“It’s the Slaughtering King!”

“The Slaughtering King’s here.”

Some eagle-eyed guests noticed that the man soaring above their heads was the Slaughtering King himself. The spiritual master naturally knew of the Slaughtering King, and began flying away at an even faster rate toward the west.

Li Mo steered his sword in front of the black smoke. Refusing to have a head-on clash with the man, the black smoke turned toward the northwest. As he did so, however, he found Li Mo’s figure in front of him once again. In the end, after the black smoke had tried to escape in all the cardinal directions and found itself blocked, it had no choice but to remain still.

Li Mo’s face was grim. His eyes flashed with an icy light, and he could clearly see that, within the black smoke, Yun Ruoyan was caught in the embrace of a pure-black centipede spirit. The gauze patch on Yun Ruoyan’s face had fallen off. Her right cheek was swollen and bulbous, a clear sign of extreme poison. Although Yun Ruoyan could neither move nor speak, she hadn’t fainted. That pain continued to plague her, and tears rolled down her face like pearls.

Li Mo’s hands were clenched behind his back.

Finding himself fully trapped, the spiritual master could only reveal himself.

“Slaughtering King, I’m simply here to hunt a demon. This thousand-year-old fox demon killed the second daughter of the Yun family and was trying to bewitch the entire household!”

“You bastard.” With a slicing motion, Li Mo dimmed the aura of the prayer beads that were holding Yun Ruoyan captive.

All the guests had left the great hall and were looking toward the sky. The Yun matriarch and her scions had also walked out from the side room they were hiding in. As a result, everyone could see the fox in the spiritual master’s hands transform back into Yun Ruoyan.

“An illusion might be able to trick everyone else down there, but do you think it’ll work on me?” Li Mo shouted coldly. “You’re the demon here, not her!”

Li Mo had made his pronunciation with spiritual energy, so all the bystanders could hear his words loud and clear. The crowd once again erupted in shock: it seemed that the demon wasn’t Yun Ruoyan, but rather the demon hunter himself…!

Xi Lan, Peony, and Ling Lan had been getting ready for the banquet when the commotion occurred. When they asked around, they found out that Yun Ruoyan had been caught and branded a demon by a Daoist. The three maids jumped in shock and tried to rush into the great hall to inform Yun Lan that it was all a ploy by Madam An, but the throng of people rushing out of the hall left them unable to enter.

When the three servants heard the Slaughtering King’s words from outside, they immediately shouted, “Our mistress isn’t a demon! Madam An summoned that demon hunter to scheme against her, and we saw him leave her quarters with our own eyes!”

“Master, Old Madam, this demon hunter is in cahoots with Madam An!”

“Please, Master, Old Madam, you have to believe us. Please save our mistress!”

The three servants were almost crying in their agitation.

“Master, Mother, don’t listen to those servants’ nonsense! I never harmed Ruoyan!” Madam An was as flustered as anyone else present: the development of these events had gone far beyond her expectations. Why had the spiritual master suddenly become hostile to her, and how did the Slaughtering King appear at this exact moment?

Yun Lan eyed Madam An coldly. Although he didn’t say a word, that gaze left chills on her body, and she couldn’t help taking a step back.

“Mother,” Yun Ruoyao supported her mother from behind before whispering into her ear, “don’t worry, Mother. Yun Ruoyan seems to be suffering from a highly toxic poison of some sort, and she might not be able to live. If she dies, it won’t matter whether she’s a demon or not.”

When Madam An heard her daughter’s words, she immediately raised her head and began to pray that the heavens above wouldn’t allow Yun Ruoyan to live.

The spiritual master was feeling equally flustered. That Li Mo was able to break his illusion on Yun Ruoyan and on himself so easily was clear evidence that Li Mo’s cultivation was far beyond his.

Trying to resist such an overwhelmingly strong foe was clearly an illogical decision, but Yun Ruoyan’s status as a human furnace was too enticing to the centipede spirit. If he were to give up on her, then he would likely never have a chance for improvement in his lifetime, forever doomed to remain a centipede spirit. As a result, the spiritual master decided to fight for her.

“Slaughtering King, the demon is in my hands. If you try anything, I’ll kill her immediately.”

“If you dare hurt her, I’ll flay your skin and pulverize your bones.” Li Mo’s voice was faint and cool, but his fury was evident. “I don’t care what sort of demon you are, but if you let her go, I’ll spare your life.”

“Slaughtering King, please calm down. The girl’s hideous, and I’m not interested in her in that manner. I doubt your taste is that unfortunate, so… is it also her unusual physique that interests you?”

Li Mo didn’t respond, but he’d mentally slated the centipede spirit to death. No one else could know that Yun Ruoyan was a human furnace; anyone else who found out had to die!

The centipede spirit relaxed somewhat in the resulting silence. “There are too many people here, so shall we make a transaction in a private location, Slaughtering King?”

Li Mo’s eyes were so icy that they’d all but frozen over. He could see that the spirit had a hand on Yun Ruoyan’s neck, ready to end her life at any moment. If he weren’t hurt, he could have teleported to Yun Ruoyan’s side and rescued her in a flash.

But flying all the way here on his sword had significantly agitated his wound, and Li Mo really wasn’t confident that he could save Yun Ruoyan from the centipede spirit’s grubby hands without harming her.

“Let us,” Li Mo responded after thinking for a moment, before taking out a pill from his robes that he handed to the spiritual master.

When the spiritual master took the pill and saw that it was, in fact, a high-grade antidote, he smiled and praised the Slaughtering King before feeding it to Yun Ruoyan. Having ingested the antidote, Yun Ruoyan finally was able to fall unconscious.

Li Mo followed behind the spiritual master as they rushed westward. When Yun Lan saw them leave, he shouted toward the heavens, “Slaughtering King, please save my daughter!”

“Don’t worry, Official Yun. With Uncle around, nothing will happen to Miss Yun,” Li Qianyuan spoke up by Yun Lan’s side.

The spiritual master finally stopped in a forested, mountainous area, and Li Mo perched on a treetop a few meters distant from him.

“Slaughtering King, I know I’m not your match,” the centipede spirit began. “I can hand you Miss Yun, but you need to promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“When you’ve gotten what you want from her, and when she’s no longer of any use to you…” The centipede spirit’s eyebrows waggled. “Would you give her to me then?”

The spirit’s words weren’t explicit, but his intent was clear: after the Slaughtering King had made use of her to bypass his bottleneck, to lend her to the centipede spirit for his own use.

After all, Yun Ruoyan was so ugly that he doubted the Slaughtering King would have any reason to guard her if not for her body. Once the Slaughtering King broke through, he wouldn’t need such a furnace any longer.

Li Mo’s fingernails grew as sharp as claws behind his back, and his lips curled up into a mocking smile. “I accede to your request. Now, hand her over.”

“Oh, no, not yet. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Slaughtering King, but this is too precious a treasure for me to play around with. Whether or not I’ll be able to become a sword saint depends solely on this girl.” After thinking for a moment, he continued, “I’d like you to make a vow to the heavens.”

The mythology of the Chenyuan continent supported the notion that saints and immortals existed above the heavens, that the key to becoming an immortal lay at the very end of cultivation. As a result, the people of the Chenyuan continent, and especially cultivators, placed a particularly significant emphasis on such vows.

“Slaughtering King, I hold your word in high regard. As long as you take this vow, I’ll hand the girl over to you immediately.”

“And if I don’t?”

The centipede spirit’s eyes turned cold. “If you wish to monopolize her, Slaughtering King, then I’ll simply have to kill her. If I can’t have her, then no one else will.”

He waited grimly for Li Mo’s response as his fingers tapped on her neck. After a momentary silence, Li Mo opened his mouth. “If I ever break this compact, may I be struck by lightning, my cultivation stunted, never to reincarnate!”

“Excellent.” The centipede spirit laughed before throwing Yun Ruoyan to Li Mo. “Three years from now, I’ll return for the girl. Farewell!” He cupped his palms at the Slaughtering King as he made to leave. What he didn’t expect, however, was for Li Mo to appear in front of him once more, blocking his path.

“Slaughtering King, what do you mean by this?” The centipede spirit frowned. “I’ve already handed you the girl. Are you thinking of going against your pact?”

Li Mo didn’t deign to reply. One of his hands held Yun Ruoyan securely, and the other he placed in front of him. As he spread out his long, slender fingers, his fingernails slowly turned sharp, gleaming with gold.

“Slaughtering King, don’t you humans fixate on vows?” The centipede spirit was finally getting anxious. “Aren’t you afraid of karmic retaliation?!”

“Ha, haha.” Li Mo began to laugh. “You can tell that she’s a human furnace, but not that I’m not a human?”