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

The other person had long, loose blue hair, half of their beautiful face was covered in blood, their eyes were wide open, one hand was desperately clutching their abdomen that had been pierced by a sharp object, and their legs, with their broken bones, were twitching intermittently.

The female nun had clearly seen Zhang Ruoxue; she stopped clutching her abdomen and instead extended her trembling, weak right hand toward her.

"Are you...are you alright?"

Zhang Ruoxue didn't realize how foolish she had asked the question. She rushed over and knelt down beside the female cultivator.

Her abdomen was pierced, and it seemed as if her spiritual root had been ripped out; the bleeding was unstoppable...

The bones in his lower body were mostly shattered, and one of his upper arms was severed, leaving only his right arm.

Such injuries... saving them is nothing short of a pipe dream.

How could the female cultivator not know her own predicament? Even so, she still tried her best to grip the fabric at Zhang Ruoxue's shoulder, breathing rapidly, and opening her red lips stained with a lot of blood.

She whispered weakly, "No...no..."

Zhang Ruoxue couldn't read lips, let alone hear the indistinct words, so she had no choice but to lean closer and ask, "What did you say..."

The other person trembled as they brought their lips close to Zhang Ruoxue's ear, and with their last ounce of strength, they whispered, "Don't... don't go to him... he's... a traitor..."

“Go back...and tell...General Fang...he...has already…”

At this point, the female cultivator suddenly froze.

Right beneath her, from the scorched earth, wisps of demonic energy suddenly appeared and rushed into her battered body at incredible speed.

Intense pain swept through the female cultivator's body in the blink of an eye. Her soul was attacked by demonic energy at this moment, and having lost her spiritual root, she had no ability to resist at all.

"Aaaaaahh ...

Intense screams and painful howls.

The female cultivator in front of him began to convulse violently. Her limbs and blood seemed to be in chaos, with blood flowing backward and her limbs twisting. For a moment, she no longer resembled a human being.

Shocked by the scene before her, Zhang Ruoxue subconsciously took a step back, staring in horror at the strange female cultivator in front of her.

In her eyes, this heroine of the Guardian Army was dying rapidly—her life force was disappearing at an extremely fast pace, and the focus in her eyes was slowly fading into nothingness.

what happened?

Where did this demon come from?

Before Zhang Ruoxue could react, the female cultivator in front of her had already turned into a corpse and was lying on the ground in an extremely bizarre posture.

However, the demonic energy within her body was not eliminated; instead, it continued to wander within the corpse in a way that Zhang Ruoxue could not comprehend.

Zhang Ruoxue was probably stunned by the sudden turn of events, and she took another step forward and tentatively asked a question.

"Um... are you alright?"

—If Ye Yuchan were here, she might have spent half an hour just complaining about that sentence.

As expected of the number one idiot in Yuntian Academy... Why would you ask such a question to someone who is already dead?!

How could they possibly reply...?

Suddenly, a terrifying black dot appeared in the center of her vision, rapidly enlarging in a short time until its full form was revealed to Zhang Ruoxue.

It was a black thorn shaped like a cone, its sharp tip hurtling towards Zhang Ruoxue's brow the moment she asked that foolish question.

Zhang Ruoxue's expression hardened slightly, and she quickly took three steps back, trying to create some distance.

However, the black thorn seemed to have no limit to its extension. As Zhang Ruoxue retreated, it advanced, and its speed was even faster than Zhang Ruoxue had imagined.

Since there is no way to retreat, we can only face it head-on.

A powerful iron fist, imbued with immense spiritual energy, slammed into the sharp black thorn without restraint. With a single punch, a hurricane arose, and after a brief pause, the entire black thorn transformed into streams of demonic energy, shattering and dissipating.

"This is……"

But after the black thorns dissipated, Zhang Ruoxue saw an extremely bizarre scene.

The person who had already lost all hope, the person who should have died... Countless black thorns grew back on the female cultivator's severed right arm. She stood up again, still with lifeless eyes and still with her hair disheveled.

Marks gradually appeared on his pale skin. The marks were black and carried a heavy aura of demonic energy.

The dead man... has stood up?

Demonic...corpse...

Corpse puppet?!

Zhang Ruoxue instantly realized that the female cultivator had been killed by the demonic energy while on the verge of death and had been turned into a corpse puppet!

Since corpse puppets exist, that means...

The person controlling the corpse puppet is nearby.

She hurriedly looked around, trying to find the person controlling the corpse puppet, but before she could follow the demonic aura, she discovered that more and more of the Guardian Army's corpses were beginning to writhe violently.

The corpses of those fallen heroes... the heroes who defended their homeland were crawling with dark demonic forces, which eroded their remaining souls and completely took over their bodies.

The most proud and powerful force of the Lantian Empire—

At this moment, the soldiers of the Guardian Army stood up in the form of the Demon Dynasty's corpse puppets and stood in front of Zhang Ruoxue.

They had no expression, no eyes, no words; their wounds were covered with sharp black thorns, and endless demonic energy surged from the broken orifices on their bodies.

One by one, they stood up.

"That bastard..."

Gazing at the figures being transformed into corpse puppets, Zhang Ruoxue gritted her teeth, her resentful gaze sweeping around, trying to find the bastard who dared to defile the dead Guardian Army.

However, there were no suspicious figures nearby, which means... the other party probably used the corpse puppet technique from a distance.

—We need to think of a way.

Zhang Ruoxue had no time to waste here. Her goal had always been to find the thousand Guardian Soldiers. Although she had witnessed this terrible scene, it did not mean that the other Guardian Soldiers had met the same fate.

If we can fight our way out of here... find the surviving members of the Guardian Army, and bring them back...

There's still hope for Shattered Wood City!

Thinking of this, Zhang Ruoxue's heart sank. She assumed a fighting stance, and the bandage on her right hand was burned away by flames in the blink of an eye. A scorching aura and spiritual energy surged out from the magical arm armor.

These soldiers of the Guardian Army were not as powerful as Zhang Ruoxue before they died, let alone in their corpse puppet form... If she were to face them as her opponents, Zhang Ruoxue would not be afraid at all.

But... she has to personally send these heroes who once defended their country to the afterlife.

Of course, this might actually be a relief for them—at least they wouldn't have to persecute the empire they fought so hard to protect during their lives after they died.

"excuse me!"

Zhang Ruoxue swung her arms downwards, and wisps of blood energy appeared in the orifices of her body, causing her aura to rise rapidly.

However, just as she was preparing to give these corpse puppets a release.

The corpse puppets that were originally moving towards Zhang Ruoxue, preparing to surround her, suddenly stopped.

At the same time, one of the corpse puppets, resembling a young man, suddenly stepped forward.

His eyes were lifeless, and his face was deathly pale—he was clearly a dead man, yet he suddenly spoke.

"This is a bit surprising... I didn't expect to run into you here again."

He said he was surprised, but he didn't show any emotion at all.

Zhang Ruoxue's hand paused, as if she realized that the person who spoke was not the dead Guardian Army soldier, but the one who was controlling the corpse puppet.

[Will we meet again?]

Zhang Ruoxue held her breath and asked sharply, "Who are you? Do you know me?"

"Of course I know you, and you must know me too."

For some reason, Zhang Ruoxue suddenly felt that the corpse puppet in front of her was blooming with a strange and terrifying smile.

But beneath that smile lay words that sent Zhang Ruoxue's delicate body trembling violently.

"After all, we met once in that little-known village."

"do you remember?"

"Mad dog."

19. You really are a traitor!

Mad dog?

A village?

Zhang Ruoxue didn't understand at first.

But her memory drifted back to a long, long time ago, to that day... when it was raining.

What a mad dog!

【Consider yourself lucky, you mad dog.】

What a pity, you're too late. Everyone in this village has already been slaughtered.

The torrential rain soaked their clothes, drenched their hair, and chilled their bodies.

Suddenly, a mask with the shape of a black bat appeared before her eyes, something she would never forget in her life.

"Is that you...?"

She murmured softly, her head bowed, her delicate body trembling slightly.

On the desolate land, Zhang Ruoxue's breathing was extremely heavy and rapid—she had never imagined that the day of reunion with that person would come so soon.

The man who called her a mad dog.

The man wearing the bat mask.

The man who sacrificed the entire Jinglin Village in blood and personally murdered the Zhang couple.

boom!

A towering inferno erupted from her petite body. The instant the pillar of fire exploded, the resulting shockwave sent everything within a radius of tens of meters flying. The swirling flames scorched everything that could burn.

A hand covered in leaping flames emerged from the crimson pillar of fire, pressing down on the corpse puppet's face with an utterly unreasonable force. Like a wild beast devoid of reason and only lust remaining, she pounced on the corpse puppet, making it crawl on the ground, pressing one hand against the puppet's already cold face.

The corpse puppet offered no resistance whatsoever. Even though the raging flames burning on Zhang Ruoxue's body were gradually incinerating it, it still did not react in the slightest.