Despite her confession, the air did not clear. Reason is a thin sword against a heart shielded by emotion. Feiyun Xing stood with a face that didn't belong to him—the village leader’s emotional tampering was a slow-burn fever, turning the prince's natural brilliance into a jagged, paranoid edge.

  He kept dissecting her.

  “Again, how do I know you aren't playing a game right now?” His voice was rasp. “How do I know that your so-called ‘confession’ isn’t just another layer?! A distraction from the truth.”

  Without moving an inch from her passive position, she almost looked like a statue waiting for the storm to pass.

  “You can’t know,” she finally said. “There is no proof of me. Humans aren’t a mathematical equation; we don’t have ways to know every answer with certainty. But we have time. Sometimes we contradict ourselves. Yet, by spending time, one will eventually see the true face of another, even see through all the contradictions and understand them.”

  The village leader chuckled softly behind him.

  “Listen to her poetry, Your Highness,” he said. “Even lies can sound sincere when rehearsed long enough.”

  The next moment, the hand of Sui Zhuan Yang dropped off.

  Click.

  A sword being sheathed again followed suit.

  “Did I allow you to whisper in my ear like a snake?!” The prince’s expression became ugly.

  “F-forgive me.” The leader stuttered before the pain arrived. “AHHHHHH!” He screamed while the prince approached Ren Lin.

  “You evade my question. Let me ask another thing then.” He stood before her. “Did you use me? To get here. To achieve your goal.”

  Ren Lin looked to the side, then back at him. “Shameful as it is… I indeed used you. But… over the time we spent, it felt more as though it was meant to be. I hadn’t planned so much. Just when your father ordered you to ask me for submission—no, when I sat in your horse carriage, I knew I could use you to get to the Obelisk. Though that was my ulterior move, anything else was honest. Our time wasn’t fake.”

  “You seem honest…”

  Feiyun Xing lingered on the word, his eyes still shimmering with that jagged, unnatural light. For a long, suffocating moment, the only sound was the Village leader’s ragged, wet gasps as he clutched the stump of his arm.

  The prince’s hand trembled on his hilt. He looked at the blood on the snow, then back at Ren Lin. The "fever" in his expression seemed to hit a peak—his jaw tightened so hard a vein throbbed in his temple—and then, it broke.

  The blue light in his pupils dimmed. He exhaled a long, shaky breath, his shoulders slumping as if the gravity of the island had suddenly doubled.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the rasp leaving his voice, replaced by a hollow exhaustion. He didn’t look at her; he looked at his own hands. “I don’t... I don’t know what got into me. It felt like my own thoughts, but louder. Sharper.”

  He glanced at the screaming Leader with a look of genuine confusion, as if waking from a nightmare to find he had committed a sleepwalking atrocity.

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  "It wasn't you, Xing," she said, her voice dropping to a soothing, rhythmic cadence. "He didn’t just whisper in your ear. He used a Core to rot your thoughts from the inside. He turned your grief into a weapon and pointed it at me."

  Pale and trembling, Sui Zhuan Yang looked up from the reddish snow. Even in his agony, the "Leader" of the village tried to grasp at the threads of his control.

  "Your Highness..." the Leader wheezed, his voice bubbling with forced warmth. "She is poisoning you. I used a Core, only to ensure your survival. If you doubt me... test my honesty. Use your essence. Ask me anything."

  Feiyun Xing turned his head slowly. The blue light didn't return to his eyes, but a cold clarity took its place. He didn't need a scan to know the truth of the tampering; he could feel the phantom echoes of the rage receding.

  “I don't need to test your honesty to know you are a parasite," Xing said. "Still, I will ask. Why? Why go through this theater?”

  The Leader opened his mouth to spin a tale of village tradition and the burden of leadership, but Ren Lin’s voice cut through the air like a cold blade.

  "Tell him the truth, Sui Zhuan Yang," she threatened, her eyes narrowed. "Tell him what happened to the women here. Weren’t there a lot more?"

  A visible flinch racked the man's frame. “H-how—”

  Looming over his broken form, Ren Lin let her shadow swallow him. “The scent of a predator is familiar to me. I’ve seen your kind before. Come on, ‘Leader’…”

  Finally, the unnatural smile shattered, exposing a jagged, desperate hunger. A wet, mocking laugh tore from the Leader's throat as his tear began to drop.

  “Do you hear her?! How could she possibly know our ways, Your Highness? I have been a savior to these people!”

  The sharp crack of a slap silenced him. Before the echoes died away, his cheek had already bloomed into a violent red.

  “What happened to the women?” Feiyun Xing stepped into the man's space, casting a long, dark pall over him.

  “There were no others! She is lying!”

  “The math fails you,” Ren Lin countered. “To sustain a population this size, the ratio of both genders must be similar. A lot of women are missing. And I saw none of the defects of an inbred lineage anywhere, yet you claim they didn’t exist?”

  “I-I…”

  Sighing at the man’s frantic stuttering, Feiyun Xing leaned in. “Tell the truth, and I will let you live.”

  With a shuddering breath, Sui Zhuan Yang’s eyes darted like a trapped animal. “Fine... if Your Highness insists. I ‘consumed’ them…” he shrugged. “But I promise! They were merely mortals, and I am Rank Two! I am the strongest here—I just took a little reward here and there...”

  Gripping his sword, Feiyun Xing pulled it out.

  “W-wait! You said you wouldn’t kill me!”

  “You can continue to live in the realm of ideas.”

  Stumbling, the Leader retreated. “You can’t make the Core without me! She will be stuck here! Do you want that? Also, we have no more ice for it!”

  “Mm… I figured the recipe.” He started to swing his sword. “‘Also’, Ren Lin didn’t give you all of the ice.”

  From his pants a fluid stretched like ink.

  “N-no!” He begged while his head flew off.

  The crunch of something heavy hitting snow followed as his body collapsed.

  The prince let out a breath. “What despicable scum.”

  Ren Lin too sighed, “I knew something was off the moment I saw him. Good work, Xing.”

  Returning her words, Feiyun Xing laid his hand on her shoulder. “I understand your poem a lot more now. It wasn’t easy for both of us. Yet we have things to do; I will go refine the Core. Let’s leave then.”

  “Alright, I will spread news around.”

  Subsequent to gathering the villagers, Ren Lin began to speak, “…Sui Zhuan Yang died. After I figured out what torture he put this village through—the prince punished him! Some of you may not know what happened, but I’m sure some rumors spread before. Indeed, your ‘Leader’ ate women! Such an act of not only brutality towards all of you, but to his ancestors couldn’t be tolerated! Or is anyone of another opinion?!”

  Fire built in the people’s eyes as cheer erupted. Some looked confused, others as though their suspicion got confirmed.

  “If anyone dares to subject you were effectively fooled by that man. It is a fact that when his reign started, too many women ‘mysteriously’ died. I know how helpless you were, as he was a Second Rank cultivator. Fear not! Such tyranny dressed as a blessing will never happen again! We will proceed to find a suitable successor.”

  As Ren Lin held her speech, some people, of course, were questioning her. Since not many people lived here, everyone had a bad feeling, yet one can’t deny that the Leader has helped them—on hunts with his immense strength or by simply being ‘kind.’ Naturally, those questions were answered with twisted logic by Ren Lin. Making her look like a righteous heroine.

  After her speech, she headed back to Feiyun Xing. Without any interruption, Ren Lin lay down to sleep while the prince took the ice and refined Cores all night.