charged straight for Yu Xiaotang!
"Wretched disciple!" Hua Qiluo roared, sending her jade ruyi flying once more. But this time, she was half a beat too slow.
Pfft!
The Eclipsing Moon Ribbon smashed through Yu Xiaotang's shoulder blade, a spray of blood erupting as she was hurled across the hall!
"Ahh!" Yu Xiaotang slammed into the altar's edge, vomiting blood in torrents.
Yun Qingyue prepared to strike again, but suddenly the world went silent.
Boom!
Nine bolts of violet thunder descended without warning, crashing down onto her!
"Ahh!" Her entire body convulsed violently. The moment she summoned her life-bound artifact, it shattered into dust.
When the second thunderbolt struck, she heard it—the shattering of her dao heart.
Then came the third, the fourth…
Her meridians snapped apart piece by piece under the heavenly thunder. Blood gushed from her seven orifices. With great effort, she lifted her head. Through blurred vision, she saw everyone rushing to Yu Xiaotang's side, not one person sparing her a single glance.
"Why…" She reached out unwillingly, only for her fingertip to crumble into ash under the thunder's glow.
Why would even the Heavenly Dao… protect her?!
In her final moment, she thought she saw Yu Xiaotang curve her lips into a strange smile. Before she could even process it, her body dissolved into ash within the lightning.
As her consciousness faded completely, she faintly heard Yu Xiaotang whisper, "System…"
…
"Last time, we spoke of how Yun Qingyue turned love into hatred, only to be executed by the Heavenly Dao itself…"
Inside a roadside teahouse, a storyteller slammed the wooden block on the table. The sound rattled teacups and sent spittle flying onto the front row of listeners.
"Yun Qingyue, chief disciple of the Hehuan Sect, suddenly lashed out in the middle of her wedding ceremony!" His thin, bony hands gestured dramatically. "With a single twist of the Eclipsing Moon Ribbon—Medicine King Valley's third disciple Lu Mingchuan died on the spot!
If you ask this old man, nothing's more vicious than those three bolts of heavenly thunder." The storyteller's voice rose suddenly. "Do you know? When the lightning struck, even the eastern pearl set in her hairpin was reduced to dust!"
The teahouse erupted in sharp intakes of breath.
In a shadowed corner, Yun Qingyue reached for her empty earlobe. The storyteller was right—the Bright Moon Earrings she wore had indeed vaporized in the lightning. But there was no way he could've known such a detail.
She sat quietly, eyes downcast. The tea in front of her rippled faintly, reflecting an unfamiliar face—sallow skin, thin and weak, the face of a girl barely past her coming of age.
Listening to the storyteller's words, she sneered inwardly.
Yes, Lu Mingchuan's death was true. But three Nascent Soul elders? Heh…
Around her, the crowd chattered excitedly:
"They say the thunder that day reached all the way to the spirit fields a hundred miles away…"
"Bullshit!" A drunken man at the next table slapped the table. "It was clearly Lu Mingchuan who…"
Before he could finish, two shadows dropped from the beams above.
Cold light flashed. The drunk's little finger rolled into the tea dregs bucket, and silence instantly blanketed the teahouse. Only the storyteller's pipe tapped rhythmically against a clay plate.
Yun Qingyue lowered her straw hat further. These weren't ordinary patrons—they were Medicine King Valley plants.
The storyteller continued weaving his tale. "…Young Sect Master Yu showed her compassion and even built a cenotaph for her senior sister…"
Her gaze lowered to the crack in the table, tea residue caught inside. A stench of rot from the mass grave three days ago rose suddenly in her throat.
Rot had a weight to it.
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she felt was the iron taste pressed against her tongue. Five crows pecked at a corpse's eyes nearby, their black feathers glinting purple in the twilight. She tried forming a hand seal, but her right hand froze midair. Her meridians were empty, unable to even summon the most basic protective qi.
"What… happened to me?" Her voice was hoarse, scraped raw.
She struggled upright, only to realize she was lying among corpses wrapped in straw mats. The sun set over the mass grave, silence broken only by the wind rustling through dry weeds.
Then, a flood of memories crashed into her.
The searing pain of the thunderbolt.
The Eclipsing Moon Ribbon torn apart by lightning.
Yu Xiaotang's golden eyes, that twisted smile, and the final strange word on her lips…
"…So that's how it is…" she muttered.
Her body shook violently, not with fear, but with a near-mad joy. Her cracked lips opened in a string of hoarse laughter, coughing so hard it sounded like her lungs would rip apart.
"Hahaha… cough cough… I'm not dead… hahaha…" She tilted her head back at the circling crows, her laughter echoing across the graveyard. "The Heavenly Dao… cough cough… wants to kill me? Dream on!"
Her laughter grew louder, more frenzied, until she hacked up bloody phlegm. Blood streaked down her chin, but she didn't care, wiping it away with her filthy sleeve.
A crow startled by her laughter fluttered down in front of her, its beady eyes fixed on her. Yun Qingyue suddenly lunged and clutched its neck, bones snapping under her grip.
"What're you staring at?" she hissed, eyes burning with madness. "You think I should've died too, huh?"
The crow's struggles faded, going limp in her hand. She let it fall into the mud, then burst into manic laughter again.
"Hahaha… I survived… I really survived!" Kneeling amid the corpses, she dug her hands into the cold mud. "Yu Xiaotang… Medicine King Valley… you never saw this coming, did you?"
As she laughed, tears welled uncontrollably.
She tried to wipe them away, but the more she did, the more they fell, until her laughter broke down into wild, hysterical sobs. The flood of emotion drowned her, leaving her curled up in the mud, shivering between corpses. The sect's so-called grace… was finally repaid in full with three hundred years of blood and her very life.
She didn't know how much time passed before calm finally returned.
Breathing deeply, the foul air of decay somehow gave her a strange sense of comfort. That was what it meant to be alive.
Only then did she truly confirm it—she'd died.
The heavenly thunder had indeed torn her apart, body and soul. She only lived because of a forbidden art she'd cultivated centuries ago.
The Soul Splitting Rebirth Technique.
It forcefully split a strand of Primordial Soul, sealing it in a safe place. If the main body perished, the remnant soul would seek out a suitable vessel to be reborn.
She never thought she'd wake up in such a weak body.
Yun Qingyue lowered her gaze to her bony wrist, mottled with bruises and frostbite. The body's original owner must've been a neglected mortal girl, starved to death and dumped here. She probed her condition and her face darkened. No spiritual root, blocked meridians, incapable of even the simplest qi absorption.
"…Living… is enough."
She took a shaky breath, sensing her remnant soul. A thin thread of spiritual power still lingered, enough to let her move. But if she wanted her cultivation back, she needed to find the backup she'd left behind.
Slowly, she pushed herself up and brushed dirt and straw from her tattered clothes.
The sunset bathed her face, revealing a frail stranger's features. It wasn't her face, but it was her body now.
"At least I need to get out of here first."
Looking around, her eyes settled on the distant mountains. Relief washed over her—this was near Hehuan Sect's territory. When she'd split her soul, she'd chosen this location on purpose. Now, it had saved her life.
With direction confirmed, she staggered toward the city below.
…
An hour later, outskirts of the city.
Yun Qingyue stood before a shabby little courtyard. Dust covered the gate, showing no one had entered for years. She placed her hand on the lock, channeling the faint spark of power in her fingertip. The restriction she'd laid down ages ago only opened to her soul.
Click.
The gate creaked open.
Weeds filled the yard. Dust blanketed the main house. She felt along the corner of a wall until a hidden compartment clicked open, revealing a black wooden box. Her fingers traced its surface as the box slowly opened—
Three Swiftstride Talismans.
A disguise mask.
A storage ring.
And… one very special jade slip.