Chapter 92: Farewell to a Turbulent Past

Staring at the body lying on the ground, An suddenly sighed.

"You can stop pretending. I know you've been conscious for a while." He had long sensed the sudden fluctuations in her Qi, even back when he was fighting Yin Claws. But because of her weakness and severe injuries, she was too afraid to even move, let alone run.

Hearing his voice, Ru Meng's body trembled. 'I-I need to stay calm!'

She slowly turned and sat up on the crimson grass, bracing herself with one hand on the ground. Her clothes were torn from the battle, and some parts of her body were clearly visible, especially in the position she had taken.

"Brothe-Senior, please forgive me and my inappropriate behavior! I cannot show you the proper respect due to my condition. Please understand." Lowering her head slightly, she showed a gesture of respect, clasping her hands at her chest. 'Who even is this?! I can't remember anyone who looks like that... Especially from our Sect! He's clearly not connected to any core group! And his cultivation? Judging by the screams and the energy I felt during their battle, he's clearly at Foundation Establishment... But now, I feel pressure between the eighth and ninth layers of Qi Condensation... I need to be careful!'

Waiting for his response, Ru Meng looked at him, but saw only cold, empty eyes devoid of any emotion. 'The main thing is that he doesn't realize I tried to use him! Damn! I need to think of something... Anything!'

Without overthinking, she straightened her back and shifted onto her knees. She lowered her body slightly and, as if by accident, folded her hands lower, causing her chest to rise slightly, stretching her torn clothes and exposing more, creating the effect that her breasts were about to burst free, or that the fabric itself would tear apart under the pressure. "Senior! My elder sworn sister, Es Tsu, the most outstanding Alchemist of our sect, and my Master, Sia Moy, the Lord of the Hope Peak himself, will reward you when they learn that you helped me and saved me from an inevitable and horrifying death! I don't know how else to thank you!" With a sincere, kind face, she smiled warmly, looking at An with her mesmerizing blue eyes, trying with all her might to evoke pity.

'Just you dare touch me. Once they hear who stands behind me, even the other Peak Lords wouldn't dare lay a hand on me.' Overflowing with confidence, she looked into his eyes with hope, not moving, remaining on her knees. 'When I break through to Foundation Establishment myself, I'll put you on your knees before me!'

Carefully examining her, specifically her Qi flows, An tilted his head. 'This world really is cruel... I saved her, preserved her life. If it weren't for me, she would have been... I don't even know what that pervert would have done to her... And in return, only hidden threats and her true emotions...' Observing the emotions buried deep within Ru Meng, anger, humiliation, contempt, hidden behind innocent eyes and a grateful gaze.

'Sigh... This isn't a novel where, after saving the princess, she rewards you with herself and half the kingdom to boot... Here, it's every cultivator for themselves, especially if you don't have a protagonist's luck and aura 24/7...' An immediately thought of the strange group surrounding Mo Fan. All the girls around him never showed hidden malicious thoughts toward this world's protagonist, even though An had only crossed paths with them a few times, the contrast was enormous.

He suddenly noticed a gray patch spreading on her side, growing larger by the second. 'It seems that pervert never intended to leave her alive, he used Yin energy poison on her in advance...'

Sitting on her knees, Ru Meng frowned slightly. Following his gaze, she looked down and saw her skin turning gray, and immediately felt the cold spreading from her side.

"Ah!" Talismans, pills, vials of ointment began appearing in her hands. With trembling, already cold hands, she used everything in her arsenal to heal herself. But after each talisman, each pill, realizing nothing worked, panic seized her. She turned sharply to An with pleading eyes, opening her mouth, but he spoke first.

All this time, watching her futile attempts to expel the Yin energy, An suddenly smiled. "You really don't remember me?"

Hearing something completely unexpected, her face immediately changed. Fear and panic took control of her body. 'W-what difference does it make who you are?! Help me! You owe me... Wait, I should know him? W-who are you?! One of the losers who tried to court me?! I don't have time for this!'

Holding her gray side, now so cold that all nerve endings had simply died, she looked into his eyes, and suddenly shuddered. 'W-what?! I was afraid just by looking into his eyes? Eyes? Why do I remember those eyes... That empty gaze and that familiar feeling of fear... Wh-who is he?!' The more she tried to remember who he was, especially focusing on his eyes, the more she began to tremble. She didn't understand where this fear came from, why it was growing, completely replacing her panic about her spreading wound.

Watching her emotions cycle from fear back to panic and around again, An simply sat down on the ground and began examining the wound on her side.

"Yin energy in your wound can't be expelled even with your Fire Qi, because you need energy from a Foundation Establishment cultivator... If I understand correctly, this was the work of that ghost..."

Hearing his words, her face fell, and she began trembling violently.

"Actually, our meeting wasn't a coincidence... You've probably already realized that yourself, given my cultivation." An began looking around at the bodies lying scattered about.

'What is even happening?! What does he want from me?! UGH! The cold is spreading through my body, m-my lungs... I can barely breathe!' Dropping her hands to the ground, she clawed at it, trying to hold back a scream from the growing pain.

"Actually, I didn't want to reveal myself, I just wanted to observe from the sidelines... But in the end, I decided the opposite. I was curious what choice you would make when you saw me... Would you stand shoulder to shoulder with me and, as a proper righteous cultivator should, face the demonic filth with your head held high... or would you use my life to escape?" Without even looking at her, he continued admiring the various life forms around him, especially a small family of pale blue flowers that had managed to shed the crimson tint, clinging to a thick tree and draining energy from it.

Hearing his calm voice, his words, she tried to crawl backward, but her legs had already begun to go numb. "D-don't touch my body... I beg you! Just not my body!"

"What?" Frowning, he looked into her eyes. "You think I'm a rapist? What makes you think I want your body?"

Just as Ru Meng was about to say something, he cut her off.

"After our first encounter... I won't hide it, I held a deep grudge against you and those three morons... That day they attacked me. Their eyes full of hatred and contempt, their whole beings radiating killing intent without any concealment... For the first time, I felt someone truly trying to kill me... But then you appeared, an officer of the prestigious Sect's Hall of Justice. Seeing you, your graceful silhouette in the sky on a flying sword, that righteous image of a cultivator..." An sighed and looked away from her again, examining his surroundings.

Fighting through the pain, she heard his words, and suddenly her entire body froze. She finally remembered that gaze, its owner, and especially the fear she had felt when the young man before her almost attacked her and her subordinates in the Outer Hall of Hope Peak. 'I-it's him?! Wait, but how?! H-he only joined the Sect three years ago! How? How did he break through to Foundation Establishment?! How?! This slave without any support!'

Though An could see from his peripheral vision the changes in her emotions and understood that she had finally remembered him, he didn't stop. "But upon seeing the brand on my neck, you didn't even hear me out. After taking a bribe, you threw me into the dungeon without a second thought... Sigh. Thanks to that experience, thanks to you, I learned a lot about this world, about the world of cultivation."

Feeling his strange tone, that overly calm voice, she trembled with fear, finally realizing who stood before her and what likely awaited her. Tears welled in her eyes. "P-please forgive me! I, I couldn't have done otherwise! Please!"

"Our second encounter and its consequences were actually my fault. How should I put it... at that time, I was very unstable, trying to understand what and how I should do next, how I should continue to see this world through my eyes... You gave me a year, honestly, the best year of all this time. And I'm grateful for that... though I understand you probably hoped I would perish there."

Seeing his cold, empty eyes, she forgot about her wound entirely, which had already spread across her torso and was slowly creeping up toward her chin. "P-please! My master... If you! He-"

All this time, An hadn't been looking at her so much as at her Qi. Understanding exactly what she feared, he tilted his head. "You misunderstand me... I'm telling you all of this not because I'm going to kill you. I'm simply saying goodbye to you, or rather, saying goodbye to the unstable and most difficult mental period of this life. And I chose you to be the final period of that chapter."

Looking at him with wide eyes, she finally realized she couldn't even move her limbs. She was immediately overcome by a deathly cold. "N-no... AH! Help! Help me!"

Completely ignoring everything he had said, she screamed for help. But seeing that the young man before her wasn't even looking at her, but rather through her, she boiled over in despair.

"How dare you! Who do you think you are?! Do you even know who I am?! Who my clan is?! You! Damned worthless slave! Who just got lucky! You're not even worth the dirt under my nail! I command you in the name of the Ru clan to heal me! F-fast! H-help m-me!" Unable to bear the realization of the inevitable, she finally broke. Her face contorted, all her natural beauty gone, every thought and feeling spilling out directly at him. With snot, spit, and tears, she screamed at the top of her lungs everything she thought of him.

"Who gave you the right! You lowly- PTUGH!" Before she could finish screaming, without even understanding what had happened, suddenly there was silence and darkness: not a single sound, not a single thought.

He lowered his gaze to Ru Meng, now a gray, stiffened body. The Yin energy had taken its toll, turning her into a frozen gray corpse with glassy eyes.

'Sigh... Can I say I did all of this out of hatred and a desire for revenge?' He suddenly closed his eyes and looked deep within himself. 'No... The day the Dao of Death accepted me and became part of me, all those thoughts and desires for vengeance vanished, like something foolish and insignificant... Only curiosity remained. I was curious, after all this time, whether she had changed...'

Touching the wound on her side, he sent a clump of black energy into it. It immediately began devouring all the Qi in her body, growing larger and desiccating her corpse, turning it into something resembling a mummy.

Rising from the ground, An looked around and, having completely lost any interest in Ru Meng, began slowly walking among the bodies of the demonic cultivators, who had long since stopped radiating Death Qi.

Reading through Qi, he realized that only a few of the bodies carried spatial objects, specifically, thick leather bracelets on their wrists.

Waving his hand, he tore them from the bodies and drew them toward himself, trying to peer inside. 'Oh? I can't access them, even after erasing the previous owner's Qi traces... Is it because of the runes on the underside?'

Turning the bracelet over, he began examining the numerous crooked runes. Not understanding which was which, he decided to try force.

Pssh!

'Damn!' Breaking through the defense, the bracelet sparked and imploded, leaving a burn on his hand and a small pebble that radiated no Qi.

Trying to ignore the pain, he focused on the next bracelet while his regeneration healed the wound.

'Demonic energy doesn't work... I can't recreate the cultivator's signature... What nonsense... Oh! Idiot!' After trying several methods, it finally hit him. He began slowly directing particles of Death Qi onto the surface of the runes while carefully monitoring the reactions between the energies.

'It worked!' After erasing only two of the dozen runes, he finally gained access to the bracelet and immediately peered inside. 'Hmm, a few intact spirit stones and a whole bowl of crushed ones... a few sets of clothes, and some first-rank fruits...'

Checking each bracelet, he found they were all roughly the same in terms of wealth, except for one, belonging to a female cultivator, which contained several dolls and plush toys inside.

Raising his gaze and finding that girl's body among the clearing, looking at her face, An felt slightly uneasy, realizing this girl had been barely more than a teenager.

After taking everything that interested him from the bracelet, namely, spirit stones and two mutated Underground Trickery roots, he returned it to her wrist.

Turning back to Ru Meng's body, specifically the black clump that had absorbed almost all the Yin energy from her, he suddenly frowned.

"Hmm?"

Whoosh!

A translucent artifact, resembling a seed, shot out from her heart and soared into the sky, disappearing into the crimson clouds. Even with his Foundation Establishment cultivation, he couldn't react in time, the speed was too high. 'What was that?'

Staring into the sky, 'That feeling of unease I had back in the Sect... I thought it was related to this strange place... But the moment that seed flew out, the feeling returned and intensified... Sigh. I have a bad feeling about this...'