The nurse began to scream, like a short, sharp thing, ripped from her throat by pure, unadulterated terror.
The sound jolted Xiao Pei into action.
He scrambled off the low bed, his earlier embarrassnt gone and replaced by the primal instincts to be clothed.
His fingers fumbled with the ties of his robes, his movents hurried and inelegant as he tried to shield himself from the terrifying atmosphere and the unfolding chaos.
Du Juan didn’t so much as spare the screaming woman a glance.
And without her needing to make a move, the woman’s head rolled to the floor, her voice cut off as though it had never existed.
She turned her focus back on the old doctor groveling on the floor.
The air around him warped, and the wooden planks beneath his knees let out a soft, agonized groan.
"Old man," Du Juan’s voice resounded in the quiet room. "I’m going to let you live just this once because you know the Matriarch."
The pressure intensified for a fraction of a second, drawing a wet, choked gasp from the doctor.
"But try and defy again," she continued, her tone conversational yet dripping with venom, "and I’ll make sure this entire place falls down into ruin, with you buried at the very bottom of it."
And as swiftly as it had descended, the imnse pressure vanished.
She turned to Xiao Pei, her expression smoothing into one of cool impatience. "Let’s go."
Xiao Pei, finally securing his last robe tie, ran over to her side, his eyes wide with excitent. "Sister Du Juan, what was that? That was so amazing! You—"
Tap.
A single, cool finger pressed lightly against his lips, silencing him as effectively as a blade at his throat.
"Shhh..."
The sound was no more than a breath, soft and fleeting, yet it cut through the air with finality.
For a heartbeat, the chamber was still, until the quiet was broken by the sharp rhythm of boots against stone.
It was the sound of a collective hurried footsteps drawing closer.
Du Juan’s eyes half-lidded, her expression unchanging.
She drew in a slow breath, then released it in a sigh that carried with it sothing ancient, weary, and dangerous.
"I wonder..." Her voice was calm, almost lazy, though each syllable dripped with disdain. "...just how stupid a person can be."
As the final word left her lips, a strained, pain-racked shout echoed from the chamber behind them, tearing through the hallway.
It was the doctor’s voice, but now it was a ragged thing, frayed with agony and fury.
"Cough! Get them! Get the boy! Cough— Kill the girl! At all cost! Cough-cough— I want that boy alive!"
Hearing the voice, a cold, cruel smile touched Du Juan’s lips.
"Well," she murmured, the words for herself alone. "This does make it easier for ."
She closed her eyes for a single mont and then when they opened, she released her divine sense.
It was an instantaneous flood as it travelled everywhere at once.
It poured through every corridor, seeped under every door, and filled every room of the decrepit clinic.
In an instant, the entire building was mapped within her mind, every scurrying rat, every hidden guard drawing a sharp, surprised breath, every trembling leaf on a dying plant outside, she perceived it all.
She felt the doctor’s raging, pain-filled consciousness like a pustule of hatred, and she felt the dozen or so spiritual signatures of his guards beginning to converge on their position.
She looked down at Xiao Pei, her smirk a beautiful, dangerous thing. "It’s best we teach fools what a Nascent Soul realm cultivator is capable of, shouldn’t we?"
Xiao Pei gulped, the sound audibly dry in his throat.
She raised her hand, her fingers elegant and poised. Her thumb and middle finger ca together.
Snap.
The snap was not loud.
It was a small, clean, almost delicate sound. But its effect was absolute.
It was as if the world itself had been muted.
The thudding of boots charging down hallways ceased instantly.
The labored, angry coughing from the doctor’s room was cut off.
"Good. That’s it." Du Juan said, her voice unnaturally clear in the perfect stillness.
She turned her head, her moonlit hair shifting like a silver waterfall, and gazed with certainty down a specific dark hallway.
"Follow ," she commanded, already beginning to walk without a single glance back to see if he obeyed.
Xiao Pei instantly followed, his steps silent on the now-muffled floorboards, his wide eyes taking in the terrifying, awe-inspiring stillness.
There were no more sounds of footsteps rushing toward them.
There was only the quiet, confident click of Du Juan’s heels and the frantic beating of his own heart.
The silence was the loudest thing he had ever heard.
It was.... as they passed the first open doorway that he saw it.
His steps faltered.
Just inside the room, a man in guardsman leathers was frozen in a half-crouch, one hand reaching for the sword at his hip.
The pose was perfectly captured, but the man was utterly still.
And his head... was not where it should have been.
It lay on the floor several feet away, tilted back as if staring at the cobwebbed ceiling.
There was no blood spray, only a single, clean, impossible cut.
Xiao Pei’s breath hitched. He stopped, his eyes wide, fixed on the ghastly scene.
Ahead of him, Du Juan did not turn. "Do not linger on the scenery," she said, her voice a flat, undisturbed pond. "It is beneath your notice."
She continued walking, her footsteps echoing softly in the profound quiet.
Swallowing hard, Xiao Pei forced his feet to move, tearing his gaze away from the headless guard only to have it fall upon another. And another.
It was the sa in every room and corridor they passed.
A nurse slumped over a table, a tray of dical instrunts spilled beside her still hand.
An alchemist frozen in the act of pouring a vial, his body upright at his workbench, his head resting neatly beside the beaker he would never fill.
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