Slaying

The Seven Emotions Array was a formation guided by the human heart and driven by the shifts of seven emotions. Leveraging joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred, and desire, it disturbed an opponent's divine sense and mental state while generating a multitude of lethal killing forces.

Evil cultivators possessed clouded, impure mindsets and volatile emotions, making such a formation far more effective against them than against ordinary cultivators. The only difficulty lay in stalling long enough to complete its setup.

Fortunately, Pei Yanji had underestimated her after all, taking few precautions and focusing his entire attention on the meteoric iron needles she used as a smokescreen, which had allowed her the opportunity to complete the formation.

The moment Pei Yanji stepped into the array, he felt as though he had been plunged into a dream.

The surrounding scenery shifted constantly—at times showing joyful moments from his past, at times revealing the deepest fears and regrets in his heart, and at times presenting temptations and desires he could not resist.

His mind surged and ebbed alongside the visions—weeping with overwhelming joy one moment, bristling with fury the next, then consumed by deep sorrow, laughing hysterically, clinging blindly to infatuation, burning with bone-deep hatred, or trapped in irresistible desire.

He saw his parents, master, brothers, friends, and lover—some smiling at him, some enraged, some gazing with love, and others with hatred.

A woman in white robes, her eyes filled with tenderness, stood amid a sea of flowers. Stretching out her hand, she spoke softly, “Yanji, you're finally here. I've waited so long for you.”

Pei Yanji walked toward her uncontrollably and reached out to grasp her hand. Yet, the moment he was about to touch her, her smile suddenly twisted into a sneer.

The woman in white shoved his hand away violently. The scene shifted, placing them inside a dark, decaying wooden cabin. The woman was no longer in white, but covered in bloodstains and filled with pure hatred. “Pei Yanji, you ungrateful hypocrite! I should never have saved you!”

...

Trapped inside the Seven Emotions Array, Shi Yu watched Pei Yanji struggling to remain conscious, yet periodically succumbing to whatever visions he was seeing.

One moment, his expression turned blank, filled with remorse. “Yinzhu... don't hate me... don't hate me...”

The next, he burst into a long, hysterical laugh, his eyes filled with wicked pleasure. “Li Yinzhu, you betrayed me! You deserved to die!! You deserved to be made into a human puppet, forced to sleep with me every single night! Hahaha!”

Inside the illusion, amidst such endless cycles, Pei Yanji's sanity was gradually eroded and his willpower slowly destroyed. He could only let these illusory images flash before his eyes, enduring their relentless torment.

Such was the Seven Emotions Array. It subjected a person to the most extreme emotions, tossing them upon waves of feeling and relentlessly tormenting them with illusions until they ultimately lost themselves.

Shi Yu had no interest in watching others writhe in pain for her own entertainment. With a cool gaze, she raised the Yinhuang Bow. Spiritual light converged into an arrow that pierced through the air and struck Pei Yanji straight in the chest.

The maniacal Pei Yanji froze. The approach of death snapped his eyes into sudden clarity, filled with unwillingness and remorse, as if he wanted to drag Shi Yu down to hell with him. But it was useless; he could only fall backward uncontrollably.

With a heavy thud, Pei Yanji crashed to the ground with eyes wide open, kicking up a cloud of dust.

“...”

After confirming he had no breath left in him, Shi Yu still didn't dare lower her guard. Sweeping her divine sense over him to examine him closely, she confirmed that his divine soul had indeed dissipated beyond recovery. Only then did she step forward slowly and dismantle the Seven Emotions Array.

Next came time to claim her spoils of war.

In the cultivation world, fighting and plundering were natural law, decided entirely by capability. Shi Yu had no desire to make enemies on her own initiative, but if someone sought to harm her, she would show no mercy. She would repay an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and naturally, she would claim her spoils without any burden on her conscience.

Drawing it up with a flick of her spiritual power, she picked up the blood-red bead Pei Yanji had dropped earlier and examined it.

The bead bore an extremely thick stench of blood—at a glance, an evil object refined from the blood and divine souls of countless living creatures.

Strange markings covered the bead's surface. Though Shi Yu possessed broad knowledge in the Dao of Artifacts, she had never spent much effort studying evil items. Based solely on the restrictions formed by the surface markings, she roughly deduced its function:

“It can absorb the blood and spiritual power of enemies, condensing them into drops. Consuming them boosts one's cultivation... though naturally, it also turns the user bloodthirsty and cruel.”

Having no interest in such an evil thing, Shi Yu muttered to herself, “The materials are good, though. I'll think of a way later to see if I can purify it...”

Shaking her head, she picked up his artifact, the Three-Split Curved Fang Hook. “This hook isn't bad—a Tier-3 artifact. It took some damage from colliding with the meteoric iron needles, but once repaired, it'll sell nicely.”

Tossing both items into the Fate-Tapping Bell, Shi Yu shifted her gaze toward Pei Yanji's corpse.

She was already quite adept at looting corpses. Sweeping her divine sense across the body, she singled out the useful items.

A spirit beast pouch and a storage ring.

The storage ring was branded with Pei Yanji's divine soul mark, preventing Shi Yu from opening it before erasing the imprint. Since Pei Yanji had possessed a higher cultivation than her, wiping the mark would take considerable effort.

Shi Yu wasn't in a hurry. She could take her time—it wasn't as if the items were going to run away.

With the divine soul mark intact, the ring remained sized for Pei Yanji's finger and couldn't resize itself. It was too big for her to wear on her finger, so she simply threaded a cord through it and hung it around her neck, intending to whittle away at the mark whenever she had free time.

She then looked at the spirit beast pouch.

A spirit beast pouch served only one purpose: storing living spirit beasts so cultivators could carry them around easily.

However, there was no spiritual Qi inside a spirit beast pouch. A spirit beast kept within could only sleep and could not cultivate, making it impossible to advance its cultivation. As a result, cultivators with spirit pets generally allowed them to stay outside as much as possible, putting them into the pouch only when necessary.

By contrast, the space inside the Fate-Tapping Bell lacked such limitations. A spirit beast inside was not hindered in its cultivation; rather, it enjoyed immense benefits and rapid progress, as evidenced by Little Seven's current growth rate.

Originally, although Little Seven had undergone a bloodline mutation and luckily became a Seven-Color Luan, it had suffered from congenital deficiencies. Two colors in its tail feathers were far dimmer and weaker than the other five, showing that it was still quite far from being a true Seven-Color Luan.

However, after spending this period inside the Fate-Tapping Bell, Little Seven had undergone a complete transformation, growing into a true Seven-Color Luan. By Shi Yu's estimate, if converted to human cultivation levels, Little Seven's strength was roughly equivalent to the eighth or ninth layer of the Qi Refining Realm.

With continued growth, it would surely become a great aid to her.

Returning to the topic, what was held inside Pei Yanji's spirit beast pouch was undoubtedly his Fire-Absorbing Blood Toad.

Shi Yu gazed at the blood toad. Seeing its bloodthirsty, ferocious demeanor, she knew it had devoured a considerable amount of living blood Qi. Dripping with evil and violence, the blood toad whipped its long tongue toward Shi Yu the moment it saw her.

Shi Yu dodged aside and flicked out the Void Fissure Spiritual Flame to intimidate it. Terrified by the spiritual fire, the blood toad backed up a few steps, wanting to flee.

The Fire-Absorbing Blood Toad had already acknowledged Pei Yanji as its master, so it could not be used by her. Shi Yu disliked it anyway and was contemplating how to dispose of it when Little Seven began chirping eagerly from inside the Fate-Tapping Bell, conveying its intense craving.

Shi Yu paused, then understood.

“Both being fire-attribute spirit beasts, the fire spewed by this Fire-Absorbing Blood Toad is quite remarkable. Little Seven wants to devour it to strengthen its own origin.”

Spirit beasts preying on one another was as natural as human cultivators fighting and competing. Shi Yu naturally wouldn't suppress its instincts and immediately released Little Seven.

“Chirp—” With a clear cry, Little Seven swooped down upon the fleeing Fire-Absorbing Blood Toad.

After a short tussle, the blood toad was outmatched and swallowed whole into Little Seven's belly.

Seeing this tiny bird gulp down such a huge toad, leaving it wobbling as it walked, Shi Yu couldn't bear to look and sent it back into the Fate-Tapping Bell.

Turning her gaze back to Pei Yanji's corpse, Shi Yu fell silent for a moment. Then, with a flick of her finger, a streak of fire wrapped around the body.

In mere moments, the corpse was reduced to ashes, scattered to the winds by a gentle breeze.