Another day passed as they flew across the continent from where Zhu Xuelian brought them, and come morning light, they saw Star City in the distance, or what was left of it.

  Half the city was gone. The parts of the city closest to the Galaxy Sword were a ruin and a series of craters and ravines. Because Star City was set in the valley beneath the mountain of the Galaxy Sword sect, it was obvious that Star City was not the target of the attack, but suffered immensely from the proximity of the sect.

  “Those animals…” Wu Yulan hissed. The parts of the city that were closest to the sect were indeed the place where she grew up, and where her Wu clan buried its roots.

  “It doesn’t look like they targeted the city, sister Wu, but that this was a consequence of the barrier deflecting…” Tian Li began, but a glare from Wu Yulan stopped his sentence dead in its tracks. “I am sorry, sister Wu. I spoke out of turn.”

  After a moment, Wu Yulan’s fists unclenched, and she shook her head. “No, you shouldn’t apologize. You didn’t do or say anything wrong.”

  Zhu Xuelian bid her sword to hover closer to Wu Yulan’s, and she pouted at her friend but didn’t say anything.

  Which one of them didn’t think or feel that Zhu Xuelian was, in a way, responsible for this? This was especially true for Zhu Xuelian herself. If she didn’t exist — if she never entered the rivers and the lakes — would this still have happened?

  But they also weren’t stupid. They saw the true faces of their sects that day, and they knew, that if it wasn’t Zhu Xuelian, it would’ve been Wu Yulan. If it wasn’t Wu Yulan, it would’ve been Mu Jingyu, Lei Yangming, or Tian Li.

  Wu Yulan felt this the most, so when she called them animals, she wasn’t referring to the Arks that fired on the sect, but to the sect that didn’t lower its barrier to spare the city from the consequence of its failed coup.

  Not many people remained in the city. Several dozen, maybe up to a few hundred, scattered souls walked the empty streets, either looting or recovering their family legacy from abandoned homes.

  “Yulan, do you want to search…” Zhu Xuelian asked, but Wu Yulan shook her head before she could form the full question.

  “We can both tell that if there is any hope, it will be in what remains of that mountain,” Wu Yulan said, and though her tone was cold, Zhu Xuelian could still feel the carefully concealed hurt and despair.

  She referred to the mountain appropriately — as remains. It was gouged on all sides and crippled, blasted apart by energies that this continent had not seen in hundreds of years — since the end of the age of war. Several peaks were missing, including the sect master’s. Several disciple palaces were also gone, obliterated by fire and energy.

  As they descended toward the Galaxy Sect, they all withdrew white cloaks with light blue embroidery from their storage rings, put them on, and covered their heads with the hood.

  Wu Yulan’s cloak was white, with gold embroidery, and she had a veil similar to Zhu Xuelian’s covering her face. Mu Jingyu, the other recognizable genius, also wore a white veil, but her cloak lacked any distinguishing features like Wu Yulan’s.

  Once they landed at the foot of the mountain, they could barely see the glittering, shattered remains of the barrier shimmering in the air, but it had tremendous holes blown into it, and the qi was still fading. It looked as though the siege had only recently ended.

  As they went up the mountain, they saw several hundred people kneeling on the ground, and kowtowing to a cultivator who stood proudly on the edge of a protruding rock, her sword pierced into the stone, watching over the people like a guardian.

  Tian Li broke from the group, approached the rock in front of the cultivator, and kowtowed. No one could see because of his hood, but he was crying bitter and proud tears.

  The female cultivator was dead.

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  They all bowed to the cultivator, who died standing. Seeing this scene alone was enough to evoke the image of how this cultivator died, and what these hundreds of people had to be so grateful for. Today, they kowtowed in front of the cultivator, but recently, they covered behind her.

  This scene repeated many times as they ascended the mountain, where groups of people revered the remains of fallen cultivators who held strategic positions to their very last breath. They weren’t strategic in the sense that they were important to the sect’s defense but to the protection of the common people who came to seek shelter.

  Wu Yulan apologized to every fallen cultivator, though no one but Zhu Xuelian understood what she was apologizing for, and no one had the heart to ask.

  Wu Yulan misunderstood. How can these fine people be animals, when they could die for such a noble cause?

  Closer to the summit, they encountered living cultivators in small outposts. Most of them were wounded and beaten, and few even dared to look up at the strange group of white-cloaked strangers that walked through their sect as if they owned it. Various shouts and cries echoed from the palaces that were still intact, mostly seeking medicinal pills or materials.

  Here, Lei Yangming retrieved several pouches full of medicine from his storage ring. These pouches he handed out to a dozen cultivators, alongside special instructions.

  “These red pills are only for those on their last breath. These blue ones are for mild injuries. These purple ones are qi recovery pills…”

  Yuan Qiuyue followed suit and distributed several pouches of various medicinal herbs that the alchemists here could produce into medicine.

  Both these pills and herbs were of such high grade that it made the receiving disciples burst into grateful tears as if a miracle had come to Star Mountain.

  No one bothered to point out that these pills and medicinal herbs were meant for their own use and their goal.

  When they reached the Sect Hall, Zhu Xuelian pushed the door open with enough force to make them swing into the walls with a loud bang.

  Hundreds of glares immediately settled on her, and half that many killing intents rose. But as their eyes met hers, their intensities quickly wavered before the determined, sharp glare of her hate.

  On the left side, looking at the floor, were the hundred or so remaining disciples of the Galaxy Sword sect, and a few elders. On the right side were a hundred or so yellow-robed cultivators. In the middle, an old man kowtowed before a fat, middle-aged man in a lavish yellow robe, with a cultivation that Zhu Xuelian could not even measure. Peak of Nihility?

  Zhu Xuelian stomped forward, as her cadre of white-cloaked fellows also poured into the room in her wake, and she stopped next to the old man kowtowing on the ground.

  “Ancestor Yang,” she said, “What are you doing? Why are you sitting on the floor? You will catch a cold. Forgive this junior’s impoliteness.”

  With those words, she picked up Ancestor Yang by the neck of his robe and tossed him toward the Galaxy Sword disciples and elders, who caught Ancestor Yang with a bewildered expression.

  There was a mix of anger and surprise from everyone in the Sect Hall, but especially the Galaxy Sword disciples. However, though the Galaxy Sword disciples did not recognize her, they all felt a familiarity toward this figure and, in particular, the impression her killing intent carved into their souls.

  They could never forget Zhu Xuelian’s intensity.

  “You… what reason do you have to interrupt? Are you so eager to die?” the fat, middle-aged man spoke.

  To this, Zhu Xuelian drew her sword and pointed it skyward.

  A haze of fire erupted around her sword as she spoke a few simple words.

  “Sword Dao Domain — Salvation Edict.”

  The haze of fire rippled and disappeared into itself. Then, like a fine beam of red threads, a line of pure fire rose into the air, stretching infinitely toward the heavens. There was a crushing sword force within that line of fire, where qi and sword law perfectly merged to create an unimaginable union of killing force. It was as if the world itself wanted them dead.

  The line rippled and smeared out, forming a single word in red ink.

  DEATH

  All the disciples stared up at the sky — even though there was a roof between them and the word which they could see clearly — and they watched it descend toward them. In a moment, they realized that the word itself was not painted in ink, but constructed out of thousands of swords made of strange fire energies that reminded them of ancestral worship and purification.

  And then the salvation edict — death — compelled them to obey and pierced dozens of yellow-robed cultivators. Whomever the swords touched, they turned into ashes, each one erupting into flames like a human torch doused in oil and pulling others into the vacuum of consumed air, feeding a bloodthirsty, blossoming inferno.

  The smarter disciples ran — they, with their Nascent Soul cultivation, did not underestimate this Core Formation cultivator — and most of them broke through the walls of the Sect Hall to do so. Others fought back against the swords that rained down to claim their lives, keeping them at bay, though only a few managed to avoid being pulled into the flames of others as their lives bloomed and ignited.

  Lei Yangming and the others did not wait for Zhu Xuelian to give the command, and they immediately rushed after the yellow-robed disciples who escaped. The few that didn’t immediately run after the escaping ones did so after Zhu Xuelian’s next words, as she lowered her sword.

  “Kill them all.”