Her words were a calculated provocation, each syllable designed to ignite fury in her opponents. She spoke with deliberate sharpness, her tone mocking and fearless, as if daring them to strike first. The underlings' faces flushed with rage, jaws clenching, hands trembling on their weapons—exactly as she intended.
The formation array crumbled before it could fully manifest. Spiritual energy sparked and dissipated into the air like dying embers. Panic rippled through the guards as they broke formation, stumbling over each other, shouting contradictory orders. Chaos erupted—weapons clashed, dust billowed, and the clearing descended into mayhem.
Yu Xiao moved like a phantom unleashed. She combined impossible speed with devastating strength, her blade flashing in lethal arcs. One guard lunged—she sidestepped, her movements fluid as water, and drove her elbow into his throat. He crumpled. Another charged from behind—she spun, her blade singing through the air, meeting steel with a deafening clang before disarming him with a brutal twist. She gave them no respite, no moment to breathe or regroup. Each strike was precise, merciless, her amber eyes burning with cold determination as she cut through those who had dared to mock her.
The remaining guards circled her like wolves, their eyes gleaming with desperation and bloodlust. Yu Xiao stood at the center, chest rising and falling in controlled breaths, her blade dripping crimson onto the scorched earth.
"Together!" the senior cultivator roared, his voice cracking with fury.
They attacked as one—a storm of steel and killing intent. Yu Xiao's eyes narrowed. She dropped low, sweeping her leg in a vicious arc that sent two men crashing to the ground. Before they could recover, she was already airborne, twisting mid-flight to avoid three simultaneous blade strikes that whistled past her head.
She landed on one guard's shoulders, using him as a springboard. Her boots connected with his face with a sickening crunch as she propelled herself backward. The man collapsed like a broken puppet.
A spear thrust toward her heart. She caught the shaft with her bare hand, ignoring the splinters biting into her palm, and yanked hard. The spearman stumbled forward—directly into her rising knee. His nose shattered. Blood sprayed. She wrenched the spear from his grip and spun it in a deadly circle, the blunt end smashing into three attackers in rapid succession.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Ribs broke. Men screamed.
The senior cultivator charged from her blind spot, his sword wreathed in crackling spiritual energy. Yu Xiao sensed the killing intent like ice down her spine. She pivoted at the last possible second, the blade missing her throat by a hair's breadth. She could feel the heat of the energy searing past her skin.
"Too slow," she whispered.
Her fist shot forward, striking the pressure point beneath his sternum. His eyes bulged. The spiritual energy around his sword flickered and died. She followed with a devastating palm strike to his chest that sent him flying backward, crashing through two of his own men.
A blade finally found its mark—slicing across her shoulder. Pain bloomed, hot and sharp. Yu Xiao hissed through gritted teeth but didn't slow. She grabbed her attacker's wrist, twisted until the bone snapped, and drove her forehead into his face. He went down hard.
Blood—hers and theirs—painted her arms. Sweat stung her eyes. Her muscles screamed in protest. But her movements never faltered, each strike flowing into the next like a deadly dance choreographed in violence.
Two guards remained standing, trembling, their weapons raised but their resolve crumbling.
"Run," Yu Xiao said, her voice cold as winter frost, "or join them."
They ran.
She stood alone among the fallen, her blade still raised, amber eyes scanning for the next threat. The wind carried away the dust, revealing the devastation she'd wrought. Bodies littered the ground—some groaning, some silent, all defeated.
Yu Xiao lowered her weapon slowly, rolling her injured shoulder. Pain lanced through her, but she smiled—a fierce, savage expression of triumph.
"Who's mocking who now?" she murmured to the unconscious captain at her feet.
Ten cultivators emerged from the shadows, their robes marked with the insignia of elite guards. Their spiritual auras flared to life simultaneously, creating a suffocating pressure that would have brought ordinary warriors to their knees.
"Formation!" their companion commanded.
They moved with practiced precision, surrounding Yu Xiao in a perfect circle. Each cultivator began channeling spiritual energy, their hands weaving intricate seals. The air crackled and hummed with power as threads of luminous energy connected them, forming an execution array designed to crush anyone trapped within.
Yu Xiao's eyes darted between them, calculating. The formation tightened like a noose, spiritual pressure bearing down on her from all sides. Her breathing grew labored. Blood from her shoulder wound dripped faster.
"You're finished," the guard sneered. "No one escapes the Ten Directions Annihilation Array."
The ten cultivators thrust their palms forward in unison. Ten streams of concentrated spiritual energy shot toward Yu Xiao—blazing pillars of destruction converging on her position from every angle. The ground beneath her feet cracked and splintered from the sheer force.
Yu Xiao closed her eyes.
In that fraction of a heartbeat, she drew inward. Deep within her core, where her spiritual power resided—a wellspring of energy sealed through years of seclusion and bitter survival. She felt it respond, surging through her meridians like a raging river finally unleashed.
Her eyes snapped open, blazing with golden light.
"Break!"
Yu Xiao slammed both palms to the ground. Her inner spiritual power erupted outward in a devastating shockwave—a sphere of pure, concentrated energy that expanded in all directions. The golden wave collided with the incoming attacks, swallowing them completely.
The cultivators' eyes widened in horror.
The shockwave struck them like the fist of an angry god. The first three were thrown backward, their protective barriers shattering like glass. They crashed into trees with bone-breaking force. The next four tried to resist, channeling more energy, but Yu Xiao's power overwhelmed them—their feet left the ground as they were hurled through the air, tumbling end over end before slamming into the earth.
The formation array disintegrated, its energy threads snapping and dispersing into harmless sparks.
The remaining three, including the sub-leader, managed to stay upright by stabbing their weapons into the ground. But blood trickled from their mouths, their internal organs damaged by the spiritual backlash.
Yu Xiao rose slowly, her hair whipping around her face from the residual energy still radiating from her body. Steam rose from her skin. Her amber eyes, now edged with gold, fixed on the guards with merciless intensity.
"Ten directions?" Her voice carried across the devastated clearing, cold and mocking. "I only needed one."
The sub-leader stumbled backward, fear finally replacing arrogance in his eyes. Around them, the nine other cultivators lay scattered and groaning, utterly defeated by a single strike.
Yu Xiao stood alone in the center of the destruction, her chest heaving, spiritual power still crackling around her fists like caged lightning. The message was clear—she was not prey. She was the predator.
"Tell whoever sent you," she said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper that somehow carried to every conscious ear, "that I won't bow to anyone."
But their injuries were too severe. Despite their cultivation, survival was impossible.
Then, one by one, the cultivators began to fall.
The sub-leader clutched his chest, eyes wide with disbelief as blood seeped between his fingers. He opened his mouth to speak, but only crimson bubbles emerged. He collapsed face-first into the dirt.
Around the circle, the others followed. Some convulsed violently before going still. Others simply crumpled where they knelt, their life force extinguished by the devastating spiritual backlash. The sheer power of Yu Xiao's strike hadn't just defeated them—it had shattered their internal cultivation, ruptured their meridians beyond repair.
Within moments, the clearing fell deathly quiet. No groans. No breathing. Only the whisper of wind through broken branches.
Yu Xiao remained standing, but something was changing. The golden mark on her forehead—the one that had blazed like a brand during the fight—began to flicker. Its light dimmed, then fractured into fragments of fading luminescence before dissipating completely, as if it had never existed.
Her eyes, which had burned with that otherworldly amber-gold intensity, slowly bled back to their natural black. The transformation was gradual, like ink spreading through water in reverse, until no trace of gold remained.
Consciousness returned like a wave crashing over her.
Yu Xiao blinked, her vision swimming into focus. Confusion clouded her features. Where...? What happened?
Her gaze dropped to her hands.
Blood. So much blood.
It coated her fingers, her palms, her forearms—dried and fresh, hers and theirs, impossible to distinguish. Her hands trembled as she turned them over, staring at the crimson stains as if they belonged to someone else.
Then she saw them. Bodies. Everywhere.
Cultivators sprawled in unnatural positions, their eyes vacant, their chests still. Ten of them. All dead.
"No..." The word escaped her lips as a broken whisper.
Her breath quickened. What did I do? Fragments of memory flickered—rage, power, the roar of spiritual energy—but it felt distant, like watching someone else's nightmare.
Before the horror could fully sink in, a different sensation seized her. Pain. Excruciating, all-consuming pain that had been held at bay now came flooding back with vicious intensity.
It started in her core, where she'd drawn every last drop of spiritual power, and radiated outward like liquid fire through her meridians. Her shoulder wound throbbed. Her muscles screamed. Internal injuries made themselves known—ribs cracked, organs bruised, spiritual channels torn from channeling more power than her body could safely contain.
Yu Xiao stumbled backward, her legs suddenly unable to support her weight. She gasped, trying to breathe through the agony, but her lungs wouldn't cooperate.
Then she felt it—the warm, metallic taste flooding her mouth.
Blood surged up her throat. She tried to swallow it back, but her body rebelled. She doubled over, and a torrent of blood spilled from her lips, splashing onto the ground in thick, dark droplets. Too much blood. The amount was alarming even to her fading awareness.
Her vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in like encroaching shadows. The world tilted sideways. She tried to steady herself, reaching out for something—anything—but her hand grasped only air.
The last thing she saw was the blood-stained earth rushing up to meet her.
Then darkness swallowed everything, and Yu Xiao collapsed, her body crumpling among the fallen cultivators in the deathly silent clearing. The wind continued its mournful whisper, the only witness to the devastation and the lone survivor who might not survive much longer herself.