Facing Kedron

"I said it, didn't I? You're never going to see him ever again." Kedron stared at Iris's lifeless corpse and chuckled.

Since Iris had been the first person to ever somehow successfully escape from his grasp, seeing her dead body lay before his very eyes made him feel more satisfied than usual.

"Well… I wish I could've at least cleanly killed her though." Kedron said in disappointment.

As someone who absolutely loved to feast on the organs of all of the enemies he's killed, Kedron would always try his best to give someone a swift and clean death in order to do so.

However, due to the fact that Iris had managed to put up a rather impressive fight against him despite their level differences, Kedron had to kill her using brute force instead, causing most of her organs to be torn apart.

But oh well, what's done is done.

Now he just has to throw Iris's body in an ocean somewhere where there's a lot of carnivorous fishes and then report back to Ronald.

And with that in mind, Kedron slowly walked up to Iris's body.

Just as he was about to crouch over and pick up Iris's dead body however...

"SHIT!" Kedron cursed loudly seeing that Iris, who was suppose to be dead, all of a sudden appear right in front of his face with her dagger in hand.

So he panicked and jumped backwards, just barely avoiding being stabbed by Iris's dagger.

Not giving any time for him to breathe at all, Iris then lunged forward with a speed that greatly surpassed Kedron's expectations and aimed her dagger towards his neck.

Nevertheless, Kedron easily parried her attack and simultaneously counterattacked by swinging his dagger at her.

Iris quickly reacted to this by blocking his attack with her dagger, causing sparks to fly all over the place due to the collision of their weapons.

"You bitch, how can you even see through this fog!" Kedron exclaimed while barraging Iris with attacks.

"..." Iris didn't reply back but blocked each of his attacks with slight ease.

While it was still extremely hard for her to see through the fog, and it was especially even harder for Iris to block all of Kedron's attacks, for some reason, after she had left the weird dark abyss and returned back to the forest, her intuition had been greatly enchanced.

Not only that, but her physical body doesn't hurt as much now although she's still terribly wounded.

In other words, she's somehow gotten significantly stronger now.

But even so, she's still unable to actually hit him at all.

If she tries to even hit him once, then she'll end up leaving an opening for him to strike her down.

Luckily for her, she could tell that Kedron wasn't a cultivator, and couldn't manifest his qi, otherwise she wouldn't of been able to stood a chance against him.

As such, Iris started to observe her surroundings while still managing to block off Kedron's attacks trying to find anything that she could use to her advantage.

She soon realized something about Kedron that she might be able to take advantage of.

Kedron seemed to be getting increasingly impatient as time has passed, thus making him slightly more and more careless.

Using this knowledge to her advantage, Iris decided to wait and carefully observe Kedron's movements and wait for the the right moment to pounce upon Kedron.

Then after fully going on the defensive and waiting patiently for several minutes, she finally saw an opening, and immediately took the opportunity and lunged her dagger right towards Kedron's heart, intending to get this fight over with once and for all.

'...'

She missed.

Instead of piercing straight into Kedron's chest like she had hoped to do, her dagger got deflected by his weapon which sent the blade flying out of her hands.

"Do you understand the difference between me and you now? No matter what you plan to do, it's useless infront of me." Kedron grinned wickedly.

As an assassin on the list of Immortals that's fought and murdered thousands of people throughout his entire career, he knew exactly when someone had a plan in their head.

That was why he had purposely pretended to be careless and even left a small opening for Iris to counterattack.

"Well then, any last words?" Kedron pointed his dagger towards Iris's neck and then asked.

"..." Iris didn't reply back but stared at Kedron with a cold look in her eyes.

"Silent till the end. Wonderful!" Kedron stated with a grin on his face.

He then swiftly moved his dagger towards Iris's neck.

Just as he was about to slash her neck however, a sharp pain shot through Kedron's arm as if something had stabbed him.

So he looked down and saw this his hand that was pointing the blade at Iris had gone missing, and blood was gushing out from it.

"AHHHH!" After taking a brief second in order to process what has happened to him, he cried out in pain and clutched his severed limb with his remaining hand while completely disregarding the fact that Iris was right infront of him.

After all, this was the first time in his life that he had felt this much pain before despite the fact that he was an assassin on the list of Immortals.

Seeing that Kedron was distracted, Iris quickly stepped forward and cleanly sliced both of Kedron's legs off, causing him to scream out in pain even louder.

"If you want to survive, tell me everything you know about Ronald and where he went after he had left the hospital." Iris grabbed Kedron's hair and stated in a cold tone.

"H-how am I going to even survive! 3 of my limbs aren't even intact anymore!" Kedron shouted out in agony.

"Don't worry about it, I have a way to easily heal you. Now talk before I decide to leave you to rot." Iris lied.

"O-okay! I-I'll talk, I'll talk!" After quickly taking into account about everything that he's seen Iris done so far during the fight, Kedron believed that she had an actual way to make him survive and started to speak.

"R-Ronald's c-c-currently s-staying at a mansion that he has r-rented out for the time near the most popular shopping district in the capital city."

"So he's safe then?" Iris questioned.

"Y-yes he's safe, b-but t-there s-shouldn't be t-that much guards over there besides 4 of my men, b-but t-they should be e-easy for you to fight." Assuming that Iris wanted to do something to Ronald, Kedron briefly told her about the security.

"What did you do to him then?" Since Iris still believed that Kedron had done something to Ronald, Iris continued to inquiry.

"I-I didn't do anything to him! B-but please hurry up and heal me! At this rate I'm going to die from blood loss!" As Kedron was slowly losing more and more consciousness, he tried urging Iris to quickly save him.

"I will once you finish all of my questions. Tell me why you had ignited the first explosion then." Iris said.

"F-first explosion? O-oh, I-I didn't i-ignite t-the first explosion, I-it just happened because s-some people wanted to escape from me. I-I thought they were on your side." Kedron answered while the pupils on his eyes were starting to now dilate.

"They're not. Tell me who sent you out to kill me then." Seeing that Kedron was about to die due to blood loss, Iris hurriedly demanded.

"R...Ronald sent me." Kedron hesitated for a moment but eventually spoke truthfully.

"Ronald sent you to kill me?! Why did he send you to kill me?" Iris's eyes widened up as she heard Kedron's statement.

"I... I don't know why. Since I'm in subservient to the Kuangge family, I'm just do as I tol..." Before Kedron could finish his sentence however, he fell unconscious and his breathing stopped.

"HEY! WAKE UP! WE'RE NOT DONE YET!" Iris tried to wake Kedron back up, but unfortunately, he remained motionless.

So Iris threw Kedron onto the ground and processed everything that Kedron had told her.

Even though Iris wanted to deny the fact that Ronald had really sent out Kedron to kill her, she had a very strong feeling that Kedron was telling the truth.

But why?!

She was certain that she didn't do anything in this life that would warrant Ronald to send someone out to kill her.

In addition, Iris tried to do everything within her power to make sure that Ronald doesn't have any ill feelings towards her.

But regardless of what the reason may be, Iris couldn't help but tear up just thinking about it.

The love of her life, the one who who makes her smile whenever she sees or hears his name, the person who she wants to dedicate her entire existence for this time around, and the only one who she was going to go through absolute hell for...

Wants her dead.

'...'

It hurts.

It really hurts.

The total amount of physical pain that she had experienced throughout the past two lives wasn't even as nearly comparable to the mental anguish she was feeling right now.

Just the sheer volume of emotions flooding through her body was enough to make her body collapse right next to Kedron's corpse on the ground.

She felt hopeless, empty inside, and utterly lost.

What was even the point of living anymore if Ronald wanted her dead?

As she was weeping silently with thoughts like these popping up into her head every so often, suddenly the dagger that she was holding came into her vision.

So without hesitation, she pointed it directly towards her chest, specifically where her heart was located at.

She couldn't help but start to ponder whether or not she should just end it all right here and now.

After all, Ronald wanted her dead.

So with that in mind, she closed her eyes with tears rushing down her eyes, hoping that maybe, just maybe that this will make Ronald finally happy.

Just as the tip of the dagger had touched the surface of her skin and she was about to plunge it deep into her own flesh however...

Ding!

A custom notification sound specifically created for whenever Ronald sends her a text message suddenly went off.

And upon reading the contents of the message, she immediately dropped the dagger and bursted out even more tears.