87: Chapter 87 Jealousy?

The blade was too heavy, and this slash failed to split Yan Haifang's head, only tearing open a wound deep enough to expose bone on his shoulder.

Fresh blood spurted out and splashed all over her face. Without even wiping it away, she raised the blade again and brought it down for a second strike.

Then came the third strike, and the fourth.

Her blade technique had no rhyme or reason, chopping and smashing, raining blow after blow down upon that heap of flesh.

Blood spattered onto her tattered burlap jacket, onto her knotted hair, and onto her chapped lips.

She chopped down strike after strike, her breathing gradually growing rapid, yet the corners of her mouth slowly curved upward. It was not a smile, but something that chilled one's heart even more than a smile—a satisfaction like an infant tasting sweetness for the first time, or the primitive joy from the deepest recesses of life felt by a hunter the exact moment a beast breathed its last.

She was relishing this.

Wang Shouren stood behind her, taking all of this in.

He had thought she was avenging her family, and that beneath those hollow eyes lay a suppressed hatred that had been bottled up for too long.

But when he saw the curve at the corners of her mouth, a chill slowly crept up his spine.

"This child is different from everyone I've ever seen before."

Yan Haifang finally breathed his last.

The lingering fear and pain on that fat face froze into a mask of agony, with pieces of flesh and bone shards exposed from the rolled-back wounds, and blood pooling all over the ground.

The girl released the hilt, panting heavily, and turned her head to look at Wang Shouren. On her blood-spattered face, the curve at the corners of her mouth had yet to recede.

"Mas—" She had barely uttered the single word before seeming to remember something, abruptly swallowing the rest. Lowering her head in thought, she said, "From now on, whoever you tell me to kill, I will kill."

Wang Shouren fell silent for a long moment, then stepped forward, reaching out to pick a piece of flesh stuck in her hair. His voice carried a trace of helplessness, along with a hint of pity that he hadn't even realized was there.

"You don't need to rush to settle on that just yet."

He stood up and looked down at her. "You said you don't have a name. My sister is called Wang Qingcheng. From today onward, you shall be called Wang Qingxin."

The girl trembled all over.

Within those hollow eyes, something was lighting up bit by bit, like a faint light suddenly surfacing beneath a long-frozen sheet of ice.

Her lips moved a few times, chewing over those two words repeatedly, until she finally seemed to confirm she hadn't heard wrong. Slowly lowering her head, she looked at her own blood-stained hands, then raised her head again to look at Wang Shouren.

"Qingxin... Is this my name?"

She tilted her head, holding the name in her mouth and turning it over and over, as if tasting a sweet fruit she had never eaten before.

She didn't know how to write those two characters, nor did she understand what the name represented, but she understood one thing: her name and the name of the girl called Wang Qingcheng differed by only a single character.

The same character, carrying the same weight.

Never had anyone compared her with others, and never had anyone placed her side by side with anyone else.

She was picked up from the village, called a good-for-nothing loss by her adoptive parents, a little beggar, an unwanted bastard.

But now she had a name, and one character in it was identical to that of the girl named Wang Qingcheng.

The corners of her mouth curved upward; this time, she was truly smiling.

"Let's go, I'm taking you home." Wang Shouren burned those corpses on the ground along with Yan Haifang's remains until nothing was left, and reached out a hand toward her.

The girl—no, Wang Qingxin—looked down at her blood-stained hands, rubbed them hard against her tattered burlap jacket, and only then placed her hand into his palm.

Her hands were very small and ice-cold, yet she gripped him extremely tightly.

Wang Shouren held her hand and stepped onto the flying Magical Artifact. A crimson-gold flash of lightning soared into the sky, speeding away in the direction of Lotus Pier.

As the Magical Artifact ascended, Wang Qingxin looked down at the patch of ground turning to ashes beneath her feet, then raised her head to gaze at the unprecedented sky ahead. Within those eyes that had remained hollow for most of her life, a speck of starlight was finally reflected.

"It really is because of her."

Along the way, Wang Shouren sensed the fluctuation between his brows more than once, confirming that the abnormality of the black lotus was indeed related to this little girl.

Connecting this to the special ability of the black lotus, anyone capable of inciting a desire for Possession within it must either be a peerless Prodigy or a fellow practitioner of the Dao, and of the absolute top tier at that.

"I'll take it one step at a time. If she really is a Devil Head, at worst I'll just use the black lotus once more."

Wang Shouren was still quite confident in his control over the black lotus. After all, a figure like his Revered Master, the Thunder Emperor, was practically one of a kind across the entire Immortal Realm.

If the Thunder Emperor were to learn of this thought, he would probably strike him dead with ten thousand bolts of heavenly Dao lightning on the spot.

"You brat, this old man has long since transcended this realm. How could you compare mere ants to me?"

When the Flying Sword landed before the mountain gate of Lotus Pier, Wang Qingcheng had already received word of Wang Shouren's return and came trotting out to greet him all the way.

She had run so hurriedly that she didn't even have time to brush off the crystal debris clinging to her round hair bun. In her arms, she was holding a half-assembled Puppet Rat, its tail drooping outside and swaying back and forth.

"Brother! What took you so long to come back?! You said you'd be back in two days, and it's already—" Her words abruptly stopped.

Her gaze crossed over Wang Shouren's shoulder, landing on the little girl standing behind him who was as thin as a bean sprout.

The girl was wearing a coarse cloth jacket temporarily borrowed from Daliu Village. The sleeves had been rolled up several times yet still hung down a section longer, dangling loosely from her arms as if she had stolen and worn an adult's clothes.

Her hair had been washed, but because it hadn't been tended to for too long, the knotted braids couldn't be unraveled and could only be clumsily tied into two crooked little pigtails.

Her face still bore a few lingering bruises, and her mouth had scabs at the corners—one could tell at a glance that she had taken a beating not long ago.

Seeing Wang Shouren holding the girl's hand, Wang Qingcheng's smile instantly froze on her face.