Inside the cave, there really was a group of demonic cultivators—the very ones causing trouble around Beiyang City.
This cave was one of their hideouts; every time they kidnapped people, they would rest here afterward.
According to the burly man, their gang had five people in total, calling themselves the “Five Great Bandits.” But there were only four people in the cave; their boss had gone out for something and hadn’t returned yet.
“How many people have you kidnapped in total, and where are they being held?” Xiao Minghuang asked at last.
“We’ve caught seven women and four children, all locked up in the deepest dungeon of the cave.”
“Where is the female cultivator at the seventh level of Body Tempering being held?” Hearing this, the burly man’s heart skipped a beat.
This heroine even knew they’d captured a female cultivator at the seventh level of Body Tempering—could she be a family member of that woman, here to rescue her? “That female cultivator is locked in Third Bro’s—ah, no!—the third demon’s room.
That demon practices evil arts, often stealing women’s vital yin to cultivate, and then cruelly kills them afterward.
Heroine, you mustn’t let that beast go!” The burly man said angrily, looking like he shared a common enemy.
Hearing this, Xiao Minghuang smiled faintly and asked, “You say others practice evil arts, but you reek of blood.
Aren’t you also using human blood to cultivate?”
“I’m not! I swear I’m not!” The burly man hurriedly denied it.
“It’s all animal blood, not human!”
Xiao Minghuang didn’t answer.
Whether it was true or not, she had her own judgment.
After confessing everything, the burly man trembled and asked, “He—heroine, I’ve answered all your questions.
Can you let me go now?”
Xiao Minghuang’s face was expressionless as she withdrew her finger from the back of the burly man’s neck.
The golden light faded, and darkness returned.
“Go.”
Feeling the pressure on his neck disappear, the burly man felt as if he’d been pardoned.
He immediately started to run away.
But after just two steps—
In the pitch-black cave, a flash of golden light suddenly appeared, like a shooting star streaking across the night sky, vanishing in an instant.
Whoosh! The starlight was so fast that the burly man didn’t even have time to react before it pierced through his chest, leaving a thumb-sized bloody hole.
The burly man’s vision went black, then his chest burned with pain.
Blood gushed out like a fountain, and in the next moment, he was dead, his body crashing to the ground.
After killing the burly man, Xiao Minghuang didn’t spare the corpse a single glance.
Her expression unchanged, she moved gracefully, drifting down from the table and heading deeper into the cave.
As she went further in, she found more demonic cultivators with even lower cultivation, none above the sixth level of Body Tempering.
These demonic cultivators were so weak they didn’t even notice Xiao Minghuang’s presence.
She killed them in their sleep.
It didn’t take long.
Xiao Minghuang reached the deepest part of the cave.
After clearing the way, more than a dozen demonic cultivators had died by her hand.
Except for the leader of the “Five Great Bandits,” all the rest were dead.
“Other than the boss who isn’t here, the remaining three should be in this stone building.”
Xiao Minghuang looked at the tall stone pavilion in front of her and steadied herself.
“To carve out such a huge building inside a tiny cave—they really went to a lot of trouble!” She stood at the door, faintly hearing the noisy voices of the demonic cultivators inside.
There were clearly more than just the three leaders.
There were over twenty auras inside, but most of them weren’t strong; only a few were above the sixth level of Body Tempering.
Only three auras at the peak of Body Tempering could be felt—those should be the three leaders.
As for Qi Refining cultivators, there weren’t any.
“The boss of the demonic cultivators probably isn’t here.
The rest are all small fry.
It’s too much trouble to deal with them one by one—might as well kill them all at once.”
Ever since she started cultivating the “Ziwei Imperial Dao Scripture,” she hadn’t used her full power.
Now was a good time to test the power of starlight.
Xiao Minghuang muttered to herself, then gathered all her spiritual power.
Vortexes of energy appeared at her lower abdomen, chest, and hands, drawing in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
A faint light appeared between her brows, and a point of golden light shot out, illuminating the pitch-black cave and making it as bright as day in an instant.
Brilliant starlight, like a comet in the night sky, seemed to carry the power to pierce the heavens and earth as it pressed down on the stone building.
…
Inside the stone building.
“Come on, brothers! Drink up!” The demonic cultivators’ eyes were glazed, all of them dizzy and drunk, when suddenly a flash of light appeared outside the window.
They didn’t even have time to react before the light descended upon them.
The demonic cultivators’ eyes widened, their pupils full of disbelief, as if they were seeing the most dazzling and beautiful sight of their lives.
But after the endless brilliance came cold, unfeeling death.
…
The starlight faded.
Xiao Minghuang’s face turned pale, and the four vortexes on her body disappeared.
Feeling her empty dantian, she took out a pill and swallowed it, her spiritual power slowly recovering.
She couldn’t help but give a wry smile.
“Even though I’ve advanced to the fourth level of Qi Refining, releasing starlight once still drains all the spiritual power from my dantian.”
Xiao Minghuang took out another pill from her storage pouch and swallowed it, replenishing her depleted spiritual power.
Even so, it was a huge improvement compared to before.
When she had just learned the “Ziwei Imperial Dao Scripture,” she couldn’t use the technique on her own at all.
She had to rely on external spirit stones to supply spiritual power in order to use it.
Now, she could use her own spiritual power to cast the technique.
That was a big step forward.
Also, Xiao Minghuang discovered that the “Ziwei Imperial Dao Scripture” and the “Big Dipper Seven Stars Sword Technique” seemed to come from the same source, with no barriers between them.
“Is it possible that the Big Dipper Seven Stars Sword Technique is actually part of the Ziwei Imperial Dao Scripture, just separated later?” Xiao Minghuang murmured to herself.
It was just a guess—she couldn’t prove it.
She stepped into the stone building, and what greeted her was a floor covered in corpses.
The demonic cultivators lay sprawled all over the ground, blood streaming from their seven orifices, eyes wide open and pupils unfocused, completely and utterly dead.
“I acted too fast.
I should’ve asked them first where the people they captured were being held.”
Xiao Minghuang’s elegant brows furrowed slightly, then she released her spiritual sense, spreading it outward.
But her spiritual sense had barely left the stone building when she spotted a small house and suddenly sensed a restless aura.
“I remember that guy said they caught a woman at the seventh level of Body Tempering and locked her up alone in the three bosses’ room.”
Thinking of this, Xiao Minghuang immediately started walking toward that house.
As she got closer, she faintly heard the sound of porcelain shattering inside.
A sense of foreboding rose in Xiao Minghuang’s heart, and she quickened her pace.
…Inside the house.
A woman dressed in a fiery red wedding gown, her figure graceful, could be seen through the thin red veil—her face was as delicate and radiant as white jade.
Right now, the woman was curled up in the farthest corner of the room, her whole body tied up with rope, unable to move.
Her mouth was stuffed with a towel so she couldn’t make a sound, her eyes were covered with a red cloth, and her body trembled nonstop—clearly terrified to the extreme.
This woman was Lin Wanqiu, the only daughter of the Lord of Beiyang City.
She was born with blocked meridians, and only managed to force her way to the seventh level of Body Tempering through sheer willpower and a bit of support from the city lord’s mansion.
But as her cultivation increased, the disadvantage of her blocked meridians became more and more obvious.
To cure his daughter’s blocked meridians, the Lord of Beiyang City had even sought help from the royal family’s honored guests, but it was useless.
A month ago, Lin Wanqiu read in an ancient book that there was a spiritual herb in the world that could break through blocked meridians if consumed.
Coincidentally, a few days ago she heard that such a herb might be growing in the Wild Forest, so she hurried there with her guards.
After some searching, she finally got the herb, but it turned out the evil cultivators had already set their sights on it.
Her guards died protecting her.
She fought hard but was defeated and captured by the evil cultivators.
But before she was caught, she managed to hide the herb.
The evil cultivators wanted the herb, so they hadn’t harmed her yet.
But this morning, they forced her to put on this outfit, which showed their patience had run out.
“Little beauty, let me show you some love…” A fat man in a bright red robe, greasy-haired and with a face full of lecherous smiles, squinted his eyes into slits as he moved closer to the woman.
Just then—
The door quietly opened, a breeze swept in, and the candles in the room went out instantly, plunging everything into darkness.
The sudden turn of events startled the fat man, but before he could react—
A faint golden light flashed and pierced through his heart, then vanished in an instant.
Xiao Minghuang grabbed the fat man by the sleeve and tossed him out the door, sending him flying more than ten meters away.
She moved fast and clean, using spiritual energy to open and close the door, making no sound at all.
After finishing, Xiao Minghuang returned to the room, walked to the bed, and looked at the woman.
Once you reached the ninth level of Body Tempering, you could see in the dark, so the woman’s graceful figure, the fiery red wedding dress, and her delicate, jade-like neck were all exposed to Xiao Minghuang.
“Was she kidnapped on her wedding day?” But after another look at the obviously cheap wedding dress, with even the threads left untrimmed, and thinking of the fat man she’d just thrown out—
“She must have been forced to wear it after being kidnapped.”
Xiao Minghuang raised her right hand and pulled the towel out of the woman’s mouth.
The towel felt nice and smooth, but after being bitten for so long, it was soaked with saliva and sticky.
The room was pitch black and silent.
Before Xiao Minghuang could say anything, the woman spoke first.
“Chief Chen, how about we talk terms?”
