But at that very moment, the Yuan family patriarch suddenly furrowed his brow and looked toward the entrance of the council hall, saying in a low voice, "Something is wrong."
The Yuan family head followed his gaze, then slowly rose to his feet, "Something is indeed wrong. It is far too quiet."
At the same time, inside the Yuan family estate, Murong Xiaoya walked in through the front gate.
Everywhere she passed, every member of the Yuan family she encountered had their heart burst and dissolve without warning, the blood mist condensing into threads of refined blood that she absorbed entirely.
As she took in more and more refined blood, Murong Xiaoya's aura deepened until it was like a vast and bottomless abyss. Her expression grew colder and colder, and her entire body became shrouded in a thick crimson light too dense to disperse.
The eyes behind those molten gold vortexes seemed to hold no feeling of any kind anymore. She had become something like a human blade, capable only of slaughter, harvesting lives in mechanical succession.
Every member of the Yuan family, regardless of their martial cultivation, fell the moment she appeared before them, before they could even manage a word of challenge, each contributing their thread of refined blood as sustenance.
After absorbing the dozens of martial cultivation currents from her eldest brother's body, Murong Xiaoya's strength had already reached a terrifying level. And as she continued killing and absorbing refined blood, that level kept rising at a rate that defied imagination.
In the darkness of the night, Murong Xiaoya walked step by step deeper into the Yuan family estate. In her wake there were no rivers of blood, only fields of corpses.
The terror buried deep in each person's eyes at the moment of death had likewise been brought there by Murong Xiaoya, for the crushing, overwhelming pressure of her killing and the absolute dominion of life and death she held in that moment left everyone feeling powerless and without hope.
Not a single person, right up until the instant of their death, had dared to meet Murong Xiaoya's eyes with their molten gold vortexes directly.
As the members of the Yuan family died without a sound, the grand and brightly lit estate grew quieter and quieter, until at last the silence was enough to make the heart seize.
"Something has gone wrong!"
The Yuan family head was the first to flash out of the council hall, launching himself straight into the air.
A single sweeping glance across the estate was enough to drain the color from his face entirely. The clansmen and younger disciples of the Yuan family had, almost without exception, become rows upon rows of corpses.
Among those corpses, he even saw with his own eyes his wife, and his two sons, and his daughter.
Every one of them lay on the cold ground with a hole burst through their chest, unmistakably, irreversibly dead.
In that instant, the Yuan family head's eyes went bloodshot and his hair seemed to stand on end, and from him erupted a killing intent like crashing, towering waves.
"Who did this? Who?!"
The True Qi of heaven and earth shook and roiled. Astounding whirlpools of martial True Qi burst from around the Yuan family head's body, and the air in the dark night around him was compressed into rippling, twisting waves.
"I did."
In one of the courtyards of the Yuan family estate, as threads of refined blood continued flowing into her, Murong Xiaoya slowly lifted her delicate face and looked up at the Yuan family head hovering in the air above with an utterly blank expression.
"You?"
The Yuan family head's gaze dropped, looking down at the black-robed young woman below him. The fury in his eyes stilled for a moment as a look of startled suspicion crossed them, "You are... Murong Hong's daughter?"
Murong Xiaoya glanced up at the Yuan family head and replied in a voice without the faintest trace of feeling, "Yes. And also the one who is going to kill you."
The moment those words fell, Murong Xiaoya vanished from the courtyard in an instant.
She disappeared too quickly. The Yuan family head's expression shifted sharply, and in that same instant the lock he had held on Murong Xiaoya's presence collapsed and scattered entirely.
Along with it, he lost all trace of her whereabouts.
Very quickly, a wave of cold dread swept through the Yuan family head's entire body, and a powerful sense of mortal danger surged suddenly in his heart.
Without a moment's hesitation he spun around and drove a ferocious punch behind him.
In an instant the dark night sky exploded apart, and blinding, terrible fist light blazed across every direction, sweeping through a space of several dozen yards in all directions.
Yet still there was no trace of Murong Xiaoya anywhere in his sight.
And at that moment, a pale, slender hand drove into his back like a blade through soft curd, without any warning at all.
The vast martial True Qi surrounding the Yuan family head stalled. He managed only to look down, and saw his heart crushed in that hand, bursting into a mist of blood in an instant.
"How... is this... possible..."
The Yuan family head's mouth fell open in disbelief as the life within him drained away at terrifying speed.
The martial True Qi dispersing from around his body surged toward the blood mist at his heart like rivers pouring into the sea, and in the end condensed into a thread of refined blood carrying an overwhelming power, drawn into Murong Xiaoya's chest and absorbed.
All of it happened too fast. The senior members and clan elders of the Yuan family who had rushed out of the council hall below had no chance to move to his aid, and could only watch helplessly as Murong Xiaoya, hovering above them, crushed their family head's heart with one hand, then consumed every last drop of his refined blood in a manner that seemed no different from the acts of a madwoman.
"How dare you!"
A cry of grief and fury rang out. The Yuan family patriarch had appeared behind Murong Xiaoya without anyone knowing when.
In the next instant he raised both fists and drove them down with full force toward Murong Xiaoya's head.
The empty air before him collapsed and was annihilated under that blow, and everything in the surroundings, air included, seemed on the verge of being hammered into nothing.
But Murong Xiaoya seemed not to notice at all, and only turned her head back calmly.
In the darkness of the night, visible to the naked eye, lines of red-gold traced across her skin like streams of molten rock surging through the veins of mountains and earth.
In almost the same instant, scarlet flames wrapped her entire body, and the lava wing-shadows behind her spread open and fanned lightly outward, sending a torrent of fire pouring out like a downpour of rain.
Everything those flames touched was reduced to cinders. The patriarch's twin fists, which had been powerful enough to collapse empty space, could not endure even an instant before being swallowed in the blink of an eye.
From his fists to his torso, then to his head and his legs, every part of the Yuan family patriarch, flesh and bone alike, became ash. Only his heart, which had already shattered into a blood mist, remained, condensing into a thread of refined blood more powerful than the Yuan family head's, and Murong Xiaoya absorbed it all.
In the next instant, Murong Xiaoya's aura surged upward once more. Above the Yuan estate the sky was lit with fire, and red-gold flames blazed and spread outward from beneath her feet, becoming nearly a sea of fire that descended toward the Yuan family estate below.
At the same time, having watched both their family head and their patriarch struck down by the youngest daughter of the Murong family, with streams of fire then raining down like a meteor shower from above, the senior members and clan elders gathered before the council hall lost all will to fight. In a panic they scattered in every direction, fleeing toward the outer walls of the estate.
But before any of them had escaped the courtyard of the council hall, the sound of a dozen or more hearts bursting rang out at the same moment. Every figure stumbled to a halt, and the life within them faded rapidly away.