Having cultivated myself into an immortal, all I want to do is raise female disciples.

She could almost hear that man's voice again.

To be honest, Zhang Ruoxue still can't accept the fact that she is Qu Wenxue—over the years, she has always regarded that couple as her biological parents and Zhang Xiaohan as her blood-related younger brother...

But now, everything she believed has been overturned.

Even Xiao Han... has nothing to do with her...

despite this.

Zhang Ruoxue subconsciously pinched the elixir hanging around her neck. From the broken, pale golden elixir, she seemed to be able to feel the warmth of the deceased.

It was as if he were really holding Zhang Xiaohan's hand.

Even though she wasn't Zhang Xiaohan's biological sister... Xiaohan ended up like this because of her...

It was my fault that Xiao Han died... If she had died as Qu Wenxue from the beginning, Zhang Xiao Han wouldn't have died.

It's all her fault.

The girl's heart, which was already unable to discern the ways of the world, was entangled by a thread of guilt called self-reproach. With each heartbeat, that inexplicable sense of guilt grew stronger.

only--

Within her line of sight, something unusual suddenly caught her eye out of the corner of her eye, instantly interrupting the girl's thoughts.

She turned her head, staring blankly and in astonishment at the upstream stream, at the gently flowing clear water... for some reason—

It had a touch of blood on it.

Zhang Ruoxue's heart skipped a beat, and an extremely ominous premonition surged into her mind. She quickly walked upstream.

As they moved forward, the once crystal-clear stream was completely stained crimson with a blood-like liquid. In addition to the blood-like water, there were also clumps of pure black viscous substance flowing downstream.

From that twisted, black, unidentified object, Zhang Ruoxue clearly sensed—

The aura of demons.

demon?

How could something like that be here?!

Zhang Ruoxue had no time to deal with these messy, unidentified objects. She channeled her spiritual energy and rushed towards the direction from which the black mass was coming at an extremely fast speed.

Just a few minutes later, she saw a scene she would never forget in her life.

His fragile body was pierced, and endless blood gathered into a crimson stream, slowly flowing down the slope.

On the red-stained slope, lay the corpses of nearly a hundred lifeless mortals... and above each corpse, a dark, demonic shadow writhed and writhed, as if devouring the dead.

Dense demonic energy permeated the air, and a chilling wind blew over, carrying with it the stench of blood and the stench of demons. Zhang Ruoxue stood at a distance, staring blankly at all of this.

What did she see...?

Those mortals... those mortals dressed in cloth, carrying baskets of herbs and broken axes!

They're from Jinglin Village!

Zhang Ruoxue recognized almost every one of the hundreds of villagers.

Lying there with three bloody holes pierced through his chest... was Old Wu, the village's famous strongman... lying next to him, with his arms torn off and bleeding profusely, was Old Wu's wife.

The man with a black thorn piercing his throat and hanging from a tree trunk with his head drooping was Li the tailor.

And there's Old Man Guang... the three Jin brothers... the old blacksmith from the Qin family...

Corpses, memories.

They're all dead! They're all dead!

Not only that... Zhang Ruoxue even saw a woman she had never seen before, holding a three- or four-year-old child in her arms, huddled under a large tree as thick as a bowl, trembling constantly.

She's still alive!

Even so, her legs had been pierced with two bloody holes, rendering her unable to escape.

The little girl in her arms was so frightened by the scene before her that she couldn't speak. She just stared blankly, and even forgot to cry out.

In the little girl's eyes, which were filled with fear, was reflected a humanoid black shadow about two meters tall—a terrifying phantom constructed of twisted darkness, without facial features, but holding a black thorn.

Demon! Demon!

The dark figure slowly walked towards the little girl and her mother, raised the black thorn high, and stabbed it fiercely into the woman's back.

Hey~

The sound of metal clashing.

"roll!!!"

A furious shout.

Zhang Ruoxue's left arm armor blocked the black spikes directly in front of her. In an instant, her spiritual energy surged out, and a raging tornado of flames enveloped the black-haired girl completely.

With a powerful swing of her left hand, she gripped the black thorn with her backhand, her right hand clenched into a fist, her legs slightly bent, and flames of anger burning fiercely on her cheeks and right fist.

With a single punch, he exploded and fell into the air.

boom!

The fiery phantom that appeared behind it slammed the iron fist, which was about five meters in diameter and resembled lava, forward. The moment it touched the black shadow, it generated an extremely terrifying shockwave.

The shockwave, which spread rapidly in all directions, even snapped the giant tree behind Zhang Ruoxue in half, and the writhing black shadow on the ground was completely crushed by the shockwave.

The dark figure that took Zhang Ruoxue's punch head-on didn't even have time to let out a wail before it dissipated into a cloud of black smoke under the raging flames, turning into nothingness and disappearing without a trace.

Zhang Ruoxue flicked her right fist, and the flames on her body disappeared in the next second. The surging spiritual energy was also absorbed into her body through all the orifices of her body in a short time.

She turned around and looked at the mother and daughter.

"Are you alright...?"

"You...you...you are..." The woman was clearly in shock; even though she had been rescued, she remained deathly pale and her speech was slurred: "Who are you..."

"My name is Zhang Ruoxue... You... are you also from Jinglin Village?"

"Zhang Ruoxue? Zhang Ruoxue from the Zhang family?!"

Upon hearing this, the woman immediately knelt down and crawled to Zhang Ruoxue's side, clutching her daughter in her arms.

She looked up, tears streaming down her face, staring at the girl before her with almost pleading eyes. "You're a cultivator, right? You're a cultivator, right... Please, please... save us, save my husband!!"

"You...you need to calm down..."

Zhang Ruoxue wasn't a very thoughtful person to begin with, and now that someone was suddenly begging her while crying, she was at a loss for words.

She took a deep breath and then asked, "You...you tell me first, what exactly happened? Why...why did it turn out like this?"

The woman swallowed hard, panting, her eyes filled with undisguised fear. She cried out, her voice trembling with uncontrollable sobs, "It's a demonic cultivator! The demonic cultivator is here!"

"Demonic cultivator?"

"The demonic cultivators suddenly came to our village, saying they wanted to sacrifice the entire Jinglin Village in blood... and then... then they started releasing some... some unknown things, those black things! Yes! Those black things, and they started killing people!"

“We couldn’t stop them at all…and we couldn’t run away…My husband told me to take our daughter and run, but when we got here, we were stopped again…Everyone else is dead, all of them are dead…”

These words were spoken.

Like a bolt from the blue, a bombshell struck Zhang Ruoxue's heart.

Jinglin Village... was subjected to a blood sacrifice by demonic cultivators...

In other words... the other people in Jinglin Village... are currently being slaughtered by the demons released by the demonic cultivators.

Including the parents who raised me... Including the village chief, and all the people I know.

Are you kidding me?!

Zhang Ruoxue clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her palms, and blood kept flowing down.

She didn't look at the woman, but gritted her teeth and squeezed out the words: "Where are my parents?"

"Your parents...they didn't escape with us..."

"They stayed there...it's said..."

"What do you mean?"

"They said they were waiting for you to come back..."

……

“Leave here,” Zhang Ruoxue said. “Go to a safe place, like Jinglin Village, or Yuntian Academy over there, either is fine…”

"But my husband..."

"I will go."

Zhang Ruoxue gritted her teeth, lowered her head, and trembled all over her body.

That wasn't because of fear, but because of anger!

An rage that seemed to burn the entire body and soul to ashes!

52. Wrath!

Zhang Ruoxue never imagined that one day Jinglin Village would experience this change.

Eight years... is truly just a blink of an eye for cultivators. In just eight years, Zhang Ruoxue hadn't even had time to go home before she learned of the calamity that had befallen Jinglin Village.

Blood……

It was all blood...

There were no remains or severed limbs, because the twisted, sinister creature had already devoured anything that could be called flesh. Along the way, apart from the increasingly thick and stinking blood, Zhang Ruoxue saw nothing else.

Hiss--

The sound of gas rising.

Zhang Ruoxue's left fingernails dug into her palm, and as blood seeped out, it was evaporated by the raging flames surrounding her, with dark red blood smoke rising and dissipating.

Her blood was boiling, roaring, and raging.

The spiritual energy within the meridians was being suppressed so intensely that it seemed as if it would erupt like a volcano if it were to be relaxed.

……