“Did you have to be so cruel?” Lan Xiaohui asks, as she walks back onto the podium, gait slow and measured, and head slightly lowered.

The Seven Killing Swords disciple regards my owner carefully. Tian Li was fatigued from his previous fight, but Lan Xiaohui is a different matter. She was a first-ranker, and his rank was only fifth. No matter how proud or arrogant he was, he had to know that his chances in this match would be non-existent.

But still, arrogant he is. “He had no business staying here; he should’ve forfeited immediately. I merely taught him a lesson. The weak will be crushed by the strong!”

Lan Xiaohui chuckles. “Is that so?” she asks. “Not unsurprising, coming from a sect that knows everything about the strong crushing the weak.”

Though it is true that Lan Xiaohui has no desire to cause an incident here, her convictions and Dao Heart do not allow her to simply overlook pointless cruelty, even when it comes at a cost.

“You… do I know you from somewhere?” the disciple asks.

Lan Xiaohui lifts her head slightly to stare coldly at the disciple. “I’ve never met you before,” she says, truthfully.

“No,” the disciple continues. “I’ve seen you before. And that sword…”

Lan Xiaohui glances over her shoulder in my direction and then back at the disciple.

“That is Yu Shun’s sword… you are…”

My consciousness lashes out, immediately, washing over the sound and image-transmitting formations, that the previous fight has significantly damaged, and I attack their nodes with my soul force, crushing their core mechanisms.

Several protests ring out from the crowd as, suddenly, the ability to see and hear clearly that they took for granted disappears.

“You are Lan Xiaohui…!” the disciple exclaims. After a brief pause, the disciple laughs. “I can’t believe it! It really is you!”

“So what if I am? What are you going to do about it?” Lan Xiaohui asks, eyes narrowing. “Are you going to beat me and torture me like you did the others?”

“Maybe I am,” the disciple says. “A great reward is waiting for whoever captures you or kills you.”

“I am right here,” Lan Xiaohui simply says, my hovering form finally moving closer to her, and gently landing in her waiting grasp.

“Where is Yun Fei?” the disciple asks.

Lan Xiaohui blinks, the sudden question catching her completely off-guard. “What does this have to do with Yun Fei?” she asks.

“There is a reward for her, too,” the disciple says. “Only dead, however. The queen concubine gets special treatment — and we will make sure to give you very special treatment when we capture you.”

Lan Xiaohui’s eyes narrow, and for the first time, her Dao Heart shudders.

The disciple's mind clouds, in my perception, becoming dark with malicious intent. “Don’t worry, we will give Yun Fei special treatment too, right before we kill her." A pause, as the darkness of his malevolent intent becomes completely black. "Like the old times.”

“Old… times…?” Lan Xiaohui asks as her sword energy and intent disappear; her Dao Heart becomes empty.

“You… did you… were you the one… who hurt… Yun Fei…?” Lan Xiaohui’s words come slowly.

The Seven Killing Swords disciple chuckles and shakes his head. “It was Yu Shun's brother, Yu Yun, who put the seal on her, but we all benefited. She was important… for our cultivation.”

At that instant, the entirety of Lan Xiaohui’s Dao Heart goes pitch black.

“All of you… come out,” Lan Xiaohui says, loudly enough for her voice to carry back to the ranks of the other disciples.

“Did I hear you correctly…?” the Seven Killing Swords fifth-ranker asks. “You want to fight all of us at once? Have you finally realized that you have no hope for victory or escape? That’s right, all you can do is sub—“

“Enough talking,” Lan Xiaohui says. “All of you. Come out!!”

The disciples and elders all look toward the tournament organizers; they clearly heard Lan Xiaohui’s demand to fight — presumably only the five remaining disciples — all at once.

In truth, Lan Xiaohui wanted the entire sect to come out onto the podium.

Once more, put in a situation that their rules do not cover, the tournament organizers hesitate for a moment. “If that is what Zhu Xuelian wants, then we will allow it.”

I understand their decision; this event has already gone completely off script; it is likely that this is worse than their worst-case scenario. At best, all they can do is just hope to conclude the event as quickly as possible.

Immediately, the four other disciples leap out of their seats and onto the platform, advancing toward Lan Xiaohui.

“Isn’t that Lan Xiaohui…?” one of them asks. “She looks almost exactly like her.”

“This is Lan Xiaohui,” the fifth-ranker confirms, at first a bit confused as to why his disciples couldn’t hear the conversation he just had with my owner.

“Ha! How lucky we are; not only are we going to win this year, but who knows what kind of reward we will receive if we manage to capture her.”

Lan Xiaohui closes her eyes, perhaps to question, deep in her heart, whether this is the step she wants to take, here and now.

“We are here,” the fifth-ranker says. “Now what?”

“Now…” Lan Xiaohui slowly opens her eyes. “I am going to slaughter every last one of you.”

The disciples burst out into laughter, though the sound quickly fades out as their expressions remain completely frozen, half-horrified, and half-laughing when they see the stream of blooming flowers erupt into the air.

One moment, the fifth-ranked disciple stood there, in front of them, and the next, Lan Xiaohui’s sword parted through him, his body consumed by an extreme sword force unlike any they had ever felt before. Even the elders observing this battle were shocked into speechlessness when they felt the edge of that invisible sword pour through the arena with its tyrannical might — the same sword force that made Elder Qin’s fingers tremble. In their mind’s eye, they could even see the image of a moon, and a lonely flower blooming on its surface, drinking the sun.

As for the disciples, they could see nothing between Lan Xiaohui’s declaration and the sudden demise of the fifth-ranked disciple. It just happened so quickly. There was no indicator, at least they thought, that Lan Xiaohui would attack, but this is merely because Lan Xiaohui had learned an important lesson from the Eternal Red princess; to kill without killing intent, is like to kill something that is not worthy of being alive in the first place.

In Lan Xiaohui’s black heart, it was indeed so. There would be no grief or remorse; nor would there be regret or mercy.

Because they could not feel Lan Xiaohui’s killing intent, they did not see the moment she used Liminality Steps to cross the distance in one single step or the Autumn-Severing Petals that annihilated the fifth-ranked disciple. All they saw was an inexorable force hurtling toward them.

Lan Xiaohui’s attack is swift and brutal.

She throws my vessel forward with enough force to tip her body forward and completely off the ground. My vessel pierces through the throat of the third-ranked disciple who is too stunned to react, and — once again — unprepared because of the lack of killing intent.

Just as the third-ranked disciple is killed, immediately, Lan Xiaohui appears before him, purple lightning dancing around her ankles, and rips me free from the still-standing corpse of the third disciple, and then continues that motion to slash through the fourth-ranked disciple's chest, who is standing nearby. The fourth-ranked disciple's death is heralded by the same blooming petals of sword energy that killed the fifth-ranked disciple, and a moment later, the accumulated energy destroys all three corpses.

“You dare, junior!?” the hoarse screams of the Seven Killing Swords elders roar out across the platform, and no one needs the formations to hear and see the rage; and just as it echoes once, all the elders, from all sects, jump to their feet, just as stunned and caught off-guard by the lack of killing intent. It was as if their eyes were deceiving them — as if they were watching an illusion. There she was, slaughtering disciples like they were nothing, yet there was not a thread of killing intent.

And that sword force — not even the Grand Galaxy Sword or the Winter’s End Cut could compare to its pure, unyielding quality; though Lan Xiaohui’s martial techniques were not even close in power, the depth of her attainment was so obviously superior that not even Elder Qin — the elder most familiar with Lan Xiaohui’s capabilities — could believe her eyes.

It had to be an illusion — their minds were simple to read in a situation like this. It was simply not possible for a mere Core Formation cultivator to have sword force as pure and destructive as this, or so they thought.

The second-ranked disciple, wielding a large saber — just like Xin Muchen — rushes forward, finally overcoming the strange feeling gnawing a hole in his stomach, and swings his saber at Lan Xiaohui.

— Blood Devil Sword: Mayhem Slash!

The saber that bursts into blood-colored flames approaches Lan Xiaohui’s neck, clearly intent on decapitating her, but it is too slow, to even catch her off-guard.

Lan Xiaohui has fought countless opponents, therefore her situational awareness in circumstances like this could be considered to be at the pinnacle of her potential. On top of that, she also faced off against the [Life-Severing Sword] before and has learned its strengths and weaknesses. Its derivative, [Blood Devil Sword] inherits both.

As she ducks under the burning saber, Lan Xiaohui cuts upwards, my blade biting into the second-ranking disciple’s outstretched arm, flinging its severed remnant directly upward, and in the opening that presents itself, Lan Xiaohui spins, and cuts again, my vessel cleaves straight through the second-ranking disciple, cutting him in half, and turning his energy into another burst of lily flowers.

A moment later, the explosion of the flowers consumes the rest of the second-ranker’s body.

“Blood Dance Sword!”

A voice comes from behind Lan Xiaohui, as the remaining first-ranked disciple uses a technique that likely comes from the third or fourth layer of his martial art. It is vast and extremely powerful. The blood-red flames that shroud the sword climb as high as to be seen like a thread descending from the heavens, even from dozens of miles away.

If this sword were to descend on the podium, it would not just be Lan Xiaohui who would be killed, but hundreds of people in the spectator stands would get caught, especially now that there were no more formations left to protect them — destroyed along with the listening and observing mechanisms.

“The weak will be crushed by the strong, you said?” Lan Xiaohui scoffs, releasing me from her grasp to hover beside her as she thrusts both arms outward, straight into the flames of the burning sword and her fingers grip down, causing the long, thread-like flames to freeze and then tremble.

Against an opponent like this, with her superior sword intent and energy, not to mention her glimpse of the Sword Law, as long as there is an opening, she can quickly demolish and unravel techniques — though this is an advantage most likely bestowed upon her simply because her gold core is superior and capable of suppressing other Core Formation cultivators.

“Salvation ashes,” she whispers, forcing the blood-flame sword to the side, and creating an opening in the first-ranked disciple's defenses.

"Execution blaze."

Lan Xiaohui makes a chopping motion with her left hand, and a crescent-shaped jet of flames erupts in the wake of her motion which collides with the first-ranked disciple's head, completely annihilating it. The rest of the body burns to ashes a moment later, leaving Lan Xiaohui standing alone on the podium which has been nearly entirely terraformed by the extreme sword force of her movement and attacking techniques, still holding on to the first-ranked disciple's sword, which the extreme heat has warped.

Just as the ashes disperse, the Seven Killing Sword elders land on the platform and charge toward her.

“You will die for this!!” one of the elders roars as he rushes across the podium.

Lan Xiaohui turns my vessel upside down, as I land in her grip again. “I will, but at least one of you will keep me company in hell!” Lan Xiaohui coldly replies to the elders. “Void Bounda—“

“Stop!” several elders, from all three sects, arrive in front of Lan Xiaohui, and even Mu Jingyu and some of the disciples stand next to her and in front of her.