Under the baptism of the cold moonlight and the disappointment of the astral stars, a handle-less steel sword commenced its nightly purge in Bone Spirit Town.
The steel blade carved its presence into the essence of the Peaceful Road, erasing the necessity of the street's moniker as well as imparting a blessing of the cruel and unfaithful jianghu.
"ARGH!"
A cry filled with the torment of death and a longing for release echoed throughout the solemn and mocking night sky, and a head belonging to a soldier in his thirties tumbled onto the Peaceful Road, forming a pathway of blood that trailed behind the severed cranium.
The obtuse object rolled for several meters, until it came to a natural state of rest after a gruesome removal process.
Besides it in all directions lay a pile of severed human skulls, each soaking in their nascent vitality and spilt blood essence.
"Help! Hel-HELP!"
Another cry seeking for liberation echoed within the forcefully slumbering streets, following by the soft spongy sound of a fleshy substance decompressing due to a severe puncture.
The misty barrier continued its faithful duty of obscuring all visual reception regarding the scenes that occurred on the other side, but the three elders and the young lady were already terrified to the bottom of their wits.
The four people sank onto their knees, their limbs trembling in fear as their hearts attempted to leap out of their hearts and seek the Dragon Gate.
"Just… just what kind of…" an absentminded and shell-shocked elder gasped, his chest heaving for a cup's worth of sore breath.
"What's happening…?"
Whoosh!
The handle-less sword swung in a perfect full moon sweep in the air, severing three more unlucky heads from their respective containers.
As the numerous men backed away in fear, the steel blade howled with a malicious anger before rushing towards its next prey.
A young girl stood behind it at a distance of five meters, untouched by the platoon of soldiers dispatched to claim her life.
Partly bathed by the moonlight glow and shielded by the sustained darkness of midnight, the young girl's obscured countenance sported a delicate smile of amusement.
An Fei watched the steel blade vent its pent-up fury in a single night, her lips locked as her mind underwent a partial trip down memory lane.
Before the young girl's consciousness, the scene of the Peaceful Road transformed into numerous flashbacks of various locations, their ghastly screams and shrieks returning to her mind.
A dense rainforest accompanied by the onslaught of bullets crashing through trees and all other strains of life.
She had run for her life from an overly excited division of well-trained hunters and special agents, not even bothering to conceal their presence as they encircled her from all directions.
Pei!
The handle-less sword hacked onto a younger solder from above, splitting his body into two equal halves.
A greasy mixture of white, grey, and red splattered onto the cobbled streets, the parched soil finally receiving their heavenly blessing.
The rainforest morphed into an open desert, with lonesome cactus trees serving as loyal sentinels to ward off the cowardly and weak-minded.
In the blistering heat and intense humidity, a young girl ran from side to side, utilizing the frequent plumes of dust and the sloped sandy plains to evade her captors.
Pu!
The steel blade dropped to hover a few centimeters above the ground, its blade parallel to the cobbled design of the street.
Amidst the men's frightened gazes and shrieks of terror, the handle-less sword began to rotate utilizing its partly severed tang as the anchor, rising a centimeter in height each time it completed a full rotation.
A scarlet radiance erupted from the inscriptions engraved onto the blade, extending forward to sever the legs of nearby soldiers.
Within the storm of scarlet malevolence, a slew of starved wraiths and banshees tore apart the fallen bodies of the soldiers, leaving nothing behind but metallic armor components and polearm.
After receiving its penance, the desert morphed into the interior of a research laboratory, then an archaic landmark of a powerful country, followed by a slew of buildings, environments, and hell – each filled with a horde of excited and agitated people radiating with a sinister intention and a malevolent aura.
Sha!
As the young girl closed her eyes and took a deep breath with her arms outstretched to their fullest length, the steel blade decimated the last shivering soldier of the platoon exclusively owned by the Xiao Clan's Young Miss Xiao Yue.
The young man crawled backwards on his hands and knees towards the barrier of mist, as if seeking aid from the nonresponsive elders on the other side.
The handle-less blade and teased him from time to time, slivers of scarlet radiance severing miniscule portions of important flesh and tissue from the soldier's body.
With a heartrending cry seeking help, the young man collapsed onto the pile of his compatriot's severed heads, causing the lake of blood to merge with his own vestiges of vitality seeping from his bleeding and torn body.
It was at this moment that the veil of mist decided to bid its protectories farewell, dissipating with another glimpse of moonlight.
The barrier that had obscured the visuals of the scene on the other side had decomposed of its own accord, permitting the elders of the Xiao Clan to welcome a hellish experience to haunt their nightmares.
Three elderly men and one young lady stood in silence as they gazed at the pile of severed heads, the young soldier's mutilated body, and a large pool of blood that had stained the cobbled stones with a scarlet malice.
Their eyes were stretched to the absolute limits their physique could sustain, their consciousness phasing between life and death from the gruesome shock.
The handle-less blade had seemingly disappeared from sight, leaving the defenseless figure of a young girl to gaze at them from the other side of the gruesome obstacle.
An Fei blinked as she took in the astonished and despairing countenances of the Xiao Clan's members before her, realizing that the seeds of a perverse, malignant illness had infiltrated their souls from their catatonic state.
The young girl tilted her head to the side, a slightly upwards curve tilting her lips.
The little raven and the small fox had long been stuffed into the startlingly soundproof leather bag, obscuring any obvious hints regarding her identity.
"What…"
The elder on the middle was the first to respond, his eyes first submerged in the pile of flesh and blood of the Xiao Clan's preciously reared military force, before landing onto An Fei's figure.
Though his eyes were still narrowed as compared to before, the tinge of lust and depravity was now replaced by a cold fear.
"Esteemed… Daoist," the old man mulled over his words with obvious hesitation and reluctance.
"The… Xiao Clan… requests for the Esteemed Daoist's mercy. Under the surveillance of the eternal heavens, there exists no eternal grudge, only endless prosper."
Near the latter half of his sentence, the elder's voice recovered its dignity and powerful imposition.
The old man straightened his hunched back in a display of strength, his eyes reflecting a might only displayed in the Shattered Star Continent's Foundation Establishment practitioners.
"No eternal grudge, only endless prosper… was that what you said?"
An Fei intoned each word that departed from her lips, the pair of scarlet irises carefully scrutinizing each of the people standing before her.
In the dense moonlight that shone above their heads, the cracks in the irises began to reemerge after months of their obscured slumber.
In the crisscrossing, weaving branches of black that invaded the sea of scarlet, there existed a faint shadow of an immortal dominance soaked with the blood of heaven.
As the cracks increased in their contrast against An Fei's irises, the astral stars above frowned in suspicion at the abrupt fluctuation of divine essence.
Nonetheless, the stars remained quiet; the earth was not their jurisdiction, nor were they willing to place themselves in trouble by mindlessly quibbling.
"We have said," the three elders chorused, before the elder to the left took a step forward to brush the corner of his chin.
"Nevertheless, we are three elderly folk of eight, and there is an ancestor above us in our Xiao Clan. Esteemed Daoist, let us write off our conflict with the stars serving as the witness!"
The imposing shout reverberated within the startled but quelled Peaceful Road, and the young lady's consciousness finally recovered.
Xiao Yue glanced around from within the three elders' domain of protection, her pretty countenance blanching at the gruesome sight of what had become of her platoon.
"Write off our conflict?" An Fei raised an eyebrow, her lips nearly curving into a sadistic smile.
The young girl raised a finger to point towards the young lady behind the three elders, her voice laced with coldness and a tinge of mockery.
"Then your Young Miss will also prevent herself from unleashing a conflict that pits me against your Xiao Clan?"
The three elders glanced at each other with curious dismay, then onto the pretty young lady behind their wings.
Nonetheless, the chorus of power and confidence echoed for the second time.
"We, three elders of the Xiao Clan, do solemnly swear!"
"Then that's good," the young girl finally revealed her tantalizing smirk.
However, An Fei's hand surged towards the night sky, before erupting in an invisible aura of malice and death!
"That was a nice threat, calling out the ancestor of your clan. Let me show you mine, ah?"
The handle-less sword that had been hovering in the air above Bone Spirit Town flashed with an indistinct light, before morphing into a three-pronged spear!
And at the young girl's signal, the spear of calamity began its journey of persecution!