The wind stirred faintly through the Hu tribe's peach blossom grove.
Nola stood still, her right eye dimming from an eerie green shimmer. The Foresight Dao Tool, stolen during the transmigration ritual, had shown her one single truth.
If she remained, she would die.
She had glimpsed a future soaked in crimson skies, the righteous daoist slicing her head, her body shattered and her soul torn apart. A precise, merciless execution.
And yet, she didn't panic.
She smiled.
Because she wasn't unprepared this time. She would not make the same mistake.
Not again.
She was the great Boluo, the great demonic cultivator, once feared at the peak of the Wu Realm, now reincarnated into this fragile vessel.
The flesh was different, but the soul was his.
The rage?
That was the same.
The Hu Tribe had raised her body. But they had not raised her soul.
In her past life, Boluo had trusted no one. Not the demonic sects who envied him. Not the women who adored his power. And certainly not the "righteous" daoists who hunted him until the final moment of his life just coveting his treasures.
He had died surrounded. Trapped in a crumbling realm. Bleeding and furious.
And just before his soul was consumed, he had activated the transmigration ritual. The golden pineapple of the sun which bloomed once every ten millennia. The price paid in blood.
His soul had been launched back in time. Back into the body of a young girl from a mid-level tribe.
Nola.
Now, the Hu Tribe would pay for simply being in the way. For simply existing in his path ignorantly.
He can't kill all three tribes. But he sure can massacre one of them with no troubles.
The massacre began at first light.
Boluo or Nola moved through the compound like shadow and flame.
The guards never saw her coming.
A quick palm to the chest shattered ribs. A flick of her halberd removed heads. She didn't waste spiritual energy. She didn't say any stupid monologues. No flashy techniques.
Just pure, brutal, demonic precision.
Screams rose only for a moment. Then silence. Then more death.
Disciples scattered. Elders tried to gather resistance.
But it was too late. Too futile.
The tribe's formation core shattered under her assault. Their defense was gone in an instant.
Her father, the Hu Tribe Head stood at the ancestral hall.
Long beard and a steady gaze. His spirit sword trembling in his grip.
"Nola," he said.
"Wrong name," she replied.
He frowned. "You… who are you?"
The halberd split his words in half.
There was no ceremony.
He was not her father.
Just another weak mortal wearing an empty title.
The ground ran red by midmorning.
Children. Elders. Warriors. Peacemakers.
None were spared.
She left no survivors.
She sighed, "So sad. Pity I can't take these fresh corpses into my undead army. That bitch from the Shen realm will find me."
By noon, the Hu Tribe no longer existed.
She stood before the stone treasury gate. Runes flared but then dimmed as they recognized her blood.
The gate creaked open.
Her gaze swept past rows of treasures: pill furnaces, arcane scrolls, enchanted blades, ancient beast hides.
All meaningless.
Soul jades and Spirit stones.
That's what she wanted.
She found them piled in vaults behind silver seals. She broke through the defenses with a simple hum of qi.
And when she found them?
She laughed.
Mountains of spirit stones glimmered in chaotic auras. The soul jades vibrated, whispering faintly of old cultivators buried within.
She raised her hand.
The core inside her chest stirred, an infernal lotus, cracked but hungry. It opened like a maw.
One by one, the spirit stones and soul jades vanished into her.
They would be digested slowly, fed into her marrow and spirit sea. She would refine them. Make them hers.
Boluo would rise again.
But this time in a new body.
A stronger, colder one.
She walked out of the treasury.
The peach blossom tree had turned dark red, the ground around it soggy with blood.
She looked once, just once at the world she had burned. The art of red she had left behind.
Then she turned her back.
She flew away.
Upward. Northward. Away from the Xiao and Gou tribes.
They had no clue what had happened yet. But they would soon.
And so would the daoists.
She had used the Foresight Dao Tool only once. It was not foolproof from change.
And she would not use it again.
Without more fate beads, the tool was unusable. Hungry. Each use drew more than energy, it fed on the river of fate itself.
And she wasn't willing to gamble twice.
Not yet.
Inside her, the tool pulsed gently, like a sleeping monster.
It would stay that way.
Until she was ready to feed it more fate.
She landed hours later in a hidden ravine beneath the Qing Hills. A cultivation cave from an older era.
She drew seals over the entrance.
Dozens. Then hundreds. Layered like silk.
Inside, silence.
Perfect.
She sat cross-legged and closed her eyes.
The spirit stones began to dissolve.
Their essence funneled into her core, her veins, her bones. Her muscles spasmed once, then again, as power surged through. Her body was not strong but she endured it through.
The soul jades vibrated next, wisps of ancient memories slipping into her consciousness.
Techniques. Emotions. Regrets. Hatreds.
Boluo devoured them all.
Inside her mind, a void stretched wide.
In that void stood a memory of Boluo, a man wrapped in black fire, his eyes like abyssal suns.
He stared at her, the girl he now was.
And smiled.
"Round two has begun," he said while cackling.
Outside the cave, night fell.
A breeze passed through the Qing Hills.
Somewhere in the distance, a jade-robed daoist paused, frowning as he felt the residual trace of time-space distortion to the south.
The ripples were growing.
But he had no name.
Not yet.