Liu Xing walked with a slow, deliberate pace, his hands clasped behind his back as he followed the man in front of him. The man looked young, his hair dark, but his skin was so pale that Liu Xing thought he looked like a vampire.

  In truth, Liu Xing could have ended the man anytime he wanted. Yet, he chose not to. It was not because he wanted the man to live, but because he was curious about where he would go. The man looked desperate, but not like the enemies who ran for their lives when they came face to face with him. Liu Xing sensed the man valued something more important than his own life, and since patience had already yielded a jade slip filled with information—along with scrolls and books now secured in his spatial ring—he was curious about what else he could gain by letting the man live a bit longer.

  As Liu Xing walked, the sole survivor of the base looked behind him repeatedly, his teeth chattering and his body trembling, but he did not stop running.

  Liu Xing observed the hall they were in. It was sparse and spartan. There was no luxury in this place, only practicality. The underground level, where Liu Xing had destroyed their array formation and killed the majority of the people in the base, was also sparse despite its important function. Though sparse and mostly unadorned, this place was important to the Nether Lotus Sect. It was a relay that accommodated communication. Destroying it would cause trouble for the Nether Lotus Sect, hindering their communications and making the sect more vulnerable.

  Soon, they arrived at a level between the destroyed array formation and the surface. To one side, the hall had caved in, but the other side was intact, filled with doors that he suspected were used by people on the island for resting.

  The man he had spared arrived at the second door from the end of the hall. Despite his unsteady hand, the man successfully unlocked his room and entered.

  "He knows he's already dead," Liu Xing muttered as he walked forward. Tide Walker tugged on him as if to ask why he was delaying. Liu Xing conveyed to the shark to wait a little longer and that it could swim if it wanted to. He had a small matter to attend to here.

  Liu Xing arrived at the doorstep and looked inside. The man opened a coffin at the edge of the dark room, carried the corpse from within, and laid it on his bed before kneeling beside it.

  Liu XIng took a step inside, his eyes locked on the corpse on the bed. It was a woman. Her skin was pale, as if there were no blood inside her. In fact, Liu Xing was sure of it. Her black hair was cut short, and a tiara with a golden diamond in the center adorned it. Her lips and nose were small, making her look cute and pretty. The blue dress she wore was pretty and clean. She did not stink; in fact, perfume had been used on her, and she smelled like flowers. If not for the fact that she was devoid of life—no qi, no heartbeat, no pulse, no warmth—she would have looked as if she were asleep.

  Liu Xing looked at the man kneeling beside the bed, and it was evident that he took care of her corpse. Yet, as Liu Xing saw the bulge in her belly, he knew the man was not only taking care of her but also violating her. What made it worse was that while the corpse itself was definitely dead, the baby inside her stomach felt alive. It had qi, warmth, and a pulse. Yet, Liu Xing sensed a wrongness emitting from it, as if the corpse were not holding a human baby.

  After a moment, Liu Xing concluded that it was, of course, not a human baby. It was something else. Something unnatural, gruesome, and pitiful.

  The man turned to him and began to beg. "This is the love of my life. You can kill me, but I want you to spare her and our child!"

  Liu Xing felt his stomach twist. "How long since her death?"

  The man pressed his lips together. "Five years ago."

  "And how long has she… borne your… child?"

  The man looked at him with shining eyes, as if excited by the topic of conversation, as if he were truly proud of what he had done to that pitiful woman. "Twenty-three months! If all is well, soon, she will be born into this world! And we will become parents."

  "Was she your lover?"

  "Yes!" he shouted with excitement in his voice. Liu Xing tried to think from his perspective and realized that his questions made him seem interested in him, the corpse, and the unborn… child. And if there was interest, then there was hope. Liu Xing let the man have his misunderstanding, for now.

  "Even though she died, we are still lovers. I try my hardest to care and provide for her and our child every day, and she, in turn, relieves my stress and becomes the one who silently listens to my day. It would be better if she could talk back, but reviving her is something beyond my reach, perhaps beyond everyone's reach. Even so, I am happy with our current situation."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  As if his mouth were a dam that had broken, a tale began to pour from his mouth. He seemed to think that he was trying to gain sympathy by telling Liu Xing his tragic backstory. Which was, in fact, not tragic.

  "We were from different statuses. She was wealthy, while I was poor. The moment our eyes met for the first time, we knew we were made for each other. But the situation held us back. She was already the wife of another man, and even though she smiled and looked like she had a happy life, in truth, she was in pain. Luckily, I came across a cultivation method and successfully amassed my power. Once I was ready, I poisoned her husband and her children and set her free. At that time, I proposed to her, and she faked her rejection of me. It was for appearance's sake, I'm sure of it, and then she went back to her family. That was a wrong move in the end, because her family didn't agree to me marrying her, so I poisoned them and set her free again. It was an odorless and tasteless poison. To this day, no one knows their deaths were not from illness."

  As the man continued to spout tales about his actions, Liu Xing finally realized one thing about him. He was delusional and blinded by a sick love. This woman was not his lover. She was an object of his possession who was killed and violated again and again.

  Liu Xing felt his stomach twist more and more, and he held up his hand, stopping the man from talking further. She had not only suffered in her life but also in her death.

  For a moment, there was only silence before the man spoke again. "Please, please! Please spare us!"

  Liu Xing thought for a moment, glancing toward the corpse on the bed, noting that the bedding and parts of her clothes were rumpled, and decided on the obvious choice.

  "No," he replied. In that instant, Liu Xing pointed his gun and shot him in the forehead, killing him instantly. His face landed on the ground.

  Liu Xing glanced at his gun, noted the six stripes on its side, and, though disgusted by this qi, sent it into his consciousness and directed it to his third core. It had absorbed quite a lot of qi, to the point that it would soon be saturated. Once it was full, he could move to the second core, and then the main core, before breaking through to the next stage.

  Seeing the corpse of the woman and her bulging stomach, Liu Xing sighed, pointed his gun toward her belly, and steadied his breath for a moment before finally pulling the trigger again. Whatever was inside that belly was not human, not even a spirit beast. It was not a living thing. Since its "father" was dead, the thing would not survive for long, and he reasoned that what he did was an act of both mercy and revenge on behalf of this pitiful woman.

  Liu Xing turned to the victim and prayed. "May your next life be filled with happiness."

  He came out of the room and noted that his gun had absorbed some qi. He grimaced before absorbing the qi into his consciousness once again.

  Once outside, Liu Xing decided to release his pent-up frustration over what he had just witnessed and done. He charged Harmony of Two Seas with potent qi, extended the blade with a jet of water, and began to swing, slicing, cutting, and destroying the base thoroughly. When he finished, the center of the island had caved in and the buildings were reduced to rubble.

  Liu Xing inhaled deeply to calm himself and decided to distract himself by summoning a jade slip and sending some qi into it. Instantly, he felt as if he were submerged in a consciousness that was not his own. Information, images, and impressions flooded his mind. The information the jade slip contained was quite rich. It contained reports on many things, though Liu Xing focused on the part about their movements against the great sects. Some reports stated that certain bases were abandoned and the disciples inside were left to die, yet one thing stood out to him.

  "How is the Nether Lotus Sect surviving its current condition?" He pinched his chin. He finally got confirmation that all the great sects aside from his own were truly in this Wild Tide Region, and they were actively attacking Nether Lotus Sect bases, similar to his own actions. The Nether Lotus Sect was truly surrounded. Logic stated that there was no way for this small sect to win against four great sects at the same time. It should have been wiped out, yet it was not.

  "Why?" he wondered. Was the Nether Lotus Sect truly that formidable, or was there something else at play?

  Liu Xing began to think about the elder of the Purple Moon Sect who was backing the Nether Lotus Sect. Was it because of him? After all, Liu Xing suspected he was the reason his own sect was not here. If he could hold back one great sect, why not four others? Perhaps he cultivated a peculiar method that made him suited to this kind of conflict. Or perhaps it was not so complicated. Perhaps the great sects were taking their time because they underestimated the Nether Lotus Sect, or because they actually wanted Ye Xuanming to succeed in his ritual.

  As Liu Xing consolidated more information, he came across one important piece that made him stop.

  It was a mission. An important mission to capture two people. Alive.

  At that moment, a memory struck him like lightning. Wuji Sanren had told him that he still had time before Ye Xuanming was ready, but it seemed the time was actually longer than he thought.

  He remembered that while Fang Ruxue and his other friends traveled with him, one of the thirty women kidnapped by the Nether Lotus Sect did not. Instead, she was with her brother. The sight of the two of them kissing was branded in his mind, and he was disgusted by it. Yet, thinking of them made his heart beat rapidly. It seemed that aside from just becoming stronger, he had another way to go against Ye Xuanming.

  Liu Xing licked his lips. The information did not come with details, merely a mission log among many others. But Liu Xing was not discouraged. After all, he still intended to hunt Nether Lotus Sect disciples. He just needed to add another objective on top of it.

  With that, Liu Xing jumped high into the sky. Tide Walker followed behind him. At that moment, Liu Xing could see a ship in the distance, but instead of sailing on the ocean, it was flying in the air like a giant bird.

  Liu Xing looked at it intently, narrowed his eyes, and wondered what he needed to do.

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