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Join the ServerHua Liang narrowed his eyes, a flicker of scrutiny and amusement dancing in his crimson pupils.
Without further questions, he turned his wrist, reversing the grip of the demon blade, Miyuki-maru, which was wreathed in an ominous aura, and offered it to Xiao Moyuan.
“The blade is yours.”
His voice was low, yet it carried a distinct note of challenge.
“A word of caution,” he added, “this blade of mine has a rather fierce temperament.”
“It often induces strange compulsions. One can easily become… ensnared by it.”
Before he could finish, Miyuki-maru had already settled into Xiao Moyuan’s hand.
The blade felt slightly heavy upon contact, radiating a bone-chilling cold. It seemed to awaken the darkest impulses within, instantly coiling up the hilt and attempting to burrow into the wielder’s mind.
This was the accumulated ‘hatred’ and resentment of countless defeated monsters; Miyuki-maru’s insidious test and corruption of every wielder.
Xiao Moyuan’s expression remained utterly placid, not even a flicker of movement in his brow.
He simply gripped the hilt casually, his wrist giving a slight tremor, and the blade carved an almost imperceptible, grey-black arc through the air.
“Chaa—”
With a barely audible whisper, the hard ground below inexplicably split open. A straight gash, an inch deep and more than a foot long, appeared, its edges as smooth as a mirror.
“A fine blade indeed.”
Xiao Moyuan’s heavy gaze swept over the sword, his tone calm and unruffled.
Hua Liang’s pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.
Could Miyuki-maru’s demonic energy truly have no effect on him?
No, it wasn’t that it had no effect…
Rather, that encroaching power had instantly dissipated upon contact with this man. He could even sense a faint trace of… apprehension and shrinking from the blade itself.
This demon blade, which had driven countless great demons to madness and turned them into mere puppets, now seemed so docile in the hands of a human demon hunter.
Xiao Moyuan naturally ignored the astonishment in Hua Liang’s mind.
Holding the blade, he turned and walked, step by step, towards Ling Chen, who had been thrown back by Hua Liang’s demonic energy moments ago and was now struggling to rise.
His footsteps echoed clearly in the dead silence.
Hua Liang suddenly noticed something amiss. Xiao Moyuan seemed to be heading… not towards Ling Chen, but towards the spot where he himself had just been standing?
He moved aside, watching Xiao Moyuan stop not far in front of him, a hint of confusion in his eyes.
“Senior Xiao?”
Hua Liang instinctively spoke.
“You’re taking the blade to…”
Xiao Moyuan lifted his gaze to him, his deep brown eyes now so cold they could freeze a person solid.
He spoke, his voice not loud, but every word clear and distinct:
“I’m taking the blade, naturally, because I fear dirtying my hands.”
Hua Liang froze, then understood. A humorless curve played on his lips, and he said no more, merely stepping back half a pace with folded arms, ceding the space.
“You…”
Ling Chen used his remaining spiritual energy to staunch the gushing blood from his reattached arm. Struggling to sit halfway up, he saw Xiao Moyuan approaching him with the blade.
No, not approaching him, but stopping where Ling Chen had just been lying, then turning, his gaze falling upon Ling Chen himself.
There was no anger in that gaze, no killing intent. Only an unfathomable coldness and an indifference akin to observing something foul.
Ling Chen’s heart wrenched violently. His mind, previously muddled by the excruciating pain of his severed arm and fear, suddenly connected a terrifying detail.
When Xiao Moyuan had ‘reattached’ his arm earlier, the flow of spiritual energy had been excessively precise and stable. It was almost as if he had ensured every bone, meridian, and even pain nerve in Ling Chen’s arm was perfectly reset.
And then—
“Aaaah—!!!”
A bloodcurdling scream, inhuman in its intensity, tore through the air once more!
The blade flashed, so swift that even its afterimage was barely visible.
Ling Chen’s ‘new arm,’ which had just regained sensation and hadn’t even had a chance to move, was severed cleanly at the shoulder. It flew through the air again, crashing nearby and splattering a plume of blood.
This time, the pain was clearer, more intense. The arm had been perfectly restored, its pain nerves impeccably reconnected, only to be violently re-severed.
An overwhelming tsunami of agony engulfed him. His vision swam with black spots, and cold sweat instantly drenched his ragged clothes.
“Xiao Moyuan! Are you insane?!”
Ling Chen shrieked, his voice distorted by excruciating pain.
“Have you forgotten the ironclad rules of the Demon Hunter Academy?! Killing a fellow disciple is a capital offense! A grave crime!!”
He no longer dared to shout ‘Senior.’ Fear and fury made him call out Xiao Moyuan’s name directly.
“And… I am from the Ling family! The direct lineage of the Ling family!”
“If you dare to touch me today, the Ling family will never let this rest!”
“Even the Xiao family won’t be able to protect you!”
He invoked the Academy’s rules, he invoked his family’s power, attempting to bind this harbinger of doom, who seemed to have emerged from the abyss, with these external shackles.
Xiao Moyuan remained deaf to his screams.
He held the blade, its tip slanted towards the ground, as a few drops of thick blood slowly slid down its grey-black surface, dripping onto the earth.
His face was devoid of expression. He merely watched Ling Chen’s face, contorted by pain and terror, his gaze as still as if observing a struggling insect.
Then, his wrist moved again.
The blade’s gleam was like the cold, clear light of the moon, sweeping past.
“Pffft! Pffft!”
Two muffled thuds followed in quick succession.
The two thuds occurred almost simultaneously.
Ling Chen felt a chilling sensation at his thighs, immediately followed by a wave of excruciating pain, even more overwhelming than that of his severed arm.
His lower body lost all support, and he crashed to the ground, only his torso and head remaining to twitch in place.
All four limbs were severed!
His screams had become hoarse and broken. Ling Chen, like a stripped and limbless grub, lay trembling violently in a pool of blood, his face a horrifying mix of extreme agony, boundless terror, and incredulous madness.
He simply could not comprehend how Xiao Moyuan dared to do this.
How could he dare to go to such lengths for a mere demon, a mere shikigami?
Did he truly not fear the Academy’s investigation, or the Ling family’s retaliation?!
Not far away, Su Baixue clapped her hand over her mouth, her nails digging deep into her palm, barely suppressing the scream that threatened to escape.
Her face was ashen, her body trembling uncontrollably. Her eyes were wide, staring at the utterly gruesome and brutal scene before her.
A chill shot from the soles of her feet straight to her scalp.
For the first time, she truly understood how shallow and laughable her past perceptions of Xiao Moyuan had been.
That senior, legendary in the Demon Hunter Academy for his exceptional talent, calm demeanor, and immense power—that figure she secretly admired and found unapproachable—was now revealing a completely different side.
He was ruthless, decisive, merciless in his killing, and utterly disregarded rules and threats.
She suddenly recalled the words Xiao Moyuan had spoken to her earlier:
“You should be grateful you have an identity that can protect you.”
At the time, she had only felt a bone-chilling coldness. Now, looking at Ling Chen’s utterly wretched form in the pool of blood, she finally grasped the bloody meaning behind those words.
If not for the fragile protective shell of her ‘Sister Su’ identity, would she also be lying there now?
Cold sweat, born of terror, instantly drenched her back.
“Xiao… Xiao Moyuan…”
Ling Chen gurgled in his throat, blood foam constantly spilling from the corners of his mouth. He stared with bloodshot eyes at the figure standing with the blade, like a god of death. His remaining sanity and will to live forced out fragmented words.
“You… you’re going to kill me… for that… that fox demon in your arms?”
He couldn’t understand, screaming hysterically:
“It’s just a shikigami!”
“A plaything! A demon that can be replaced at any time! Are you utterly mad?!”
“Is it worth it for something like that?!”
These words seemed to trigger a switch.
A faint chill flickered across Xiao Moyuan’s usually expressionless face, and something in his cold eyes seemed to sink completely.
He raised the blade again.
“No… don’t… don’t kill me!!”
Ling Chen was utterly terrified, the shadow of death completely engulfing him.
Stripped of his limbs, he could only use the remaining strength in his jaw and abdomen to writhe frantically on the ground, desperately ‘crawling’ towards Su Baixue, who was closest to him.
A long, gruesome trail of blood, mixed with dark red earth, stretched behind him, a horrifying sight.
“Baixue! Su Baixue!! Save me! We… we’re partners!!”
He shrieked hoarsely, his voice filled with desperate pleading.
“Help me… stop him!”
“As long as I can return… I’ll have the Ling family help you investigate your parents’ case! We’ll use all our resources!”
“I… I have many spiritual artifacts, high-grade ones, I’ll give them all to you! All of them!!”
Su Baixue watched him, like a vengeful ghost, writhing towards her. Her stomach churned violently.
Fear made her recoil repeatedly, her mind screaming: ‘Don’t come closer! Don’t come closer! Stay away from me!!’
She saw, in Ling Chen’s wretched and despairing face, a possible reflection of her own future. This connection sent shivers down her spine.
Ling Chen exerted his last ounce of strength and will to live, finally resting his blood-stained head against the tip of Su Baixue’s shoe.
He looked up, his face covered in blood, his eyes vacant and full of entreaty.
Xiao Moyuan stood behind him, blade in hand, unhurried, like the most patient hunter appreciating the final struggles of his prey.
“Xiao Moyuan…”
Ling Chen suddenly remembered something, like grasping a final straw, and shrieked with all his might.
“Class A demon hunters… all leave a spiritual energy imprint of their origin in the Academy! There’s special registration!!”
“If you kill me… the Academy will know immediately! They can trace the killer! They can even… even backtrack to the scene I saw before I died!!”
“Kill me… even if you’re the Young Master of the Xiao family, a Class A hunter, you won’t escape responsibility!”
“The Academy will definitely investigate! You’ll be in huge trouble!!!”
This was his last trump card, the rule-bound talisman he believed would save his life.
The lives of Class A demon hunters were precious resources to the Academy, and their deaths would inevitably trigger a rigorous investigation.
Indeed, Xiao Moyuan’s hand, holding the blade, paused almost imperceptibly.
Seeing this, Ling Chen’s heart suddenly eased, almost collapsing in relief.
Hua Liang, standing nearby, frowned, cold light glinting in his crimson demonic eyes.
“If it’s inconvenient for you to act,”
He spoke, his voice carrying an unmistakable killing intent,
“I’ll do it. I don’t care about your Academy’s rules.”
Ling Chen’s heart, which had just settled, instantly leaped back into his throat!
Fear seized him once more!
How could he have forgotten that there was a demon nearby who disregarded rules? This demon would kill him without any qualms!
Xiao Moyuan, however, did not hand the blade to Hua Liang, nor did he even spare him a glance.
Holding the blade, he turned and walked a few steps back to stand before Su Baixue.
Su Baixue, whose mind was trembling from Ling Chen’s pitiful state and the approaching scent of death, suddenly saw Xiao Moyuan return and stop in front of her. She was so startled she nearly screamed.
Xiao Moyuan looked at her, his gaze still icy, but with less of the previous bone-chilling coldness and more of an inexplicable, unsettling scrutiny.
He flipped his wrist, offering the hilt of Miyuki-maru to Su Baixue.
“Take it.”
Two simple words, without explanation or command, yet they carried an irresistible imperative.
Su Baixue’s mind went blank. Almost instinctively, in extreme fear and confusion, she reached out and grasped the ice-cold hilt.
In that instant—
A chilling, sinister power, filled with countless negative emotions, surged violently from the hilt into her palm, racing along the meridians of her arm and wildly assaulting her mind!
“Om—”
Su Baixue’s vision swam with red. Countless emotions she had suppressed or ignored—fear, jealousy, rage, hatred, despair, betrayal, resentment, anger, grievance, unwillingness, envy—were infinitely amplified and distorted by this external force!
Holding the blade, her body trembled slightly, the clarity in her eyes rapidly replaced by a chaotic, crimson hue.
Everything from before echoed repeatedly in her mind:
Ling Chen’s foolish words,
Su Mian’s cunning gaze when she took off her necklace,
Xiao Moyuan’s cold rebuke of “disgusting,” and that phrase, “you should be grateful”… All these images intertwined, finally pointing to a single source—
It was all because of him!
If not for Ling Chen’s foolishness, how could she have done such a thing?
How could she have made Xiao Moyuan so disgusted with her?
How could she have fallen into such an irreversible predicament, even almost ending up like Ling Chen?!
It was Ling Chen!
It was all Ling Chen’s fault!
He had ruined everything for her!
He had turned her into the villain she herself despised!
Towering resentment and furious rage, like an ignited wildfire, consumed her remaining sanity.
“It’s all your fault… all your fault!!!”
Su Baixue suddenly lifted her head, her crimson eyes locked onto Ling Chen, who lay in the pool of blood at her feet, looking up at her with a last flicker of hope.
Her voice became sharp and distorted, filled with maniacal hatred.
“If not for you… how could I… how could I have done such a thing?!”
“You made me a villain! You made the seniors despise me! You almost killed me!!!”
She gripped the hilt tightly with both hands, feeling the blade’s cold power, as if it could sever anything, and the sinister whispers that continuously indulged her hatred.
All her fear, regret, and self-loathing now transformed into a furious killing intent directed at this ‘culprit’ before her.
“Go to hell! Go to hell!!!”
She shrieked, using all her strength, raising Miyuki-maru high with both hands, aiming at Ling Chen’s back, and plunging it down fiercely!
“Pfft!”
The sound of the blade entering flesh was dull yet distinct.
Ling Chen’s eyes widened abruptly, and a strange, guttural ‘ho’ sound escaped his throat, filled with extreme shock and despair.
He hadn’t expected that the fatal blow would come from this ‘partner’ he had tried to exploit and regarded as a fool!
Su Baixue had completely fallen into a state of madness. One stab, two stabs, three stabs…
She mechanically repeated the stabbing motion, blood splashing onto her pale face and clothes, yet she was utterly oblivious. Only one thought occupied her mind: ‘Kill him! It’s all his fault!’
Ling Chen’s body initially twitched a few times, but soon became completely still.
Before he died, his vacant pupils stared fixedly at Su Baixue, his blood-stained teeth clamped tightly onto the tip of her shoe, as if a final curse.
Hua Liang stood aside, quietly watching the scene. A flicker of understanding crossed his crimson demonic eyes, quickly replaced by cold indifference.
He looked at Xiao Moyuan, his tone devoid of discernable emotion:
“Your method is quite clever.”
“You’ve not only eliminated Ling Chen but also shifted the ‘karma’ of directly acting onto Su Baixue, a demon hunter whose mind was temporarily controlled by a demon.”
“Even if the Academy investigates, the primary accountability will fall on Su Baixue for ‘killing a colleague,’ while Xiao Moyuan would at most be faulted for ‘failing to prevent it in time’ or ‘using extreme measures to subdue a colleague controlled by a demon.'”
However, Hua Liang’s tone shifted, taking on an inquisitive note.
“I’m more curious, why did Miyuki-maru have no effect on you?”
Xiao Moyuan glanced at Su Mian, still sleeping soundly in his arms, her brow only slightly furrowed. He replied calmly, “When you’ve seen enough, you simply get used to it.”
Compared to the boundless pain and negative emotions brought by the bloodline curse that tormented him day and night, Miyuki-maru’s petty attempts to tempt and provoke inner demons were nothing more than a gentle breeze.
In fact, the moment he grasped the hilt, the curse power within him subtly circulated, effortlessly crushing and assimilating the demonic energy attempting to invade the blade.
This demon blade, feared by a hundred demons, was for him no different in essence from a slightly sharper ordinary weapon.
He was already in hell; why would he fear a few ghost flames?
Hua Liang looked at him deeply, no longer pressing the question, and reached out to grasp the air.
With a soft ‘clang,’ Miyuki-maru, deeply embedded in Ling Chen’s body, automatically flew out and landed in his hand.
The bloodstains on the blade, the instant they left Su Baixue’s palm, transformed into black mist and dissipated, restoring the blade to its original pristine state.
As the demon blade left her hand, the power that had enveloped her mind and the eerie influence that had amplified her emotions receded like a tide.
Su Baixue’s body trembled, the crimson in her eyes rapidly fading. Her chaotic, violent thoughts felt suddenly emptied, and reason returned.
She blinked blankly, her vision refocusing.
The first thing she saw were her own hands, stained with dark red blood, trembling slightly.
Then, at her feet… Ling Chen’s grotesquely disfigured corpse, his back a bloody mess, his eyes wide and unseeing in death.
His blood-stained teeth were still clamped tightly onto the tip of her shoe.
“Om—”
Her brain felt as if it had been struck, a complete blankness.
Everything that had just happened—those insane thoughts, violent actions, splashing blood—receded into her consciousness with chilling clarity.
“What… have I done?”
She murmured, her voice dry and hoarse, filled with incredulous horror.
Xiao Moyuan watched her calmly, his voice still devoid of fluctuation, yet every word was like an ice pick, nailing into her eardrums and into her instantly crumbling world:
“You believed Ling Chen had fooled you, made you do wrong, turned you into a ‘villain.'”
“So, you lashed out at him and killed him with your own hands.”
“With your own hands, you killed a Class A demon hunter, your temporary partner.”
Every single word was like a red-hot knife, repeatedly slicing at her heart.
Su Baixue stood frozen, looking at her blood-stained hands, then at Ling Chen’s terrifying corpse at her feet, then up at Xiao Moyuan’s utterly cold eyes, and at Su Mian sleeping peacefully in his arms…
Finally, her gaze swept past the indifferent Hua Liang and Xue Li beside her, past this crimson, silent, illusory world.
“Hoh… hoh…”
Broken gasps escaped her throat. Her body began to tremble violently and uncontrollably. The color drained completely from her face, even her lips turning bluish-white.
Killing a colleague… a Class A colleague… using a demon’s blade… during a mission…
She knew the Academy’s rules, she knew what this meant.
Her future?
Ruined.
Her family?
Potentially implicated.
Everything she had in the Demon Hunter Academy was over.
Not only that, from now on, she would forever bear the stigma of ‘killing a colleague,’ ostracized, investigated, perhaps even stripped of her cultivation and imprisoned for life…
And all of this, she had done ‘herself.’
In plain sight, with a demon blade, she had frantically stabbed her partner to death.
Immense fear, regret, and despair instantly engulfed her completely.
Her legs gave out, no longer able to support her, and with a ‘thud,’ she collapsed onto the cold, dirty ground, kicking up some dark red dust.
She was finished.
Utterly finished.
Xiao Moyuan watched all of this indifferently.
This was what Su Baixue deserved.
Although he disliked Su Baixue, as he had said before, if it weren’t for Su Mian, his sister, and that layer of identity protecting her.
Su Mian still valued her.
He would have long ago personally crippled this selfish, brainless fool.
However, everything that happened today still needed to be told to the little fox.
At least, the little fox needed to know that her currently cherished, sole family member had almost pushed her into an abyss.
Xiao Moyuan knew that Su Mian had always felt guilty towards Su Baixue.
Believing her own identity had led to her parents’ misfortune.
After this incident, at least Su Mian would no longer need to feel guilty towards Su Baixue.
Staying away from this disastrously foolish ‘sister’ would also be a good outcome for the little fox.
***
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