Chapter 73

The beauty that blooms on branches will eventually wither away.

To Collei, the Preacher was the source of all her misery.

He brought the plague, the Archon residue, and with them, pain and despair.

Old wounds may fade, but deep-seated hatred is etched in memory.

To others, this was just a tragedy.

Merely a tragedy.

One that would draw tears, only to be forgotten soon after.

Since the wound wasn't theirs, they would never understand its true pain.

But to Collei, this was her past, her experience.

The moment she survived the plague, she knew she had one mission in life.

To find that man and kill him...

Kill him.

Kill him!

At first, Collei had been merely walking, so the Preacher hadn't paid her much attention.

But once she closed the distance, she suddenly sped up.

Her speed caught the Preacher off guard. He hadn't expected such a small body to produce such explosive power.

Thankfully, his extensive combat experience saved him—he leaned back just enough to avoid Collei's dagger.

However, the dagger was longer than he anticipated.

It still managed to leave a thin trail of blood.

Though Collei didn't manage to cut his throat, and the Preacher had narrowly dodged the attack, the dagger had sliced through his skin, though not deeply enough to cause any serious harm.

Collei didn't let up after her first strike missed. She didn't give the Preacher a chance to recover.

With a quick flick of her wrist, she activated a mechanism on the dagger and flung it.

"Hisssss…"

The dagger was attached to a thin wire.

Although Collei wasn't entirely familiar with handling the wire, she instinctively used an assassination technique and unexpectedly created an advantageous situation.

The wire looped around the back of the Preacher's neck and came back to Collei, who grabbed it.

Collei intended to strangle the Preacher with the wire, but her inexperience gave him an opening.

He managed to slip his arm through the loop before the wire tightened. When the dagger's mechanism began to retract, instead of strangling him, it was stopped by his arm.

"Don't get cocky, kid!"

The Preacher was growing increasingly irritated. This kid's every move was aimed at his vital spots. If it weren't for his extensive combat experience, he would have died twice already.

Is this a sparring match? It feels more like I'm fighting a mortal enemy.

Had Bai Luo been the one wielding the dagger, even if the Preacher had avoided the wire, Bai Luo would have followed up with a killing blow.

But Collei wasn't Bai Luo. Lacking his strength, even with the help of the mechanism, she couldn't overpower the Preacher, a grown man, and he managed to break free.

"You really are just like him," the Preacher muttered, rubbing his neck where a trickle of blood had stained his fingertips.

If Bai Luo had a penchant for poisoning his blades, this small cut might have been lethal.

Licking the blood from his fingers, the Preacher's expression twisted into a savage grin. His pupils began to change, reflecting a growing beastly instinct awakened by the scent of his own blood.

And then…

Collei ran.

Yes, without hesitation, Collei bolted toward the side of Starsnatch Cliff and jumped off.

"Damn it!"

The Preacher immediately ran after her, not to kill her but to save her. He couldn't let her die during their fight.

He even began to suspect that this might have been a trap orchestrated by Bai Luo. Was this some ploy to force his hand, perhaps giving Bai Luo an excuse to deal with him?

But as the Preacher looked down from the cliff, he couldn't see any sign of Collei.

"What the...?"

Just as he was puzzling over the situation, Collei appeared behind him and kicked him in the back.

The assassination techniques Bai Luo had taught her were never about direct confrontation.

Speed, precision, and decisiveness were their core principles.

Speed: attack so fast that the opponent couldn't react. The ideal was to end the fight before the enemy could even realize it had begun.

A fight drawn out over hundreds of moves was a brute's way. The goal was always to end the fight within a single strike.

Precision: hit where it counts. If you can't land a lethal blow, don't strike at all. Wait for the right moment to strike when it matters most.

Stability: never lose composure.

Perhaps the most important principle of Bai Luo's assassination technique.

If things go south, run. Never engage in a prolonged battle. As long as you're alive, there will always be another opportunity to strike.

Use any method necessary to win, no matter how underhanded.

It had only seemed as though Collei jumped off the cliff. In reality, she had used the wire to swing herself to the other side of the cliff.

While the Preacher was busy thinking about possible conspiracies, he hadn't noticed Collei sneaking up behind him.

To make matters worse for him, after kicking him off balance, Collei didn't even try to save him. Instead, she pushed a large rock towards the edge—one usually used by couples as a seat during their romantic rendezvous—sending it tumbling after the Preacher.

"You really are just like him!"

Clinging desperately to the cliffside, the Preacher drew his weapon, shouting the same line he had earlier—but this time, there was no admiration in his voice. Only bitterness and frustration.

He had seen Bai Luo use these tactics before, but he hadn't expected this little girl to have mastered them so well. She was a spitting image of Bai Luo, cut from the same mold.

The Preacher's weapon was a peculiar curved blade, composed of four segments. He could control the individual parts of the blade remotely using the power of the Archon residue, making it almost as if he could wield it from a distance.

But without the power of the Archon residue, it was nothing more than scrap metal.

And easily breakable scrap metal at that.

At this point, though, the Preacher had no choice. This girl clearly intended to kill him, and if he didn't fight back, he was going to die.

"Remember this moment, kid! You're about to witness the power of a god!"

As he clung to the cliff, the Preacher tore off his cloak, revealing strange markings on the side of his neck.

These marks looked like puncture wounds, with bulging veins around them.

The Preacher hadn't yet unleashed his full power. Doing so would also burn him with black flames.

But for a little girl? That much wasn't necessary.

Behind him, a phantom of a lion appeared—its head adorned with three horns, its forked tongue flickering like a snake's, and its muscular form radiating raw strength.

The phantom let out a roar as it was summoned, but its attention was immediately drawn to a man.

A man in a black coat with a white mask stood behind Collei. He seemed ordinary, exuding no threatening aura.

But the phantom's focus was on the figure behind him.

That cold gaze—just one glance made it feel as though its very soul was freezing over.

There was no mistaking it—this was…

With a pitiful whimper, the Archon residue vanished into thin air, leaving the Preacher bewildered.

No matter how much he tried to summon it back, the residue refused to show itself again.