The newcomer landed softly on the grass, making no noise as she did so. Her sharp blue eyes shifted from the girl beside me before settling on me.
"You are free to go," she said, her tone sounding more like an order than a request.
Now, I really should have been getting the hell away from here. I was no brave hero; quite the opposite. I was scared of what she could do. With her ice sword and the biting coldness radiating off her, it was easy to connect the dots between the murdered disciples I had stumbled upon before and this girl.
But trusting the word of someone, a cold-blooded murderer, would be stupid. The only thing you could trust an enemy to do was lie if it was convenient for them.
"Can I at least ask what is happening here?" I put up a friendly smile and shuffled the other girl behind me.
Even if she told me that I was free to go, murderers weren't easy to deal with. Perhaps she was doing this all for sport; the girl I had brought with me didn't seem like the kind who would have tried to kill her.
The jade-like beauty narrowed her eyes. "This test is a waste of time. I will kill all the disciples from the Sect to show that I'm worth investing in."
"Kill disciples from the Sect? Wouldn't that brew bad blood between you and the Sect?" I asked, carefully noting that I was also one of those disciples from the Sect. It seemed like she had no intention of letting me go and no particular interest in bothering too much to hide something like this.
"If you could exchange one coin of silver for a coin of gold, would you complain?" She explained as if I had asked the most ridiculous question ever.
Oh, so she was working under the assumption that the Sect would accept her no matter what. But her actions made it clear that she was under some kind of time limit; otherwise, they were wholly illogical and downright stupid. Either that or she was just insane, putting on a facade of sanity.
The sad part was that there was a good chance the Sect would accept her as long as she killed no one related to the Core Elders or the Sect Leader. There was a reason someone like Song Song was so passionate about changing the Sect's punishment system.
After all, the Sect's rules weren't necessarily made to help the disciples who came there. They were there to benefit the Sect itself. That was why, when a Core Elder or one of their relatives committed something, it was easier to turn a blind eye rather than punish the man's great-great-grandson for breaking the cultivation of an outer disciple. What else were they going to do? Fight the Core Elder?
Perhaps those same rules kept the Blazing Sun Sect around for so long. Song Song had a crazy solution for this whole thing: If the people weren't scared of the rules, she would make them scared of the punishment. It wasn't necessarily a good way to handle things, but it was something she had come up with.
If things went as Song Song wanted, people wouldn't be oppressing each other. She would just be oppressing them all equally.
After spending so much time around Song Song, I understood why she thought the way she did. However, understanding didn't mean I agreed with her views, nor would I be a sacrifice or tool for her to achieve these things.
The air around us grew colder and more rigid, and the jade-like beauty was ready to swing her sword. I grabbed the girl behind me by the scruff of her uniform and jumped back behind a tree as a wave of coldness exploded around us. In an instant, the area around us turned into ice, and as quickly as I could, I cast a basic barrier around us. But the cold also ended up freezing the barrier, and we were stuck in an ice egg.
I put an arm around the girl's shoulders and asked, "What's your name?"
"C-Cao Wu," she stuttered, sticking close to me like glue.
"What martial techniques do you know, Cao Wu?" I whispered.
"Eight Gale Steps and Wine Piercing Sword Art," she answered between heavy breaths. The air around us grew heavier, colder, and harder to breathe. "The Wine Piercing Sword Art is an Earth Grade Technique, best used when someone is drunk and has a curved sword. I have neither on hand..."
She had an Earth Grade Technique as an outer disciple? Since when did Earth Grade Techniques become so common?
Despite my thoughts, I didn't waste much time, so I kicked the ice egg around us while dismissing the barrier. As my kick connected with the ice, it felt like my leg got frostbite as the ice cracked around us and broke. Immediately, I kicked off the ground with the Rushing Bull Step, and Cao Wu followed me, too. However, she struggled to keep up with me as I went at the best sustainable speed possible.
If Cao Wu couldn't keep up, she would be left behind. If I stayed behind to try to protect her, I would only get both of us killed.
But my worries were needless because while she was having some difficulty keeping up, her movement technique seemed better than mine when it came to escaping these situations.
Despite our speed, the cold feeling grew closer, and it felt like I was naked in Antarctica as my clothes did nothing to protect me from the chill.
But suddenly, there was a surge of Qi, and something quickly approached us. So I stopped in my tracks, causing Cao Wu to smash into me as she was too close.
"Sorry-" she was about to apologize, but there was no time for good manners as I grabbed her by the clothes and jumper to the side.
Not even a second after doing that, the tree we were standing by froze instantly. Then, a large invisible slash cut it into two. My heart froze, and I bit the inside of my cheek to cause enough pain that the shaking stopped. I hardly knew whether I was shaking because of fear or the cold.
But one thing was for sure, she was playing with us.
Cao Wu's face paled as the cold grew closer, and she said, "We need to run away!"
She tried grabbing my sleeve and dragging me away, but I didn't budge. Her gesture of not running away without me was heartwarming, but it was no longer necessary. By now, I had come to a startling realization.
"You want me to believe that someone as skilled as you has such bad aim?" I asked.
As if to mock me, the jade-like beauty emerged from one of the trees before us, showing that she had already overtaken us and there was no way we could run away.
"If you could see through my plan, you should have kept your mouth shut. Perhaps you could have lived longer," the jade-like stated, too calm for someone who had her plans seen through. Which meant she would kill us.
"You let us go intentionally so we would lead you to another team. No doubt you did the same with Cao Wu here," I stated matter-of-factly.
But the jade-like beauty did not mock or belittle me; instead, she nodded. "Yes. For all it's worth, I would like to apologize to you all. But my life is more important than yours. If there was another way, I wouldn't have killed so many. But when you chase immortality, you should be prepared to have an early death. I will kill millions more until my dream comes true."
That was a lot of lip service for someone who was brandishing their weapon to finish us off. So far, her relentless killing made no sense, and it clearly was not in self-defense. She wasn't someone who needed to be defended by anyone.
She swung her sword, and that cold feeling again took over. Before Cao Wu could respond, I grabbed her again. I threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes while falling as the invisible ice slash cut the tree where we were standing. Even as we were falling, cold energy blasts came toward us. The Qi was so dense that it had formed into visible ice spikes that followed me like homing missiles as we fell.
Rushing Bull Step!
I stomped the ground with all the power I could gather, causing the earth to shake and the trees around us to sputter. Then, as the dust rose, we hid behind a tree, and the ice spikes punctured the said tree.
"You can sense my attacks? That's quite something for someone at the Body Tempering Realm. Your senses might be better than one of the Qi Gathering disciples I ambushed. He sensed nothing and only noticed by the time I had stabbed him in the eye," she explained as we heard footsteps approaching us. "Perhaps when some lazy Qi Gathering disciples can see Qi, their ability to sense Qi becomes irrelevant and not something they actively try to use. You can't see Qi, so sensing is the only thing you can do, and that's all you have to concentrate on."
While I let her yap, I used my finger to write some instructions for Cao Wu. The fellow outer disciple looked a bit out of it, likely in shock, but she still nodded at my plan. Then, I used my fingers to count down from three.
"Now!" I yelled out, and we both shot off in opposite directions.
It was clear that we stood no chance against this monstrous woman. But no matter how strong she was, she couldn't be in two places at the same time and would have to give chase to one of us.
Thankfully, this girl was not like Song Song, who trusted her instincts enough to have her body react before her mind could catch up with what was happening. But the jade-like girl's reaction was still fast, and she shot an attack toward the girl while turning toward me and shooting off like a bullet.
"Are you perhaps like me?" She asked.
But her words were cut short because her eyes widened as she turned around to see that the spikes she had sent toward Cao Wu had been destroyed by a barrier.
"Tch, a second artifact? Just how many does she have?" The jade-like girl grumbled under her breath and turned toward me, her pupils dilating as she zoned in on me. "Doesn't matter, I can catch up to her later. You, on the other hand, look like someone troublesome enough to be able to escape."
I no longer paid attention to her words and concentrated on moving as fast as possible. With every step I took, the tree branch I stomped upon was blasted apart, and I flew off. No matter how hard I pushed, the girl was catching up to me faster and faster.
Taking a deep breath, I ignored the pain in my legs from using the Rushing Bull Step further than it was intended to be used. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my Qi sense while looking for attacks. She seemed to be satisfied with chasing me for now.
Did she think I would lead her to another team? No, such sidetracked thoughts were useless for now. I should only concentrate on the main objective.
A 2D map of the island formed in my mind, trying to recall the shoddy map Song Song had shown me when telling me where we were going. Then I remembered where I had killed the team trying to kill us and which direction the two inner disciples Song Song had chased had gone.
When those two had run away, they went in a straight line, and Song Song chased them North. Based on their initial movement, their movement martial technique should be like my Rushing Bull Step, which worked best when moving in a straight line. So, there was a clear, straight segment where they could have moved along the island.
Now, the question that my life depended on was to try and guess which place Song Song had killed them. If she had done so, then at which point was she returning to where she had left us. So I had to calculate all that in my mind while escaping.
This was not some math homework I could skip.
I was not returning to the beach where the rest of my team was. That was the direction Cao Wu was going to meet up with my team and notify the Outer Elder here.
But I was not running in a random direction either. I was trying to get Song Song and this psycho jade-like girl to meet.
The second question was, how could I survive before either of my plans came to fruition?
Also, the jade-like beauty seemed like someone with a plan, and I had a distinct feeling she had something in store for me just like I had for her.