Chapter 5
"You think I believe you?" Ling Xu said coldly, standing despite her unsteady body.
"I am the daughter of a Goddess who was violated and butchered. I will never trust humans that easily."
She snapped her fingers, and inside Huan Zheng's body, the poison activated.
Not like the previous poison that burned—but like thousands of tiny ants biting from within, piercing every meridian that had just recovered.
Huan Zheng screamed.
His scream was worse than before, worse than the poison of One Land, Two Skies, Three Authorities, because this time he was not dying—he was being punished while fully conscious.
"Stop… stop!" he shouted, his body rolling on the ground, his hands clawing at the dirt.
Ling Xu walked closer slowly, silently, like a shadow that could not be dispelled.
"Sorry… forgive me!" Huan Zheng cried, his voice turning into a nauseating tone of submission.
"I won't do it again! I swear by heaven and earth—I will become your subordinate! I will become your slave!"
Ling Xu stopped, staring at him with unreadable eyes.
Within her mind, the consciousness of the Star of Humanity whispered.
"He is lying. Or perhaps not. But you need him, remember?"
Ling Xu let out a long breath, then knelt before Huan Zheng, who continued groaning in pain.
"Listen, human," she said, her voice as sharp as a scalpel, "I do not need a slave. I need a tool. And you will be my tool until I reach the Heavenly Longitude cultivation level. After that, you are free—you can leave, you can come back and attack me, you can die on the road, I do not care."
Huan Zheng, still writhing in pain, looked up with teary eyes.
Not from emotion, but from pain, shame, and anger mixed into one.
"Heavenly… Heavenly Longitude? That will take decades!"
Ling Xu smiled faintly.
"Then you will stay with me for decades. Or you can die here, now, because my poison has no antidote—except for me stopping it."
Huan Zheng fell silent.
He wanted to curse, wanted to shout that Ling Xu was the descendant of a Goddess who deserved to be mutilated, that all Goddesses deserved the same fate as her mother—but the poison kept biting, and death felt so close.
"Fine," he whispered at last, his voice broken, "I… accept."
Ling Xu stopped the poison.
Not all at once, but gradually, like someone loosening a rope from a victim's neck knot by knot.
Huan Zheng sat weakly, his breath ragged, and for the first time, he looked at Ling Xu not as a lowly goddess—but as his master.
"But remember," Huan Zheng said, his eyes still holding a faint spark of rebellion, "I will be free the moment you reach Heavenly Longitude. Not a day later."
Ling Xu nodded, then stood, fixing her disheveled white, multicolored-streaked hair.
"Agreed. And during that time, you will serve me, protect me, and lead me to the mastermind behind my mother's violation. If you betray me again—"
She snapped her fingers, and within Huan Zheng's body, the poison pulsed softly as a warning.
"… I will not stop it next time. I will simply watch."
The border of Xuelan Camp looked like a wound at the edge of the world—half-collapsed wooden fences, dry grass swaying like the fingers of corpses, and a dusk sky whose red was too deep to be called orange.
Ling Xu arrived first, deliberately, cruelly, with a small smile that had not left her lips since she decided to toy with the second Wheel of Cultivation.
"He will definitely be angry," she murmured while fixing her wind-tangled white hair, "but let it be. Let him know what it feels like to be a tool."
Behind her, about a thousand meters to the east, Huan Zheng shot forward like an arrow released from a bow of pure rage—his face flushed red, veins bulging in his neck, and within his chest, the poison Ling Xu had activated suddenly bit again, squeezing every pulse of his life like an unseen giant hand.
"You—!" Huan Zheng shouted from afar, his voice cut by pain, "you damned goddess pest—you activated the poison again?!"
Ling Xu only laughed, then flew faster, leaving behind a streak of white light in the air like a taunt that could not be caught.
Uuuhh!!
A few hours earlier, right after the slave agreement had been made, Ling Xu suddenly flew off without warning, leaving Huan Zheng still sitting weakly.
"Hey—wait!" Huan Zheng shouted, but Ling Xu did not look back.
Instead, she snapped her fingers, and within Huan Zheng's body, the poison residing in the forty-nine fragments of the Star of Humanity activated.
Not to kill, but to torture.
"What—!"
Huan Zheng screamed, his body curling, feeling every vein being crushed repeatedly, as if something was twisting his intestines with a cold hand.
"Follow me," Ling Xu said from afar, her voice sounding like a devil's whisper in the ear, "or let this poison crush you slowly. The choice is yours."
Huan Zheng, with tears falling not from sadness but from unbearable anger, forced himself to fly.
And thus began the most insane chase in cultivation history.
A former number two of the Wheel of Cultivation who had just survived death chasing a goddess girl of Lower Star level who deliberately toyed with him like a dog chasing a bone.
Back to the present, at the border of Xuelan Camp, Huan Zheng finally arrived.
Late, gasping for breath, and his Lower Star Foundation cultivation energy had been drained fifteenfold during the journey.
But strangely, just as he was about to collapse from exhaustion, something happened.
The last reserve at the base of his chest exploded, instantly filling all his meridians, like a dry well suddenly boiling with underground spring water.
"This… this is the moment," Huan Zheng hissed, his eyes burning with pure hatred.
He gathered all that newly recovered energy into his right hand, then—without mercy, without warning—lunged toward Ling Xu's face.
His fist shot forward, fast, faster than lightning, and for a moment, Ling Xu's confidence turned into terror because she could see in Huan Zheng's eyes that he truly intended to kill her.
Not playing around, not merely scolding—but truly wanting to crush her face into pulp.
"You—!" Ling Xu cried, too late to evade.
The fist was only an inch away from the bridge of her nose, one inch away from a death that felt terrifyingly real.
But the fist struck only air.
Not because Huan Zheng withdrew, nor because Ling Xu suddenly dodged—but because something pulled Ling Xu backward.
A hand—large and firm—wrapped in robes like those of royalty—deep purple with golden patterns, as worn only by nobles from ancient palaces that even gods hesitated to name.
"Careful, miss," the man said, his voice deep and calm, like thunder restrained behind a mountain.
His face was serene, neither young nor old, with eyes that seemed to have witnessed a thousand years of history.
Huan Zheng pulled back his fist that struck nothing, his eyes narrowing sharply toward the man in purple robes with golden patterns—someone who dared interfere, someone who dared touch his prey.
"Release her," Huan Zheng said, his voice cold yet trembling at the edges, like a blade freshly sharpened, still holding the heat of friction.
The man—later known as Prince Whou Ming—smiled faintly, unthreatened, then released Ling Xu with a graceful motion like pouring tea.
To be continued…