Chương 20: Chapter 13 Part 2

The days that followed their departure from the town of Greenvale blurred together in a steady haze of continuous travel and quiet, deliberate practice. They had left Greenvale long before dawn the next day, slipping out of the inn while the sky was still a bruised, deep indigo.

At Ming Xuan Ji's quiet instruction, Harlan had diverted the carriage away from the main, heavily paved imperial highway, taking a longer, far more winding route through quieter dirt roads and significantly smaller, isolated villages to throw off any possible pursuit. The decision was tactical. The Blood God Cult was wealthy and deeply entrenched; staying on the most obvious, direct path to the capital was an unnecessary risk.

For the first few days of the detour, the dense, ancient canopy of the deep woods provided a protective, shaded canopy over the carriage. However, the wilderness held its own grim realities, realities that Evanthe was intimately, painfully tied to. It happened on the afternoon of the fourth day, as the carriage navigated a particularly narrow, overgrown pass flanked by steep, jagged limestone cliffs. Without warning, the carriage jolted to a harsh, grinding halt.

Outside, the massive draft horses let out high-pitched, nervous whinnies, stomping their heavy hooves against the dirt and refusing to move forward.

"Hold fast, my lady," Harlan's tense, gravelly voice echoed through the wooden partition. The distinct, metallic shing of the coachman drawing his longsword from its scabbard followed immediately.

"There's a blockage on the road ahead. Looks like a merchant wagon. Smashed to kindling." Xuan Ji's dark eyes narrowed. She did not reach for a weapon, she was the weapon, but her crushing aura flared to life, spreading outward like an invisible, sweeping radar. Before Xuan Ji could speak, a sudden, horrifying sound ripped through the quiet interior of the carriage. It was a wet, agonizing gasp. Xuan Ji turned her head sharply.

Evanthe had collapsed sideways against the velvet cushions, her hands clawing desperately at the fabric of her gray cloak. The girl's face had drained of all color, turning a sickly, translucent white, save for the dark veins bulging against her neck.

"Evanthe?" Xuan Ji commanded, leaning forward instantly. Evanthe couldn't answer. Her body violently convulsed, her spine arching backward as a choked, gurgling scream tore from her throat. Her eyes snapped open, and the unnatural, glowing blood-red irises were blazing with a terrifying, luminescent intensity. The air inside the carriage suddenly grew thick, heavy, and foul. The metallic, nauseating stench of fresh copper and rotting meat flooded the enclosed space.

Through the [Divine Eye of Veritas], Xuan Ji saw exactly what was happening. Up ahead on the road, dozens of bodies lay slaughtered in the mud, the victims of a brutal bandit ambush, monster attack, or a monstrous territorial dispute. The ambient spiritual energy in the air was thick with the lingering residue of sudden death, fear, and freshly spilled blood. Evanthe's constitution, the legendary Heavenly Killing Star, was designed to thrive on slaughter.

But because it had been violently, artificially awakened and corrupted by the cult's dark ritual, it lacked any natural, biological filters. The thick, viscous red pond of blood-aspected energy sitting in her dantian was violently reacting to the ambient death outside. It was resonating. And it was completely overwhelming her fragile, unconditioned physical vessel. The dark energy would rage like a storm inside her, tearing at the lining of her meridians and threatening to shatter her from the inside out.

If left unchecked, the corrupted Qi would devour her mind, turning her into a feral, blood-starved abomination.

"Master..." Evanthe choked out, blood beginning to slowly trickle from her left nostril. Her fingernails dug so deeply into her own arms that they broke the skin.

"It burns... make it stop... please..."

"Look at me," Xuan Ji ordered. The unyielding authority in her voice cut through the haze of agony. Xuan Ji didn't hesitate. She moved with fluid, predatory speed, closing the distance between them and pressing the palm of her right hand directly against the center of Evanthe's chest, right over her furiously churning heart. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. The Heavenly Demon Scripture roared to life.

Xuan Ji did not attempt to gently coax the wild energy; dealing with corrupted blood-Qi required overwhelming dominance. She flooded Evanthe's meridians with a highly compressed, devastatingly pure surge of Yin Qi. To Evanthe, it felt as though a glacier had just been forcefully shoved into her chest. The agonizing, boiling heat of the blood-Qi collided violently with the abyssal zero of the Heavenly Demon's frost. Xuan Ji closed her eyes, meticulously mapping the girl's internal network.

She used her Yin Qi like a scalpel, isolating the raging, stormy tendrils of corrupted energy that were trying to violently expand, freezing them in their tracks, and ruthlessly forcing them back down into the central reservoir of the dantian. The physical gap in their power was incomprehensible. What felt like a world-ending, agonizing tempest to Evanthe was nothing more than a minor, disobedient spark to Ming Xuan Ji.

With a final, measured pulse of stabilizing Yang energy to warm the girl's shocked system and prevent hypothermia, Xuan Ji sealed the raging energy back into its dormant state. Evanthe collapsed forward, completely limp, gasping greedily for air as if she had just been pulled from the bottom of an ocean. Her forehead rested heavily against Xuan Ji's shoulder, her entire body shaking with cold sweats.

"Breathe, Ev," Xuan Ji murmured, her voice softening into a quiet, grounding rhythm as she kept her hand steadily on the girl's back, letting a trickle of neutral Qi continuously flow to soothe the torn meridians.

"In through the nose. Out through the mouth. You are safe." Outside, Harlan's voice called out, tense but steady.

"It's clear, my lady. Just carrion feeders left. No sign of the attackers. I'll navigate us around the wreckage."

"Do it quickly, Harlan," Xuan Ji replied, her voice projecting effortlessly through the wood.

"And find us a secluded place to make camp for the night. We are done traveling for today." An hour later, the carriage was safely pulled off the main dirt road, hidden deep within a natural, sheltered clearing surrounded by towering, ancient ironwood trees. The quiet, domestic routine of making camp provided a stark, desperately needed contrast to the violent resonance Evanthe had just endured. Harlan moved with practiced, stoic efficiency.

He unhitched the massive draft horses, brushing them down and feeding them oats from a canvas sack, his longsword never leaving his hip. He kept a watchful, vigilant eye on the dark perimeter of the treeline, acting as a silent, heavily armored sentinel for their small group. Near the center of the clearing, Lira had quickly gathered dry deadwood and coaxed a bright, crackling campfire to life.

The catgirl hummed a soft, cheerful tune from the capital as she set an iron pot over the flames, effortlessly dicing root vegetables and dried meats with a small dagger. Her fluffy ears twitched occasionally, swiveling to catch the ambient sounds of the forest, but her golden eyes frequently darted toward Evanthe with undisguised, nurturing worry. Evanthe sat wrapped in a thick woolen blanket on a fallen log near the fire, her knees pulled to her chest.

She watched the flames dance, her body still feeling fragile and hollowed out from the internal battle. Yet, as she watched Harlan patrol the edge of the firelight and Lira meticulously season the stew, a strange, warm realization began to slowly settle over her. She was not just a piece of luggage being dragged to the capital. She was not entirely alone in the dark.

These people, a stoic veteran coachman, an anxious but fiercely loyal catgirl maid, and a master whose power rivaled the gods, were actively protecting her. They were forming a bizarre, incredibly deadly surrogate family. It created new, profound emotional stakes in her heart. She couldn't afford to be weak. She couldn't afford to let the corruption win, not when these people were risking their lives to pull her out of the shadows.

After Lira served her a bowl of rich, hot stew, and Harlan had settled by the carriage wheel for his first watch, Xuan Ji approached the log. The master sat down smoothly beside her disciple, the firelight casting dancing shadows across her flawless, serene features.

"Every night, we will practice the basic meditation I showed you," Xuan Ji instructed quietly, not allowing the day's trauma to serve as an excuse for weakness.

"Your constitution is a wild, starving beast. If you do not learn to hold the leash, it will break you again." Evanthe set her empty wooden bowl aside and nodded resolutely. She adjusted her posture, sitting cross-legged on the log, and closed her eyes. It was agonizingly difficult at first. Her mind kept forcefully drifting back to the blood-soaked memories of the manor, or the terrifying, suffocating sensation of the resonance from earlier that afternoon.

Every time she tried to gently guide the wild energy in her dantian, the crimson pool would violently resist, sending sharp, warning pains through her chest and leaving her gasping for breath.

"Do not force it into submission with anger," Xuan Ji's voice guided her, floating through the darkness of her mind like a tether.

"Anger is the food it craves. Approach it with absolute, cold indifference. You are the master of your vessel. It is merely the water; you are the stone." Evanthe gritted her teeth, sweat beading on her forehead despite the cool evening air. Some nights were worse than others; the energy would rage like a storm, scattering her focus and leaving her deeply exhausted and frustrated. But tonight, fueled by the desperation to never feel that helpless again, she pushed past the pain.

She envisioned Xuan Ji's absolute, abyssal calm. She stopped fighting the current and instead built a dam of willpower around it. Slowly, agonizingly, she managed to settle it into a faint, unsteady swirl. It was a microscopic victory, but as she opened her eyes and exhaled a long, shaky breath, the pain in her chest had significantly eased.

"Better," Xuan Ji noted, her dark eyes reflecting the campfire.

"Rest now. Tomorrow, we push harder."