Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sporadic, poorly aimed volley of arrows whistled through the air, a desperate attempt to slow her down. But Su Min moved with a dancer's preternatural grace, her body flowing with the rhythm of the gallop. She spun her slender sword in a shimmering, defensive arc, the fine steel meeting each projectile with a sharp, metallic ring, deflecting every single one with impossible accuracy. The shattered arrowheads and splintered shafts clattered uselessly to the hard, dry ground behind her galloping horse, marking her trail with debris.
Clip-clop, clip-clop—
The horse's hooves beat a frantic, staccato rhythm against the packed earth, a sound of pure flight.
Hiss—
A collective, sharp intake of breath came from the pursuing cavalry. They instinctively reined in their mounts, their faces masks of stunned disbelief, their earlier bravado evaporating like mist.
"How is this possible?!" one of them whispered, his voice tight with a shock that bordered on fear.
Su Min's reflexes were simply not human. They far exceeded anything they had ever witnessed on any battlefield, a feat even their most seasoned, battle hardened veterans could not hope to match. Their orders demanded she be taken alive, but if risking their lives was not enough to even touch her, if she could bat away their arrows like annoying insects, what was the point of chasing this demon further into certain danger?
Noticing their hesitation, the sudden break in their pursuit, Su Min allowed herself a small, internal sigh of relief. After breaking through to the mid stage of Body Refining, her perception had sharpened to an incredible degree. By focusing her mind and channeling a thread of spiritual energy to her eyes, she could track the flight path of each arrow with crystal clarity, as if the world had slowed down just for her, making the projectiles seem like lazy, drifting feathers.
"Witch! You think you can escape?!"
A furious, youthful roar cut through her momentary respite. Ahead, a young general in his twenties, his face a contorted mask of rage and ambition, charged toward her on a powerful, snorting warhorse. He lowered his gleaming silver spear, its polished, razor sharp tip aimed directly at her heart, a classic cavalry charge meant to skewer her where she sat.
"Look! It's General Sun!"
"General Sun, stop her!"
The soldiers behind her cheered, their hope renewed by the sight of a noble officer, their courage artificially bolstered.
Su Min narrowed her eyes, her focus becoming absolute, the world shrinking to the point of that silver spear. The lance's angle was vicious and precise, a killing blow aimed with deadly intent and practiced skill. The Body Refining stage was still a step below true immortal cultivation, still bound by many mortal limits. She was tougher than a normal person, her bones denser and her skin more resilient, but she could not afford carelessness against a well placed thrust from a fine weapon. Yet, no matter how refined the martial technique, it was useless against someone who could read every tiny flex of his muscle, every shift of his weight, someone who could react faster than thought and strike with overwhelming, cultivated force. It was all just flashy, mortal posturing.
At the very last possible second, when the spear tip was a mere hand's breadth from her chest, she twisted her body aside with an impossible, serpentine agility. As the spear shot past her, a silver streak of wasted motion, she grabbed the wooden shaft with one hand and the general's armored wrist with the other, her grip like iron. Then, using his own forward momentum against him, she yanked hard, unseating him with brutal efficiency.
Thud!
The man flew from his saddle as if launched from a catapult and hit the dirt with a heavy, bone jarring thud, rolling in a cloud of dust and dry grass. Before he could even recover his breath or his wits, Su Min leaned down low from her own horse, her balance perfect. In one fluid, practiced motion, she snatched the powerful laminated bow from his back and plucked a single, fletched arrow from the quiver strapped to his saddle.
She nocked, drew, and released in a single, seamless breath.
Twang!
"ARGH!"
A sharp, choked scream tore through the air as the arrow punched straight through his ornate, decorated chest plate and buried itself deep into his heart. The pursuing cavalry, who had been moments from charging in to support him, froze in their tracks, their blood running cold. The blood drained from their faces, leaving them pale and wan. Her movements had been a seamless, brutal dance of death that left no room for counterattack, no space for heroics. Several soldiers scrambled from their horses and rushed to check General Sun's pulse. A heavy, terrified silence followed their grim discovery. He was gone.
This was the grandson of Grand General Sun Tangshou, a three dynasty veteran with immense influence in the court and a temper known to be as fierce as his battle prowess. The young Sun himself had been no slouch, a skilled tactician, a master of logistics, and widely considered one of the army's finest young warriors. It usually took six or seven elite soldiers to match him in sparring combat.
And now he had been killed in a handful of seconds, like a child swatting a fly. Who in their right mind would keep chasing the demon who had done that? What reward was worth such a certain death?
Their unit was already understaffed, mostly infantry who could not hope to catch a galloping horse. The dozen or so horsemen left would just be picked off one by one, target practice for her bow. This was not even a real, honorable battlefield. Dying here would not bring their families glory or a pension, only ridicule for being bested by a single, unarmored girl.
"Why risk our necks for a monthly stipend?" one soldier muttered, voicing the thought that was now on all their minds, shattering the last illusion of duty.
Su Min exhaled slowly, a genuine wave of relief washing over her, cooling the fire in her veins. That general had gone straight for the kill, no hesitation, no false chivalry. His ornate, gilded armor had marked him as high nobility, making him the perfect example to make, a message to the others. The result was even better than she had hoped. She had broken their will.
If she was being completely honest with herself, she had never properly trained in archery, not in this life or her last. Instead, in the brief moment she had grabbed his wrist to unseat him, she had imprinted a tiny, almost invisible spark of her spiritual energy onto his chest, right over his heart. The arrow, subtly infused with a wisp of her power, had then homed in on that spark like a magnet drawn to steel, ensuring it would not miss its fatal mark. It was a cheat, a cultivator's trick against a mortal warrior.
But then—
Thud-thud-thud!
The ground began to tremble, a vibration she felt through her horse's hooves. A distant thunder, the sound of hundreds of synchronized hoofbeats, rolled toward them from the east and west. The signal flare had done its job.
"Reinforcements from the flanks," she realized, her brief moment of triumph cut short. But it was too late for them to intercept her.
She had chosen her breakout point with meticulous care, aiming for a spot right by the Jishui River's edge where the bank was low. Without slowing, she spurred her tired, lathered horse toward the water's edge and then, at the very last moment, as the animal skidded to a halt, she leaped from the saddle, abandoning her steed.
SPLASH!
Her boots skimmed the river's churning, gray brown surface, barely making a dent. She was running, propelled forward by a thin, concentrated layer of spiritual energy that adhered to the soles of her feet, creating a temporary, solid platform with each step, allowing her to treat the water as solid ground. This technique, using qi to walk on water or scale walls, required a finesse and control that most Body Refining cultivators never mastered, focused as they were on raw power. At the Qi Refining stage, one could use brute force to propel oneself, but for now, perfect, unwavering precision was the only way.
It was something she had practiced relentlessly in her secluded mountain pool for hours on end, anticipating this very escape, this very moment.
Mid river, she risked a single glance back over her shoulder. The reinforcement cavalry had reached the bank, a mass of men and horses, but they could only watch, their jaws slack with a kind of superstitious horror as they witnessed a lone girl sprinting across the wide river as if it were a paved imperial road. By the time their officers bellowed orders and they fumbled to nock their arrows, she was already a small, receding figure, far out of their maximum range.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
The moment her feet touched the soft mud of the far shore, Su Min's legs buckled, the spiritual energy in them utterly spent. She collapsed to her knees, gasping for air, her chest heaving. The toll was immense. Her calves screamed with a deep, burning pain, and the core of spiritual energy within her dantian felt nearly empty, drained and dim, a guttering candle. But she had done it. She was safe. She was across.
In this era, no bridge, no matter how grand, could hope to span a river this wide and powerful. Crossing required boats, ferries, and time. The only vessels on this side were a few rickety, leaking fishing skiffs, utterly useless for a swift military pursuit. Any pursuers would be idiots to follow in those. And if a few brave, foolish stragglers did make it across, she was confident, even in her drained state, that she could handle them easily.
"Farewell, gentlemen," she whispered toward the distant, helpless soldiers, her voice hoarse but laced with triumph.
Tossing a Qi Restoring Pill into her mouth from her storage ring, she felt a welcome, cooling warmth immediately spread through her tired meridians, a balm to the emptiness. With one final, triumphant glance at the vast, impotent army stranded across the water, a mere spectacle now, she turned on her heel and vanished into the thick, deep, welcoming shadows of the southern forests, leaving only silence in her wake.
She was not completely out of danger yet, not by a long shot. Not until she had put the entire Great Wei Dynasty's sphere of control far, far behind her.
Back across the river, the massive, once proud army stood in dumbfounded, humiliated silence. The scale of their failure was absolute.
Half a year of meticulous preparation and planning. The mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men, a logistical nightmare. The felling of countless trees to create firebreaks. The deliberate burning of an entire sacred mountain range, an act that would haunt the land for generations.
And she had just... walked away across the water, as if their entire effort was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.