“Improper?” Her voice was icy, the syllables fired off so quickly they tangled together. “Look at yourself, you’re half dead already. You’re a clay idol trying to cross a river, and you still dare to play hero?!”
“Up here on Level Nine, the strong devour the weak. They surrounded me because I was unlucky and not strong enough. That’s the law, and today happens to be my turn. You chose to kill them. Your choice, not mine!”
“Did you honestly expect me to fall at your feet in gratitude, or worse, throw myself into your arms? You’ve got some skill, sure. Shame the brain behind it is dull. Those three were only outer disciples of the Dark Wrath Sect. Slaughtering them means real trouble will sniff you out soon… If you want to live, stop clinging to me and start figuring out how to run!”
She spat the warning in a single breath, sharp, rapid, dismissive, turning Jared’s act of rescue into an irritant she could hardly be bothered to swat away.
The flurry of mockery should have fanned his anger. Instead, Jared felt an almost glacial absurdity settle over him. He had risked himself for a woman whose heart was chipped colder than the steel in her hand.
“Still…” he said quietly, “I did save you, didn’t I?”
“And I never begged you to!” she shot back, as if the very idea smelled rotten.
“Idiot…” Jared muttered, a short, savage laugh escaping him. “You should’ve told me you had a physiological defect before I bothered saving you.”
Watching the female cultivator act uninterested, Jared deflated. Even arguing felt pointless.
“Physiological defect?” She blinked, momentarily confused, then her cheeks flared crimson. “You’re the one…”
The Dragonslayer Sword flashed. A single silver arc split the air, and her words, and her head, left her shoulders in the same breath.
Before the body hit soil, Jared’s off-hand flicked. The storage pouch at her waist leapt obediently into his palm.
“Kid, that was stone-cold.” The Vermilion Demon Lord’s curious voice sounded. “But tell me, what defect were you rambling about? She looked normal enough to me.”
Jared only smiled, a thin, private curve of the mouth. Some jokes explained themselves; the rest weren’t worth the breath.
He rifled through four stolen pouches, then strolled off the trail until he found a fissure in the cliff wall.
Inside the shallow cave, he sketched a quick-and-dirty cloaking formation, let the runes sink into the stone, and finally sat amid the shadowy hush to count what the day’s bitterness had bought him.
Jared began with the practical. One by one, he upended the storage pouches, yet the rewards were meager—crude demonic crystals and a scatter of morbid ingredients that meant almost nothing to his path.
The moment he untied the woman’s pouch, however, a muted glow slipped through his fingers and made the cave walls quiver with color. Alongside several flawless spirit stones and high-grade elixirs lay an emerald vial, delicate as frost.
Inside floated a marble-sized pill, haloed by nine swirling hues—the very Ninefold Pill those fools had butchered each other to seize. Nestled beside the vial was a palm-sized token, neither metal nor wood, cool as moonlit jade.
The front bore the single word *Mystic*; the reverse, a mist-wreathed peak and another word, *Fiend*.
“Mystic Fiend Sect?” Jared’s brow rose.
Though he had only recently stepped onto Level Nine, even he had heard that name, an unsavory second-tier order famed for corpse-harvesting and ghost-binding.
“Rotten roots make rotten branches,” he muttered, the woman’s earlier cruelty still fresh on his mind. The memory of her venomous smirk flickered before him; how could a sect steeped in such filth possibly nurture anything else?
From resentment, a plan crystallized, clear, sharp, and merciless.
“This Ninefold Pill will restore most of my strength. Once I’m whole, the Mystic Fiend Sect will be my first stop for fund-raising…” His voice dropped to a chill no flame could thaw.
Cold light cut across his eyes. Jared was never a wanton butcher, yet his creed remained iron.
*Treat me with respect, and I repay double. Harm me, and I return it tenfold…*
The woman had crossed that line; by extension, so would her sect. In his view, the world would breathe easier without it.
Purging such a nest of demons would fill his stores and, incidentally, polish a bit of karmic balance. He stopped thinking. He uncorked the vial and swallowed the Ninefold Pill in one smooth motion.
