Shen Ruoxi moved like moonlight given form.
One moment she stood on the rooftop, white robes pristine against the smoke-stained sky. The next, she was between Dao Jianfeng and the demonic cultivator, her hand raised in a gesture so casual it might have been a wave.
The Jin Wolf enforcer's killing blow stopped two inches from Dao Jianfeng's chest.
"Interesting." Ruoxi's voice carried the same predatory amusement Wang Ben had grown to dread. "You actually thought you could take this city."
The demonic cultivator's face went through several expressions in rapid succession: confusion, recognition, and finally terror. Wang Ben had never seen a mortal shedding cultivator afraid before. It was not a pleasant sight.
"You..." The enforcer stumbled backward, his composure shattered. "You're not supposed to be here. The regional powers agreed to non-interference. The Jin Wolf faction has guarantees..."
"Do I look like I care about your guarantees?" Ruoxi stepped forward, and the demonic cultivator matched her step with a retreat. "Do I look like I'm bound by regional accords?"
"Who are you?"
Ruoxi smiled. It was the smile of a cat that had finally found prey worth chasing.
"Someone who was very, very bored. Until now."
The other two mortal shedding cultivators arrived within seconds, drawn by their companion's panic. Wang Ben watched from the edge of the courtyard, his newly enhanced perception tracking movements that would have been invisible to him just minutes ago.
[ENHANCED THREAT PATTERN RECOGNITION: ACTIVE]
[Analyzing combat signatures...]
[Subject 1 (Jin Wolf Enforcer): Mortal Shedding class (weakest of three)]
[Subject 2: Mortal Shedding class (mid-tier)]
[Subject 3 (Leader): Mortal Shedding class (strongest - late-stage probable)]
[Note: Precise staging unavailable at host cultivation level. Rankings based on comparative pressure response.]
[Shen Ruoxi: Mortal Shedding Stage 9 Peak]
[Combat projection: One-sided. Estimated engagement duration: <60 seconds.]
The Jin brothers, if that was truly who they were, took positions flanking their enforcer. The elder of the two, a heavyset man with scars that twisted across his face, assessed Ruoxi with the calculating gaze of a veteran fighter.
"Peak stage nine," he said. His voice was rough, graveled by centuries of demonic cultivation. "Not common in frontier territories. Who sent you?"
"No one sent me." Ruoxi began circling, forcing them to adjust their formation. "I'm here because I choose to be. Because three little wolves thought they could hunt in my territory."
"Your territory?" The scarred leader laughed, though it carried an edge of uncertainty. "The Jin Wolf faction doesn't recognize personal claims. This region belongs to whoever has the strength to take it."
"Then by your own logic..." Ruoxi's smile widened. "It belongs to me."
She moved.
Wang Ben had seen cultivators fight before. Had watched foundation establishment techniques clash during the clan war. Had witnessed Dao Lingwei's desperate four-minute stand against a single mortal shedding opponent.
This was nothing like any of that.
Shen Ruoxi didn't fight. She performed. Every movement was deliberate, precise, designed not just to defeat but to demonstrate exactly how outclassed her opponents were.
The enforcer died first.
He tried to run. Tried to use whatever movement technique had carried him across battlefields for centuries. Ruoxi appeared in front of him, behind him, beside him, always just ahead of wherever he tried to go.
"Too slow," she said, and her hand passed through his chest the same way his had passed through Dao Lingwei's. The difference was, when Ruoxi withdrew her hand, she held nothing. She had simply destroyed his core without bothering to extract it.
The body crumpled.
The two remaining brothers attacked together, coordinated strikes that would have overwhelmed any single opponent below nascent soul. Techniques bloomed around them: shadow blades, soul-rending howls, corruption arts that made the air itself turn toxic.
Ruoxi walked through all of it.
The attacks that hit her simply... stopped. The techniques that reached her failed to manifest. She moved through their combined assault like a ghost through morning mist, untouchable and unconcerned.
"You cultivate by consuming others," she observed, deflecting a shadow blade with her bare hand. "Parasites feeding on weaker souls. It's efficient, I suppose. But it makes you predictable."
The younger brother lost his arm. Then his head. The sequence happened so fast that his body remained standing for three heartbeats before it realized it was dead.
That left only the leader.
Jin Wei, eldest of the Jin Wolf brothers, had not known fear since he was a child.
Mortal shedding cultivators existed beyond such base emotions. They had shed their mortality, transcended the weaknesses of flesh and spirit. They were hunters, predators, the wolves that culled the weak from the strong.
He knew fear now.
The woman before him was not mortal shedding. Could not be mortal shedding. Peak stage nine should mean they were peers, equals in the vast hierarchy of cultivation. Instead, he felt like a foundation establishment disciple facing a nascent soul ancestor.
"What are you?" His voice came out as a rasp.
"Disappointed." Ruoxi stopped circling, finally still for the first time since the fight began. Around them, the courtyard had been transformed into a landscape of craters and scorched stone, evidence of his attacks that had failed to touch her. "I thought you would be more... entertaining. Your faction has quite a reputation in the border regions. Ruthless. Cunning. Willing to do whatever it takes."
"We are!"
"Then why am I still bored?"
She attacked. Not fast this time. Deliberately slow. Giving him every opportunity to defend, to counter, to demonstrate some skill that might make his death interesting.
He failed every test.
Jin Wei's cultivation was drained in stages. First his protective barriers fell. Then his movement techniques. Then the shadow arts that were his faction's signature ability. Ruoxi stripped them away one by one, dissecting his cultivation like a physician examining a failed experiment.
"Please..." He was on his knees now, blood streaming from a dozen wounds. "The Jin Wolf faction will pay any price. Resources, territory, slaves..."
"I don't want payment." Ruoxi crouched before him, studying his face with clinical interest. "I want you to know something before you die."
"What?"
"This city is mine to watch. These people are mine to observe. When you threatened them, you threatened my entertainment." She leaned closer. "And I do not share."
Her hand moved. Jin Wei's cultivation core shattered.
The leader of the Jin Wolf expedition crumpled beside his brothers, and the demonic threat to Redstone City ended in a courtyard stained with the blood of those who had thought themselves predators.
Dao Jianfeng was dying.
Wang Ben reached him before anyone else, pushing through the stunned cultivators who had witnessed Shen Ruoxi's massacre. The Dao Patriarch lay where he had fallen, his final sword strike having cost him the last of his strength.
"Wang Ben..." The voice was barely a whisper. Blood flecked Dao Jianfeng's lips. "My mother... did she..."
"She bought us time." Wang Ben knelt beside him, his newly enhanced senses screaming warnings about the man's collapsing cultivation. "Four minutes. She bought four minutes that let us organize, let us..."
"Good." A ghost of a smile crossed the dying man's face. "That's... good."
Dao Zhen appeared, shoving past Wang Clan guards who tried to hold him back. He fell to his knees beside his father, his hands shaking as they reached for wounds that no physician could mend.
"Father. Father, you can't... you just woke up. You can't..."
"Zhen'er." Dao Jianfeng's hand found his son's. "Listen to me. The clan... you're patriarch now. You have to..."
"I don't want to be patriarch. I want you to live."
"I was dead the moment my breakthrough failed. You knew that." The elder Dao's eyes found Wang Ben's over his son's shoulder. "Watch over him. Please. He's all that's left of us now."
Wang Ben nodded once. "I will."
"And the technique... your father's technique. Promise me you'll share it with the Dao Clan. Give my descendants a chance to... to not repeat my mistakes."
"I promise."
Dao Jianfeng's eyes drifted closed. His breathing slowed, stuttered, and finally stopped.
Dao Zhen's scream echoed through the courtyard, grief and rage and loss compressed into a single, terrible sound.
Shen Ruoxi was cleaning blood from her robes when Wang Ben found her.
She stood at the edge of the courtyard, watching the chaos with the detached interest of someone observing a particularly engaging street performance. Bodies were being moved. Wounded were being treated. Somewhere, someone was trying to organize a coherent response to a threat that had already been eliminated.
"You saved us," Wang Ben said.
"I killed some pests." She didn't look at him. "Don't confuse the two."
"The Dao Patriarch is dead."
"I know. I could have saved him too, if I'd arrived a few breaths earlier." A shrug. "I didn't."
Wang Ben felt something cold settle in his chest. "You let him die."
"I arrived when I arrived. The dying man chose to spend his last strength on a futile gesture instead of waiting for rescue." Ruoxi finally turned, and her eyes held no sympathy, no regret. "He made his choice. I made mine."
"That's..."
"That's how the world works, little cultivator." She began walking away, her pristine robes somehow untouched by the carnage around her. "The strong survive. The weak die. The clever find ways to become strong before it matters."
She paused at the courtyard entrance.
"My brother says you owe him three favors. I suggest you pay attention to what he asks. Wuyan's requests are never as simple as they seem."
Then she was gone, vanishing into the smoke-filled streets as if she had never been there at all.
Wang Ben stood in the courtyard, surrounded by the dead and the grieving, and felt something change.
The remaining demonic cultivators were fleeing. He could see them in the distance, core formation and foundation establishment cultivators abandoning their positions, running for the city walls. Without their mortal shedding leaders, they were nothing but prey.
But something else was approaching.
He couldn't sense it directly. Body refinement cultivators had no spiritual senses. But his System was screaming warnings, text flooding his vision faster than he could process.
[ALERT: MASSIVE SPIRITUAL PRESSURE DETECTED]
[Source: Northern approach, 2.3 kilometers and closing]
[Classification: NASCENT SOUL]
[Threat level: ABSOLUTE]
Wang Ben's blood ran cold. Another one. Something far beyond the three cultivators Ruoxi had just killed. Something that made them look like children playing at war.
And it was coming straight for the city.
Straight for them.
END OF CHAPTER 50