The defeat of Zhang Iron-Legs acted like a bucket of freezing water thrown over a raging furnace, instantly dousing the feverish, desperate greed of the surrounding refugees.
The crowd stepped back, their torches trembling in their hands, their eyes darting between the groaning man in the rubble and the white-haired giant who stood coughing blood in the center of the alley. The heavy silence of the night returned, thick with the scent of sulfur, wet dirt, and raw terror.
But Gu Yao did not lower his guard.
His hand remained locked around the handle of Severed Head, his bloodshot eyes staring past the cowering refugees toward the deep, pitch-black shadows at the far end of the street. To a common mortal, those ruins were empty. But to a warrior who had reigned at the apex of the cultivation world fifty years ago, the sudden, subtle shift in the wind carried a chilling, professional intent.
The desperate, chaotic panic of starving peasants had vanished. In its place rose the cold, calculated aura of trained killers—predators who had smelled blood and were patiently waiting for the prey to exhaust itself.
"Since you have already come all this way, there is no need to hide behind the stench of these ruins," Gu Yao rasped, his voice dropping into a low, dry murmur that vibrated through the quiet street. "Come out."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
A slow, mocking burst of applause echoed from the dark alley.
Three figures slowly emerged from the dense fog, stepping into the dim orange light of the refugees' torches. They did not wear the flowing, elegant robes of the Immortal Sects, nor did they carry the pristine flying swords of formal disciples. Instead, they were clad in tight, sleek black leather armor, their waists wrapped in thick, golden metal chains that clinked softly with every movement.
But what forced the breath to catch in Gu Yao’s throat was the brand upon their foreheads.
Carved deep into their skin, still raw and weeping with a dark-red hue, was a single, jagged word: SIN.
"The Sin-Slave Battalion," Gu Yao whispered, his eyes narrowing to pinpoints.
This was the most notorious mercenary guild in the Middle Three Provinces—a collection of rogue cultivators and ruthless exiles who had been branded by the Immortal Sects for their crimes. To avoid being refined into living sacrifices or worked to death in the spirit-mines, they had chosen to act as the Sects' personal hunting hounds, slaughtering their own kind in exchange for a reduction in their sentences.
They did not seek ascension or immortality; they sought only to kill, and they did it with a brutal, clinical efficiency.
"Gu Yao, former First Disciple of the Cloud-Soothed Sect," the leader of the trio spoke, his lips parting in a yellow, tobacco-stained smirk. "Your eyes are still sharp, even after fifty years of being nailed into the mud like a crippled dog. Though your spine is broken and your vitality is dry, that frame of yours is still a treasure. On the black market, a 'Fallen God's' bones can fetch a king's ransom. And that doesn't even include the three Sky-Patching Pills the Sect Master has placed on your white-haired head."
He slowly uncoiled the golden chain from his waist, the heavy metal rings scraping against his leather bracers with a sickening, metallic hiss.
"And as for the woman beside you..." His gaze drifted shamelessly over Shen Yi’s slender frame, his eyes flashing with a predatory, cold amusement. "...she is worth even more. Capture her alive, and the Sect Master will grant us absolute amnesty. Quite a cozy little deal, wouldn't you say?"
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"A-Yao, step back," Shen Yi said.
Her voice was quiet, but it carried a cold, sharp edge that Gu Yao had never heard before. She did not look at the three assassins. Instead, she slowly bent down, her fingers brushing past the mud-soaked pebbles on the ground, and picked up a small, jagged piece of rusted waste-iron—a scrap that had fallen from the anvil of some long-forgotton blacksmith.
In her hand, the ordinary, worthless piece of metal did not emit any blinding magical light. Yet, as the faint firelight caught its surface, the deep layers of red rust seemed to glow with a strange, warm, and jade-like sheen.
"Oho, the little wife has some teeth after all," one of the subordinate assassins jeered, his golden chain snapping through the air like a striking serpent. "Grab her first! The Sect Master wants her skin intact, but he didn't say we couldn't break a few of her fingers!"
"Get out of the way!"
Gu Yao unleashed a furious roar. He attempted to channel his dormant blood-qi, trying to lift the six-hundred-pound hammer to shield her. But the moment his muscles flexed, the third Immortal-Locking Nail—the Ling-Xu Nail embedded deep within his thoracic spine—abruptly erupted with a blinding, white-hot agony.
It felt as though a serrated steel saw was being dragged back and forth through his central nervous system, tearing his mind apart. The sheer, overwhelming pain caused his vision to black out, his knees buckling beneath him as he collapsed heavily onto one knee, his hammer slipping from his numb fingers and cracking into the dirt.
In that exact microsecond, as the golden chain whistled through the air, aiming straight for Shen Yi’s throat, she moved.
Her movements were not fast. To any observer, they appeared almost clumsy, like a common peasant woman trying to avoid a blow. Yet, her footwork was so precise it made the skin crawl. With a single, unhurried tilt of her torso, the whistling iron links of the chain missed her cheek by a hair's breadth.
Before the assassin could recoil the chain, Shen Yi slipped past his guard.
Her body turned in a fluid, elegant motion that seemed to ignore the gravity of the earth. She raised her right hand, the rusted piece of scrap-metal in her fingers cutting a simple, vertical arc through the cold night air.
SPLAT—!
The movement of the lead assassin stopped instantly.
He stood frozen in the center of the alley, his eyes wide with a blank, uncomprehending shock. One second later, his right hand—still tightly clutching the golden chain—detached cleanly from his arm, sliding off his wrist and falling into the black mud with a wet, heavy splash.
The cut across his forearm was so smooth, so perfectly flat, that not a single drop of blood escaped the flesh for three full heartbeats before a violent, crimson spray erupted into the night air.
"AHHHHH—!!!"
A high-pitched, agonizing scream tore from the assassin's throat as he clutched his stump, stumbling backward into the ruins, his face contorted in absolute disbelief.
The entire alley went dead silent once more.
The remaining two Sin-Slaves stared at the severed hand in the mud, and then at the slender woman holding the rusted iron shard. The smirks upon their faces had frozen into masks of pure, instinctual horror. They did not see an ordinary peasant woman; they felt as though they were staring at an ancient, primordial terror that had draped itself in a mortal's skin.
"You... what kind of monster are you?!" the leader of the assassins stammered, his voice trembling violently as he took three hasty steps back.
Shen Yi did not answer. She stood quietly before the kneeling Gu Yao, the hardwood torch in her left hand still burning with a steady, warm light, while the rusted iron shard in her right hand remained perfectly clean, not a single drop of blood clinging to its oxidized surface.
She turned her head slightly, her dark eyes locking onto the trembling assassins, the gold light within her pupils flaring with an ancient authority that seemed to dim the very stars above.
"I told you," Shen Yi said softly, her voice light and cold. "The tea is not cold yet."
Gu Yao stared at her back from his knees, a silent, titanic wave of shock crashing through his mind.
In this dark, freezing night, he finally understood. He finally understood why, over the past fifty years of endless agony, no matter how much the Immortal-Locking Nails had tortured his flesh, he had always found a deep, absolute peace the moment he held a chipped porcelain bowl of her barley tea.
Shen Yi was not his anchor. She was the anchor of this entire broken world—the sole, terrifying spark of life remaining upon this road of blood.