"Why bother trying to escape..."
Gu Junshi narrowed her long, elegant eyes. Her slender eyelids were light and thin. As she stared at them, a powerful divine sense locked onto the group.
Their skin immediately felt as if it had been struck by electricity, tingling and numb, their muscles tensing and stiffening.
They couldn't move.
Their hearts seemed to stop beating in that instant, cold sweat trickling down their backs.
"In the end, you're all going to die anyway."
Realizing she wouldn't let them go, Yan Tianjiao gritted his teeth and, at the cost of self-harm, activated a life-saving secret technique his parents had placed on him.
He bit his tongue forcefully, his mouth filling with blood that sprayed out. The moment his fingers, due to the pain, could move slightly, he used his heart's blood as a guide, causing the smooth texture of his entire body to form uneven, stone-like ridges of frost due to the surge of power.
His hair instantly turned white and whipped around him.
"Aargh!"
He couldn't suppress the resentment in his chest and let out a long cry. The air around him filled with dense, sharp ice shards.
Taking advantage of the spiritual power surge, he broke free from Gu Junshi's divine sense lock, preparing to bet everything he had on this one chance.
If someone had to sacrifice themselves in this calamity, he was willing to be that sacrifice to let Lu Ziyin and Ru Lan escape.
"Gu Junshi—"
He called out with a deep, angry voice. The ice crystals, scattered like dew in the air, were reshaped by spiritual power into sharp blue ice needles. They were no longer ordinary ice needles but were infused with cold poison.
Yan Tianjiao's face was as pale as frost, his eyebrows frozen stiff. He quickly formed hand seals.
He brought his palms together, and with an opening and closing motion, pushed them forward, launching all the ice needles towards Gu Junshi.
However, when they were within a palm's distance of Gu Junshi, they hit an invisible wall. One after another, they were all crushed into powder.
Yan Tianjiao stared in stunned silence, while Gu Junshi's expression remained unchanged, not even a strand of her hair was disturbed.
In the wind, the power difference between the two was clear. Even if Yan Tianjiao fought with his life, he couldn't even touch a single strand of Gu Junshi's hair.
Looking at Ru Lan's tear-filled, angry eyes, Gu Junshi said gently, "Since your brother is so important to you, perhaps you should go and accompany him."
Gu Junshi raised her hand, the wind whipping her robes, and countless black energy threads intertwined and coiled around her fingertips.
Lu Ziyin saw that Yan Tianjiao had used his ultimate skill. This was a life-saving technique his parents had given him, a one-time use item. Although its power was immense, capable of killing enemies of a higher cultivation level, it also caused immense damage to the user.
He knew that Yan Tianjiao would likely have little strength left after this move. He couldn't hold back any longer, or the few of them would probably die here.
He also took out his greatest trump card—the Boundless Cave Heaven.
This was a life-saving artifact. The Boundless Cave Heaven was a secret realm, but unlike ordinary secret realms, once entered, even the most powerful immortals couldn't harm anyone inside. This was because after the Boundless Cave Heaven closed, it would be randomly teleported to an extremely safe, hidden location.
However, this artifact had a fatal flaw: anyone who entered would have to stay for at least a hundred years before they could emerge again.
But he couldn't worry about that anymore.
With his weak spiritual power, he activated the defensive formation of his high-grade magical robe. A green light enveloped him, momentarily warding off Gu Junshi's divine power. He struggled to form hand seals, and the whistling winds from all directions converged before him. A colorful light formation gradually took shape and appeared in front of him.
"Hurry and get in!"
Lu Ziyin shouted urgently.
The activation of the Boundless Cave Heaven required a massive amount of spiritual power, and he couldn't sustain it for long.
Ru Lan looked at him, her face filled with extreme conflict. She didn't care about her own life or death, but she couldn't stand by and watch Yan Tianjiao and Lu Ziyin lose their lives because of her.
"Aargh—"
She screamed as if weeping blood, turned back, and pulled Yan Tianjiao and Lu Ziyin with her. The three of them then fled into it together.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A gentle voice, like that of a demon, sounded from behind them.
Ru Lan and the others' eyes widened as they discovered that the Boundless Cave Heaven seemed to have frozen, showing no reaction to their entry.
They turned back abruptly to see Gu Junshi calmly raising her hand, forming a fist. She extinguished the formation of the Boundless Cave Heaven in front of them. The intricate formation broke, finally collapsing into a ball of disintegration and vanishing.
They stood there in a daze.
"It seems you still don't understand the immense gap between me and you... no, between me and everyone here. Let alone you, even if your master or sect leader came, they would be like clay figures that I can knead and shape at will. If I want them flat, they can't become round."
The three of them truly felt Gu Junshi's power. It was indeed as she said; she was already the most powerful being in this world.
At that moment, a figure blocked their path. It was the injured Tan Ya.
The Human Emperor was absent. They didn't know if he had won or fled.
He clutched the large bloodstain on his chest and smiled at Gu Junshi, saying, "Ah Yi, why use a butcher's cleaver to kill a chicken? Why don't you let me deal with them?"
Gu Junshi looked at him steadily for a moment, then said, "Very well."
Tan Ya was stunned that she agreed so readily. Just as he let out a quiet sigh of relief, he saw an incomparably sharp black spike pass by his ear. The biting wind whipped his cold hair upwards...
Thump, thump, thump—
Three piercing sounds of flesh being penetrated were accompanied by muffled groans of extreme pain.
His pupils froze.
He turned back in shock and saw Yan Tianjiao, Lu Ziyin, and Ru Lan with their chests pierced through, like cattle or sheep impaled on a spit.
"Gu Junshi, you are so heartless..." Ru Lan's mouth continued to fill with bloody foam.
Lu Ziyin vomited large mouthfuls of blood, mixed with fragments of internal organs. He looked upwards, his pupils already unfocused.
"I was wrong... infatuated by beauty without knowing... the more beautiful the flower, the more poisonous it is..."
Yan Tianjiao stared deeply at Gu Junshi. Due to the extreme coldness of his body, his internal injuries were sealed for a moment. However, the iron spike piercing him was no ordinary object; the death qi on it was eroding his spiritual roots and flesh.
Knowing he had little time left, he cursed her maliciously: "What use is it even if you become an immortal? Gu Junshi, you are destined for a life of solitude and dependence. What's the point of being immortal and ageless if you will never feel alive again?"
Sizzle—
The iron spikes piercing the three were quickly pulled out. Without support, they lost their balance, like butterflies with broken wings, falling weightlessly for thousands of feet below the clouds.
"You think I would be afraid?" She chuckled.
Tan Ya, his face pale, slowly looked at Gu Junshi: "Didn't you say..."
Knowing what he was about to ask, Gu Junshi interrupted him: "Other matters can be handed over to you, but this is a task given to me by the Demon God. If you do it for me, how will I report back?"
Tan Ya finally couldn't control his emotions. He wanted to question her, but he was shocked to find that he couldn't make any sound.
Gu Junshi placed a finger to her lips.
"Shhh~ Don't say things I don't want to hear. Tan Ya, I have always admired your ability to adapt to circumstances, to update yourself with the times, and to change your path according to the situation. This adaptability is your only merit. If you lose even this, what difference is there between you and those people? What right do you have to stay by my side?"
Tan Ya stared at her blankly.
"Demon God, do you see? In my heart, there is no attachment or lingering affection. Now, please grant me demonic transformation."
Gu Junshi bowed slightly towards the upper heavens, towards the location of those evil red eyes.
"Very good."
A voice, like thunder, boomed from an indistinguishable direction.
The Demon God was now certain that Gu Junshi could be used by Him.
Cruel, heartless, and possessing overwhelming power.
Although He had escaped from the void between the two realms, He had been imprisoned for so many years, and His strength had not yet fully recovered. It was not yet time for Him to act recklessly, so He still needed a capable and loyal subordinate to act on His behalf.
Originally, these matters could have been handled by the demon race, but Gu Junshi had disrupted the original plan. In order to escape before the planned time, He had absorbed the power of the demon race to replenish Himself and break the shackles of the realms.
Now, the demon race was bound to be in danger, as these were all His loyal kinsmen. Gods and demons would not abandon them. But with Gu Junshi, who could sweep across the twenty-eight heavens, He no longer had to worry.
He wanted to make her an enemy of all twenty-eight heavens, with all hatred focused on her alone. This way, the demon race would have time to recuperate and recover.
"I bestow upon you demonic energy, to aid you in the path of demonization!"
He injected a dark demonic force into Gu Junshi's body. Although this would make Him weaker in the short term, once successful, He would be able to completely control Gu Junshi.
A pillar of black demonic light, the size of two people embracing, enveloped Gu Junshi. From a distance, it appeared that she could not endure such immense power, her hair flying wildly, her bun coming undone, her eyes turning blood red.
Her fair, soft skin developed black veins, strip by strip, patch by patch, like thick earthworms, or like small venomous snakes, crawling beneath her skin.
"Sister—"
Gu Er, in his divine sense, sensed Gu Junshi's consciousness on the verge of collapse. It was imaginable how painful the process of forcibly infusing demonic energy into an incompatible body was.
He was so worried that tears streamed down his face, desperately wanting to rush out and help her.
"Almost there, just a little more, just a little more..."
Her mouth was full of blood, her lips bitten raw, but her eyes remained as firm as iron. The blue ice flames deep within her pupils burned, consuming and transforming the redness.
"Sister—"
"Be quiet!"
"Why must you do this..."
Gu Er knelt on the ground, choked with sobs.
The pain Gu Junshi was experiencing, like scraping her bones and flesh, was far more intense than being struck by heavenly lightning. She opened her mouth, struggling to breathe, her entire body convulsing, veins bulging on her neck, her eyes wide open, her clothes billowing wildly.
She was about to grind her teeth to dust: "Gu Er, believe me, I will not lose!"
Gu Er's heart ached so much that he couldn't speak.
"I... I believe you..."
Gu Junshi, almost opening her body, absorbed as much of the demon power's marrow-cleansing effect as she could, like a parched, greedy sponge. In the end, even the Demon God was shocked by her endurance and wanted to interrupt the power transfer, but the current pace was no longer under His control.