Chapter Thirty-Nine: Guan Shanyue's End
Changdong's legion soldiers began methodically taking prisoners, counting casualties, and controlling every corner. Li Yue stood slightly behind Jiu Ya, scanning the entire area to ensure that no one escaped and could threaten the Demon Lord who had just experienced a fierce battle.
Jiu Ya glanced at You Chi's corpse, her eyes showing no pleasure, only a calm that came after the necessary steps had been completed. Her gaze swept over the kneeling rebels, over Jiang Zheng, who was tightly bound, and over her fourth brother, Ao Li, who was being held down by soldiers.
Then, her gaze froze.
That spot should have belonged to Guan Shanyue.
At this moment, only a small patch of messy footprints and a few drops of strangely colored liquid remain.
"Where is Guan Shanyue?" Jiu Ya's voice was not loud, but it clearly reached the ears of the officer in charge of guarding the area.
The officer's face paled, and he immediately knelt down: "Your Majesty! In the chaos just now, Her Highness suddenly threw out a poison smoke bomb. The smoke had a strong hallucinogenic and paralyzing effect, and two brothers were accidentally hit. She...she seems to have used some secret technique; her figure vanished in a flash! I have already sent men to seal off all exits of the main hall and search the area!"
"Disappeared?" Jiu Ya raised an eyebrow. Her ninth sister was the most cunning and fearful of death. How could she not have left a way out? The "Shadow Secret Knowledge Chapter" quietly started operating and instantly captured a trace of demonic energy fluctuations that were rapidly moving away. The fluctuations were mixed with the familiar coldness that belonged to Guan Shanyue.
Behind a decorative colonnade at the side rear of the main hall, there must be an extremely hidden passage.
"Li Yue, maintain order. Fifth Elder, eliminate the remaining enemies and stabilize morale." Jiu Ya left these two sentences, and with a swift movement, she rushed towards the pillar, her speed leaving only a blur in her wake.
"Your Excellency!" Li Yue instinctively tried to follow.
“This is a family matter,” Jiu Ya’s voice came from afar. “Cleansing the household is something no one else needs to do for you.”
Li Yue stopped in his tracks, exchanging a glance with Chang Dong. They both saw the seriousness in each other's eyes, but even more so, their trust in Jiu Ya's strength. They immediately turned around, using even harsher measures to suppress any potential unrest and completely extinguish any possibility of it resurfacing.
Jiuya followed them into the narrow, secret passage hidden behind the pillars. The passage was dark and damp, filled with a mixture of the cold, fragrant powder that Guan Shanyue often used and a faint, sweet, and poisonous odor. The walls were inlaid with magic stones that emitted a dim, eerie light, barely illuminating the path ahead.
Her intuition locked onto the frantically fleeing aura ahead.
The passage was winding and circuitous, with several forks and simple illusionary formations. An ordinary person would likely have lost track of it long ago. But under the perception of the *Shadow Secrets*, these arrangements were rendered useless. Jiu Ya could even clearly "see" the traces left by Guan Shanyue in her hasty escape—powder from her skirt scraping against the wall, beads of sweat that had accidentally dripped down, and her increasingly undisguised panicked heartbeat.
The chase didn't last long.
A dull thud came from ahead, along with a sliver of light from the outside world—the exit had been reached.
Jiuya sped out of the passage exit. Outside was a secluded palace ruin, with broken walls and overgrown weeds, rarely visited by anyone.
Not far from the exit, Guan Shanyue was frantically trying to activate a small teleportation array carved into the ground.
Hearing the whooshing sound behind him, Guan Shanyue turned around abruptly and saw Jiu Ya chasing after him.
"Eleven! Are you determined to wipe us out?" Guan Shanyue shrieked, her usual dignified and confident demeanor completely gone. Her hair was disheveled, her hairpins askew, and her magnificent palace attire was covered in dust, making her look utterly wretched. As she accelerated the flow of magic into the teleportation array, she suddenly raised her right hand.
Several tiny, dark rays of light silently shot towards Jiu Ya's face, throat, and heart—these were fine needles coated with deadly poison, moving at an astonishing speed and constantly changing their trajectory in the air, making them unpredictable and cunning.
However, under Jiu Ya's spiritual perception, the trajectory of these poison needles was clearly visible.
Jiuya swayed slightly, narrowly avoiding all the poisoned needles. The needles pierced the wall or ground behind her, making a hissing sound and corroding small pits.
"Is that all you've got, Ninth Sister?" Jiu Ya stepped closer. "When you poisoned me back then, you didn't use such a cheap trick."
Guan Shanyue slammed her hand on the ground, and the teleportation array flashed rapidly, but still failed to activate. She bit her tongue, spitting out a mouthful of blood essence onto the array, attempting to force it to activate.
At the same time, she commanded to both sides, "Shadow Slave! Kill her!"
From the shadows on either side, two stealthy figures suddenly emerged. Without uttering a word, one thrust a short blade straight at Jiu Ya's back, while the other brandished a poisoned glove and grabbed at her ankle. Their coordination was impeccable, and their actions were ruthless.
But Jiuya seemed to have eyes in the back of her head; the "Secret Knowledge of Shadows" made her extremely sensitive to killing intent.
Instead of retreating, she advanced, sliding half a step forward to perfectly evade the attack from both sides. The Kunwu Blade wasn't even drawn; the tip of the scabbard struck the wrist pulse point of the shadow slave wielding the short blade with pinpoint accuracy. The shadow slave groaned, his entire arm instantly going numb and powerless, the short blade clattering to the ground.
At the same time, Jiu Ya kicked another shadow slave hard in the jaw with her right foot, the crisp sound of bones shattering clearly audible. The shadow slave didn't even have time to scream before he was sent flying like a rag doll, crashing into the ruins, twitching twice before becoming still.
The first shadow slave whose wrist was struck tried to struggle, but Jiu Ya didn't even turn her head and struck out with her palm. The domineering magic of the "Burning Marrow and Corroding Heart Technique" penetrated the body, and the shadow slave was like being branded with a hot iron in the chest. He screamed and flew backward, the blood he spat out turning black in the air. He was already dead when he landed.
In the blink of an eye, the two elite shadow slaves were instantly killed.
Guan Shanyue was shocked by Ying Nu's easy defeat, and her face drained of all color. Driven by her life essence, the teleportation array finally lit up with a blinding light, and space began to distort violently.
"Hahaha! Eleven! You were still a step too late!" Guan Shanyue's face revealed a mixture of elation at surviving a calamity and a hint of venomous smugness. "The humiliation I suffered today will be a hundredfold in the future..."
She hadn't finished saying her harsh words.
Jiuya moved.
This time, she held nothing back. The Kunwu Blade was suddenly drawn, and she frantically poured the magic power of the "Burning Marrow and Corroding Heart Technique" into it. Then, she slashed down at the most unstable core node connecting the teleportation array to the outside world—a weak point that only the "Shadow Secrets Chapter" could discern!
The blinding teleportation light abruptly extinguished, and the space that had just begun to distort instantly returned to normal. The array runes carved on the ground emitted a series of cracking sounds, completely failing.
Guan Shanyue's ecstatic joy and smugness froze completely. She stared at the destroyed teleportation array beneath her feet, "No...impossible! How could you..."
"Your methods and your reliance are full of loopholes in my eyes." Jiu Ya approached step by step, the tip of her Kunwu blade pointing at Guan Shanyue, "Just like that poisoned soup you drank back then."
Guan Shanyue's legs went weak, and she collapsed in the center of the ruined teleportation array, her beautiful dress spreading out in the dust. She looked up at Jiu Ya, who was approaching step by step, and suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.
"Wrong... all wrong!" She laughed until tears streamed down her face. "I shouldn't have listened to those idiots, You Chi and Ao Li! What was the point of setting up a puppet Demon Lord? What was the point of playing the power balance game?! I should have taken matters into my own hands long ago! I should have poisoned you the moment you were pushed into that position, when you were at your weakest! I should have torn you to pieces!"
"I was truly blind! I actually thought you were an insignificant piece of trash that could be easily manipulated! I actually thought my biggest opponents were that idiot Ao Li and that brute Qi Mu! Hahaha... What a ridiculous joke!"
Jiuya stopped in front of her and looked down at her.
"Are you done talking?" Jiu Ya's voice was eerily calm.
Guan Shanyue's maniacal laughter abruptly ceased. She gasped for breath, staring intently at Jiu Ya. Just as Jiu Ya thought she had completely given up and was preparing to deliver the final blow—
Guan Shanyue's previously limp and desperate figure suddenly sprang up. Her left hand, hidden in her sleeve, had already secretly crushed a black jade talisman that she kept close to her body—her most treasured life-saving item, which she used to burn her remaining life and soul in exchange for a moment of extreme burst!
"Let's die together, Eleventh Sister!" Guan Shanyue was about to self-destruct her demonic energy, even at the cost of detonating the power of the forbidden jade talisman, in order to drag Jiu Ya down with her and destroy her together.
This sudden counterattack was a suicidal tactic.
The instant Guan Shanyue's aura changed drastically, the terrifying spiritual senses brought about by the "Secret Sense of the Shadows" had already sounded the sharpest alarm. Jiu Ya didn't even have time to think before her body reacted.
The Kunwu Blade emitted an unprecedented hum, and the dark light on its blade surged, actively drawing in all the surrounding magic power.
At the same time, Jiu Ya spread her five fingers on her empty left hand, her fingertips swirling with the domineering magic of the "Burning Marrow and Eroding Heart Technique," and pressed down sharply.
"ban!"
Below, in the ruins of the destroyed teleportation array, several runes that hadn't completely faded suddenly lit up—these were the backup plans that Jiu Ya had secretly modified and left behind, using her pure magic power and superb understanding of arrays, when she had just shattered the array with a single strike. These runes instantly formed a miniature spatial confinement barrier, perfectly enveloping Guan Shanyue and her about-to-explode magic power within it.
Guan Shanyue's crazed and triumphant expression froze, and the process of self-destruction was abruptly interrupted.
The scorching power of the "Burning Marrow and Corroding Heart Technique" and the Kunwu Blade's ability to devour magic power combine to instantly invade.
"No!!!" The tip of the Kunwu Blade had, without anyone noticing, gently touched Guan Shanyue's brow.
A drop of blood seeped from between his eyebrows.
“…You…what exactly…” Guan Shanyue stared intently at Jiu Ya, seemingly trying to find the answer in her face, but in the end, all the brilliance vanished from her eyes.
Her body went limp and fell backward, crashing heavily onto the cold ground.
Even in death, she couldn't understand why her carefully prepared plan to perish together with others was so easily broken.
Jiuya silently watched Guan Shanyue's lifeless body, then slowly sheathed her sword. She let out a soft breath, and the wound on her shoulder, which had already stopped bleeding, began to bleed again due to the extreme burst of power and the impact of magic.
This cunning Ninth Sister finally paid the ultimate price for all her ambitions and evil deeds.
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