While Red Lady was also one of the assassins who tried to kill Jin Yuyan, she was hired by the four families, which were on the opposite side of Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin.
Also, Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin intentionally indulged her to carry on the assassination although they had seen through her plan, essentially regarding her as a bait. Naturally, she had every reason to hate Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin.
Later, Red Lady’s shooting from the high altitude contributed a lot to Qi Yuanbao’s easy capture too.
Therefore, Li Yao had suggested to Jin Yuyan that Red Lady be caged somewhere not far away from Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin. It would be easier for the prisoners to be controlled if they stalled and fought each other because they belonged to different forces.
He did not expect that Red Lady, a legendary expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, had died so abruptly.
Li Yao looked around, only to notice several deep footprints on the wall and even the ceiling of the corridor. Somebody seemed to have stomped on them heavily.
The footprints were very small, leaving no doubt that they belonged to a woman.
Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!
Thinking quickly, Li Yao calculated and recreated the scene back then.
At that time, the explosion inside the building destroyed the security measures and barriers on all floors, allowing Wuying Qinxin and Red Lady to escape.
Red Lady had long reached an agreement with Li Yao and Jin Yuyan, and she was more or less joining them. She was not really imprisoned here but was meant to watch over Wuying Qinxin and Qi Yuanbao.
After the failed assassination, it was impossible for Red Lady to return to the four families. Naturally, she could only be loyal to Li Yao and Jin Yuyan. Therefore, the moment she discovered that Wuying Qinxin had escaped, she went forward to stop her.
Perhaps, in her eyes, Wuying Qinxin was merely a Meditation Healer with barely any combat ability, and she could capture her without much trouble.
But unexpectedly, Wuying Qinxin made small-scale dodging movements on the wall and the ceiling without a pattern at an extremely high speed, so fast that even the eyes of an ace sniper like Red Lady could not catch her trace.
Measuring Wuying Qinxin’s acceleration from the depth of the footprints, she must’ve crossed a hundred meters in 0.1 seconds and appeared before Red Lady. Then, she destroyed Red Lady’s internal organs in a heavy attack, before she stabbed a finger into Red Lady’s forehead. Flames of spiritual energy surged out of her finger, burning Red Lady’s spiritual root and even the whole brain into nothingness.
The whole process couldn’t have lasted longer than one second. The top sniper of the Imperium was killed before taking any action.
How exactly… did she manage it?
Walking in the shoes of Wuying Qinxin, Li Yao inferred again and again but still couldn’t think it through.
Although Red Lady was a sniper who was not best at melee combat, she was a battle-type Immortal Cultivator after all, and her melee combat ability must’ve been higher than that of a battle-type Nascent Soul Stage expert in any case.
Of course, since she attempted to murder Jin Yuyan, neither Li Yao nor Jin Yuyan could’ve allowed her to keep all her strength. Therefore, Jin Yuyan had forced Red Lady to take medicines that would confine her soul, and Li Yao had also put manacles and shackles on Red Lady that could block the cycle of spiritual energy. At most, she could unleash the combat ability at the starting level of the Nascent Soul Stage.
But even if she were merely a sniper at the beginning level of the Nascent Soul Stage, she was still not someone that a Meditation Healer like Wuying Qinxin could’ve killed!
Wuying Qinxin’s body was relatively soft and vulnerable, just as all the other non-battle-type Immortal Cultivators. It had been examined by Li Yao and Jin Yuyan carefully and couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Even though she had certain secret techniques of instant outbreaks, say, imposing strong psychological hints on herself to make her soul overload and unleash a ten times higher combat ability, her weak body would not be able to handle it at all.
The outbreak of spiritual energy of such a high intensity would burn her into ashes after only a few hours.
Was she out of her mind? What was she trying to do?
While thinking, Li Yao suddenly felt something wrong in his hand. Rubbing Red Lady’s forehead carefully, he picked up a broken bone that was somewhat weird.
It was a bone that was smaller than a tooth. It was unlike a piece of the skull and more like one’s fingerbone.
Red Lady’s hands, on the other hand, were absolutely intact. Even the skin was not damaged, much less the bones.
Seeing the broken bone, Li Yao immediately had a picture in his head—
In the mayhem of the explosion, Wuying Qinxin rushed out of her prison cell like a crazy devil. With unusual flames of spiritual energy surging around her body, she lunged at the few tall, strong guards in crystal suits.
There was no telling where she got the strength that was far beyond her capacity, but she killed all the guards in the end. However, her weak body could not withstand the recoil of the flooding spiritual energy as well as the heavy punches. Her fingers cracked like fireworks, and even the finger bones were broken and fell out.
But she was like an animal that had lost the sense of pain. Not caring about the damage that was inflicted on her hands at all, she went on and killed Red Lady with the broken hands, before she crashed the glass window at the end of the corridor that was embedded with dozens of defense rune arrays, fleeing successfully.
Li Yao turned around and checked the wounds of the few guards. As he expected, he did find more broken bones from the dented helmets of two guards.
After assembling the broken bones, several intact fingers would be formed.
Li Yao shuddered in coldness.
Wuying Qinxin gave him the feeling that she was not a Meditation Healer at all. She was not even a battle-type Immortal Cultivator, but an animal that had completely lost sanity and got controlled by fiends!
Picking up all the broken bones, Li Yao dashed out from the broken window through which Wuying Qinxin escaped.
“Neltharion, attack!”
The “Blood Stripe Virus”, the antecedent to the mental devil, was an alien virus that lived on and moved with blood. It had the keenest senses on the smell and type of blood. From the tiny blood left on the broken pieces, it was possible to track the source of the blood.
Besides, since Wuying Qinxin was burning her soul so crazily and blatantly, the waves of her spiritual energy couldn’t have been normal. It couldn’t be covered at all.
Li Yao spread out his telepathic thoughts and soon discovered Wuying Qinxin’s trace in a populated downtown area.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
At this moment, intense explosions burst out in all directions at the same time. The earthquakes were so devastating that the whole planet seemed to be falling apart. Countless skyscrapers were shaking, and the whole world was occupied by a black fog.
“Damn it. How many accomplices does Wuying Qinxin have? How many crystal bombs have they planted in the Seven Seas Grand Market? Why are they doing all this?”
Li Yao hopped and swung among the crowded buildings, tracing Wuying Qinxin’s blood.
New explosions echoed from all directions incessantly, gradually approaching the downtown area. The super metropolis where tens of millions of people lived was reduced into chaos, the order completely gone.
Suddenly, dazzling sparks burst out between the blue sky and the white clouds above everybody’s head. In the next second, the blue sky and the white clouds were all twisted into a messy swirl, before they were completely gone, revealing the cold, iron dome behind them.
The artificial sky had collapsed, and the whole planet fell into darkness. Even all the enemy supply had been cut off. Cries, screams, and collisions of shuttles were echoing in the dark. The shuttles were crashing into each other or even the buildings around like headless flies after losing automatic navigation, resulting in countless tragedies.
Only the emergent illumination arrays, which had independent powers, were emanating dim red brightness, but what they lighted was the panicked faces, which made people even more anxious.
This is truly tricky!
Li Yao was even more certain that it was definitely not Wuying Qinxin’s improvisation, and she did not create the chaos in order to find a way to escape. Judging from the operations that she had done by consuming her spiritual energy and damaging her body without control, she did not intend to escape alive at all.
In order to completely cut off the energy supply of the internal district of the Seven Seas Grand Market, the mainframe crystal processors of the whole planet must be controlled first, or at least implanted with abundant viruses.
Li Yao hated the smart yet shameless enemies who disregarded their own lives for their dreams more than anything else!
When he was about to catch the enemy’s tail, Wuying Qinxin’s coordinates suddenly disappeared off the surface and reached the tubular world below the planet that was as complicated as a maze.
While the surface was a mess with smoke everywhere, the underworld was even darker.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions were breaking out nonstop among the interconnected cables and spiritual energy tubes, bringing a flickering light to the dark world but making the places beyond the reach of the light even darker.
After they reached so deep below the planet that the exit to the surface of the planet was nowhere to be seen, Wuying Qinxin suddenly stopped, as if she were waiting for Li Yao’s arrival intentionally.
Her shadow under the shimmer looked like a fiend with a headful of crazily dancing snakes.
Cautiously, Li Yao stepped into Wuying Qinxin’s nest and finally saw the woman’s real appearance in the middle of the fierce flames. He couldn’t help but gasp hard.
As he estimated, the series of attacks and escapes that were beyond her limits had significantly damaged Wuying Qinxin’s own body.
Not only was her hands shattered and her palms scrubbed to nothing left but two bleeding arms, but even her legs were twisted weirdly. Countless bones protruded out of her skin. One would feel the excruciating pain just by looking at her.
Also, she had lost so much weight after only half a day that she was almost beyond recognition. Her flesh and blood seemed to have been sacrificed to mysterious forces, making her look like a wrinkled, living skeleton.
Hundreds of wires around had also pierced into her body deeply, connected with her nerve clusters and brain cells. She looked like a puppet controlled by countless strings, waving her bleeding hands and feet and floating in the midair in the shape of a cross while she stared at Li Yao without blinking and with a weird smile.
