Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sporadic, poorly aimed volley of arrows whistled through the air; it's a desperate attempt to slow her down. But Su Min moves with a dancer's preternatural grace. Her body flows with the rhythm of the gallop. She spins her slender sword in a shimmering, defensive arc. The fine steel meets each projectile with a sharp, metallic ring. She deflects every single one with impossible accuracy. The shattered arrowheads and splintered shafts clatter uselessly to the hard, dry ground behind her galloping horse. The debris marks her trail through the withered grass.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
The horse's hooves beat a frantic, staccato rhythm against the packed earth. It's a sound of pure flight. Hiss—a collective, sharp intake of breath comes from the pursuing cavalry. They instinctively rein in their mounts. Their faces are fixed in shock. Their earlier bravado evaporates like mist in the autumn wind.
"How is this possible?!" one of them whispered. His voice is tight with a shock that borders on fear.
Su Min's reflexes are simply not human. They far exceed anything they have ever witnessed on any battlefield. It's a feat even their most seasoned, battle-hardened veterans couldn't hope to match. Their orders demand she be taken alive, but if risking their lives isn't enough to even touch her—if she can bat away their arrows like annoying insects—what is the point of chasing this demon further into certain danger?
Noticing their hesitation and the sudden break in their pursuit, Su Min allows herself a small, internal sigh of relief. After breaking through to the mid-stage of Body Refining, her perception has sharpened to an incredible degree. By focusing her mind and channeling a thread of spiritual energy to her eyes, she can track the flight path of each arrow with crystal clarity. It's as if the world has slowed down just for her, making the projectiles seem like lazy, drifting feathers.
"Witch! You think you can escape?!"
A furious, youthful roar cuts through her momentary respite. Ahead, a young general in his twenties charges toward her on a powerful, snorting warhorse. His face is a contorted mask of rage and ambition. He lowers his gleaming silver spear. Its polished, razor-sharp tip is aimed directly at Su Min's heart. It's a classic cavalry charge meant to skewer her where she sits.
"Look! It's General Sun!"
"General Sun, stop her!"
The soldiers behind her cheer. Their hope is renewed by the sight of a noble officer. Their courage is artificially bolstered.
Su Min narrows her eyes. Her focus becomes absolute. The world shrinks to the point of that silver spear. The lance's angle is vicious and precise: a killing blow aimed with deadly intent and practiced skill. The Body Refining stage is still a step below true immortal cultivation; it's still bound by many mortal limits. She is tougher than a normal person. Her bones are denser and her skin is more resilient.
But she couldn't afford carelessness against a well-placed thrust from a fine weapon. Yet, no matter how refined the martial technique is, it's useless against someone who can read every tiny flex of a muscle or every shift of weight. She can react faster than thought and strike with overwhelming, cultivated force. It's all just flashy, mortal posturing.
At the very last possible second, when the spear tip is a mere hand's breadth from her chest, she twists her body aside with a serpentine agility. As the spear shoots past her—a silver streak of wasted motion—she grabs the wooden shaft with one hand and the general's armored wrist with the other. Her grip is like iron. Then, using his own forward momentum against him, she yanks hard. She unseats him with brutal efficiency.
Thud!
The man flies from his saddle as if launched from a catapult. He hits the dirt with a heavy, bone-jarring thud, rolling in a cloud of dust and dry grass. Before he can even recover his breath or his wits, Su Min leans down low from her own horse. Her balance is perfect. In one fluid, practiced motion, she snatches the powerful laminated bow from his back and plucks a single, fletched arrow from the quiver strapped to his saddle. She nocks, draws, and releases in a single, seamless breath.
Twang!
"ARGH!"
A sharp, choked scream tears through the air as the arrow punches straight through his ornate, decorated chest plate and buries itself deep into his heart. The pursuing cavalry, who had been moments from charging in to support him, freeze in their tracks. Their blood runs cold. Their faces are pale and wan. Her movements were a seamless, brutal dance of death that left no room for counterattack and no space for heroics. Several soldiers scramble from their horses and rush to check General Sun's pulse. A heavy, terrified silence follows their discovery. He is gone.
This was the grandson of Grand General Sun Tangshou—a three-dynasty veteran with immense influence in the court and a temper known to be as fierce as his battle prowess. The young Sun himself had been no slouch: a skilled tactician, a master of logistics, and widely considered one of the army's finest young warriors. It usually took six or seven elite soldiers to match him in sparring combat. Now he has been killed in a handful of seconds, like a child swatying a fly. Who in their right mind would keep chasing the demon who had done that? What reward is worth such a certain death?
"Why risk our necks for a monthly stipend?" one soldier muttered. He voices the thought that's now on all their minds, shattering the last illusion of duty.
Su Min exhales slowly. A wave of relief passes through her, cooling the fire in her veins. That general had gone straight for the kill without hesitation or false chivalry. His ornate, gilded armor had marked him as high nobility, making him the perfect example to make—a message to the others. The result was even better than she had hoped. She has broken their will.
If she is being completely honest with herself, she had never properly trained in archery, not in this life or her last. Instead, in the brief moment she had grabbed his wrist to unseat him, she had imprinted a tiny, almost invisible spark of her spiritual energy onto his chest, right over his heart. The arrow, subtly infused with a wisp of her power, then homed in on that spark like a magnet drawn to steel. It ensured it wouldn't miss its fatal mark. It's a cheat: a cultivator's trick against a mortal warrior.
But then—
Thud-thud-thud!
The ground begins to tremble; she feels the vibration through her horse's hooves. A distant thunder, the sound of hundreds of synchronized hoofbeats, rolls toward them from the east and west. The signal flare did its job.
"Reinforcements from the flanks," she realizes. But it's too late for them to intercept her.
She has chosen her breakout point with meticulous care, aiming for a spot right by the Jishui River's edge where the bank is low. Without slowing, she spurs her tired, lathered horse toward the water's edge. Then, at the very last moment, as the animal skids to a halt, she leaps from the saddle. She abandons her steed.
SPLASH!
Her boots skim the river's churning, gray-brown surface. They barely make a dent. She is running, propelled forward by a thin, concentrated layer of spiritual energy that adheres to the soles of her feet. It creates a temporary, solid platform with each step, allowing her to treat the water as solid ground. This technique requires a finesse and control that most Body Refining cultivators never master, focused as they are on raw power. At the Qi Refining stage, one could use brute force to propel oneself, but for now, perfect, unwavering precision is the only way. It's something she had practiced relentlessly in her secluded mountain pool for hours on end, anticipating this very escape.
Mid-river, she risks a single glance back over her shoulder. The reinforcement cavalry has reached the bank. They're a mass of men and horses, but they can only watch. Their jaws are slack with a kind of superstitious horror as they witness a lone girl sprinting across the wide river as if it's a paved imperial road. By the time their officers bellow orders and they fumble to nock their arrows, she is already a small, receding figure, far out of their maximum range.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
The moment her feet touch the soft mud of the far shore, Su Min's legs buckle. The spiritual energy in them is utterly spent. She collapses to her knees, gasping for air as her chest heaves. The toll is immense. Her calves scream with a deep, burning pain, and the core of spiritual energy within her dantian feels nearly empty—it's a dim, guttering candle. But she has done it. She is safe. She is across.
In this era, no bridge can hope to span a river this wide and powerful. Crossing requires boats, ferries, and time. The only vessels on this side are a few rickety, leaking fishing skiffs, utterly useless for a swift military pursuit. Any pursuers would be idiots to follow in those. And if a few brave, foolish stragglers make it across, she is confident that she can handle them easily.
"Farewell, gentlemen," she whispers toward the distant, helpless soldiers. Her voice is hoarse, yet it rings with triumph.
Tossing a Qi Restoring Pill into her mouth from her storage ring, she feels a welcome, cooling warmth immediately spread through her tired meridians. It's a balm to the emptiness. With one final, triumphant glance at the vast, impotent army stranded across the water—a mere spectacle now—she turns on her heel and vanishes into the thick, deep, welcoming shadows of the southern forests. She leaves only silence in her wake. She is not completely out of danger yet, not until she has put the entire Great Wei Dynasty's sphere of control far behind her.
Back across the river, the massive, once proud army stands in dumbfounded, humiliated silence. The scale of their failure is absolute. Half a year of meticulous preparation and planning is gone. The mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men was a logistical nightmare. They felled countless trees to create firebreaks. They deliberately burned an entire sacred mountain range—an act that will haunt the land for generations.
And she has just walked away across the water, as if their entire effort was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.