'What the hell…?' he thought
Every instinct honed through decades of life-and-death battles screamed at him—
He didn't question it. In one fluid motion, Flender twisted his body and rolled down sideways in the rain. The unseen attack scythed through the space he had been occupying a heartbeat earlier.
When he steadied himself, he almost wished he hadn't looked back.
A wooden street lamp, standing quietly behind him moments ago, had been sheared into splinters. The trees just beyond it were neatly carved into sections, jagged cuts exposed to the pounding rain.
Even with the chill of the downpour, a thin sheen of cold sweat gathered on Flender's forehead.
'If that attack had hit me… I'd be lying on the ground in four or five pieces right now.'
His gaze snapped forward again, straight into the steady stare of the cloaked figure. She had stopped walking and was simply… watching him.
Beneath the hood, her face was obscured, but two vivid purple eyes seemed to glow in the rain. The rest of her features wavered and blurred, masked by some strange distortion.
Flender didn't know it, but this was Qian Renxue's use of her third soul skill—Illusion, expertly concealing not only her identity but also the golden flare of her second soul ring, activated in tandem. The layered disguise was seamless, like reality itself refused to hold her true image.
Crackle!
A bolt of lightning lit the street in stark white, and in that brief instant, something almost ridiculous flickered across Flender's mind.
'I've… met this person before.'
But the notion vanished as quickly as it came, buried under a far more urgent instinct:
This was no ordinary intimidation.
The moment Flender met that steady purple gaze, the subtle psychological cues embedded in the figure's posture and presence began to work in tandem with an even more sinister force—her second soul skill: Emotion Control.
Invisible, insidious, it reached into the back of his mind and magnified his fear a hundredfold. Every beat of his heart pounded like a war drum, each droplet of rain against his skin felt like a warning. His instincts screamed that he was standing before something wrong—not just an enemy, but a predator that had already decided he wasn't worth the effort to kill.
His breathing came uneven and shallow as he forced himself to move.
Soaked to the bone under the relentless downpour, Flender staggered to Liu Erlong's side. She lay on the muddy ground, unmoving except for the rise and fall of her chest. The rain plastered her hair to her face, streaking away the soot and dirt from the earlier fight.
He crouched, pressing two fingers to her neck. The pulse was steady, her breathing even. Relief trickled in, but he was too shaken to notice the subtle difference—the faint redness in her cheeks, the slightly ragged rhythm of her breath. It wasn't from exhaustion or injury, but from something else entirely.
All that mattered to Flender now was that she was alive.
He glanced over his shoulder, and the cloaked figure was still there—motionless, watching. That was enough. In his mind, she was no longer simply an unknown assailant; she was a devil's minion, something far beyond what he was prepared to face.
Without a second thought, he slipped his arms under Liu Erlong and lifted her. The wind from his third soul skill—Swift Movement erupted again as he launched into the air, flying at his absolute fastest speed.
Not once did he dare look back.
He simply prayed the figure wouldn't strike again.
The cloaked girl didn't move to follow. She simply tilted her head, watching them vanish into the curtain of rain. A faint, almost amused smile tugged at her lips as she whispered to the empty street,
"You know… for dragons, anger and lust are two sides of the same coin."
The storm's roar swallowed her words.
With the quiet street to herself again, Qian Renxue finally allowed her gaze to shift toward the charred remains of the house. The rain hissed against the smoldering wood.
She inhaled, feeling the subtle emptiness in her soul power reserves. Forty percent of her soul power reserves had been drained, from the sheer intensity of her skill usage.
The vortex within her dantian, formed accidentally during her earlier cultivation mishap, had refined her soul power to a denser, higher quality than most Soul Masters at her level could dream of. Each attack required less soul power than before.
Otherwise the million year soul skills usage would have sucked most of her soul power.
A faint ripple in the rain Ghost Douluo arrived beside Qian renxue like a shadow .
Qian Renxue didn't turn immediately. Her gaze remained fixed on the half-burnt ruin of the house, the smoke now just a ghostly wisp under the downpour. She exhaled slowly, her voice calm but carrying the weight of quiet finality.
"Uncle Ghost… let's give Lu Ping a proper burial."
Her tone lacked the tremble of grief, but there was something in the way her eyes lingered on the charred beams, a stillness that wasn't indifference.
She stepped forward, boots sinking slightly into the rain-softened earth.
"He may have only been with me for a short time, but he followed my orders, and in the end, an accident claimed his life. As his… boss," she hesitated briefly, as though tasting the word, "the least I can do is ensure he's laid to rest with dignity."
Ghost Douluo followed her gaze to the smoldering wreck. His pale eyes flickered with something akin to pity.
'Young Master… you are too mature for your age.'