The young woman tottered across the churned earth. Blood beaded along her lips, then fell like garnets onto a gown ripped open by countless blows. Pale skin showed through cracked silk, every exposed inch laced with fresh crimson. Her steps wavered, betraying fatigue she could no longer hide.
“Stop struggling, pretty thing. Hand over the Ninefold Pill you stole from that ancient cavern. Do that, and my buddies and I might let you die quickly.”
A scar-faced demonic cultivator, his cheek carved by an old wound that twisted whenever he grinned, let out a low, lecherous chuckle. Greed and lust shimmered in his eyes like twin blades thirsty for new cuts.
“Never! I would rather die than let trash like you succeed!”
Her sword flickered forward in a desperate flurry, yet every frantic stroke opened another weakness, another invitation to the killers circling her. Hidden, Jared watched, brow knit in reluctant concern.
He normally didn’t like being a busybody, but three demonic thugs bullying one wounded woman was too unfair. Plus, the words Ninefold Pill stirred him. The pill could heal bodies and raise cultivation, and his own hidden wounds still ached.
Oh, well… Fate has brought me here… Their misfortune will be their judgment.
He was no saint, but some lines he would never allow to be crossed.
Scarface lunged, claws out, reaching for the woman’s unguarded back. A razor-thin hiss, sharper than a whipcrack, split the air. A streak of sword energy, as bright and sudden as lightning, drilled clean through Scarface’s brow.
The predator’s victorious smile froze in astonishment. He wavered once, then collapsed like a felled statue, eyes wide and unseeing.
“No!”
The two remaining demons lurched to a halt, terror eclipsing their bloodlust.
Across from them, the wounded woman blinked in stunned relief, uncertain whether the miracle was real or merely the last dream before death.
Jared stepped into view like a shadow given form. Though his face had paled, the calm in his eyes outweighed the weakness of his body.
He raised two fingers as though they were a blade, and the faint glow of the Five-Element Origin Power gathered around him, subtle, yet undeniably superior.
“Time Deceleration!”
An unseen field rippled outward. The two demons moved as if trapped in syrup, every motion slowed to a helpless crawl.
“Die!”
The Dragonslayer Sword never even left its sheath. A single arc of condensed sword force swept across the immobilized necks.
Two heads spiraled skyward, expressions of shock still etched on their faces while the bodies toppled, spraying silent fountains of dark blood.
A wet, rasping cough ripped from Jared’s throat, and a scarlet spray arced through the night air like rain driven from a broken vessel.
He had forced his ebbing strength into one last, ruthless surge: three strokes, three enemies felled. The backlash now tore through muscle and marrow. His knees buckled. He stabbed his sword into the shattered flagstones and used the trembling blade as a crutch, jaw clenched while the courtyard tilted beneath him.
The handsome planes of his face turned a waxen gray. Each breath hitched out of rhythm, ragged and short, clear proof that his earlier wounds had deepened into something far more dangerous.
Dragging a breath deep into bruised lungs, Jared forced the riot of energy inside him to settle. Only when the worst of the tremors eased did he lift his eyes toward the young woman he had just saved. She was still standing in a daze, her chest rising and falling too quickly.
Before he could speak, she examined herself with brisk efficiency.
Finding nothing broken, she dismissed him with stunning indifference, stooped to strip the fallen demonic cultivators of their storage pouches, then spun away. Her cloak flared violet in the torchlight as she streaked skyward, a shard of amethyst vanishing into the clouds.
For a heartbeat, Jared simply stared, speechless. He did not ask for a repayment, yet her retreat felt colder than any blade edge.
To walk off without a glance, without even acknowledging the carnage he had endured on her behalf, struck him as merciless. Besides, he had slain those thugs himself. By any law of the wandering world, their spoils were his.
Blood still dampened his robe where the rescue had ripped fresh seams in his wounds, but she offered not so much as a token of gratitude. It was as though none of this, neither the danger nor his sacrifice, concerned her in the slightest.
A flush of anger burned away the weakness.
Drawing what power he could muster, he barked, “Halt right there!”
The command was low, ragged with pain, yet it carried an iron finality that froze the swirling night air.
The female cultivator paused, turned, and drifted back until pale moonlight revealed her face. She was striking—delicate features framed by dark hair—but frost rimed her expression.
In those brilliant eyes, he found no gratitude, only guarded suspicion and the faintest shadow of irritation.
“What do you want, stranger?” Her voice rang clear and cool, a bell of polished glass held at arm’s length.
Swallowing his frustration, Jared steadied himself. “I intervened of my own accord, yes, but the clash reopened wounds I can ill afford. Simply flying off, pockets heavy with loot I earned, feels… Improper, don’t you think?”
Her lips curved into something almost like a smile yet far closer to a sneer. She let her gaze drift over the blood on his collar, the tremor in his grip, then shrugged as if weighing the worth of an insect.
