"Kurgh—y-you...evil..." The young man gurgled, his hands clutching at the deep wound, eyes wide with disbelief before his body crumpled, adding to the mountain of corpses littering the courtyard.
Silence.
"Haa....finally," Olea exhaled, her body shuddering from exhaustion, her grip tightening around her swords to suppress the ache spreading through her arms.
Her eyes flickered across the battlefield.
It was over.
The Exorcism Sect had been wiped out.
Or so she thought.
THUD
The sound of soone's body falling broke the stillness.
The Vice Sect Leader of the Ghost Sect collapsed.
His exhausted fra hit the blood-soaked ground with a dull impact, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His reserves were spent; his strength utterly drained, to the point where even the will could no longer sustain him as his body betrayed his mind and he fell unconscious.
Olea turned her gaze toward him but paused.
Her attention was drawn beyond.
There, amidst the carnage, a lone figure remained standing.
A woman.
The last woman standing, with whom the vice sect leader was fighting a mont before.
"Haah....Haah...." Her body was ruined—soaked in blood, battered beyond recognition.
Her right arm was missing, the torn stump still oozing, yet she stood.
Her sword—a re remnant of what it once was—trembled in her grip, barely holding her up.
Her lips moved.
Soft. Barely a whisper.
Olea narrowed her gaze.
Then—
She heard it.
"No..."
A ragged breath.
"I don't want to die."
The woman's fingers clenched around the hilt, her knuckles bone-white with the wound on her chest, showing even the hint of the bones within, blood completely bathing her. Yet it appeared that the sheer will—sothing that could even make the dead rise—was burning within her as her feet stumbled, completely out of control, yet she wanted to live.
"...I want to live."
Her legs shook, her body on the verge of collapse—yet her voice, though weak, carried sothing raw.
"I don't want to die."
However, these words were not begging for rcy, but sothing else. It was as if she was telling herself that she needed to live. She needed to heal. She could not just die like this.
"...." Olea's grip on her swords tightened. Her eyes, through the crimson filter of the liquid from others dripping from her eyebrow, cleared before she moved towards that battered figure, yet halted the mont she saw the princess coming forward.
"Princess, she...." Olea looked towards the princess, who also halted, glancing at her, giving a small look before turning towards the woman, battered while stumbling. They realized that the princess also noticed the peculiar thing: the woman was unconscious.
Indeed, that woman who was murmuring to live was sohow already unconscious. Yet, her body was moving on its own, as if sheer will was crossing the limits of what one could ever imagine. She stood there, battered, bathed in blood.
"Haah, live...huh," Aleriana looked towards the woman, turned her head upward, hand loosening on her sword as she clearly saw the desperation in that already dying body, enduring beyond what any cultivator could ever possess.
She could see that to have such desperation, to let one's body move even when it was unconscious, only showed the admiration one could have for that woman.
Yet in this cruel world, either way, rcy wasn't an option, prompting her to clench the sword and end this all as she moved.
Hands pulling the sword in an instant before her body once again blurred, directly slicing through that woman's neck.
Slice
A thin red line ford within the already blood-soaked neck as the head, which had been uttering the desperation to live, finally detached from the body, falling on the floor, rolling with the remaining body as it halted its movent, falling directly on her knees.
"Let's leave, Olea." Aleriana, having seen that the sun was about to set, turned her sapphire eyes towards Olea, who seed to be looking at the headless body and knees of that woman—armless yet alive.
For this fleeting mont, she caught a glimpse of admiration for such desperation to live, which was similar to Olea's and the princess's own desperate desires to get what they wanted.
"Hm," Olea gave a nod before putting her sword in its sheath as she turned to leave, moving before grabbing the unconscious vice sect leader and lifting him onto her shoulder.
Just as she turned to follow the princess, a chilling murmur reverberated in that premise.
"I want to live...."
'!?!'
The voice was ominous yet desperate, causing both Aleriana and Olea to halt, their eyes turning back toward the source of the voice, which led their line of sight to the head lying on the ground with hollow eyes, its lips automatically murmuring those words.
The desperation and burning desire within those words caused both Olea and Aleriana to stiffen in their places. Given their whole lifeti, it was the first ti they saw a severed head uttering sothing.
"I don't want to die..."
"I want to live."
"Princess..." Olea could clearly hear the voices from that head, slowly turning, materializing into words, the black letters coming out of it, causing her to wonder if she was hallucinating. When it appeared, the princess was the sa, her sapphire eyes narrowed, once again causing her hand to materialize, gripping her sword.
Aleriana's whole body seed to beco on guard, seeing such strange phenona while also knowing that there was ominous energy increasing around them.
The voice from the severed head grew louder.
It was no longer a whisper.
It was a chant.
"I want to live... I want to live... I WANT TO LIVE!"
The air turned thick and suffocating, charged with sothing beyond comprehension, but for cultivators, this was not sothing that could make them retreat.
Yet Aleriana and Olea instinctively stepped back, their hands gripping their weapons as the temperature around them plumted, the Qi in the area reacting violently, filling the internal energy into sothing ominous and dark.
A chilling gust surged across the blood-soaked ground.
Then—
A tremor.
The corpses in the courtyard—hundreds of them—twitched.
Their limp limbs convulsed and then jerked violently, as if sothing unseen had seized them.
The severed head trembled, its hollow sockets leaking black mist. A suffocating pressure descended, and in the next instant—
The dead rose.
The bodies levitated, drawn into the air as if unseen hands pulled their flesh upward.
Their skin, already drained of life, began to blacken and disintegrate.
Ashes peeled away, flaking into the air like whispers of decay, swirling together into a vortex above the battlefield.
The black mist thickened, consuming the sky, twisting into an unnatural storm of death.
Bones clattered.
Hundreds of skeletons—stripped of flesh—floated in eerie unison.
They did not fall.
Instead, they rged.
Aleriana was surrounded by a dense mist. Even though she was exhausted, the phenonon in front of her was enough to alert her to the realization that sothing was coming. Her hands gripping the sword, she said, "Olea, I cannot sense the level of this thing."
'!'
Those words from Aleriana just changed the whole perspective of this battle. Given that if she, at the 7th layer, was not able to sense even remnants of the energy, then it simply ant the beast in front of her was far stronger than she, most probably at the 8th layer.
'....No,' Olea's hand loosened, causing the wise sect leader to fall on the floor as her hands took out the sword again. She knew this was going to be a death battle, eyes looking towards the vortex that they could not approach but could only watch the transition unfold before them.
The bones coiled together, an unseen force weaving them into sothing monstrous.
Vertebrae snapped into place, forming an enormous spine.
Ribcages cracked and fused, crafting the grotesque bulk of a body.
Skulls snapped together, stacking along the length of the abomination, their empty sockets gleaming with sinister light.
Then, the head rose—the very sa head that had started it all.
It hovered at the structure's peak, bathed in swirling black mist. The voice had not stopped.
"I want to live... I want to live... I WANT TO LIVE!"
A horrid screech split the air. The skeletal mass lurched, its form elongating, stretching, serpent-like.
Black light pulsed from its core, a sinister energy crackling across its bones. The sheer pressure it emitted sent cracks through the stone beneath them.
The Death Serpent had awakened, its size being equivalent to the bodies of all 500 humans rged together.
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