The female cultivator said coldly, “Improper? Look at you, your injuries are clearly serious. You’re a clay bodhisattva barely crossing the river yourself, yet you still play the hero at the sight of injustice? How laughable!”
“In the Ninth Heaven, the law of the jungle is ironclad! The fact that I was surrounded and attacked today is simply because my strength fell short and my luck was bad. This tribulation was fated for me!
You suddenly appeared and killed them; that was your own choice. What has it got to do with me? Don’t tell me you expect me to be overwhelmed with gratitude and pledge myself to you?”
“You do have some skill in your strikes, but sadly your brain doesn’t seem to work very well. Those three were merely outer disciples of the Black Fiend Sect. Now that you’ve killed them, trouble will soon come knocking.
I advise you to start thinking about how to save your own skin instead of wasting time tangling with me here!”
Her words came fast and sharp, dripping with sarcasm. She treated Chen Ping’s rescue as nosy meddling, even as a burden and nuisance.
As Chen Ping listened to her machine-gun mockery, the anger in his heart gradually gave way to an icy sense of absurdity.
The person he had saved turned out to be this selfish, heartless creature who couldn’t tell right from wrong.
“But I did save your life,” Chen Ping said.
“I never forced you to save me,” the female cultivator retorted.
“Bloody hell, you’ve got some kind of emotional defect or something? You could’ve said so earlier!”
Looking at her utterly self-righteous expression and the way she seemed to find him a bother, Chen Ping suddenly felt all interest drain away. He no longer even wanted to argue.
“Emotional defect?” The woman faltered for a moment, but quickly caught on.
“You’re the one who’s f—”
Whoosh!
Before she could finish, Chen Ping’s Dragon-Slaying Sword was already swinging.
A flash of sword light arced through the air, and the woman’s head flew high.
With a casual beckoning gesture, her storage bag landed in Chen Ping’s hand.
“Kid, that was ruthless enough. But what did you mean when you said that girl had an ‘emotional defect’?
I didn’t see anything wrong with her,” Scarlet Cloud Demon Lord asked curiously.
Chen Ping merely gave a faint smile and offered no explanation. Some things were understood naturally by those who got it; for those who didn’t, explanations were pointless.
He looted all four storage bags but did not leave immediately. Instead, he found a concealed mountain cave and set up a simple concealing array.
First, he inspected his haul. The three demonic cultivators’ bags contained mostly sinister materials and low-grade demonic crystals, which were of little use to him.
But when he opened the purple-robed woman’s storage bag, his eyes lit up.
Aside from a considerable number of high-quality spirit stones and medicinal pills, there was an exquisite jade vial containing a single dragon-eye-sized pill that radiated nine-coloured auspicious qi: precisely the “Nine-Revolution Pill” that had sparked the deadly fight!
Next to the pill lay a palm-sized token, neither metal nor wood, cool to the touch. One side bore the character “玄” (Mysterious), while the reverse depicted a mountain peak shrouded in clouds and mist, with two smaller characters beneath: “阴煞” (Yin Fiend).
“Profound Yin Fiend Sect?”
Chen Ping’s brow arched slightly. Though he had only recently arrived in the Ninth Heaven, he had already heard of this sect. It was a second-rate demonic sect notorious for dual-cultivation harvesting techniques and ghost-controlling arts. Their conduct was sinister, and their reputation utterly foul.
“No wonder she was cut from the same cloth.”
Chen Ping gave a cold snort. Given how selfish and heartless that woman had been, the atmosphere of her sect was easy to imagine.
The memory of her venomous expression just before death, combined with the sect’s infamous name, crystallised a decision in his mind.
“Perfect. This Nine-Revolution Pill is of excellent quality; it should restore most of my strength. When that happens, the Profound Yin Fiend Sect… can serve as the first stop on my little ‘resource-acquisition’ tour.”
A cold glint flashed across Chen Ping’s eyes.
He was not a bloodthirsty man by nature, but he lived by a simple creed: respect begets respect; harm me and I will harm you back.
That woman’s words and actions had crossed his bottom line, and in his view, a sect like hers had no right to exist.
Moreover, wiping out such a demonic sect would both yield resources and count as acting on heaven’s behalf.
Without further hesitation, he took out the Nine-Revolution Pill and swallowed it in one gulp.
