The moment those words left the man's mouth, the head of one of his subordinates jerked back, violently shunted by the impact of Jun Li's fist. "Collapsing Echo Fist - Echoing Depths!" As if by reflex, each of the two subordinates thrust their swords towards Jun Li, who had stepped into range so quickly that none of the three had the time to react beforehand.

  Oddly, the man in the conical hat reacted more slowly than his subordinates, who had tangibly lower Cultivations, only moving to distance himself from Jun Li after she had already evaded the retaliation of their four swords. "Shit…!"

  'Damn, she's fast… Did I misjudge her Cultivation?' Pulling a spear from his Spatial Ring, the man in the conical hat focused his senses towards Jun Li, ready to pick up on the first sign of a Movement Technique being activated.

  The dull sound of bones breaking, followed by his subordinate falling to the ground, distracted him for an instant. On the floor, the face of the subordinate whom Jun Li had struck began to sink in, blood soaking the already red bindings a shade deeper as they grew loose and tarped over a now concave surface. 'That strike broke it!?'

  By the time his eyes returned to Jun Li, he only saw a large wheel of Qi being pressed into the ground beneath her feet, before she vanished from where she stood. "Drifting Ghost Blade - Midnight Breeze!"

  This time, he reacted in time, jumping out of the way as Jun Li flew by, this time not striking with her fist, but with a scythed hook of crystallized blood, jutting out from her heel.

  Mid-air, the man in the conical hat watched as the head of his other subordinate flew into the air, having been Jun Li's target from the start.

  At the sight, his heart leapt in his chest. Not from seeing his subordinate die, that was of no consequence to this man. What shook him was the sight of the crystalized blood weapon Jun Li had so rapidly manifested.

  Landing on the roof of the nearby building, the man watched as the blood blade attached to Jun Li's foot melted away, leaving only a small puddle of blood behind. 'Ragged appearance, white robes, an advanced Cultivation at a young age, and Demonic Arts…'

  "You…! You're from the Burning Gossypium Cult, aren't you!?" Looking up towards the man, Jun Li raised an eyebrow. 'Another case of mistaken identity…? Although I'm not sure if this one is to my advantage.'

  "Oh? What makes you say that?" Jun Li didn't believe she'd be able to convince him to reconsider his conclusion, but extracting a bit more information couldn't hurt. "I'm not blind, I saw that Demonic Technique you used. Don't try to convince me that was your own blood you're manipulating, nobody would be stupid enough to use Blood Essence for a thing like that!"

  'Blood Essence?' Jun Li was even more confused. 'Is manipulating your own blood so difficult that normal people have to rely on Blood Essence, or the blood of others?' Intuiting the man's words was difficult in these circumstances, but Jun Li believed she had come to the right conclusion.

  "You seem knowledgeable about this sort of thing… Does it have something to do with these puppets?" Rolling around the severed head with her foot, Jun Li saw that next to no blood seeped from the wound, and what little that did was blackened and thick, such that it struggled to dissolve even in the rain.

  Without offering a response, the man turned around and dashed away over the roof, moving further into the estate. "...Oh well." Jun Li let out a sigh, a bit annoyed at her own inheritance. 'I didn't know there was that sort of connotation with manipulating blood, I'll have to be careful where I use that technique…'

  "Let's see if I can find an opportunity to make him forget about that little display…" Jun Li calmly wandered further into the estate, eyes wandering over the wide paths and tall, burning buildings. "...I wonder what this attack is all about anyway?"

  … … … … … …

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  High up in an overlooking pagoda, the likes of which oversaw the entire estate, a bird sat placidly on the windowsill of the highest floor, unbothered by the flames that slowly rose over the building.

  As the air shimmered with heat, the bird's feathers shimmered with a deep, scarlet light. "My Lord!" Rushing up the side of the burning building, the man in the conical hat hung from a ridge beneath the windowsill, carefully placing himself beneath the bird as he spoke. "We have an unexpected guest… A young woman from the Burning Gossypium Cult appeared. And is… strangely hostile."

  "Young…?" The bird turned its head, words flowing from its parted beak just as clearly as they would from a human. "You are sure she is young? A disciple, and not one of their Fiends?" Despite the beast's modest phrasing, the man felt an intense pressure, as if being mistaken was a sin that he could not be redeemed from. "I… am sure, yes."

  "...Then, we have nothing to worry about. Our business here is almost ended, either way." The bird turned its attention to the center of the estate, watching idly as a man tore through the many bound nobodies that had been unleashed on the estate, sweeping them aside with each swipe of his great staff.

  "And to think, will have lost little more than these untraceable Flesh Puppets." The crow let out a human-like snicker. "It was well worth calling in a favor with Young Master Jin. The wonders of the Blue Silver Palace never cease to amaze…"

  A moment passed before the crow turned back to the man in the conical hat, noticing how the heat caused sweat to soak his bindings, and signs of pain to surface. "Ah, you may retreat for now. I will remain to observe for a time." Bowing his head, the man readily allowed himself to fall, kicking himself away from the burning pagoda. "Thank you, My Lord."

  '...That a human cannot endure such heat even at their 'Crimson Palace' stage…' The bird gazed into the flames below for a moment. '...it pleases me greatly.'

  … … … … … …

  'Ah, finally.' Through the now cloying haze of smoke, Jun Li caught sight of energetic motion in the distance. The otherwise placid puppets that roamed this place seemed to roam quietly, setting flames with sparks ground off their swords. To see a flurry of motion through the smoke, Jun Li was certain she had stumbled across a moment of combat.

  'Someone's there, someone native to this estate…' Exhaling with her tempered lungs, Jun Li blew a hole through the smoke, dispersing it through the air as she walked out into a mostly untouched garden.

  As to why the garden seemed untouched by the arsonistic tendencies of the puppets, Jun Li could tell right away. 'Looks like they had a higher priority…' At the edge of the garden, a man in thick, scaled armor, appearing about thirty years of age, stood on a flight of steps that led to a great building of stone.

  In his hands was a massive stone staff, the end ringed with toothed metal disks that hovered off its surface, rotating slowly. At his feet, dozens of bodies lay torn and scattered, leaking blackened blood into the stone and soil.

  To Jun Li, it was unmistakable. This man was equal to the Elders of the Glass Cloud Sect, or even her own Master, Zhu Enlai. 'This must be… the Regalia Manifestation realm, probably an advanced stage as well…'

  Crawling down the side of the building behind the man, two of the bound flesh puppets leapt down, one towards him, and the other towards the doors at the top of the stairs.

  Without bracing himself or even moving a step, the man thrust his staff up, accurately piercing the throat of the attacking puppet with the blunt end, before the rotating wheels pulled its body inside, its teeth tugging the puppet's body apart in contradictory directions.

  Before the first puppet's ruined remains could fall out of the toothed staff, the man adjusted his grip, holding onto the very end of the staff, and dropping its full length towards the puppet that had made a break for the door.

  Though holding his staff in such a way must surely have limited his strength, the puppet still lost its human form the instant the staff touched it. Flesh and bindings caught on the teeth, and it was compressed into the floor as if it were a paper doll, ground apart so fiercely that even the gouged stone beneath was dyed black with its blood.

  With the same speed that he had destroyed the two puppets, the staff-wielding man pulled back his weapon, sweeping it through the air with a force that dislodged the flesh that still clung to his weapon's teeth.

  Though he had sensed an onlooker, he had not truly seen Jun Li until this moment.

  There, a short distance away, in the garden, Jun Li had frozen a puppet solid around the neck. And although it somehow hadn't 'killed' the puppet, it prevented it from being able to move its body. 'Interesting…'

  Clenching her hand, Jun Li shattered the puppet's frozen neck, parting its head from its body near-instantly. "Hey there!" She called out to the staff-wielding man who guarded the stairs.

  "Do you know where the Alchemist Association Branch is? This city has one, right?"