Chương 16: Chapter 11 Part 3

Hours passed in a quiet, unbroken vigil. Inside the small, whitewashed room of the village inn, the afternoon sun slowly began its descent, casting long, slanting beams of warm, golden light across the sturdy oak floorboards. Outside the open window, the peaceful sounds of rural life continued entirely undisturbed. A blacksmith's hammer rang out in a steady, distant rhythm. A dog barked playfully at a passing merchant cart.

To Ming Xuan Ji, sitting motionlessly in the wooden chair with a cooling cup of herbal tea resting in her lap, the contrast was almost nauseatingly surreal. Less than ten miles away, a cave was painted in the blood of innocents, and dark magic had attempted to tear a hole in reality. Yet here, people were haggling over the price of turnips.

'The luxury of ignorance,' she mused silently, her dark eyes tracking a sparrow landing on the windowsill. From the bed behind her, a sharp, sudden intake of breath broke the silence. Vanessa's eyes fluttered open. For a long, deeply disorienting moment, the fourteen-year-old girl simply lay there. She stared blankly up at the clean, white plastered ceiling.

She registered the profound softness of the heavy quilt beneath her chin, the warm sunlight kissing her pale cheek, and the faint, comforting scent of dried lavender and mint filling the room. There was no biting cold. There was no coppery stench of blood, iron, and corrupted mana. The agonizing, sharp pain in her dislocated shoulders had vanished, replaced by a dull, entirely manageable ache. The cruel, biting friction around her wrists and ankles was gone, her skin coated instead in a soothing, cooling salve.

Her body felt heavy, numb, and strangely distant, as if it belonged to someone else entirely. Then, like a dam violently collapsing under the weight of a flooded river, her memory returned in a crushing, suffocating rush. The deafening bang that had shaken the ritual chamber. The beautiful, terrifying woman who had ended the cultist in seconds with less effort than breathing. The drifting, foul-smelling ashes where a living person had stood moments before. And before that… the dining hall. The flash of steel.

The blood soaking into the white tablecloth. The awful, final realization crashed down on her: her family's deaths had not been a nightmare she could ever wake up from. They were real. They were permanent. Her mother, her father, her older brother, they were all gone, their bodies drained into dried husks to fuel the dark, festering sea of corrupted energy currently sitting heavy and foul inside her own Dantian. Vanessa sat up violently, throwing the quilt back. The room immediately spun.

Her chest heaved as a massive panic attack seized her lungs, making it impossible to draw in air. She grabbed the fabric of her oversized linen tunic, her knuckles turning bone-white as she curled in on herself, a high-pitched, broken keen escaping her throat.

"Breathe." The single word cut through the rising tide of her panic like a physical blade. It wasn't shouted, but it carried an undeniable, absolute weight that commanded the very air in the room to still. Vanessa flinched, her blood-red eyes snapping toward the window. The woman from the cave sat in a simple wooden chair, her legs crossed with effortless, aristocratic grace. She wore the exact same black-and-crimson hanfu, entirely pristine and untouched by the slaughter she had just interrupted.

She set her porcelain teacup down on the windowsill with a soft, deliberate clink.

"You're finally awake," the woman said softly. The ethereal, impossibly beautiful features were perfectly calm.

"Good. I have several questions, but first, you need to understand your current situation clearly." Vanessa's jaw trembled. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice came out hoarse, cracked, and barely above a whisper. It was the voice of a ghost.

"My… my family…"

"I'm afraid only you know the answer to that question," the woman confirmed. There was no cruelty in the word, no malice, but there was also no sugarcoating. She simply stated the horrific fact as gently as such a thing could be stated, refusing to offer false hope.

"Let me guess, they were slaughtered to fuel the ritual that violently remade your Dantian into what it is now, right? I am sorry. Truly." The words landed on Vanessa like heavy stones dropped into a still pond, sending violent ripples of fresh, agonizing pain radiating through her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut. Hot, stinging tears burned at the corners of her eyes, tracking down her pale cheeks and dripping onto the clean linen sheets. She pulled her knees to her chest, trembling like a leaf in a winter storm.

She had known the truth, but hearing it spoken aloud made it unchangeable. The woman allowed her to cry for a moment in silence, offering her the basic dignity of grief. But then, she spoke again. Her tone remained level and brutally honest, yet it carried an undercurrent of quiet, anchoring strength that made the crushing reality somehow easier to bear.

"The Blood God Cult won't stop hunting you," the woman said, her dark eyes locking onto Vanessa's.

"Your newly awakened constitution, the Heavenly Killing Star, is the perfect, legendary vessel for their god's descent into this mortal world. They have already invested far too much blood and magic into you to simply let you go." Xuan Ji leaned forward slightly, resting her forearms on her knees. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees as the Heavenly Demon aura subtly flared, emphasizing the gravity of her next words.

"They will send more underlings. They will perform more rituals. There will be more bloodshed. You will never, ever be truly safe on your own again. If you walk out of this inn by yourself, you will be in chains again before the month is out." Vanessa stared at her, her breathing ragged, the combined weight of bottomless grief and a newly ignited, burning rage pressing heavily against her ribs. She had already suspected as much.

Thorne, the smiling monster, had made it violently clear that she was no longer a person to them. She was a vessel. A piece of highly valuable, magical property. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"So," the woman went on, her voice calm yet carrying the terrifying weight of absolute conviction.

"Here are your choices, stated plainly." Xuan Ji raised a single, pale finger.

"Option one: I can give you a quick, entirely painless death right now. I will sever your life force before your brain even registers the strike. It ends your suffering immediately. It ends the threat to you, and it ends the threat to the world permanently. The cult gets absolutely nothing from your body or your constitution. You go out on your own terms, right here, right now, with whatever dignity remains to you." Vanessa's breath hitched sharply.

A cold, piercing spike of instinctive survival fear lanced through her chest at the casual, genuine offer of death from the exact same hands that had just carried her to safety. She looked into the woman's eyes and saw no bluff. If Vanessa asked for death, the woman would grant it without a second of hesitation. Xuan Ji raised a second finger.

"Option two. You choose to live. You choose to place yourself under my protection and my personal tutelage. I will train you. I will shield you from the threats you cannot yet face, and I will help you grow strong enough to make the people who did this to your family bitterly regret the day they were born." Xuan Ji's eyes narrowed, a glint of dark, martial promise flashing in their depths.

"But it won't be an easy path. It will be brutal, demanding, and bloody at times. And you will owe me your unquestioning loyalty while you remain under my care." Silence stretched between them. It was thick, heavy, and suffocating, exactly like the blood that had soaked the ritual floor just hours ago. Vanessa's shattered mind raced, her thoughts tumbling over one another in chaotic, agonizing spirals. Grief twisted like a serrated knife behind her ribs. She wanted her mother.

She wanted her father's steady hand on her shoulder. She wanted to spar with Robert in the morning sun, laughing when she disarmed him. She wanted to go home. But home was gone. Home was a tomb. Everything she had been, the warmth of her family, the bright future they had imagined together, it had all been violently erased in a single night of manic laughter and cold steel. If she chose death, she could rest. She could be with them again. The pain would finally stop. But Thorne was still out there.

The monster who had smiled politely at their dinner table, who had drank their wine and eaten their bread before cutting them down like cattle, he was still breathing. He was still plotting. He was out there dreaming of his Blood God descending on a wave of innocent blood. If she died now, he would win. Her family's deaths truly became nothing more than a stepping stone for a monster. Vanessa's small, trembling hands slowly curled into tight fists, the nails biting sharply into her palms.

Deep within her corrupted Dantian, the thick, heavy sea of blood-aspected energy churned violently, responding to the raw, unadulterated hatred that was finally burning away the edges of her despair. Her voice, when it finally came, was small, but it was forged in the fire of unimaginable loss and tempered by a will that flatly refused to break.

"I want to live," Vanessa said, her blood-red eyes meeting the woman's dark, abyssal gaze. The words felt like both a total surrender of her old life, and a formal, absolute declaration of war.

"If they want the Heavenly Killing Star so badly…" Vanessa's voice dropped, growing harsh and completely devoid of childish innocence.

"…I'll give it to them. I want to destroy them. Thorne. The cult. All of it. I want revenge. I want to make them feel every single fraction of the pain they made my family feel." A faint, deeply satisfied smile finally touched the woman's lips. It was there and gone so quickly it might have been imagined, but her dark eyes held something significantly warmer than before. It was approval.

"Good choice," Xuan Ji said softly. Internally, Ming Xuan Ji allowed herself a massive, private grin. The hardcore gamer's instinct she had carried over from her old life surfaced like an old habit she had never quite shaken.

'Saving the world from a dark blood cult? Classic template, I finally found a clue as to why I was summoned to this world.' Out loud, she simply nodded, her expression returning to one of calm, reassuring authority.

"Then let us begin by getting your physical vessel into acceptable shape first. Drink this." Xuan Ji reached into her wide sleeve and withdrew a delicate, crystal vial filled with a glowing, golden-colored liquid. It was one of the many highly precious, High-tier restorative gifts the Marquess had pressed upon her before her departure. She stood up and handed it to the girl.

"This is a high-grade restorative draught. It won't fix the corruption in your Dantian, we will have to manage that carefully later, but it will stabilize your severe physical trauma, repair your torn ligaments, and soothe your scorched meridians." Vanessa received the small vial with both hands, her fingers still trembling slightly from the sheer weight of the monumental choice she had just made.

She looked at the glowing golden liquid for a long moment, then looked up at the woman who had saved her life twice now, once from the cultist's blade, and once from the crushing despair that had nearly swallowed her whole. She popped the cork and drank it in one swift gulp. Instantly, a profound, soothing warmth flooded her chest. The restorative mana wrapped around her raw throat, her bruised ribs, and her dislocated shoulders like a warm, thick blanket.

The lingering exhaustion in her muscles melted away, leaving her feeling physically anchored, even if her soul was still bleeding.

"Thank you for saving me," Vanessa said quietly, handing the empty vial back. Her voice was thick with an emotion she was still desperately learning how to carry.

"My name is Vanessa Valerius. Daughter of Viscount Arnes Valerius of the borderlands."

"Ming Xuan Ji," the woman replied simply, accepting the vial and vanishing it into her spatial ring with a flick of her wrist.

"I come from the far east. You may call me Xuan Ji, or Master, whichever you prefer. But for now, rest is vastly more important than formalities."

"Yes, Master." The title felt strange on Vanessa's tongue, but it also felt right. It felt like a tether to the world of the living. Xuan Ji rose gracefully, the heavy silk hem of her hanfu whispering softly against the wooden floorboards. She moved toward the heavy oak door, pausing with one pale hand on the iron frame.

"I will have the inn staff bring you a light, easily digestible meal shortly. Eat everything they bring you, rest your eyes, and allow the potion to properly integrate with your meridians. I have some minor business to take care of before we leave this village. We will talk more about our next steps later, when you are fully ready." Vanessa nodded silently. A fragile, tiny spark of actual hope flickered in her blood-red eyes for the first time since the horrific nightmare had begun.

It was small, barely more than a dying candle flame in a violent storm, but it was undeniably there. And for now, that was enough. Just as Ming Xuan Ji was about to leave the room, Vanessa called her.

"Master, there is something that you might want to know about the Cult activity. The Blood Cult Priest named Thorne mentioned something before I lost consciousness." Ming Xuan Ji takes a step back and listens to what she has to say before stepping out of the room, closing the door with a soft, definitive click, moving with the exact same unhurried, flawless poise she had carried across battlefields and through dark forests alike. Outside in the hallway, she exhaled softly.

The late afternoon sun filtering through the hallway windows bathed the inn in gentle gold. Xuan Ji reached into her spatial ring and withdrew the smooth, jade communication talisman Marquess Drelion had given her for emergencies. Fortunately she is still close enough to reach him. Such communication talismans are convenient, but the range is rather narrow. She channeled a tiny fraction of her Qi into the stone, already mentally composing the encrypted message she was about to send to Theloca.

'The road ahead has grown significantly more complicated,' she thought, a faint, predatory smirk touching her lips as she prepared to drag the whole kingdom into a war against a secret cult.