The blood suffused everything. It flowed into the dirt, it stained the skin of countless victims, it seeped into Shao’s mind where it could never be fully removed. Shao was vaguely aware of his trousers becoming stained with blood as he fell to his knees, and a persistent droning noise emanated from the direction of the demonic cultivators.

Shao blinked twice, and the droning noise sharpened into a condescending voice directed at him. “I see… you must be the Yang cultivator. The elder must have gone after the yaoguai. I knew that beast couldn’t control its appetite.”

Chu Haoyu’s chest was ripped open. Several pure white ribs jutted out of his thoracic cavity like spines on a porcupine. In places, the ribs stabbed through Haoyu’s fragile skin. In others, the flesh and skin had been flayed off completely, revealing the damaged organs beneath. Haoyu’s unmoving face looked up into the sky like he was shirking his job at the fish market and watching clouds on a lazy afternoon.

A self-satisfied smirk appeared on the face of the leader of the demonic cultivators. Everything seemed to be going according to his plan, and he intended to give himself a few moments to enjoy it. “We probably only have a few minutes before the elder comes around looking for you, so you’ll need to make your choice quickly. If an elder of Shigong Temple took an interest in you, you must be worth something. You can join us, or I, Gao Sun Fang, will take your life.”

The body of Chu Peijing fell at an odd angle. It took Shao a moment to notice, but her foot had been trapped under a tree root. He could visualize what transpired easily. As the demonic cultivators chased the villagers, Chu Peijing got stuck and fell to the ground. Not willing to leave one of their family members, the rest of the Chu family stayed by her side and put up one last pointless surge of resistance against the oncoming cultivators.

Gao Fang, the leader of the demonic cultivators, walked up to Shao’s kneeling form. “You may have not picked up on this simple fact yet, but the lives of these animals are worthless.” The demonic cultivator gestured broadly to the corpses littering the field. “A mortal does not weep when he crushes an anthill, and a cultivator does not cry when he massacres a village of mortals. If not for us, someone else would come along eventually and cull the livestock.”

Yang Lin Shao rose to his feet.

“Have you made up your mind?” Gao Fang asked with a smile.

“Fuck off and die,” Shao said, his voice shaking with rage. When he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper, as the rage filling every bone and muscle in his body prevented his lungs from functioning properly.

“Then I suppose you’ve chosen…”

Shao charged at Gao Fang like a pouncing tiger. He used his iron staff like a spear, stabbing it hard in the direction of Gao Fang’s midsection. A moment of surprise colored the demonic cultivator’s expression as Shao covered the distance between them in a heartbeat. Gao Fang barely had time to take up a fighting stance and bring the palm of one hand forward. He grabbed the front of the iron staff and pushed the blow aside, causing the iron staff to miss his chest by a hair. Gao Fang did not have nearly enough power to stop the attack completely, so the iron staff’s momentum halted next to his chest.

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“Wait,” Gao Fang breathed, fear evident in his voice. “What step have you reached?”

“Die!” Yang Shao screamed, his rage allowing him to bypass the tightness in his lungs.

Shao tore the haft of the iron staff out of Gao Fang’s hand, swinging the heavy staff in a circle. In the half-second the iron staff flew through the air, it continuously built up momentum as Shao put as much power into the swing as his body allowed. Gao Fang brought up his forearm to block the strike, and the heavy staff crashed into his arm with calamitous force.

Gao Fang’s forearm was not nearly sturdy enough to block the attack. Upon impact, the bones in his arm instantly shattered, barely halting the staff’s momentum as it crashed into his skull. The staff smashed into Gao Fang’s head, shattering his skull effortlessly and scattering the demonic cultivator’s brain onto the grass below.

Before the leader of the demonic cultivators could even fall completely to the ground, Shao charged toward the other four members of his posse. A small part of his brain wondered why the leader had been so weak. Did the fury of his attack catch Gao Fang off guard, or was Gao Fang just weaker than he looked? This momentary thought was completely subsumed by Shao’s rage and his need to kill the four surviving cultivators.

One of the other demonic cultivators, a boy in his late teens, didn’t dodge Shao’s staff in time. The iron staff struck the demonic cultivator in the chest and stabbed all the way through his body. Shao pulled hard on his staff, but it had become stuck on the teenager’s ribcage. His attempt to dislodge the staff only caused the demonic cultivator to scream in pain and vomit blood.

The three surviving demonic cultivators fell upon Shao, forcing him to abandon his mission to retrieve the iron staff. They assailed him with a flurry of blows that forced him to go on the defensive. Each of the demonic cultivators were about half as strong as Shao himself. While not harmful on their own, together they could deal some damage.

The female cultivator paused her assault for a moment to take a neutral fighting stance. She held one hand forward and pulled her other arm back. By the time Shao realized what she was doing, it was too late to stop her. The girl rotated her body and attacked Shao with Crashing Star of the Southern Heavens. Shao caught the blow on his arm, and he heard a loud crack as the blow broke one of his bones.

With his other arm, Shao reached forward and grabbed the female cultivator by the wrist. She yelped in fear and pain as Shao’s grip strengthened. Shao pulled her close to him, interposing her body between himself and the other two demonic cultivators.

The furious rain of attacks stopped as they realized they would have to get through the female cultivator to reach Shao.

In a voice shaking with fear, the female cultivator said, “P-please don’t hurt me. Th-they forced me to help them. If you let me go, I’ll…”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Shao brought the elbow of his injured arm around the female cultivator’s neck and squeezed down hard enough to break it.