Outside the city walls, with the dust and noise of Nanyao fading behind her as she walked the winding dirt track, Su Min felt a deep, uncomplicated sense of satisfaction. She had spent every last tael of that hundred plus silver in one go, a cathartic release of pent up indulgence after years of austere, frugal living in the mountains. Blowing through what would have been a lifetime's fortune for most people in a single afternoon left her feeling light, unburdened, and strangely exhilarated, like a weight she didn't know she was carrying had been lifted from her shoulders.
"Money scattered will return again," she mused, her words echoing an old, pragmatic saying from her past life. It was just a tool to be used.
For her now, with her needs so simple and her power growing, wealth wasn't a priority. It was a means to an end, and that end had been efficiently achieved. Of course, she hadn't splurged mindlessly on trinkets and silks. She had made practical, strategic purchases, stocking up on durable, plain clothing of heavy hemp, non perishable food like hardtack and salted meats that would last through the damp seasons, and a wide variety of spices and seasonings to make her solitary meals more palatable and varied.
The system gifted robes from her starter pack were surprisingly, wonderfully practical. She could toss them into her spatial ring caked in mud and blood, and they would emerge moments later perfectly clean, smelling faintly of fresh air and mountain rain. They even adjusted subtly to her height and figure automatically, providing a constant, perfect fit that never hindered her movements. She had once, in a moment of idle whimsy, wondered if the ring's creator had been some lecherous old sage with very particular tastes, designing robes that would always flatter the wearer's form.
She had also bought various daily necessities: strong thread, fine needles, a new whetstone with a fine grain, and, most importantly, a small but well made ceremonial bronze cauldron. The metal was cool and heavy, which would be perfect as a starter alchemy furnace. Before this, she hadn't been using a crude, hand formed clay pot, which was inefficient, prone to cracking under high heat, and laborious to maintain. This new bronze cauldron, with its better heat distribution and stability, would serve her well until she reached the Qi Refining stage and could handle more volatile energies. After that, once more advanced artifact blueprints were unlocked in her manual, she could gather rare materials to craft a proper, dedicated spiritual furnace.
"Everything is stored safely in the ring, and no one noticed a thing," she thought with quiet satisfaction, having made her purchases from multiple vendors across the sprawling market to avoid raising eyebrows.
Glancing discreetly at the simple, unadorned ring on her finger, she remained cautious. She had never seen anything like it in this world; spatial treasures seemed to be a concept from her game reality alone. The various gourds and clay jars displayed in her bamboo hut were mostly for show, a stage set to maintain a plausible cover for any visitors who might wonder where she kept her supplies.
"Once I'm farther from the city and out of sight of the walls, I can channel spiritual energy to my legs and speed up my pace. There's no need to walk this whole way. Hm?"
Just as she was about to gather her qi to accelerate into a ground eating run, the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Her brow twitched. Back in the city, she had felt a faint, nagging sensation as if someone was watching her, but she had dismissed it, thinking her plain disguise and neutral demeanor were sufficient camouflage in the busy streets. Now, outside the walls and away from the crowds where the trees grew thick and the shadows lengthened, that same unsettling, prickling gaze persisted, focused and intent. Instantly, a cold, sharp thread of killing intent coiled in her chest. Her body tensed for a fight.
"Dog Emperor's men?" she thought, her expression turning to ice. "Have they finally tracked me here? Persistent bastards."
Before she could react further, a rustling sound rose from the dense brush by the roadside, followed by a sudden, clumsy clamor of feet on dry leaves. A group of ragged, filthy figures emerged from the greenery, spreading out to block the path ahead of her. They wielded an assortment of rusted cleavers, chipped knives, and sharpened sticks. Their eyes were hollow with hunger but burning with a desperate avarice.
"..."
Su Min's lips twitched in a mix of profound annoyance and dark amusement at the sight. She had been mentally prepared for a serious, life or death fight against skilled imperial agents or perhaps another cultivator, ready to unleash her full power and leave no survivors to report her location. And yet, what appeared before her were merely a few pathetic, low level human traffickers and road bandits; their malnourished frames couldn't barely hold their weapons steady.
"Sorry, little lady," the leader said with a wicked, gap toothed grin. His voice was a rough croak that grated on the ears. "Times are hard. We're a bit short on cash these days. Selling a fine, healthy piece of goods like you off to the mines or a brothel should keep us fed for a good half a year. Don't make this difficult."
"Let's see if you even live long enough to spend that money," Su Min retorted, her voice flat and chilly devoid of any fear.
"!!!"
Hearing her icy, contemptuous response, the leader's face darkened with rage, all pretense of negotiation gone. Roaring a guttural curse, he charged forward, brandishing his rusty blade in a wild, unskilled swing. His bloodshot eyes gleamed with pure, unadulterated viciousness. Even before he reached her, Su Min caught a whiff of a stomach turning stench that rolled off him in waves. It was not just the odor of unwashed bodies and filth, but a deeper, fouler smell that spoke of moral corruption and a diet of desperation; it was a scent that instinctively repulsed her cultivated senses.
"Taking advantage of the frozen river in winter to escape south from the famine," she deduced, her gaze sharpening as she assessed them in an instant. "Looks like they have eaten more than a few people along the way to survive." Cannibalism was an open secret in times of extreme famine, and the aura of death clung to their tattered clothes.
"You—," the leader only managed half a sentence, a final threat dying in his throat, before the world spun violently around him. The sky and earth traded places.
In his final, blurry moments of consciousness, he saw a headless body, still clutching a rusty cleaver, collapse to the ground in a graceless heap. The last thing he registered was the stunned terror on his comrades' faces.
"Is that, my body?"
That was his last, fleeting, disconnected thought.
Gulp...
The slower bandits behind him froze in shock. Their jaws were slack and their eyes were wide with disbelief and dawning, primal terror. They had seen it clearly, yet their minds struggled to process the speed. An almost weightless shadow had flashed past, a silvery gleam in the sunlight, and their leader's head was simply gone, severed from his shoulders with a clean, impossible finality.
"G-Ghost!" one stammered, pointing a trembling finger at Su Min, who stood unmoved, her blade already clean of blood. "In broad daylight, a ghost?!"
Instantly, the survivors were thrown back to the visceral horrors they had witnessed in the abandoned graveyards during their desperate flight from the north. Back then, it had been the same. A ghostly shadow had appeared out of the mist, silent and swift, and one of their strongest, loudest comrades was dead in an instant; his life was extinguished without a sound. Not only that, but the ghost had picked up the fresh corpse and, with a horrifying, casual strength, drunkenly sucked out its blood like a man draining a wineskin, discarding the desiccated husk afterwards.
If dawn hadn't been so near and they hadn't fled fast enough, scrambling over each other in blind panic, none of them would have survived. Since that day, they had refused to venture out after dark, huddling together for meager protection. But now, even under the bright, unforgiving midday sun, the same horror had found them.
"No spooky stories today," Su Min's voice cut through their panic, cold and absolute, shattering their superstitious delusions. "None of you're getting away."
She couldn't care less what they thought they had seen in the past or what horrors they had endured. People who had already thrown away their last shred of humanity to prey on the weak, who had likely committed the ultimate taboo to survive, were better off gone from this world. Eliminating them was a mercy to any future victims they would have undoubtedly claimed. In a flash, her figure moved again, a blur of controlled, lethal motion, and one by one, the rest of the thugs fell to the ground. Their pathetic threats were silenced forever, their rusted weapons clattering uselessly on the dirt.
"Let's just toss them into the forest nearby," she decided, looking down at the small, growing pile of bodies without a shred of emotion. "The wolves and wild dogs will make short work of them within a day. It saves me the trouble of digging."
This was one of the main mountain passes leading to her home, so leaving corpses here in the open wasn't ideal, even if travelers were few. She casually dragged them one by one—their lightness a testament to their starvation—to a nearby, shadowy ravine overgrown with thorns. The strong, metallic scent of fresh blood would soon draw countless carnivores from miles around. In this chaotic era, a few more deaths among vagabonds and bandits weren't unusual; they were a mere statistic. No one would care enough to investigate.
"This world, it's safer to stay deep in the mountains after all," she concluded. The frontier between civilization and wilderness was where the true monsters lurked, and they weren't always supernatural.
Dusting off her hands as if she had just taken out the trash, Su Min quickly left the scene, her pace brisk as we navigated the familiar trails. The world was unstable now, and she knew from her game knowledge that it would only get worse as the barriers between realms began thinning. That Demon Empress pulling the strings in the capital was a foe with unimaginably high cultivation, wasn't someone she could hope to confront or even survive meeting at her current level.
Moreover, she still lacked any real mastery of dedicated, large scale slaughter techniques. The Minor Sword Control was for precision, not carnage. For now, it was far wiser to avoid unnecessary risks and continue laying low, growing stronger in secret. However,
"Ugh."
Just as she arrived back at her secluded bamboo hut, the familiar weathered walls a welcome sight, a sudden, sharp wave of dizziness and heat hit her. She staggered against the doorframe, her knuckles white against the wood. Her vision swam with flashes of crimson, and she almost fell to one knee. A strange, thrilling fire simmered in her veins, a whisper of power that was both alluring and alarming.
"It isn't enough, I still need more. Is this the nascent insight of the Path of Slaughter? Those few thugs weren't sufficient to fully trigger it." The feeling was tantalizingly close to a breakthrough, yet just out of reach, like an itch she couldn't scratch.
Touching her slightly warm, flushed cheek, Su Min wasn't alarmed. The sensation felt familiar, an echo of the process just like when she had previously comprehended the Wood Fire Transformation Art and the Minor Sword Control Art. Her Heavenly Dao Insight worked by observing the laws of heaven through the passage of time and action, gaining enlightenment through intense, focused experience and emotion. This path could grant not only martial skills but also unique, esoteric powers tied to one's actions and nature.
Clearly, the act of killing, of decisively ending lives, had just now triggered the preliminary conditions for comprehending the Path of Slaughter. But the scale and intensity of the incident—a handful of worthless bandits—wasn't enough for a full, proper breakthrough. It's just a taste.
"There's no rush," she told herself, steadying her breathing and pushing the dizzying sensation down. "There's no rush. There will be more, suitable opportunities later." She knew this with a cold certainty. This world would provide ample fuel for such a path.
After some quiet reflection, sitting on the steps of her hut where the mountain air was cool, Su Min settled her mind. Since she had already started down this path and felt its call in her blood, there was no reason to turn back now. However, she needed to tread very, very carefully. She recalled a particular, dangerous game mechanic related to this path: Blood Frenzy.
In the game, achieving the Blood Frenzy state required indiscriminate, mass slaughter, stacking a hidden "killing intent" meter. The effect dramatically boosted cultivation speed and granted special, devastating attack properties, but the ultimate, game changing downside was the progressive, permanent loss of the character's rationality and eventually, player control, turning them into a mindless killing machine.
In the game, that didn't matter much in the end, since the player's consciousness still ultimately controlled the character's actions from a safe distance. But here, in this real world, where she was the character, losing control of her own mind, her memories, her very self to a blind rage could be a fatal, irreversible mistake. It was a trap for the power hungry.
"Kill to protect life. Cut through karmic ties and true evils, not through innocent people," she reaffirmed her principle aloud, the words a vow to the silent mountains. "Only this way can I wield this power and still remain myself. The blade is a tool, not the master."
Calming herself, she moved inside to brew a pot of strong, bitter awakening tea to clear the last of the dizziness from her head. Yet before she could even pour the hot water into the cup, the sound of hurried, frantic footsteps, the slap of bare feet on hard earth, echoed from the path outside her hut. It was followed by a breathless, terrified shout that shattered her hard won peace.
"Milady! Honored Healer! The chieftain sent me! He has got an urgent, terrible matter to ask for your help! Please, you must come!"