Fang Ruxue could swim. In fact, she was good at it. As she threw herself off the bridge, she looked straight down toward the glittering blue water, hands extended. Her body instinctively tightened, and she braced herself, determined to keep her eyes open in the water. The world seemed to slow, every detail sharp and clear. As the tips of her fingers touched the water, her body was ready. Swimming in a dress would be difficult, and she wouldn't be as fast as she hoped. She was afraid she would be caught, but at the very least, she had to try. She knew Liu Xing could observe her, which meant that while she couldn't hide in Jin territory, she needed to buy time for him to arrive.

However, before her head even submerged, someone grabbed her right ankle, killing her momentum and yanking her down sharply. Her head plunged into the water, but not in the right place or position. The sudden change made her panic, and her body began to struggle as if trying to swim, but aside from her head, the rest of her was out of the water, merely flailing in a panic. The hand on her ankle pulled her out of the water. When she looked behind her and saw the big cultivator holding her foot, despair filled her heart.

"Such a futile thing to do. You think jumping into the river would save you?" he sneered. "Unless you can transform into a fish, the chance of you getting away from us is nil."

He hauled her onto his shoulder and grabbed her waist. The man's size was enormous; his shoulder felt like a thick tree branch, and the arm coiled around her felt like a giant snake trying to crush her to death. Fang Ruxue flailed and tried to get away from his grip, but it was too strong.

"Put me down!" Fang Ruxue began hitting the man's back with all her might, hoping he would loosen his arms so she could get away.

The other cultivator walked briskly toward her, his face as serious as a father whose child was throwing an embarrassing tantrum. He swung his open palm toward her cheek. When it landed, a crisp sound reverberated in the air, and Fang Ruxue instantly stopped flailing.

The slap was so strong it rattled her brain. Her vision blurred, and she blinked several times to clear it. A hot pain seared her left cheek, and she tasted blood. She opened her mouth, and saw several of her teeth fall onto the wooden planks of the rope bridge accompanied by a string of bloody saliva.

She slowly looked up toward the man that had slapped her. His face twisted into a snarl. "Behave, mortal."

Fang Ruxue suddenly felt the air around her turn bone-chilling. Her body, her arms, and her legs began trembling as if she were lying on the ground during a great earthquake. Her remaining teeth chattered as if she were stranded naked on a snowy mountain, and profound fear twisted her face into a frightened expression. It was at that moment she realized she had been underestimating them. Cultivators were not mortal. They were not human. They could break her as easily as a lion tears apart a mouse.

The trembling intensified. Her lungs seized, expanding and contracting as if there were no air, and her heart beat frantically.

She was going to die. She would die if she moved or made a sound.

With trembling hands, she clamped both palms over her mouth, determined not to make a sound. She stiffened her body so she wouldn't irritate the cultivator hauling her.

As the two cultivators began to walk back toward Brother Rou's house, memories burst into her mind. It was not a coherent memory, but rather snapshots of the worst days of her life. She remembered the terror when her father and mother were suddenly engulfed in flames, thrashing on the ground, trying to claw at their own burning skin. She remembered the villagers burned until they turned to charcoal, and she was trying to throw buckets of water at them but nothing worked. Then, she remembered being suspended in the sky, her limbs bound as a force tried to snap her back. And then, the massacre the shark had committed to protect her and her sisters. Each memory swirled in her mind, haunting her, and then she remembered Liu Xing and Brother Rou's words.

Fang Ruxue tried to inhale deeply as softly as possible. Those memories were indeed bad. Remembering them made her feel suffocated, and her eyes began to tear up. However, she needed to be strong. Life wouldn't stop if she just mourned and moped. She needed to move forward, acknowledging the great burden on her heart, and work toward unraveling it to move on with her life. It would be hard, but it was possible. As long as she had a goal to pursue.

She peeked to the side and saw the man that slapped her. Upon seeing him, her body began to tremble again, and a profound fear screamed in her mind for her to just shut up and do nothing, which she wisely followed. She understood that she could do nothing against these two cultivators. A snail cannot overtake two cheetahs, after all. But it didn't mean she couldn't think, or try to control herself.

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As she kept her body stiff, both hands pressed so tightly against her mouth that it was hard to breathe, she tried to calm herself by thinking about what she could do. Anything involving physical movement was out of the question, so the only thing she could do was mental. Did that mean she could only think about her situation and do nothing?

After a while, she realized there was another thing she could do, though it was risky.

Talking. She could talk to her captors. She could distract them and perhaps, just perhaps, extract information from them. It was better than doing nothing, though it would not free her from this situation. There was also a chance that talking would worsen things.

She looked from side to side and decided to loosen her hands from her mouth and inhale a little deeper than before. Her heart palpitated when she did this, her instincts screaming, afraid that this deep breath would offend her captors and cause them to hurt her again. But a moment after the deep breath, she was still intact. She gradually loosened her hands more, until she could breathe freely. The air she inhaled felt fresh, and whether it was the effect of fresh air or merely her perception, she felt the gears in her mind could work harder than before.

The first thing that came to her mind was Liu Xing. That guy had planted something on her that made it possible for him to observe her, so surely he had already seen that she was captured. That guy was fast. Come to think of it, he should have arrived by now. She knew he was not the type of person who would ignore her. He reminded her a little of the protective side of her father, after all. So she wondered where he was.

Fang Ruxue looked down and saw her own footprints, which had sunk deep into the muddy ground. This particular spot was vivid to her, since she had almost slipped here, and she remembered this spot was actually quite close to the old man's house. All of that struggle, and she was back in mere minutes.

She looked to the side, trying to glimpse the old man's house, when a hypothesis about Liu Xing's lateness came to mind.

Since she was quite sure he would not dally, the only explanation was that something was preventing him from moving to her position. The first thing that came to her mind was the thought that perhaps, aside from tracking her, the Qing clan was also tracking Liu Xing at the same time, and perhaps he was in some kind of battle. If that was true, she wondered whether there was a possibility that he would lose, and came to the conclusion that it was quite slim. He was strong. There was no way he would capture or die like that. The commotion created by him fighting to the death would be explosive. Which meant it was only a matter of time before he came.

She nodded. The best thing she could do for now was nothing. Which was something hard to do. Her feelings screamed for her to do something to increase her chance of survival, but her cold logic said that it was an unnecessary risk. She was inclined to agree with her logic more, though she would still rack her brain to think of anything that would free her.

At that moment, she and her captors finally came back to the house of the old man and Brother Rou. She was still on the shoulder of the big man when they arrived at the side of the house, where a small windmill spun lazily several meters in front of them. There were also three other cultivators here, but the first thing she noticed was the old man sitting on the ground, holding Brother Rou.

The big man set her down right beside the old man. She couldn't help but check on the two people who had helped her. The blind old man was holding onto Brother Rou, who was leaning against him. His face was pointed down and he was grimacing. Brother Rou looked at her with a neutral expression, though she saw him nod slightly. They were both physically okay, which relieved her.

"This is the girl that running around asking weird questions?" a man said, pointing his blade toward Fang Ruxue. His skin was fair, and his black hair was long.

"Yes she is, she was trying to cross to Jin territory," the man who carried her sneered, "that alone is proof that she is the woman that we need to capture."

The man with long hair looked to the guy that slapped her, and when he nodded, the man sheathed his blade and turned to his side. "It seems the mission is accomplished, captain."

The captain he referred to wore a golden sash on his waist. His face was calm, and he looked at Fang Ruxue with a thin smile on his face. The smile was not pleasant, though. It was a hollow smile people wear to creep other people out. "Good. To think that we would get this easy mission. It's practically free contribution points."

"What we need to do with these two mortals?" said a person to the side of captain. He was the most slender of the people that surrounded them. His face looked calm as he pointed to the old man and Brother Rou, and the aura emanating from him was akin to that of a scholar, with curly hair and delicate hands and fingers.

"Our mission is only to capture her. However, it would be troublesome to let them roam free." The captain rubbed his chin. "Well, let's not overcomplicate things," he paused, and pointed toward the old man and Brother Rou. "Kill them."

At those words, Fang Ruxue's heart dropped and her jaw fell open. Things had suddenly escalated, and her plan to do nothing and wait for Liu Xing shattered.

There was no way in hell she would let these cultivators kill them!

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