Chapter 53: Invasion of the Gods

Ning Xiaoling moved with extreme speed. With the city walls now collapsed, nothing stood in her way.

In the blink of an eye, her figure vanished from sight. Like a stone dropped into a lake, she disappeared into the imperial city.

As the sounds faded, Ning Changjiu slowly emerged from the hall. His arms hung limply by his sides, his sleeves swayed gently in the wind, and his expression was weary.

This was the first time he had felt such a profound sense of powerlessness.

Even though he currently faced significant physical problems he didn't know how to solve, he always held an inexplicable confidence in his future cultivation because he had already traversed this path in his previous life. But today, he truly understood the four words Lu Jiajia had spoken that day: "Time waits for no one."

He watched helplessly as the blood splattered onto his junior sister, saw her succumb to the demonic influence, and witnessed her extreme struggle to force herself away from him, desperate not to harm him.

He was powerless to stop any of it.

The midday sun cast a brilliant white light across the land, illuminating everything brightly.

Zhao Xianger walked to his side, her expression grave. Under the intense sunlight, her face was as pale as gold leaf, completely drained of color.

She took a red string, held it between her lips, reached her hands behind her head, gathered her long hair, secured it with one hand, and with the other, used the red string to tie it. The string glided past her pale lips, and in an instant, her hair was neatly bound into a ponytail.

She said little to Ning Changjiu, merely glancing at the heavily wounded, dying Blood Feather Lord.

The chill that had been dormant in the Blood Feather Lord's heart for decades erupted once more. For a moment, the bone-chilling cold almost made it forget its myriad wounds and gushing blood. The aura of death pressed down on it, pinning it firmly to the ground. Its claws clutched its chest, where Ning Xiaoling's punch had caved in its bones, leaving it barely able to breathe.

Zhao Xianger could torture it, dismember it with a thousand cuts, or subject it to the most severe torments.

However, she ignored the heavily injured demonic bird and, lifting her sword, walked directly towards the spot where Ning Xiaoling had vanished.

She had more important matters to attend to.

"Wait!" Ning Changjiu called out, stopping her.

Zhao Xianger paused slightly. "What is it?"

Ning Changjiu asked, "Where are you going?"

"None of your business," Zhao Xianger replied.

Ning Changjiu said, "Her cultivation has reached the initial stage of the Purple Court. You won't be able to stop her."

Zhao Xianger closed her eyes and calmly stated, "I have my own plan. There are other means to suppress demons within the imperial city."

Ning Changjiu asked, "The National Seal or the Nine Spirits...?"

Zhao Xianger cut him off. "That is a secret of Zhao, and you don't need to know."

Ning Changjiu sighed, "Even if you have the means, what good is it? You can't find her now. The best techniques are useless if the target is gone."

Zhao Xianger glanced at him. "True dragons exist in this world."

Ning Changjiu had no time to argue with her. His expression serious, he said, "I have a way to find my junior sister and... restrain her."

On the palace wall, the Blood Feather Lord's wings were spread wide, two iron swords pinning him to the stone like nails. From the sword wounds, two streams of blood snaked downwards.

"How can the demonic influence triggered by your blood be suppressed?" Lu Jiajia stared at it indifferently, then drove another sword into its wing.

The Blood Feather Lord shrieked in agony, stammering, "How would I know?… Before that old fox died, he told me to splash the blood on that little girl, saying that if it succeeded, she... she would be mine to control..."

Lu Jiajia asked, "Then why can't you control her?"

With its bloody wings spread, the Blood Feather Lord collapsed, crying, "That old fox must have set me up! He just wanted to cause trouble for you, he didn't care if I lived or died..."

Lu Jiajia angrily retorted, "Were you so foolish as to be tricked by him?"

The Blood Feather Lord retorted, "If you had been ordered around by a half-grown little girl for over ten years, and then suddenly had a chance to kill her, could you have resisted?"

Lu Jiajia took a deep breath and struck dozens of times, riddling its wings with holes. The Blood Feather Lord's heart-rending screams echoed ceaselessly.

"You're supposed to be righteous cultivators, can't you just finish me off quickly? Do you have to torment this Lord so much... If I knew anything, I would have told you already, I truly know nothing else!"

Lu Jiajia said coldly, "Then I will grant you a swift end."

"Wait, wait... hold on! Wait for Her Highness to return first. She probably wants to dismember me with a thousand cuts. If you just kill me directly, that would be too easy on me. Besides, Her Highness despises me, so it wouldn't look good if you acted without her, right? After all, this is also a private matter for the Zhao family, isn't it...?" the Blood Feather Lord pleaded, his face twisted in misery.

Lu Jiajia said indifferently, "Slaying demons and vanquishing evil is a matter for all the world."

For some reason, Ning Xiaoling did not leave the imperial city directly.

In a large, long-abandoned manor in the west of the city, Ning Xiaoling plunged down, creating a huge crater in the ground with a thud. She stood in the center of the pit, her Daoist robe covered in mud. Her hands were buried deep in the soil, her expression constantly shifting with struggle.

"Don't waste your strength. How long can a little girl like you last? Give up the resistance. If I possess you, you won't hear or see anything, you won't feel guilty for anything that happens, and you'll be spared all pain. You won't die; this is just a silent slumber. Once the soul stabilizes, I can let you out, and we can see this world together."

A highly seductive voice incessantly echoed, impossible to block even when Ning Xiaoling covered her ears tightly, because the voice came from within her own mind.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw a snow-white, broken-tailed fox, its figure lithe, walking towards her with an eerie smile on its face.

"Shut up!" Ning Xiaoling roared.

The snow fox sneered, "In half an hour at most, I can completely devour you. What's the point of your struggle? Then, I'll leave you a sliver of consciousness, so you can watch your senior brother being torn to shreds by me, bit by bit."

Veins bulged on Ning Xiaoling's forehead, and her youthful face was unnaturally pale, like a ghost.

"My senior brother will kill you..." Ning Xiaoling said.

The snow fox scoffed, "Then why are you running? Take me to your senior brother, let him kill me!"

Ning Xiaoling said, "Senior brother just doesn't want to see me die."

"Hahahaha..." The snow fox suddenly burst into a series of sharp laughs. It said, "Do you really think your senior brother is a good person? He's just a demon possessing a body, just like me. The only difference is that he successfully devoured your senior brother, while I haven't had the chance to consume you yet. Don't you understand? The senior brother who was best to you was killed by the one who stands before you now... And you still acknowledge a thief as your brother, little girl, you are truly laughable."

Ning Xiaoling's mind wavered, and she almost succumbed to its taunts. "Shut up!"

"What? Unwilling to accept the truth?" The snow fox's sneering laugh was like the relentless wind of winter, howling ceaselessly in her ears: "Aren't you curious why he's so good to you? Hehehe... That's merely the original owner of that body being kind to you. He has only inherited some of that body's emotions, and you, you've fallen for just a tiny bit of kindness? But the senior brother who truly cared for you, his soul has already been destroyed..."

Ning Xiaoling stubbornly declared, "He *is* my senior brother!"

The snow fox said, "You're just afraid to believe it. Don't forget, your senior brother used to be a dullard! Did he suddenly become enlightened?"

Ning Xiaoling's body, stuck in the mud pit, trembled continuously. Her eyes were wide, and the eerie pure black-and-white colors of her pupils had temporarily faded, but at that moment, her irises were still very pale, as if they could be consumed at any moment.

Ning Xiaoling opened her mouth with difficulty and said, "Senior brother has always been saving me, while you want to harm me. Who do you think I should believe, you or my senior brother?!"

The snow fox fell silent for a moment. This was a very simple sense of right and wrong: even if her current senior brother were the most evil demon in the world, he was still saving her. And even if it were the kindest angel, all it did was try to devour her.

Therefore, who her senior brother was now didn't matter to her, because he had always been saving her.

The snow fox sneered, "You truly are ill-fated. The one closest to you wants to devour you, and your dearest senior brother is a hypocritical demon. A girl like you would be better off dead!"

Ning Xiaoling retorted coldly, "I'm right here in front of you. Why don't you eat me then? Old fox, with teeth that bad, why don't you just die?"

The snow fox laughed even more heartily, its voice like a blade cutting flesh. "Then I won't hold back."

Within the empty manor, the girl's agonizing screams periodically erupted, muffled and echoing faintly.

The midday sun felt incredibly cold.