Why not let it take Du Juan? One less pretty bird fluttering near my Fang Yuan. The swamp swallows everything... who would know?
But then, another image flashed in her head, Fang Yuan’s face.
Not the indulgent smile she craved, but a look of profound disappointnt.
Cold and even calculating.
The look (which she imagined) he reserved for failures, for those who wasted his resources... or brought him damaged goods.
Imagine Du Juan, mangled and lost on a simple retrieval mission, a mission he entrusted to them both.
Lin Zhaoyue could practically hear Fang Yuan’s smooth voice, laced with dissapointnt: "My dear wife Zhaoyue... did the swamp swallow your wits along with my handpicked slave? How... careless."
She blushed at the thought of being called a wife and then she imdiately felt hatred.
Not for Du Juan or being called wife, she loved that, instead it was for the idea of Fang Yuan’s hatred directed at her.
The potential loss of even a sliver of his already fractured regard was a blade twisting deeper than any beast’s fang.
Du Juan’s death would not secure his love; infact it might even push her apart, he might even brand her as incompetent.
Unreliable and even a liability.
And if she let sothing happen to Du Juan, will he ever find it in him to trust her again?
A sharp, frustrated sigh escaped Lin Zhaoyue’s lips, a sound utterly devoid of warmth, more like the hiss of steam escaping a cracked vessel.
The dreamy obsession in her eyes shattered, replaced by icy, pragmatic fury.
She couldn’t afford the luxury of letting Du Juan die, not today.
"Tch. Annoying," she muttered, the words clipped.
In a blur, Lin Zhaoyue appeared just beside Du Juan.
Her hands imdiately shot out, fingers like talons digging into the flesh of Du Juan’s shoulder with bruising force.
Du Juan gasped, pain flaring bright and sudden.
"My little sister," Lin Zhaoyue hissed, her voice devoid of any sisterly affection, laced instead with pure, venomous resentnt. "You’re really lucky today."
Before Du Juan could react, Lin Zhaoyue yanked.
It wasn’t a lift; it was a violent haul upwards.
Du Juan cried out as her feet left the sucking mud, her body wrenched through the air.
The world spun and then, jarringly, her boots hit rough bark.
Lin Zhaoyue had flung her onto a thick, gnarled branch high in a skeletal cypress tree overlooking the clearing.
Lin Zhaoyue released her grip instantly, leaving Du Juan scrambling for balance on the precarious perch.
She wobbled, heart hamring against her ribs, her shoulder throbbing where Lin Zhaoyue’s fingers had bitten deep.
Angry red marks, already darkening towards bruises, stood out starkly against her pale skin.
She clutched the branch, knuckles white, but dared not utter a sound of complaint.
Her eyes, wide with residual terror and fresh pain, snapped downwards, trying to act normal.
"Matriarch Fang," Du Juan whispered, her voice tight with fear and the effort of controlling her breathing.
She tore her gaze from the horror below to look at Lin Zhaoyue, who stood poised on the branch beside her, robes undisturbed, eyes fixed on the predator. "Is that... what I think it is?"
Lin Zhaoyue didn’t look at her.
Her gaze remained locked on the slithering bloom, her expression a mask of cold recognition and simring fury.
She gave a single, sharp nod.
"Yes," she confird, her voice flat, dangerous.
"It’s the Nascent Soul Realm Viper Seduction Flower we didn’t find when we destroyed that brood yesterday. Good timing."
Du Juan’s breath hitched.
We? Du Juan’s thoughts screeched to a halt, fixated on that single syllable. What does she an, ’we’?
The words hung in the damp air, absurd and terrifying. Du Juan blinked, certain she had misheard.
But before her thoughts could solidify, Lin Zhaoyue’s voice cut through the haze.
"I’m going down there to fight it."
Lin Zhaoyue didn’t wait for a reaction.
Her gaze, fixed on the colossal vipers tail disguised as a luminous flower, held a terrifying mix of fury and manic determination.
"You what?!" Du Juan choked out, the bruise on her shoulder pulsing in ti with her frantic heartbeat.
Lin Zhaoyue didn’t hesitate.
With a contemptuous flick of her silk sleeve towards Du Juan, a gesture that scread ’stay put, insect’, she simply stepped off the high branch.
She stepped into the void, plumting towards the colossal, luminous predator below.
Du Juan’s breath seized.
Her fingers dug into the rough bark, knuckles white against the throbbing pain in her shoulder.
Madness! Utter madness!
Fighting a Nascent Soul beast alone? That was madness. Suicidal.
Spirit beasts were, by nature, stronger than cultivators of the sa realm. It often took ten well-prepared cultivators to bring down a single beast of equal rank!
Even a fellow Nascent Soul cultivator wouldn’t engage without extre caution, preparation, or overwhelming advantage.
Du Juan, though stripped of her Nascent Soul cultivation, still carried the instincts and clarity honed at that peak.
And from what she saw, Lin Zhaoyue charging headlong into battle there would be no graceful clash of power, no elegant display of mastery.
Only a swift, brutal, and ssy death.
Lin Zhaoyue fell with terrifying speed, the wind tearing her elaborate hairstyle apart, sending dark strands whipping around her face like angry serpents.
Du Juan hadn’t even registered the movent, but Lin Zhaoyue’s jade hairpin was suddenly clutched in her hand, transford from ornant to weapon, its tip blazing with condensed, virulent green energy.
Below, the source of the hypnotic light beca horrifyingly clear. It wasn’t the beast; it was the beast’s bait.
A breathtaking, ethereal bloom, radiating srizing light and cloying sweetness, crowned the tip of a thick, sinuous tail that rose from the murk.
As Lin Zhaoyue plumted towards the lure, the hidden head shifted almost imperceptibly.
A low, rumbling hiss vibrated through the swamp, thick with malice and anticipation, the sound originating not from the flower, but from the darkness where the true fangs waited.
Lin Zhaoyue hit the ground just ters away from the swaying, luminous tail-flower, landing with unnatural lightness that barely disturbed the mud. She didn’t stop to take a pause.
Her arm snapped up, the hairpin pointed like a conductor’s baton towards the base of the thick tail, just below the seductive bloom.
Her voice cut through the hiss, clear, cold, and laced with annihilating power:
"Heavenly Timber: First Form – Wood Explosions."
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