My cultivation disguise has been exposed by Xiao Sizi.

The tip of the steel longsword dragged across the muddy slope, carving out a shallow furrow.

The two Japanese guards, dressed in rough bamboo armor, roared incoherently and, with their bowed legs, charged at Li Chen from the left and right, each wielding a sharpened bamboo spear.

Li Chen did not stop.

Just as the bamboo spear was about to pierce his chest, he stomped his left foot hard in the mud, and his whole body shifted half a foot to the right in an illogical way. His right arm swung in a circle, and the standard longsword in his hand, which didn't even have a blood groove, drew a dazzling white light in mid-air, slicing open the throats of the two guards without any hindrance.

Two heads with shaved heads shot into the sky, and hot blood gushed from their headless cavities, splattering onto the rough wooden fence of the fortress.

Clang.

The bamboo spear fell to the ground.

The village erupted in chaos, the piercing sound of a wooden whistle tearing through the silence.

A dozen or so ronin samurai, carrying iron katana and wearing slightly better leather armor, swarmed out of the main house in the village.

The leader was a burly samurai chief with a scar on his face.

The leader spotted the headless corpse lying at the doorway, then looked at Li Chen, who was slowly walking inside carrying a blood-dripping longsword.

"Baka yarou!"

The leader's eyes widened, his hands gripped his katana tightly, and he let out a hysterical roar at Li Chen, spewing out a string of rapidly uttering gibberish.

Li Chen stopped in his tracks.

He stretched out his left little finger, picked at his ear, and casually flicked the dust off his fingernail.

"What are you babbling about? I don't understand a word." Li Chen raised his eyelids, and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up, revealing two rows of gleaming white teeth.

"But I understood that 'baka'."

The voice just fell.

Li Chen slightly bent his knees, and the bluestone slab beneath his feet cracked with a "crack." He transformed into a blur that was difficult to detect with the naked eye, and charged directly at the dozen or so warriors.

too fast.

Even without using a single trace of true essence, the explosive power of a Golden Core stage cultivator's honed physical body is something these mortal warriors simply cannot react to.

The scarred leader only felt a blur before his eyes, and the Tang Dynasty man in the moon-white robe had already disappeared.

Immediately afterwards, a chill, as if it were real, pressed against his back.

"Nishini (Japanese for 'go to hell')."

A cold voice rang in his ear.

Before the leader could even turn his head, a cold, finely crafted steel longsword had already pierced his lower back, easily piercing through the cheap leather armor, and protruding from the front of his abdomen with a spray of hot blood mixed with pieces of internal organs.

The excruciating pain instantly drained the leader of all his strength.

He loosened his grip on the hilt, the katana fell to the ground, and he clutched the protruding blade against his stomach with both hands, unconsciously uttering a muffled curse.

"Eight...ga..."

Standing behind him, Li Chen heard the curse and the violence in his eyes instantly intensified to the extreme.

"Oh ho! You dare to curse?"

Li Chen sneered, and suddenly pulled his right hand, which was gripping the hilt of the sword, outwards, bringing out a long string of viscous blood beads. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he stabbed the bloody hole back in hard.

"Nisunai."

He drew his knife and stabbed again.

"Nisuchi!"

Blood gushed out like a fountain from the blood groove. Li Chen moved so fast that he left afterimages. He mechanically repeated cold words as his sword pierced in and out, turning the leader's stomach into a sieve of mangled flesh.

Li Chen only stopped when the leader had completely died and collapsed into the mud like a rag doll.

"Phew...that feels so good, both physically and mentally."

Li Chen flicked the blood off his longsword, exhaled a long breath, and looked as satisfied as a villainous tyrant who had just finished a big meal.

The remaining dozen or so samurai were completely dumbfounded.

Looking at the pile of minced meat on the ground, and then at the man who was killing people while laughing villainously, their samurai spirit crumbled instantly. They screamed, threw down their iron knives, and turned to run wildly into the depths of the fortress.

"Run?" Li Chen, sword in hand, followed at a leisurely pace, his laughter echoing through the stronghold.

"Don't run away, come play with this old man!"

Screams, the dull thud of a blade slicing through flesh, and the rumble of a wooden house collapsing—all intertwined to create a cruel symphony.

Li Chen didn't use any magic; he simply cut his way from the south end of the stronghold to the north end, killing his way through each step.

Half an hour later.

Li Chen stepped over the scattered limbs and pushed open the sliding door of the most impressive-looking wooden house.

The room was dark, and the tatami mats smelled of musty straw.

From the shadows in the corner, a very faint, suppressed trembling sound came.

Li Chen walked over, carrying the blood-dripping longsword, and stopped in front of the shadows.

They were two Japanese children, probably around ten years old. Dressed in coarse cloth shirts, they huddled together, their faces pale, their eyes filled with terror as they stared at the blood-soaked demon.

Li Chen looked at them, his murderous intent lessening somewhat, as if he were deep in thought.

He casually stuck his longsword into the wooden floor beside him, reached into his soul space with his left hand and pulled out a bright red apple, and with his right hand he pulled out an extremely sharp and exquisite dagger.

Li Chen squatted down and placed the apple and the dagger side by side on the tatami mat in front of the two children.

The two children couldn't understand Tang Dynasty Mandarin, and Li Chen was too lazy to learn bird language on the spot. He simply twitched his brow slightly, separated an extremely weak wisp of divine consciousness, and forcibly inserted his will into the minds of the two children.

"Choose one."

The voice that suddenly appeared in their minds startled the two children.

The boy on the left, who looked slightly older, was biting his lower lip tightly.

His gaze darted back and forth between the dagger and the apple, a barely concealed hatred flashing deep within his eyes, but he quickly masked it.

He stretched out his trembling hands, deliberately avoiding the sharp dagger, picked up the red apple, and then raised his head, revealing an extremely harmless and innocent pleading expression.

Li Chen looked at him and suddenly smiled.

The smile had barely appeared when the longsword stuck in the floor was suddenly pulled up, drawing a cold, semi-circular arc in mid-air before precisely slicing open the throat of the boy holding the apple.

Fresh blood splattered on the tattered paper sliding door.

The boy fell onto the tatami mat, the apple in his hand rolling to the side.

"At such a young age, when faced with the enemy who killed his family, he actually knew how to hide his strengths and avoid danger, and deliberately show weakness to pretend to be shrewd."

Li Chen stood up, looked at the corpse on the ground, and his voice was extremely cold.

"With such a deep mind, able to suppress even instinctive hatred, you will surely become a major threat if left to grow up. You should be killed."

The slightly smaller boy on the right had his face splattered with warm blood.

He was so frightened that he wet his pants, and a foul stench filled the air.

He watched as his companion was killed for choosing fruit, and the tension in his mind finally snapped.

He scrambled over and grabbed the sharp dagger from the tatami mat.

But he did not stab Li Chen.

Instead, he knelt down, raised the dagger high above his head with both hands, and lay on Li Chen's feet like a dog, kowtowing desperately, his face squeezing out an extremely distorted, fawning smile full of ingratiation.

Li Chen lowered his head, looking at the child who was fawning over him with a knife, and a look of extreme disgust flashed in his eyes.

With a flick of his wrist, the sword flashed once more.

The fawning head rolled to one side.

"Upon witnessing the tragic death of others, their first reaction is not grief and indignation, but rather an immediate change of heart and obsequiousness."

Li Chen wiped the blood off the boy's coarse cloth clothes with his longsword, his tone revealing undisguised contempt.

"Moreover, if you choose a knife, it means you harbor resentment and have murderous intent; you will not be spared either."