Outside the city walls, with the dust and noise of Nanyao fading behind her, Su Min felt a deep, uncomplicated sense of satisfaction. She had spent every last tael of that hundred-plus silver in one go, a cathartic release of pent-up indulgence after years of austere, frugal living in the mountains. Blowing through what would be a lifetime's fortune for most people in a single afternoon left her feeling light, unburdened, and strangely exhilarated, like a weight she did not know she was carrying had been lifted.
"Money scattered will return again," she mused, echoing an old, pragmatic saying from her past life. It was just a tool.
For her now, with her needs so simple and her power growing, wealth was not a priority. It was a means to an end, and that end had been efficiently achieved. Of course, she had not splurged mindlessly on trinkets and silks. She had made practical, strategic purchases, stocking up on durable, plain clothing, non-perishable food like hardtack and salted meats, and a wide variety of spices and seasonings to make her solitary meals more palatable and varied.
The system-gifted robes from her starter pack were surprisingly, wonderfully practical. She could toss them into her spatial ring caked in mud and blood, and they would emerge moments later perfectly clean, smelling faintly of fresh air. They even adjusted subtly to her height and figure automatically, a constant, perfect fit. She had once, in a moment of idle whimsy, wondered if the ring's creator had been some lecherous old sage with very particular tastes, designing robes that would always flatter the wearer.
She had also bought various daily necessities—strong thread, fine needles, a new whetstone—and, most importantly, a small but well-made ceremonial bronze cauldron, which would be perfect as a starter alchemy furnace. Before this, she had been using a crude, hand-formed clay pot, which was inefficient, prone to cracking, and laborious to maintain. This new bronze cauldron, with its better heat distribution and stability, would serve her well until she reached the Qi Refining stage and could handle more volatile energies. After that, once more advanced artifact blueprints were unlocked in her manual, she could gather rare materials to craft a proper, dedicated spiritual furnace.
"Everything is stored safely in the ring, and no one noticed a thing," she thought with quiet satisfaction, having made her purchases from multiple vendors to avoid raising eyebrows.
Glancing discreetly at the simple, unadorned ring on her finger, she remained cautious. She had never seen anything like it in this world; spatial treasures seemed to be a concept from her game reality alone. The various gourds and clay jars displayed in her bamboo hut were mostly for show, a stage set to maintain a plausible cover for any visitors who might wonder where she kept her supplies.
"Once I am farther from the city and out of sight of the walls, I can channel spiritual energy to my legs and speed up my pace. No need to walk this whole way. Hm?"
Just as she was about to gather her qi to accelerate into a ground-eating run, the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Her brow twitched. Back in the city, she had felt a faint, nagging sensation as if someone was watching her, but she had dismissed it, thinking her plain disguise and neutral demeanor were sufficient camouflage in the busy streets. Now, outside the walls and away from the crowds, that same unsettling, prickling gaze persisted, focused and intent. Instantly, a cold, sharp thread of killing intent coiled in her chest, her body tensing for a fight.
"Dog Emperor's men?" she thought, her expression turning to ice. "Have they finally tracked me here? Persistent bastards."
Before she could react further, a rustling sound rose from the dense brush by the roadside, followed by a sudden, clumsy clamor. A group of ragged, filthy figures emerged, spreading out to block the path ahead. They wielded an assortment of rusted cleavers, chipped knives, and sharpened sticks, their eyes hollow with hunger but burning with a desperate avarice.
"..."
Su Min's lips twitched in a mix of profound annoyance and dark amusement at the sight. She had been mentally prepared for a serious, life-or-death fight against skilled imperial agents or perhaps another cultivator, ready to unleash her full power and leave no survivors to report her location, and yet, what appeared before her were merely a few pathetic, low-level human traffickers and road bandits, their malnourished frames barely able to hold their weapons steady.
"Sorry, little lady," the leader said with a wicked, gap-toothed grin, his voice a rough croak. "Times are hard. We are a bit short on cash these days. Selling a fine, healthy piece of goods like you off to the mines or a brothel should keep us fed for a good half a year. Don't make this difficult."
"Let's see if you even live long enough to spend that money," Su Min retorted, her voice flat and chilly as a winter stream, devoid of any fear.
"!!!"
Hearing her icy, contemptuous response, the leader's face darkened with rage, all pretense of negotiation gone. Roaring a guttural curse, he charged forward, brandishing his rusty blade in a wild, unskilled swing, his bloodshot eyes gleaming with pure, unadulterated viciousness. Even before he reached her, Su Min caught a whiff of a stomach-turning stench that rolled off him in waves. It was not just the odor of unwashed bodies and filth, but a deeper, fouler smell that spoke of moral corruption and a diet of desperation, a scent that instinctively repulsed her cultivated senses.
"Taking advantage of the frozen river in winter to escape south from the famine..." she deduced, her gaze sharpening as she assessed them in an instant. "Looks like they have eaten more than a few people along the way to survive." Cannibalism was an open secret in times of extreme famine, and the aura of death clung to them.
"You—" the leader only managed half a sentence, a final threat dying in his throat, before the world spun violently around him, the sky and earth trading places.
In his final, blurry moments of consciousness, he saw a headless body, still clutching a rusty cleaver, collapse to the ground in a graceless heap. The last thing he registered was the stunned terror on his comrades' faces.
"Is that... my body?"
That was his last, fleeting, disconnected thought.
Gulp...
The slower bandits behind him froze in shock, their jaws slack, their eyes wide with disbelief and dawning, primal terror. They had seen it clearly, yet their minds struggled to process it. An almost weightless shadow had flashed past, a silvery gleam in the sunlight, and their leader's head was simply gone, severed from his shoulders with a clean, impossible finality.
"G-Ghost...!" one stammered, pointing a trembling finger at Su Min, who stood unmoved, her blade already clean. "In broad daylight, a ghost?!"
Instantly, the survivors were thrown back to the visceral horrors they had witnessed in the abandoned graveyards during their desperate flight from the north. Back then, it had been the same. A ghostly shadow had appeared out of the mist, silent and swift, and one of their strongest, loudest comrades was dead in an instant, his life extinguished without a sound.
Not only that, but the ghost had picked up the fresh corpse and, with a horrifying, casual strength, drunkenly sucked out its blood like a man draining a wineskin, discarding the desiccated husk afterwards. If dawn had not been so near and they had not fled fast enough, scrambling over each other in blind panic, none of them would have survived. Since that day, they had refused to venture out after dark, huddling together for meager protection. But now, even under the bright, unforgiving midday sun... the same horror had found them.
"No spooky stories today," Su Min's voice cut through their panic, cold and absolute, shattering their superstitious delusions. "None of you are getting away."
She could not care less what they thought they had seen in the past or what horrors they had endured. People who had already thrown away their last shred of humanity to prey on the weak, who had likely committed the ultimate taboo to survive, were better off gone from this world. Eliminating them was a mercy to any future victims they would have undoubtedly claimed. In a flash, her figure moved again, a blur of controlled, lethal motion, and one by one, the rest of the thugs fell to the ground, their pathetic threats silenced forever, their rusted weapons clattering uselessly on the dirt.
"Let's just toss them into the forest nearby," she decided, looking down at the small, growing pile of bodies without a shred of emotion. "The wolves and wild dogs will make short work of them within a day. Saves me the trouble of digging."
This was one of the main mountain passes leading to her home, so leaving corpses here in the open was not ideal, even if travelers were few. She casually dragged them one by one, their lightness a testament to their starvation, to a nearby, shadowy ravine overgrown with thorns. The strong, metallic scent of fresh blood would soon draw countless carnivores from miles around. In this chaotic era, a few more deaths among vagabonds and bandits were nothing unusual, a mere statistic. No one would care enough to investigate.
"This world... it is safer to stay deep in the mountains after all," she concluded, a grim finality in her tone. The frontier between civilization and wilderness was where the true monsters lurked, and they were not always supernatural.
Dusting off her hands as if she had just taken out the trash, Su Min quickly left the scene, her pace brisk. The world was unstable now, and she knew from her game knowledge that it would only get worse, the barriers between realms thinning. That Demon Empress pulling the strings in the capital was a foe with unimaginably high cultivation, not someone she could hope to confront or even survive meeting at her current level.
Moreover, she still lacked any real mastery of dedicated, large-scale slaughter techniques. The Minor Sword Control was for precision, not carnage. For now, it was far wiser to avoid unnecessary risks and continue laying low, growing stronger in secret. However—
"Ugh."
Just as she arrived back at her secluded bamboo hut, the familiar walls a welcome sight, a sudden, sharp wave of dizziness and heat hit her. She staggered against the doorframe, her vision swimming with flashes of crimson, and almost fell to one knee. A strange, thrilling fire simmered in her veins, a whisper of power that was both alluring and alarming.
"It is not enough... I still need more. Is this the nascent insight of the Path of Slaughter? Those few thugs were not sufficient to fully trigger it..." The feeling was tantalizingly close to a breakthrough, yet just out of reach, like an itch she could not scratch.
Touching her slightly warm, flushed cheek, Su Min was not alarmed. The sensation felt familiar, an echo of the process just like when she had previously comprehended the Wood-Fire Transformation Art and the Minor Sword Control Art. Her Heavenly Dao Insight worked by observing the laws of heaven through the passage of time and action, gaining enlightenment through intense, focused experience and emotion. This path could grant not only martial skills but also unique, esoteric powers tied to one's actions and nature.
Clearly, the act of killing, of decisively ending lives, had just now triggered the preliminary conditions for comprehending the Path of Slaughter. But the scale and intensity of the incident—a handful of worthless bandits—had not been enough for a full, proper breakthrough. It was just a taste.
"No rush," she told herself, steadying her breathing and pushing the dizzying sensation down. "There will be more... suitable opportunities later." She knew this with a cold certainty. This world would provide ample fuel for such a path.
After some quiet reflection, sitting on the steps of her hut, Su Min settled her mind. Since she had already started down this path, felt its call in her blood, there was no reason to turn back now. However, she needed to tread very, very carefully. She recalled a particular, dangerous game mechanic related to this path: Blood Frenzy.
In the game, achieving the Blood Frenzy state required indiscriminate, mass slaughter, stacking a hidden "killing intent" meter. The effect dramatically boosted cultivation speed and granted special, devastating attack properties, but the ultimate, game-changing downside was the progressive, permanent loss of the character's rationality and eventually, player control, turning them into a mindless killing machine.
In the game, that did not matter much in the end, since the player's consciousness still ultimately controlled the character's actions from a safe distance. But here, in this real world, where she was the character, losing control of her own mind, her memories, her very self to a blind rage could be a fatal, irreversible mistake. It was a trap for the power-hungry.
"Kill to protect life. Cut through karmic ties and true evils, not through innocent people," she reaffirmed her principle aloud, the words a vow to the silent mountains. "Only this way can I wield this power and still remain myself. The blade is a tool, not the master."
Calming herself, she moved inside to brew a pot of strong, bitter awakening tea to clear the last of the dizziness from her head. Yet before she could even pour the hot water into the cup, the sound of hurried, frantic footsteps, the slap of bare feet on hard earth, echoed from the path outside her hut, followed by a breathless, terrified shout that shattered her hard-won peace.
"Milady! Honored Healer! The chieftain sent me! He has an urgent, terrible matter to ask for your help! Please, you must come!"