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Chapter 287: Monsters in human skin

Jasmine at her side jumped at the sudden sound of falling bodies.

"Relax. These are all Soul Fire weaklings, barely above the realm of mortals." Stella ruffled her hair and laughed. "I don\'t even need to fight them directly, see? I can slaughter them from afar with my sword."

It was honestly a bad matchup for the rogue cultivators. Against most enemies, the cramped tunnels in the rock would give the rogue cultivators a way to attack from blind spots, set up ambushes, or even run away. However, the rock became trivial to Stella due to Ash\'s roots spreading throughout the mine and drenching the place in spatial Qi. It might as well be air to her and now only served as a trap for the rats trying to flee her sword.

Stella went back to humming as she waved her finger around. It may look like she was drawing runes or something in the air, but in reality, she was just pointing at the next target in the spatial plane and guiding her bloodstained sword through portals to get the job done.

The distant cries and thumps were music to her ears.

A sudden ripple of power spread through the spatial plane, and Stella could only marvel at the display control as rifts were torn open above the corpses, and Ash began feasting.

"You don\'t need to waste so much Qi for each corpse, you know," Stella yelled at the ceiling, "I can gather the corpses for you after I am done killing that Brax guy."

A laugh echoed in her consciousness. "Using this much Qi is trivial to me. In fact, I should be the one killing the rogues, as this is wasting your Qi."

Stella waved him off, "Nah, this is a good warm-up for tonight, and I barely have to expend any effort to purge these weaklings."

I am a bit worried about Jasmine, though, Stella thought as she glanced over her shoulder at the green-haired girl meekly following her. The girl kept her eyes on the ground and seemed to tremble at the distant cries of slaughter.

Perhaps feeling Stella\'s gaze, Jasmine raised her head. "Master..."

"That\'s me!" Stella cheerfully replied in an attempt to brighten the girl\'s mood. The tunnel down to the mine was a bit dreary, with the low lighting, lack of scenery, and terrified mortals running past them. It was no wonder Jasmine was in a mad mood. There\'s no way she would prefer the meeting over a stroll with her Master, right?

"I have some questions," Jasmine said.

Sensing a hint of resolve in her voice, Stella toned down the cheerful act. "I am your Master. We share no secrets, remember? If you want to know something, just ask."

"Okay..." Jasmine paused before responding, "How can you kill people so easily?"

"What a strange question," Stella tapped her chin as she continued her casual stroll. No enemies were left alive for the next hundred meters, giving her time to mull over her Disciple\'s question. After some thought, she settled on an answer.

"I can kill people so easily because I am stronger than them," Stella shrugged. There\'s not much more to it than that. What else could be holding me back than a lack of strength?

Jasmine seemed displeased with her answer. "Do you not value human life?"

"An even stranger question," Stella frowned, "I suppose it depends on who they are. You are precious to me, for example. I would go to war with the heavens to save or avenge you. The same goes for Diana, Elaine, and maybe Douglas. He can be a bit of an arse sometimes, but he works hard for the sect, so it\'s hard for me to hold a grudge against the guy for how badmouthed he was when he first arrived..."

Stella realized she was going off on a tangent and fell quiet. Jasmine joined her in the silence. Only their footsteps, the panicked breaths of mortals as they ran past, and distant screams as Stella returned to killing accompanied their stroll into the underworld of Ashfallen City.

Jasmine\'s questions made Stella wonder if what she was doing was somehow wrong. It was clear that many people disproved her methods, which is why she disliked meetings the more she attended. They treated her respectfully due to her relationship with Ash and her strength but rejected her methods and ideas as too rash.

Anything that causes harm to Tree\'s plans should be dealt with swiftly like this. The others like to spend too much time trying to come up with answers that could easily be solved with violence. The maids that wanted to kill me wouldn\'t have listened to reason, nor would the Dao Storm that almost killed Tree. Sure, talking can work sometimes, but the one with the bigger stick wins in the end, and we have the biggest stick around.

"Do you see humans as different from monsters?" Jasmine asked, breaking the silence.

Stella snorted, "Humans are far worse than monsters."

Jasmine tilted her head, "How, Master, I don\'t understand. Monsters are scary, you know? At least, that\'s what mom taught me. Monsters are the reason we hid behind walls and obeyed the cultivators. I know some humans turn to crime, but how can that be worse than something like a wyvern?"

"Stop thinking like a mortal," Stella flicked Jasmine\'s forehead, and she yelped. "A monster comes at you with open intentions; it wants to devour you to progress its cultivation. Nice and easy to understand, right? But humans? They are cunning monsters in familiar skin." Stella ran her nail along Jasmine\'s neck, leaving a faint red line to show a point. "Cultivators will betray you at the first opportunity and approach you as a friend with a kind smile before ramming a dagger through your heart. They can plot, plan, and deceive. They can even control others to do their bidding and work together. Do you understand my Disciple? It is not the monsters you should fear the most but fellow cultivators."

"Are humans really that bad," Jasmine muttered through her mask.

Stella stopped walking and put a hand on Jasmine\'s head. "Remember that man at the entrance, the one I cut in two?"

Jasmine shuddered under her hand. "Y-Yes..."

"If I was a monster, do you think he would have stood there so casually talking with his weapon strapped to his back?"

Jasmine thought for a moment and then shook her head. "No Master, he would have fought or ran away."

"Exactly, but he believed he could talk things out because my intentions were unclear, and I wasn\'t openly flexing my cultivation. Little did he know I planned to kill him the moment I saw him. That\'s the difference between cultivators and monsters. Do you see now?"

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"Mhm." Jasmine nodded.

Stella stood back up, "The world is dark and cruel. You can try to be nice and work with others, but just because you have good intentions doesn\'t mean that others do, and they will exploit that weakness. One bad apple in a sect can bring it down if people aren\'t cautious."

"I never realized it was so bad..." Jasmine looked back to the floor.

"That\'s because you are spoiled," Stella said bluntly. "You\'ve lived a life as the daughter of noble mortals in Slymere, and now you are a cultivator being raised in a safe environment with access to the greatest cultivation resources in this realm. It\'s not your fault, but you have been sheltered and protected from the darker side of this world."

A sheltered flower like you won\'t survive out there. Stella delicately combed her hair and readjusted the white flower behind her ear. I don\'t want my first-ever Disciple to wither and die. You should grow tall and strong like a tree. So forgive me for being harsh and showing you such horrible things, Jasmine. One day, you will understand.

Jasmine balled up her fists, but Stella could tell her heart still wasn\'t fully into it.

Let\'s see what she thinks after witnessing what this Brax fella is up to.

Stella snapped her fingers, and a portal formed. "Let\'s hurry this up. I have a shitty husband to murder and secrets about my past to uncover this evening. Dealing with these dregs is a waste of my time."

***

Jasmine felt her ears pop as she followed Stella through the portal. The air here was far staler and reeked of sweat and dried blood. It took a moment to adjust to the darkness of this cavern as it was even less well-lit, but once she did, her stomach began churring again.

A man with a thin body, wispy white hair, and cunning eyes sat casually with one foot propped up on a cage, picking at his teeth with a toothpick. A family of mortals was restrained inside the large metal cage under the cultivator. A man, woman, and son were cramped into the space with sunken eyes and disheveled hair. Their clothes were also torn in places, and the mortal man had a swollen face that was shades of black and blue. They didn\'t even look up at Jasmine and Stella as their dull gazes stayed on the floor.

Jasmine took a step back, horrified at what she saw. How can humans treat other humans like animals? The Voidmind family leaving us to die is one thing, but this is something else.

Other than the white-haired man sitting atop the cage, dozens of other cultivators were in the room. Some were meditating on top of a Qi-gathering formation while a group of men and women surrounded a man strapped to a chair, force-feeding him bundles of what looked to be pill ingredients. The mortal\'s screams had obscured their arrival, but the man sitting atop the cage soon noticed their presence and eyed them cautiously.

"Who are you two?" He flicked the toothpick to the ground. His voice drew the attention of the other cultivators in the room, and noticing the two newcomers, they began to slowly encircle them with blade tips poking out of their cloak folds.

"Are you Drax?" Stella strode forward with confidence that befitted her overwhelming strength.

"The name is Brax, not Drax." The man clicked his tongue, stood up, and wreathed himself in earth Qi.

"Does it matter what I call a fraud?"

Brax narrowed his eyes, "What do you mean?"

"The loudmouth at the door said you were a Star Core cultivator, but you\'re only a half step." A sword appeared in Stella\'s hand, "Your Star Core hasn\'t finished forming yet. How dissapointing."

Jasmine\'s eyes widened. They really do deceive, just like Master said they do. How dishonorable do you have to be to lie about your cultivation?

Brax mirrored Stella\'s aggression by drawing his sword in a flash of gold from his spatial ring. Compared to Stella\'s beautiful bloodstained blade of dark metal, Brax\'s sword was crude and chipped.

"So you got past Frank guarding the door. That\'s impressive, but how do you plan to defeat all of us when there are only two" Brax coughed up a mouthful of blood and looked down at the blade tip poking out of his chest.

Jasmine blinked as she realized Stella had suddenly disappeared in a pop of air and reappeared behind Brax, stabbing him through the heart with a dagger.

Stella pulled back the dagger and elbowed Brax to the floor. He fell flat on his face with a groan, and Jasmine watched the flicker of life leave his eyes.

Despite how terrible this person seemed, his sudden death still made Jasmine sick to her stomach. This was all so wrong.

"You killed the boss?! I will fucking kill you bitch!" A woman screamed as she ran toward Stella with a sword wreathed in blue soul flames. Her cloak hood flew back, revealing a middle-aged-looking woman with brown hair and a twisted scowl.

Stella effortlessly sidestepped the overhead sword swing as if it had been in slow motion, grabbed the woman\'s face, and rammed it into a nearby rock.

Jasmine screwed her eyes shut to avoid witnessing another gruesome death through the crunching sound of bone painted a clear picture in her mind. This is a nightmare. I just want to go home.

A whistling noise shot past Jasmine\'s ear, followed by a gasp and thump. Slowly opening her eyes and turning around, she saw a cloaked figure pinned to the wall behind with a dagger through the throat.

"Pay attention to your surroundings, Jasmine," Stella said as she casually fought off three people at once. Her arms blurred, and sparks flew as she parried any attack.

She protected me while fighting all those people. Jasmine narrowed her eyes at Stella and realized these people she was fighting were weaker than the man at the gate she had so effortlessly cleaved in two. Is she using them as practice before killing them off? Or maybe she finds this fun...

"You won\'t do," Stella muttered. Her speed suddenly doubled, to the surprise of her attackers, and she twisted her sword to kill one of three by shattering their sword and cutting them in half horizontally. The remaining two cultivators, one a woman and another a man stepped back in fear, their swords trembling in their grasp. "Your technique was too good, so you have to go as well," Stella teleported behind the woman and punched her so hard in the back that she went flying into the wall, dead on impact.

Jasmine gulped down rising vomit and wished she could crawl back through the portal. The smell of fresh blood tickled her nose, and there was nowhere she could look without seeing a corpse. Her knees grew wobbly, so she struggled to even stand.

"S-Stay back, you monster," the final person standing stammered as he slowly stepped backward over his fallen comrades with his sword tip pointing at Stella.

"Calling me a monster? That\'s rich coming from you, considering you kidnapped people and were even using them as living pill furnaces, though I suppose it\'s a matter of perspective." Stella said dryly as she flicked the blood off her blade before stowing it away. She then glanced around the room and locked eyes with the mortals. Bringing up her hand wreathed in spatial flames, with a simple hand gesture, the cages containing the mortals were ripped apart, and the brackets keeping the man stuck to the chair snapped.

"Go through the portal," Stella gestured to the rift with her chin, "You are free now."

"Thank you..." the man strapped to the chair wheezed as he dragged himself alongside the terrified family to the portal and left.

The remaining cultivator also stepped toward the portal, but Stella flattened him with her presence. "They were free to go, but not you. At least not yet."

"Y-You might l-let me go?" The man gasped out.

Stella didn\'t answer him straight away. Instead, she strode through the blood and corpses to sit atop an empty cage. Having taken her throne, she let her legs swing as she declared his fate.

"Throw your sword aside."

"Yes, Misstress," The cultivator, far stronger than Jasmine, was reduced to a servant before Stella. He threw the sword aside without hesitation.

"Good, I knew I picked the right one."

"I am honored"

"Don\'t be," Stella snorted, "I picked you because you had the most pathetic fighting techniques, and I felt you would suit the role of a punching bag for my Disciple here."

Jasmine and the poor cultivator her Master had picked out exchanged a glance.

"Here\'s how this is going to work." Stella continued, "I will grant you freedom if you can stay standing after twenty attacks from my Disciple. You cannot fight back and must keep your arms behind your back. If I see any hint of you attempting to harm my Disciple, your head will fly before you even realize what happened. Nod, if you understand?"

The cultivator hesitantly nodded, and the pressure on him vanished, allowing him to stand. Per the instructions, he put his hands behind his back and towered over Jasmine.

"Master, this feels wrong," Jasmine called out as she saw the man\'s terrified face.

Stella shrugged, "Jasmine if you don\'t want to fight him, then this man has as much purpose as the corpses on the ground, and I have no reason to keep him alive. This is a chance to get real-life combat experience and see if your plan to use your fists against a real opponent will work."

The man grew even more terrified, and Jasmine bowed, "Little disciple, please give me a chance to live."

"O-okay..." Jasmine hesitantly raised her fits. What kind of twisted situation is this?

"Don\'t forget to eat the Vampiric Touch fruit!" Stella said, "Now is a great time to test it. Oh, and don\'t hold back, Jasmine, for every punch you do that doesn\'t knock him down, that\'s five laps of the mountain peak you must do today."

"Master?!" Jasmine said in horror. Does that mean Stella will make me run a hundred laps today if I don\'t knock this man out?

Jasmine gulped down the blood-red fruit and gave the man a bow. "I\'m so sorry, but I will be more dead than you if I fail."

The man returned a weary, tooth-filled grin. "Let\'s both do our best to please the monster then."