Chapter 66: Murder Without Resolution
*Things like sexism and racism are purely for worldbuilding and to make it more realistic. Thank you for your understanding.*
Even though Jiang had complete knowledge, even greater so, of the secrets that Chu Hua imparted to him, he took this chance to look troubled and rest as he stared at the sky.
Besides, he could feel the vixen Chu Hua gradually growing closer to him. After all, would she have told such a great secret to him if she didn't have some trust aimed at him? One had to know, that in the eyes of outsiders, this secret would indeed be earth-shattering and would completely subvert their known reality.
Yet, she told it to him. Whether that was because she felt Wang Yufei would tell him, that he would become a core disciple sooner or later, or even because she had developed some feelings toward him, it didn't matter much.
The two sat there for a good hour, and even though Chu Hua was rushed for time with her mission, she didn't rush Jiang at all. That made him raise his eyebrow as the woman was very considerate to him, yet they had known each other for but a day. Could it be that she had already fallen for him..?
Jiang laughed at that. He knew from Wang Yufei that she was a scheming woman and there were undoubtedly reasons behind everything she did. To get lost in male fantasy and hope that she felt feelings towards him was illogical as well as pathetic.
Finally, as early afternoon arrived, and Jiang felt that Chu Hua was getting a bit restless to complete her mission before time ran out, Jiang spoke.
"I am fine now, Junior Chu. I just had some thinking to do. Should we depart for the mission now? Time is passing on before us." He spoke as if he was tired and his voice seemed to have aged several years.
Hearing this, Chu Hua perked up and looked over to Jiang with a thankful as well as concerned gaze.
"Thank you, Cousin Jiang. Time is indeed running out, but are you sure you're alright? I don't want to rush you at all. After all, it is indeed news that can make one ponder everything they knew…" Chu Hua asked with a worried voice and furrowed brows that made her only seem cute.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Truthfully, there is no need to think about it too heavily, right? We are frogs at the bottom of a well who are trying to discover the secrets of the sky. There is no point." Jiang said with a simple smile that told Chu Hua all she needed to know.
She nodded kindly at him. "Wise words, Cousin Jiang. I clearly don't need to worry about you, haha." Laughing merrily, Chu Hua then spoke.
"Shall we go then?" Before even waiting for a reply, she fell off of the roof backwards and did a beautiful flip before landing on the earthen floor. She looked up to Jiang with a smile and beckoned him forth.
"Haha." Jiang only laughed calmly out of earshot before jumping after the woman who was only getting more interesting.
They started traversing the rooftops at a fast pace as they moved across the mortal areas quickly. They were quickly leaving the outer domain of the Freedom Alliance and heading towards the border of the slums and the city on the south side, the closest to the Freedom Alliance.
There were innumerable experts flying overhead in the sky, however, they were still in Freedom Alliance territory so all the Stage 4s and Stage 5s they saw only shot them a glance before carrying on.
"The mission my master gave me is one that needed to be addressed quickly. There are a gang of cultivators that used to be a part of the black markets that have now taken to slaughtering entire populaces of our Freedom Alliance. They should kill a few hundred mortals every week. Although they don't target cultivators, it is still a blow to our morale and drying up our gold." Chu Hua explained as they ran.
"Do you know who they work for?" Jiang asked in reply.
"No, but it is easy to guess. These rogue mercenaries have been seen targeting mortals in our regions as well as the regions surrounding the Temple. So, we can imply that they have been hired by the City Administration to cause chaos. As for who exactly hired them? We don't know." Chu Hua said.
"This time, it will be particularly dangerous, however, we should be fine with just a bit of caution. The leader of them is named Tao Ro, and is only a peak Stage 2 cultivator. However, he was a butcher of renown and is extremely merciless. We still need to be cautious even with our superior cultivation." Chu Hua continued to say with a bit of a frown.
It could be seen that she was a bit apprehensive still, as most young disciples were. Killing and slaughtering were still relatively foreign and were a strange feeling to the young. However, they had to learn at one point. Facing a renowned vile butcher and slaughterer, however, fright and anxiety could still grip them.
"Don't worry, Junior Chu. You've seen my battle strength, so even if this Tao Ro had our cultivation, I can still beat him down." Jiang said to Chu Hua as they ran. Chu Hua was running lower and lower to the ground, so Jiang guessed they were getting close.
In response to him, Chu Hua smiled warmly but didn't reply.
"Stop here."
After a while longer of running, the two perched on a distant rooftop that was a dozen stories high. They overlooked a desolate and grimy portion of the slums. It wasn't deep into the slums and not close to any of the identified black markets, so there shouldn't be any experts around. However, the two still hid themselves as low as possible.
They were overlooking a series of large wooden buildings that had windows and doors boarded up. From their vantage point, they could see that in the centre of the buildings, there was a closed-off courtyard that had ten dozen people there.
They wore dirty clothes and seemed to be extremely vile people as there were all sorts of activities going on.
Men crowded around a couple of built cultivators that were exchanging fists. The beating was extremely merciless and the skin on their faces was burst and torn, their heads looking piggish and completely red.
There were even large bite marks all over their bodies and some ears missing. It was hard to look at, especially so when the men that crowded them were shouting deafening thralls calling for blood, spitting dirty phlegm everywhere.
Elsewhere, there were men who held beaten women in their embrace as the fucked them roughly amidst screams and blood. Jiang even saw a woman to tried to bite off the member of a man, promptly getting her neck snapped. After that, they didn't toss her corpse aside but continued to fuck her dead body from both directions.
Jiang looked over to Chu Hua, who was looking down on them and had seen everything he had. However, her gaze was extremely cold and nothing like before. There seemed to be a fury in her, instead of trepidation and disgust, which greatly excited Jiang.
"This is Tao Ro's gang, right? When do you want to start, Junior Chu?"
Jiang's voice came from her side, but she didn't avert her gaze from the horrifying things under her gaze. She spoke calmly and with an icy voice.
"We will start as soon as possible. These human vermin must be eradicated. As for how, we will clear out the buildings before finishing off all those down there." Chu Hua said solemnly.
"I will follow your instructions, Junior Chu. Shall we go together or split up?" Jiang asked as the two leant forward and were ready to move at a moments notice.
"The buildings are interconnected in a circular formation around the courtyard, so we will both start in that tower and meet up on the other side, killing all we come across. After that, we will move together into the courtyard and kill the others." Chu Hua said, however, she then looked at Jiang with a strange gaze.
"And, Cousin Jiang. I hope you can be as cruel as possible at this moment." Chu Hua said before jumping across the distance from the roof and advancing on the wooden buildings' southwestern tower.
Jiang nodded at her solemnly, however, after he had seen her enter and start slaughtering, he smiled jovially and muttered to himself.
"You simply don't know who you're talking to, do you? Hehehe." Jiang left a creepy laughter in his wake as he chased after Chu Hua and entered from the same spot she had, only moving in the opposite direction.
Jiang entered through one of the boarded windows that had been smashed apart by Chu Hua. Jumping into the place, a rotten smell and a few dismembered bodies instantly engulfed him. None of the bodies was left intact and their blood was mixing with the shit that had escaped them before their gruesome death.
"I have to say, Fairy, you sure are fun." Jiang muttered out loud once more before he moved forwards and started his slaughter.
The buildings were easy to navigate and no rooms were left untouched as the entire complex was a huge circuit. Jiang moved onward like a juggernaut and simply smashed bodies into pieces before they could even scream. And yet, it was like he was unfettered by the mortal world as not a single speck of dirt landed upon him.
"AH-" A terrifying scream escaped a throat that was soon gripped and squished to a little mess of blood an inch thick, the head promptly falling to the side and ripping the flesh of the little mangled neck as it fell to the floor, eyes dazed in two different directions.
"Don't-!" A plea came from behind before a hand chopped down and cleaved the body from the nave to the chops, bits of toothy flesh falling from the face and the two legs separated cleanly, urine and shit flooding the floor from the sliced body.
"You!" A cry of angry terror came forward before an index and ring finger plunged three inches deep into his skull from his eyes. Then, with a ripping, the front half of the skull was plied off as a brainless face was held in Jiang's hand while the brain matter and blood spilled from the skull that was missing its front.
Jiang was indeed cruel and merciless like Chu Hua had told him to be. No corpses were left intact and Jiang made sure to incite terror in every victim before they were slaughtered, a fresh supply of putrid excrement always filling the floor as life was ripped from the bodies of the dead.
Jiang killed over fifty people before he reached the northeastern tower, exactly halfway around where they entered on the southwestern side. However, looking about and even back to where he came from where there was a bloody path of death, there was no sign of Chu Hua.
'I guess I win then, huh? Heheha.' Jiang laughed to himself and almost seemed inhuman considering his nonchalant attitude. He imaged that Chu Hua was a lot angrier and more personal when killing this human trash, showing that while she didn't lack the ability to kill, her emotions were rampant and uncontrolled.
However, Jiang didn't mind. He was already incomparably excited seeing her killing nature. It already exceeded his expectations that he had toward any girl who hadn't even reached twenty years old. If Chu Hua was as dainty as she seemed, Jiang would probably bore of her quickly. But now, he simply wanted to know her more!
As he was lost in his thoughts, he could hear laughter down the corridor to the left of his turn to horror-filled wails. They got louder and closer until Jiang even saw a single man running towards him as fast as he could.
Blood that wasn't his was splattered all over his face and his eyes contained deep despair. Under Jiang's keen eyes, he saw the man was simply a middle Stage 1 cultivator. At that point, what was the difference between him and a mortal? Minimal.
"Brother!! Brother!! You must run, there is a fucking witch behind me!! She has killed everyone, even the Boss Tao Ro!! Wahahaha!!" The man screamed hysterically as he ran after seeing Jiang standing before him, unmoving.
He didn't care to think about why he was not running even after his scream, so he wanted to run right past him. After all, it would give him more time to escape!
However, right as he passed Jiang, a hand appeared out of nowhere and clasped right onto his face. And like a vice, his head seemed completely locked in space as it didn't move a fraction of a millimetre!
And, as it was so sudden, the man's body was continuing to run as his head was locked into place, his entire body flying past his head and the momentum carrying him into the air with his legs outstretched before him. The momentum carried his body further and further until his neck snapped from his own force that carried him!
The legs of the body that had reached high in the air fell back down and limply rested on the floor as the body hung from the broken neck. However, it could be seen that the neck was broken thoroughly as his neck extended to being a foot long, the skin whitening under the weight of the body.
Jiang clenched and burst his head like a watermelon, however, all the blood that came within a millimetre of his clothes and skin burst into flames and was evaporated by minuscule explosions that sounded like little pops followed by steam. The skill of Law fragment manipulation required for that was immense. No Stage 3 could do that...
A semi-headless body falling beside his feet, Jiang looked back to see a red figure approaching him slowly. His eyes were troubled and worried as he faced that figure approaching.
"Junior Chu?"
Indeed, right now, Chu Hua was heaving mighty breaths and not one part of her body wasn't drenched in thick blood. It had even gotten in her eyes and mouth, and Jiang could see human waste covered on her as well.
There was pain and sadness evident on her face and she seemed extremely sensitive right now. Jiang didn't say any more words.
Chu Hua didn't respond to Jiang but merely walked over to him and knelt down on the floor from tiredness as soon as she reached his feet. Seeing that, Jiang only smiled before one of the dozen spatial rings on his fingers flashed and a large amount of water came forth like a controlled hose.
"Junior Chu, you really outdid yourself. But you're worrying me, it's not normal behaviour. Can I trust you to calm down~?" Jiang spoke calmly and softly, however, there was a wide and insidious grin that betrayed his voice on his face when Chu Hua lowered her blood-soaked head.
Chu Hua said nothing but nodded her head weakly. Jiang couldn't tell if it was more cute and child-like, or pathetic and weak. He didn't care to think as he ran his fingers through Chu Hua's hair and washed it off the blood.
"Can you look at me, Junior Chu?"
Another nod came and a pair of tear-filled eyes stared at Jiang for a moment before they were shamefully cast below. Jiang then washed her face gently of the blood, his fingers tracing her skin without missing a patch.
"That's good, Junior Chu. This is fine for now, alright?" Jiang's gentle voice came again and his visage snapped from excitement to worry instantly when Chu Hua raised her little head.
"I'm sorry~" Her voice almost wobbled into tears. She was just so emotional. Seeing the horrid things those men did had put her in a fury, and she thought she would be better if she slaughtered every single one of them. However, as she heard their pitiful screams and others calling out for their mothers, wives and children; tears started to fall. Yet, she continued to slaughter every single one of them. Even that Tao Ro was easily smashed in her bloodlust.
"Don't be, Junior Chu. Come, we still have to take care of the others." Jiang said as he lifted her to stand up. Her robed were still drenched in blood, but her face and hair were clean of it.
"No...no, no...I can't." Chu Hua weakly said as she pulled away from Jiang. "I thought I could kill them easily, but I can't. After all, they are still people... They have dreams and hopes...how can I rip their dreams from them, no matter how desirable they are? It is just so saddening..." Chu Hua said with downcast eyes and small tears.
"Don't tell me..." Jiang was, at first, quite disdainful of her words. But as he thought, he was truly taken aback.
"Junior Chu, don't tell me you've never killed before this?" Jiang said incredulously.
"...I haven't..."
A small voice came back towards him and Jiang was well and truly shocked speechless. If that was the case, then wasn't this girl a bit too terrifying? He could only kill so easily because he can kill innumerable times.
But...this little girl massacred hundreds with no experience, no resolution? What would she look like when she grew up?!
"That's fine, Junior Chu, don't worry. But, we must always finish what we start. It would be an insult to the killed if they knew you wouldn't do it if you could go back in time." Jiang said somewhat sternly, which shocked Chu Hua.
"No... No, I can't go on! You...you, will you kill them for me, Jiang? Please, kill them?" Chu Hua begged and seemed to go white as she pictured coming face to face with those in the courtyard.
"Okay, Junior Chu, I can kill them. But you must watch, otherwise, you will never grow. Those with the power to kill must be able to if they will it, otherwise, we are just empty shells and soulless faces." Jiang said as he smiled, and Chu Hua nodded understandingly to his words.
And then, Jiang led Chu Hua by the hand so she could witness another slaughter.
*3,115/3,000 words*
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
PSYcho_72
PSYcho_72 Could you kill someone that you hated as easily as you think you could? Doubt and regret are heavy hitters and no one is as merciless as they believe themselves to be, well, unless they are old monsters.
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