Chapter 8: Found You

Night fell.

Inside the Saintess’s bedroom, Luoxue sat quiet at the soft dining table.

For once, she wore a cute pink pajama set, complete with a little rabbit-eared hood.

Of course, Teresa had dressed her. Because Luoxue was always so obedient, Teresa would sometimes treat her like a dress-up doll, changing her into nicer clothes.

Luoxue, for her part, was very ‘happy’ about it.

After a day’s worth of “trials,” the girl still looked obedient and placid, not a trace of fatigue. She looked more like a child who had returned from playing, in need of some soothing.

Teresa hurried over with a plate of delicate sweets and set the small porcelain dish gently in front of Luoxue.

“Saintess, you’ve worked hard today.”

Teresa bent at the waist, her voice so tender it could drip water.

“Seeing so many vicious sinners in one go must have scared you, right? Eat some sweets to settle your nerves. These are all in flavors you ‘like.'”

Teresa’s eyes carried nothing but affection.

To this maid, Luoxue was like a snow lotus that needed to be held with care. Every glimpse stirred memories of her own sister, lost too young.

In the two years since they had met, Teresa had unconsciously come to see Luoxue as that sister.

“Eat slowly, no rush.”

Teresa gently patted Luoxue’s snow-white hair.

Only once she was sure the girl was all right did Teresa turn to leave.

“I’ll tidy the room first, and I’ll be back soon to read you a story, Saintess.”

“Mhm.”

A small nod from Luoxue. Her smile was as sweet and harmless as ever, her voice soft and obedient.

Only when the door clicked shut and Teresa’s footsteps faded completely did the warm, gentle layer in the room crack like thin ice.

The sweetness drained from Luoxue’s smile, replaced by neither anger nor apathy, but a calm so flat it was nearly lifeless.

She raised a slim hand, picked up one of Teresa’s specially made sweets, and put it into her mouth.

Teresa had trained hard to make these treats; her pastry skill was truly something else.

Faced with such delicacy, Luoxue only chewed calmly, the part of her face below her eyes utterly blank.

“Why is something like this called good?” she whispered without any feeling.

“Human taste… I don’t understand it.”

Although Luoxue’s body was modeled on humans, that applied mostly to appearance.

Many functions that humans had, Luoxue simply didn’t possess… nor did she understand them.

Especially the more abstract senses.

In her opinion, taste was rather abstract.

The next moment, she set the half-eaten pastry back on the plate and tapped the rim with her finger.

The small bear doll reacted at once. It crawled over, dragged away the entire plate, then wobbled back with the sweets in its arms and sat off to the side.

Luoxue didn’t like these pastries. But to keep up the image of the dessert-loving girl Teresa believed in, every plate had to be emptied.

It just wasn’t her who ate them.

…

She wiped her mouth elegantly, reached aside, and picked up a thick stack of paper dossiers. Those were the files Bai Wushang had prepared for her.

Her finger flipped, and the pages silently spread open on their own.

The pages were densely written records of death-row prisoners: names, crimes, abilities, realms, mental states.

Many were people she had come across during the day.

Luoxue did not lift her blindfold. She merely ran her fingers across the documents.

Yet it was as if all that information flowed into her head.

And as it did, the temperature in the room dropped at a noticeable rate.

…

Sensing the chill and the subtle change in her mood, the bear beside the table set down the pastry it was clearing away, slowly raised its head, and “gazed” at Luoxue.

Its black button eyes were aimed straight in her direction.

It was still only watching her. Even so, strange, halting sounds seemed to fill the now silent room.

Sounds only Luoxue could hear.

Luoxue went on leafing through the dossiers, replying evenly to the murmur that pervaded everything.

“Those death-row prisoners?”

Her fingertip traced lines of data, as cold as if she were scanning garbage.

“No obsession worth exploiting among them.”

Her page-turning paused, and her voice cooled further.

“What matters most is… they’re too weak.”

“Low realms, fragile souls. They can’t even withstand the shallowest layer of Star Soul power.”

Compared with someone like Veteba, a goddess-chosen who had passed her trials and carried strength at the Qiongrong realm, those death-row prisoners were poor material.

The goddess herself was revolting.

But even so, one had to grant: of all the chosen ones she selected, whether in will, talent, or strength, they had passed every layer of screening. They were talents found one in ten thousand, born with the qualification to bear a Star Soul.

Star Soul.

Clearly, not something ordinary people could endure.

“I need someone stronger,” Luoxue murmured.

“At least… someone strong enough to reach the Yaogu realm and above, with a will firm enough to hold.”

Those things she would break after a casual use? A waste of time.

…

Then, as her voice trailed off, the fingers turning the pages stopped.

One entry had captured her full attention.

The photo showed an extremely young girl, about sixteen or seventeen, with black hair, a pale face, and empty eyes. There was no life in them at all.

Someone her age was a rare exception among the death-row lists.

But what drew Luoxue’s notice wasn’t her age, nor her looks. It was the record of her crimes.

“Massacred her entire kin. Butchered her fiancé and all five of his family…”

Luoxue read the blood-soaked lines: the names of nearly a hundred innocent dead…

And then the label printed in red letters: “Calamity Witch.”

A slow, strange curve spread across the corner of the girl’s pale lips.

And beneath her blindfold, gold-and-crimson pupils finally flickered with a faint, unsettling light.

“Found you.”

…

Hours later.

Marko Island, a major stronghold in the south of the Alliance.

Deep inside its most heavily guarded and secretive prison.

A black-haired girl was bound to the wall in a special restraint suit. Her whole body was fixed in place, with only a mess of dark hair and a single dull, lifeless right eye visible.

Her body was crisscrossed with fresh and old wounds, blood soaking through her clothes. She looked utterly miserable.

Yet despite that pitiful state, the middle-aged guard in military uniform standing before her showed no sympathy, only disgust.

The man spun a sharp dagger in his hand, Heaven Source power spreading silently through the air.

Whoosh!

The blade cut through the air, driving clean through the girl’s shoulder and burying itself deep in the wall behind her.

That was the sixth dagger he had thrown.

Pain exploded again. The girl’s body trembled a little. But she did not cry out, did not even frown. Her vacant right eye never stirred, as if she had long gone numb.

“Ha. You really can take a hit.”

The man let out a jeering laugh.

“Beheading, burning, poison… you survived them all. Tough little monster. But no matter how strong your vitality, it won’t matter if you can’t move.”

He chuckled to himself, but a note of lingering wariness could be heard underneath.

Then…

“Enough playing.”

A heavy iron door was pushed open, and an older officer walked in with a grim face.

“Send her back to the black cell. Now.”

The middle-aged guard blinked, annoyed.

“Back to the black cell? Why the sudden hurry?”

“She’s being transferred.”

“Transferred? Now?”

“Yes.”

The older officer drew a deep breath.

“It’s an order from above. We are to move this woman. She is being sent to Yuhai City.”

“Yuhai City?” The middle-aged man’s eyes went wide.

“What for? Is she going to be tried there?”

The older officer shook his head. One sentence silenced the room.

“Not a trial. The Saintess… asked for her by name.”

“What?!”

The middle-aged guard’s mocking expression froze. He pointed at the girl behind him in utter disbelief.

“What did you say?! The Saintess wants to see this monster?!”

…

And while the guard stood there stunned…

Behind them.

The girl who had seemed all but dead to the world, with no spark left in her eyes, a faint light quietly arose in the depths of that vacant right eye.

For the first time, a ripple of feeling moved through that hollow gaze.

She raised her head, slowly.

Her voice was hoarse and weak, but carried a tremor she had not even noticed herself.

“The Saintess…”

“The Saintess… wants to see me?”

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