To the side of a barren street, two men wearing furs were crowded around the front door of a small home. “Hey! Open this shit now or else I won’t be as polite when I let myself in!” Smashing his wide fist into the doorframe, the larger man easily caused the wooden wall of the small house to splinter and crack.

  “Hey, Brother Zhou, are you sure this girl of yours is inside?” To the side, a smaller man with a fanged mace on his back questioned his comrade. “I find it hard to believe there’s someone left in this village stupid enough to ignore us.”

  Scoffing, ‘Brother Zhou’ spoke casually. “I saw her rush back inside as I came around the corner! She’s probably hiding in a closet like an idiot.”

  As he talked down to the smaller man, Brother Zhou unexpectedly caught sight of someone walking down the street behind them. “The hell…?” Slowly, a young woman no older than nineteen casually walked nearby, glancing their way.

  Looking her over, Brother Zhou let out a breath, thinking this young woman was of a far ‘higher quality’ than the girl who had slipped inside. “Hey, little lady! Come along with me, it ain't safe out here!”

  To the side, the smaller man hit Brother Zhou’s shoulder. “Ahh, dumbass, if the boss finds out you went and grabbed a girl like that for yourself, he’d rip you in half!”

  With a sly smile, the smaller man lowered his voice. “But… if we play this right and hand her over, he might throw us some more resources!”

  Groaning a bit in unwillingness, Brother Zhou eventually sighed. Indeed, their ‘boss’ was certainly a covetous type of person, prone to violent outbursts if he didn’t get what he wanted.

  “Ahh, hell, let’s just bring her back to the tavern. Who knows, maybe the boss will give me one of those half-treasures as a reward!” Speaking aloud, Brother Zhou sneered and walked over to the young woman.

  ‘Hmm? Why is she just standing there anyway?’ After a moment of confusion, he cackled and sneered at the young woman. “Ahh, to just walk through town and just stand around when you stumble into us, you must be a ‘special’ kind of stupid, huh?”

  Reaching out to grab the woman by the arm, Brother Zhou blinked as his hand met thin air, the young woman's body suddenly an arm's length away. 'Huh?'

  Feeling a lump in his throat, Brother Zhou stumbled back in confusion and instinctively raised a hand to his throat.

  As he felt blood gush out from under his fingers, his eyes went wide, and he slowly lost control of his body and fell to his knees, struggling even to raise his eyes.

  With the last of his rapidly fading consciousness, Brother Zhou saw the young woman looking down at him without an ounce of change in her expression, his blood dripping from her fingers.

  … … … … … …

  Looking down at the man’s body as it slowly teetered to the ground, Jun Li sighed. ‘After all that anxiety… killing a person isn’t all that hard, huh?’

  Staring at the pooling blood, Jun Li felt emotion welling up in her chest. At first, she thought it might be guilt, something she expected from killing another person.

  After all, according to the common sense she had been raised with, hurting other people was an inherently bad thing, even if she had a good reason.

  It should take some exceptional circumstances to completely alleviate any guilt.

  But… as that feeling inside her grew stronger, she realized she didn’t feel any guilt, nor regret, or even fear.

  The feeling that grew inside her was a strange sense of elation.

  It was unlike the comfort she felt when she dissected Magical Beasts in the forest outside the Sect, and it was unlike the thrill inherent to combat, as she had experienced in duels and training.

  Baffled by the movement of her own heart, Jun Li tried to shake it off, only coming back to reality as she heard a voice call out. “Brother Zhou!?”

  Looking to the other Cultivator, Jun Li focused up, ignoring the man's shocked state. ‘I think I overestimated these early Qi Condensation Cultivators… I won’t even need to use any real techniques to deal with them.’

  Realizing she had an interesting opportunity, Jun Li pulled a saber from the back of the corpse she had just made, before moving towards the other man slowly, slow enough to allow time for whatever reaction he could possibly offer.

  ‘My part of the plan is simple… kill as many of these Qi Condensation Cultivators as I can without causing alarm, and regroup with the others if I find someone that seems to be in charge.'

  'So… there should be no problem if I use this opportunity to get a bit of practice in with their weapons.’ Brandishing her new saber, Jun Li’s approach snapped the other Cultivator out of his confused trance.

  Realizing his long-time comrade had actually somehow died, he quickly drew a fanged mace from his hip. Though he was alarmed, he didn’t think his life was genuinely at risk; surely this woman had killed Brother Zhou with some crude sneak attack, using a concealed knife or some equivalent.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He laughed, seeing Jun Li pick up Brother Zhou’s heavy saber and begin to drag it over. “What a complete dumbass. Maybe if you stuck with your little knife, you’d have a one in a million chance of actually hurting me!”

  Swinging his mace in a wide arc, the man aimed at Jun Li’s leg, still hoping to take her back to his boss, even if it meant breaking some bones.

  Raising her new saber lightly, Jun Li clashed with the fanged mace, sending it recoiling with a solid impact that shot through her arm into her body.

  Feeling the solid impact, Jun Li couldn’t help but grin. Something about the weapon in her hands felt lovely to her.

  Swinging her blade as if it weighed nothing, Jun Li drew a line of blood across her opponent’s chest before he could right himself.

  Staggering backwards and clutching the thin cut across his chest, the man's heart filled with horror as he gained some vague understanding of who the woman in front of him was. “Shit!”

  Turning around, the man actually began to run down the street, away from Jun Li. He did not think he could truly escape her, nor did he think escape was impossible. He simply fled without thought.

  Surprised at his attempt to escape, and alarmed at the idea that he might be rushing towards some larger, more difficult to handle group, Jun Li used her Movement Technique to cut off his escape.

  As Jun Li’s figure blurred and appeared in front of the man, he panicked and struck out again with his mace. His attack seemed terribly telegraphed and painfully slow to Jun Li's eyes.

  'I wish I had some room to mess around with these weapons more, but I suppose I should finish him before it gets out of hand…'

  Jun Li grabbed the handle of the man's mace mid-swing and tore it out of his hands, discarding it instantly. 'Oh well.'

  Before the man's expression could even change, Jun Li raised and dropped her saber with her fullest strength, splitting the man from his scalp to his pelvis in a split second, his split body falling backwards like a bloody wishbone, sliding off the blade of her saber.

  As the split corpse collapsed to the floor, Jun Li let out a satisfied sigh. ‘Hmm? This is weirdly… nice?’

  Jun Li’s heart felt light, her thoughts flowed smoothly, and the sensation of mild exertion through her body was vivid and relaxing.

  Stretching her limbs and shaking off the tingling sensation on her skin, Jun Li shook the blood from her saber. ‘What an odd sensation…’

  Full of energy, Jun Li quickly stepped away from the fallen men and jumped up onto a nearby roof, looking out over nearby alleys and streets.

  ‘‘I just have to kill the weaker ones around town, right…? I can do that.’ The thoughts Jun Li had originally, including her intent to use this opportunity to improve herself, had faded away.

  Now, she simply allowed the half-forgotten details of the plan she and her peers had made to guide her. All the while, a new seed of emotion sat in her heart, blooming into inspiration and motivation. 'I wonder how many there are…?'

  ……

  Han Wenyan had been silently creeping across the rooftops for a time, investigating the numbers and Cultivations of the individuals who had taken control of the village. ‘There must be at least two dozen of these people here… even after picking off some of the idiots that strayed too far from the rest.’

  Sighing in frustration, Han Wenyan crouched further down onto the tiles of a rooftop as he suppressed his presence, calmly looking into the window of a nearby building from a high angle.

  The building in front of him was a tavern of some sort. Oddly, unlike the rest of the deathly silent village, the tavern seemed boisterous and busy, seats packed with rowdy customers revelling in an excessive fashion.

  From what Han Wenyan could tell, all of the fur-wearing men inside were Cultivators, though of remarkably shaky foundations for their older ages; they were mostly around the Middle Qi Condensation stage.

  Clearly, most of them were poorly educated in proper Cultivation Methods and lacked resources compared to the nobility.

  Even so, they couldn’t have come from the Zhao Kingdom.

  The level of resources it would take to allow dozens of men to Cultivate to their level was something that would put considerable strain on even the wealthiest noble families of the kingdom, and even if they could fund it, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to direct such a force towards a distant village like this.

  Peeking further inside the building, Han Wenyan’s grip on his bow tightened, a hateful expression forming on his face.

  There were a few Cultivators at the Late Qi Condensation stage, and more notably, one grizzled-looking man in red furs at the Crimson Palace stage.

  Han Wenyan had a degree of confidence when it came to fighting him one-on-one, but with the crowd surrounding the man, he didn’t want to take any risks.

  Han Wenyan also suspected the man at the Crimson Palace stage had some means of controlling the Viridian-horned Beast on his body. He didn’t want to risk a fight with that Beast if he could help it.

  Calming himself down, Han Wenyan silently leapt atop the tavern’s roof, quietly overlooking the village for signs of Zhao Xiaoli or Jun Li.

  He had confidence that if he called as loudly as possible, they would hear, but he wanted to wait and see if they could maintain the advantage of surprise.

  After only a few moments of waiting, Han Wenyan saw a man rush down the street towards the tavern, stumbling over himself in a panic and almost dropping his iron quarterstaff.

  Alarmed at first, Han Wenyan drew an arrow, ready to strike him down before he reached the crowded tavern, only hesitating for a moment.

  In that moment of hesitation, however, Jun Li appeared behind the fleeing man, holding a spear and jolting forward meters at a time behind him with her Movement Technique.

  With posture that seemed almost practiced, Jun Li deftly threw the spear she had acquired from somewhere, piercing the running man through the chest and pinning him to the dusty road.

  Dashing past, Jun Li tore the iron staff out of the dying man’s hands and rushed down the street, twirling her new staff and acquainting herself with its heft along the way

  Luckily for Jun Li, Han Wenyan could not accurately read her expression from where he sat. If he had been able, it may have irrevocably altered his opinion of her.

  Hearing the bustle of the tavern, Jun Li instantly shot towards it, repeating her Cloudburst technique multiple times, and accelerating to a terrifying speed.

  ‘Huh!? That idiot!’ Seeing Jun Li about to charge inside the tavern, Han Wenyan went pale and wasn’t able to compose himself in time to intercept her.

  Helplessly, he watched as Jun Li vanished from his line of sight on the rooftop, the thunderous sound of the wooden doors below shattering into shrapnel reaching his ears, followed by the deafening silence of the crowded tavern.