Chapter 221 (II): Shameless

In a villa within the Zhu family villa district, Zhu Yangqiu and Zhu Rong were seated at a long dining table, eating their dinner in silence. Apart from the servers standing to either side, no one else was at the table.

Zhu Yangqiu ate until he was about sixty percent full, then set down his chopsticks, wiped the corner of his mouth with the napkin elegantly and said flatly, "Demon Lord has fallen. Let all that business of yours turn to dust and settle."

Zhu Rong gave a cold laugh. "Turn to dust? The scar it left inside me will never heal."

Zhu Yangqiu did not continue to pursue the matter.

"Play however you like day to day, it makes no difference. But stop scheming after Yuanshi Tianzun," he warned her sternly. "Someone like you cannot lay a hand on a figure like him. If you insist on going down this road, don't blame me when I set aside the bond between brother and sister."

Zhu Yangqiu had many sisters, but only he and Zhu Rong shared a mother. He doted on her. He wasn't afraid that the Zhu family would be dragged into it if she continued to go after Yuanshi Tianzun. He was afraid that, one day, the family wouldn't be able to shield her.

Zhu Rong said nothing, but she gripped her chopsticks until her knuckles went white.

***

When dinner was done, Zhu Rong left the villa in a frayed mood. A driver in a suit stood waiting beside the luxury car outside. When he saw her come out, he bowed from the waist and opened the door.

The car sped down the villa district's broad roads. Night hung heavy, and the streetlamps blazed bright. This district was the Zhu family's property, and their headquarters too, home to the clan's own people. Zhu Rong's villa sat on the eastern edge, a three-storey main building flanked by two two-storey annex buildings. Besides her retinue of servants, it also housed the eight boy toys she kept.

The car rolled through the wrought-iron gate and stopped inside a garden thick with green, and the driver hurriedly climbed out and opened the door for her.

Zhu Rong stepped out, and drew a deep breath. Dark clouds covered her face.

"Send Number Six to my bedroom," she said flatly.

She crossed the garden on her high heels and entered the main building under the glow of the lamps. She rode the elevator up to the third floor, shed her coat, undid her hair, kicked off her heels, and crossed the bedroom on bare, delicate feet to the walk-in closet.

It wasn't clothes that hung in that closet. It was whips, handcuffs and plugs of every kind.

She picked out a black leather whip, sprayed it with chili oil, and ran her slim, jade-like fingers along its length. A sick smile spread across her lovely face. She needed to whip a young man, to unleash the fury and the pent up darkness inside her.

Back when she'd silenced Chi Yue'an, she'd known that once the case was classified, it would be hard to trace anything to her. Sure enough, the punishment meted out by the Five Elements Alliance was severe, but fell short of doing real damage.

Even so, Zhu Rong wasn't satisfied. She didn't want to let Yuanshi Tianzun off just like that. Over the past few days, she'd come to realize, both in mind and body, that she wanted Yuanshi Tianzun. That young man was dazzling and brilliant, just like Demon Lord, and was similarly shameless as well. The one difference was that Demon Lord was the crueler of the two. In Yuanshi Tianzun, she saw Demon Lord's shadow. That alone meant she could not let him go.

Zhu Rong twisted open a tube of lipstick and swept it across her lips, and her blood-red mouth curved upward into a smile. "Sooner or later you'll be mine, Yuanshi Tianzun..."

Whip in hand, she returned to the bedroom, and her eyes immediately narrowed, her gaze fixed on the single-seat sofa by the window.

A fiery red figure sat there. The uninvited guest wore a long Song-style dress, the bodice and sleeves embroidered with intricate, exquisite cloud patterns in gold thread, with a silver half-mask covering her face. She was draped lazily across the armchair, one leg crossed over the other. The eyes beneath the mask studied Zhu Rong coldly, like an empress surveying a subject emotionlessly from high on her throne.

"Who are you?" Zhu Rong demanded.

The words had barely left her when, before she could draw an item or cry out in alarm, red cords shot out from behind the woman in red, winding and gliding through the air like scarlet rivers. They bound Zhu Rong's hands and feet and hauled her into the air.

"If you're smart, you'll know it's best to stay quiet right now," the woman in red said flatly.

The instant she saw the red cords, Zhu Rong's eyes went wide, her face a mask of terror and shock. "Seamstress of Fate..."

Zhu Rong gave up any thought of resistance entirely. Before a Seamstress of Fate, she was nothing but an ant.

"Both the Zhu family and the Xie family have only a handful of Seamstress of Fate between them, and you're not from either house. Who are you?"

The woman in red giggled. "Are you leaving out the Chu family? Come to think of it, our two houses are old friends. I ought to call you sister."

The knowledge surfaced in Zhu Rong's mind at once, and her brows knit together. "You're the Slaughter Cessation Palace Master! If you've come for the Zhu family, then you should go see my elder brother. If you've come for me, then sorry, I don't know you."

The Palace Master rose slowly, the skirt of her long dress sliding down her thighs like water. Barefoot, she walked toward Zhu Rong at an easy pace and smiled.

"You don't need to know me, and I'm not here to build rapport either."

Then what do you want with me? Zhu Rong was about to ask when she felt the red cords around her arms and thighs pull tight, biting into the tender skin. Scarlet blood welled up at once, running down the cords and dripping onto the floor.

"Nnh~" The pain caused her brows to draw even more tightly together, and she let out a low moan.

"I'm here to settle a score," The palace master said, her voice as cold and sharp as a blade of ice. "Out of everyone you could cross, dear sister, why touch Yuanshi Tianzun? That's my boy toy. I hate nothing more than people touching what's mine."

Zhu Rong's heart sank.

The Palace Master seemed in no hurry to act. Her demeanor shifted, and she laughed to herself.

"Sis, I hear you were taken captive by Demon Lord back in the day, spent a month as a lowly slave, and haven't been right in the head since. Even just using my toes, I could guess the reason why you set your sights on Yuanshi Tianzun. Is it that your hatred for Demon Lord just won't fade, or"— her voice took on a shade of feigned surprise—"that you never got over him?"

She giggled at her own conclusion. "You really have a cheap streak in you, dear sister. The man treated you like a worn-out shoe, and you went and fell in love with him instead."

That line seemed to jab the deepest scar inside Zhu Rong. Her face abruptly lost its color, then her cheeks flushed red, and a manic smile appeared.

"However cheap you think I am, I'm not as cheap as a pathetic wretch whose whole family is dead and gone," she shot back.

The palace master's eyes went cold, and the temperature in the room dropped sharply, as if deep winter had come. A few seconds later she laughed, laughed so hard a flower on its branch trembled.

One a yandere, the other a psycho, both lunatics.

The Palace Master raised a hand, and her wide red sleeve slid down to reveal a forearm white and tender as a lotus root. Her slim fingers reached up to tip Zhu Rong's chin to the ceiling.

"You're so beautiful," she said sweetly. "Such a pity you've got no shame and no face. Since you don't want your face, your little sister will peel it off for you."

The red cords crept up Zhu Rong's cheeks, writhing quick as loaches, and bored into her skin.

Zhu Rong's scream echoed through the whole villa.

Zhu Yangqiu received a report from his clansmen and rushed to his sister's residence. He pushed open the bedroom door and saw Zhu Rong collapsed on the floor, streaked with blood, her body twitching without pause. Her face was drenched in red, with raw, pink flesh exposed. Beside her lay a mask of skin, completely intact. Her arms and legs had all been snapped, the broken bones jutting out through flesh and muscle. It was a horror to look at.

Zhu Yangqiu stood frozen for a few seconds, then cried out, his voice breaking, "Quick, go get Life Essence. Quickly...!"

***

Inky black clouds rolled across the sky, and a bleak, cold wind howled through every corner of this world.

It was both a battlefield and a graveyard.

As far as the eye could see, the ground was strewn with dry bones, some human, some equine. Rotted weapons lay half-buried in the black soil, and broken windlasses and catapults were sprawled across it. Amidst the keening gale, the wronged souls of the war dead shrieked and wheeled about, letting out ghostly wails only a Nocturnal Specter could hear.

In this desolate, dreary space, a place that seemed like the netherworld itself, a woman in a long Ming-style dress stood beside a tall set of dry bones with her hands clasped behind her back. She was flawless to look at, with an otherworldly bearing, graceful as a goddess of the heavens.

"How pitiable. A War God of his generation, yet even in death he cannot rest, but remains tucked away in a stray pocket of space," said the Three Paths Mountain Goddess, a mocking edge to her voice.

That tall skeleton wore battle armor and leaned against a blade, the one corpse that had died yet not fallen.

Two soul flames kindled within the skeleton's hollow eye sockets, and it spoke. "You are..."

Slowly, with effort, it turned its neck to look at the Three Paths Mountain Goddess.

The soul flames within its eyes surged violently. "Third Princess? You... You still haven't perished..."

The Three Paths Mountain Goddess smiled. "A Nocturnal Specter's life force is strong. Of course I managed to live on. I used a secret art of slumber to drag out my last breath until now. I never expected to wake, yet it seems fortune favored me. This world has broken away from the one you and I lived in. In this new world, I can cultivate. I no longer have to worry over my lifespan. The thing is, I simply can't leave."

The skeletal general spoke slowly. "In your day, Third Princess, you were the fairest under heaven, dazzling and brilliant, with suitors beyond count from every foreign land. Heaven has truly taken pity on me, to allow your humble servant to see you again. Yet, even you cannot leave?"

The Three Paths Mountain Goddess seemed to recall the past, her flawless face momentarily taking on a distant, wistful expression before she reined it back into cool composure.

"My yang soul has been stolen by a little thief," she said. "I need to find him, but he's a person of the living world. Each time he enters this place, it is only for a very short while. There are too many little realms that can be matched to a Nocturnal Specter. I don't know when he'll come, or where he'll appear, so finding him is very hard indeed."

"Princess, your servant stands willing to serve you in any way you require," the skeletal general declared.

The Three Paths Mountain Goddess drew a sheet of paper made out of human skin from within her colorful sleeve. "I can't find him, but I can make him walk into the net himself. This book records the secret art of offering a sacrifice to me. I need you to send out the ghost horde and spread this art across every Nocturnal Specter dungeon.

"Yes, in those people's words, this is a dungeon. I've understood its rules after feeling my way through this world all this while. Once this secret art enters a Nocturnal Specter dungeon, that dungeon will adjust on its own and turn it into a quest item."

She had roamed this strange world for months, met plenty of powerful Spirit Realm Walkers, and wrung many secrets out of them through interrogation. She had come to understand this world, the Spirit Realm, and its Walkers well enough.

Once the Walkers got hold of the art for offering sacrifices to her, they'd surely rush to hold the ritual, trading offerings for power without the slightest hesitation. Because, to that crowd, what they could gain was considered a powerful consumable.

The Three Paths Mountain Goddess smiled. "Lately, my senses have been tingling. I have a feeling he's about to enter the Spirit Realm again."

"Your Highness, I will aid you with all my strength. Have you truly fathomed the mysteries of this world?"

"I’ve comprehended part of them already."

"Might you reveal what you know to me, your humble servant?"

"I might!"

***

Zhang Yuanqing was almost at a loss for words. "What did you say, Centurion? Zhu Rong was nearly killed by the Slaughter Cessation Palace Master? And her face was peeled clean off?"

That's brutal! He had long known the Slaughter Cessation Palace Master was a psycho, but he never figured she would be that terrifying once she went off the rails.

"The Zhu family doesn't lack Life Essence," Fu Qingyang said. "Her wounds and her face should be healed by now. However, the Zhu family means to sue you for malicious retaliation and demand the Songhai Branch arrest the Slaughter Cessation Palace Master."