“My grandsire was the great devil you all talk about. My father was a devil too. Since I was little, they told me the people around me were nothing but playthings kept for my amusement. So if I kill people, how is that any different from the way you kill pigs, dogs, or spirit beasts?”

“I can kill others.”

“And others can kill me.”

“As long as I become strong enough, then it’ll only ever be me killing people, not people killing me.”

“Today I’ve fallen into your hands because I’m not as skilled as you. I’ve got nothing else to say…”

Linnea Whitmore sat with her back against a great tree, dressed in a tattered green robe that barely covered her. She was breathing in harsh, heavy gulps, and just saying those few lines seemed to have wrung the last bit of strength out of her.

Her black hair was in complete disarray. In that mass of dark silk, there was only a pearl hairpin snapped in half, hanging there as if it might slip free at any moment. Her face was pale as paper. Blood had dried at the corner of her lips, dragging from the edge of her mouth down to her chin in a cruel streak, like a twisted centipede clinging to her skin.

Linnea Whitmore was badly wounded.

She could not run anymore.

Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the leaves overhead, dropping onto the ground in little rings of colored light. She lowered her head and looked at those patches of brightness, and a quiet, almost gentle smile appeared on her face.

Only after walking through this world and seeing all its beauty did one learn what longing was.

Only then did one understand what it meant to be unwilling to leave.

At that moment, she did not look like a female devil who treated human life like dirt beneath her feet.

She lifted her head and looked into the distance, gazing at the far mountains with open reluctance in her eyes. Those clear blue eyes of hers were so clean, so bright, it was as if they wanted to hold the finest scenery in all creation within them forever.

If she died, she would never see it again.

Her eyelids slowly drooped. Through that narrowing slit of vision, she saw someone drifting down from the clouds, stepping through light as he came.

Linnea Whitmore suddenly seemed to regain a flash of life before death. Her eyes flew open. A strange flush rose over her bloodless face, spreading little by little like cinnabar bleeding across white paper, lending her a startling beauty.

“Cassius Carrington, can’t you at least let me die with my eyes closed?”

She stared straight at him, her gaze burning. “What did I do to you? Did I dig up your ancestral grave or something? Was it really worth it for a high immortal who already ascended to the Upper Realm to send down an avatar with an Immortal Envoy Token and come back to the lower realm just to chase me all these years?”

The Cassius Carrington before her was only one avatar of that ascended immortal, carrying barely a tenth of the true body’s strength. But with the Immortal Envoy Token in hand, he could move freely through the lower realm without disturbing its spiritual flow, and naturally he would not draw down the heavenly lightning of the Dao.

Still, after paying such a price just to return and hunt her down, Linnea Whitmore truly could not make sense of it. She could not figure out when exactly she and Cassius Carrington had formed such a grudge. If it had really been some blood-deep hatred, then before he ascended, he could have killed her outright. Back then, his cultivation and strength had been far beyond what this avatar possessed. So why leave for the Upper Realm and then come back down again just to pursue her? The whole thing was absurd, plain and simple.

And it was not as though she had been easy prey either. True, her cultivation was not equal to his, but one mere avatar had never been enough to deal with her. Otherwise, she would not have remained free for another seventy years, slipping away again and again right under his nose.

If this cultivation accident hadn’t backfired and sent her into deviation, leaving her badly wounded, she never would have ended up like this.

Seeing Cassius Carrington stop one zhang in front of her and go still, Linnea Whitmore smiled again. "What, you can’t say it?"

"Or is it that you just enjoy chasing me around?"

She coughed twice, low and rough. "Cassius Carrington... don’t tell me you actually like me?" She looked straight at him, long lashes trembling like they could slice through spring wind itself. Her eyes were soft and shimmering, full of something almost tender, as if deep feeling were hidden there like old wine left to age for years, rich enough to make anyone lose themselves.

Too bad the immortal envoy standing opposite her had no heart for romance at all.

No matter what she said, Cassius Carrington gave her nothing.

A man so refined, so striking, so absurdly handsome, yet he acted like a block of wood. People always said that once one’s cultivation reached a certain level, a clone was hardly different from the original body. If that was true, then could it be the real Cassius Carrington was just as silent too, a cold-faced mute who didn’t know how to speak?

Seventy years.

Not once had she heard him say a single word.

Looks like today she was doomed to die with her eyes still open.

"Cassius Carrington, we’ve known each other long enough by now. Fine, don’t answer me if you won’t. But can’t you at least give me a clean death?" By the standards of those righteous cultivators, Linnea Whitmore was the kind of villain who deserved the worst possible end. And honestly, she was a little afraid—afraid Cassius Carrington would leave her trapped between life and death, unable to live, unable to die.

Still he said nothing. His steps were clearly light, yet every footfall crushed the fallen leaves into sharp little cracks.

That sound made Linnea’s heart tighten.

She pressed her dry, split lips together. The crusted blood at the corner of her mouth softened when her tongue brushed over it, spreading like smudged rouge. Tilting her head, she smiled, narrowed her eyes, and said, "Since you won’t speak, I’ll take that as a yes."

Deviation. Rage surging into the heart. Killing aura turning on its master. The grudges of all the souls that had died by her hand all those years ago had never scattered. Now they were starting to devour her spirit, eager to strip her clean, blood and flesh and soul alike.

She thought, heaven’s law really did turn in cycles.

Maybe evil people getting what they deserved made perfect sense after all.

But then again, from the day she was born, she had already been the kind of evil person everyone wanted dead.

Slowly, she closed her eyes, a smile still resting on her lips.

After being hunted by him for so long, Linnea Whitmore had run out of strength long ago.

She thought, at the very least, Cassius Carrington was an ascended immortal.

Surely he would grant her a swift death.

Yet the very next second, Linnea Whitmore, who had been hanging by a thread, suddenly let out a shriek so sharp it seemed to tear the air apart.

Her eyes flew wide open. Her whole body shook nonstop. Countless streams of murderous aura burst out from around her. The inner demon and resentment that had only been trapped inside her body before now seemed to swell a hundredfold in an instant, all of it rushing out at once. It gnawed at her flesh, bit into her bones, and at the same time lashed at her soul, forcing her mind clear so she could stay awake—awake enough to watch herself being torn apart, mouth after mouth chewing and ripping at her...

In front of her floated a square piece of jade.

Carved into the jade was a Bodhi tree.

The Bodhi tree gave off a dim green glow. That light first swallowed up the great tree Linnea Whitmore was leaning against, then spread higher and higher until it covered the sky above.

A moment ago the heavens had still been bright and sunlit, but in the blink of an eye everything turned dark and heavy. Only that Bodhi tree stood between heaven and earth, blazing with endless green radiance. Every beam of light felt like a knife driving into her body.

It left her weak. It left her in agony. And it drove the resentment around her into even greater madness.

A thousand cuts. Fire in the heart. Soul-devouring torment.

She hurt so badly she wished she could die, yet she simply could not. Maybe it was because of that green light. She had clearly been on the verge of giving out, yet under this unbearable pain she was somehow forced to endure, bit by bit, until not one patch of skin on her body remained whole. Even that beautiful face of hers had been chewed and mangled into a bloody mess.

So this was what it meant to die without a decent end.

"Cassius Carrington, you bastard!"

She had only wanted a quick death, but he had turned it into something worse than dying.

But just when she had been reduced to a mass of wounds, Linnea Whitmore noticed that the inner demon resentment wrapped around her seemed to have vented enough. The black haze around her body was fading, little by little.

Purification?

Deliverance?

This Jade Bodhi... it could dissolve inner demons and baleful resentment?

Could it be that Cassius Carrington was trying to save her?

So in the end, he really had been bewitched by her beauty?

The instant that hope rose in her heart, a palm mark appeared within the Jade Bodhi and struck straight at her forehead—

If that landed, she would be dead beyond doubt.

With her last breath, Linnea Whitmore only had time to roar, "To hell with your grandmother!"

Her soul seemed to break apart into countless specks of light, all of them pouring into the Jade Bodhi. From that moment on, the female devil Linnea Whitmore was utterly destroyed, body and soul gone, her evil finally repaid in kind.