Chapter 8
"You are agile, Miss Ling Xu," said Whou Ming while deflecting three needles at once with his Qi-coated palm, "but agility will not save you from someone who craves possession!"
He laughed—a laugh resembling that of the four assassins from the past, cheerful and depraved—then gathered all his Qi into his palm, forming a purple energy sphere the size of a horse's head, and hurled it toward Ling Xu, who had just been knocked aside by a sweeping strike.
Ling Xu rolled across the ground, her robe torn at the left shoulder, blood lightly staining her faded white sleeve.
She could feel every rib throbbing in pain, and within her chest, the remaining fifty-one fragments of the Star of Humanity trembled like frightened leaves.
"You think you can defeat me with nothing but the courage of a girl whose mother was violated?" Whou Ming mocked as he stepped closer, his fingertips still glowing purple.
"I have been doing this for decades—taking, owning, destroying. You are not special, Miss Ling Xu. You are just one among a hundred."
Ling Xu lifted her face, wiped the blood from the corner of her lips with the back of her hand, then smiled—a smile that strangely held no fear, but a disgust so deep it resembled resignation.
"You're right," she said softly, "I am not special. But at least I do not hide my past wounds by becoming the same monster that killed my mother."
Whou Ming's expression changed.
His smile vanished, replaced by something darker.
Not anger, but pain that had rotted for decades and now began to fester.
"How dare you—" he hissed, but before he could finish, Ling Xu had already leaped—not to attack, but to dodge a slash of energy that nearly severed her neck.
She landed with scraped knees, then turned toward Huan Zheng, who was still sitting lazily while dozens of subordinates lay flung around him like flies that had died from exhaustion.
"HUAN ZHENG!" Ling Xu shouted, her voice hoarse and desperate.
"STOP LOITERING! IF YOU ARE NOT SERIOUS NOW, I SWEAR—AFTER THIS YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TIME TO BE LAZY AGAIN!"
Huan Zheng let out a long breath.
Not the breath of someone tired, but the breath of someone who had finally decided to stop pretending.
He stood slowly, feeling every grain of dust clinging to his robe, then looked ahead with eyes that were no longer lazy.
Within his retinas, flames burned—not red, but pale blue like candlelight over a grave, cold yet never extinguished.
"Do you regret it, Ling Xu?" he whispered to the wind, too softly to be heard by the girl amid the battle.
"You are not alone."
And with that whisper, something terrifying happened behind Huan Zheng's back.
Not light, not an explosion, but an aura—an aura so heavy, so ancient, so absolute, as if the heavens and the earth themselves had suddenly chosen to kneel.
The area behind Huan Zheng instantly became his domain.
The wind that had been blowing fiercely suddenly softened into whispers, stones that had remained still began to tremble as if chanting prayers, even the dry grass bent their stems as though kneeling.
From the mouths of Whou Ming's subordinates still lying on the ground, strange sounds emerged.
Not screams, not wails, but prayers uttered without permission from their own throats, as if an unseen hand gripped their vocal cords and forced every muscle fiber to worship.
"Huan… Huan Zheng… the number two Wheel…" murmured a soldier with empty eyes, drool dripping from his mouth, "forgive us… please step upon our heads…"
Meanwhile, So Weihao, his twisted arm still trembling, tried to retreat, but his legs would not move, and Xing Haoran—the old man with the yellow staff—could only whisper one word with a trembling voice like an old leaf.
"Supreme…."
Huan Zheng did not answer those prayers.
He did not even glance.
All he did was raise his right leg—slowly, gracefully, like a dancer about to begin the first movement upon a silent stage—then kicked.
There was no target, no enemy before the tip of his worn shoe, only the cold, empty night air.
But the moment his heel touched the air, the world before him split.
Not a metaphor, not an illusion—dozens of Whou Ming's subordinates within a hundred-meter radius, with cultivation levels of Fourth and Fifth Lower Star that should have been three to four levels above Huan Zheng, suddenly stopped moving.
All of them.
At once.
Like wax statues whose wicks had burned out.
Then, one by one, their bodies split into two—clean, precise, without a single drop of blood spilling—like sacrificial meat cut for a pavilion feast, sliced by a blade so sharp the flesh itself never had time to feel pain.
"What… what did you just do?" whispered So Weihao, his beautiful face now pale as chalk, his magenta hair trembling as his entire body shook uncontrollably.
Huan Zheng lowered his leg, then looked at So Weihao with an unreadable expression.
Not hatred, not anger, but a boredom so deep it resembled sorrow.
"You ask what I just did?" he replied, his voice flat like a gravestone.
"I simply… remembered. Remembered who I was before that damned poison corrupted my foundation."
He stepped forward once toward So Weihao, and behind him, the split corpses began to smoke, turning into glowing dust that rose into the night sky like fireflies returning home.
"And you know, So Weihao—" Huan Zheng stopped right in front of the magenta-haired man, then smiled—a smile neither warm nor cold, but empty.
"… Those who remember are always more dangerous than those who learn."
So Weihao, with the last remnants of courage trembling at his fingertips, launched a full assault—dozens of orange-red energy-infused folding blades shot from his sleeves, accompanied by Sixth Level Common Star Qi that should have been enough to tear apart even palace walls.
But Huan Zheng did not dodge, did not block.
Instead, he did something absurd in the midst of a deadly battle.
He danced.
Not just any dance—but a ballet, with graceful movements, fingers tracing the air, and slow, measured spins like a swan gliding upon a frozen lake.
So Weihao even laughed upon seeing it, because who dances on a battlefield?
But his laughter cut short when he felt something strange within his body.
His skin turned cold, then hot, then cold again, and when he looked down, he saw thin red lines appearing on his wrists, on his neck, on his chest—lines that perfectly followed the movements of Huan Zheng's dance.
"No… don't…" So Weihao whispered, but before he could finish, his body was torn apart.
Not exploded, not shattered, but cut so swiftly, so cleanly, that he still had time to see his own head fall to the ground before his consciousness faded—and in that final moment, he saw Huan Zheng stop dancing, then bow politely like a performer ending his act before an audience that was already dead.
Meanwhile, Xing Haoran did not attack.
The old man simply stood in place, his yellow staff trembling violently, his wrinkled eyes wide open as he felt—felt something impossible from a man who was said to possess only a First-Level Lower Star.
To be continued…