The Reincarnated Villain Can Break the Fourth Wall!

"Oh?"

Ye An licked the blood from her claw.

"Trying to bargain with corpses?"

She said it with mockery, but her eyes flicked to the far ridge.

Even gods have attachments.

She relaxed when she spotted the bolt of violet lightning streaking across the sky, the Lightning Crane was airborne.

Good. No need to intervene... yet.

Despite her bloody madness in battle, Ye An's reputation among mortals was strangely wholesome. "Holy Nun," they called her. Sweet-tempered, patient, almost too kind for a cultivator at her level.

If Su Xiaobai had touched any other Transcendent Realm woman like that, he'd be a meat smear across ten provinces.

(Though Ye An didn't know he owned an Invincible Body—capable of surviving far worse.)

But that mercy?

Ended with the living.

To Hunters, she was the Queen of Blood.

Her domain: Purge A technique designed for one purpose—slaughter.

The battlefield transformed beneath her like a nightmare manifest, stone spikes erupted, receded, reformed, constantly shifting. To low-intelligence enemies, it was hell on earth.

A dance floor of death with no rhythm.

Among Guardians, there was a saying:

"Call her a nun—until she enters a battlefield."

____

"That was her…"

Su Xiaobai muttered, leaping between shifting spikes with casual grace. Beside him, Ranran kept pace, albeit a little less elegant.

Recognition hit, too late.

He clicked his tongue. "Tch. Ranran."

She glanced sideways.

"Defend yourself."

Her brows twitched. She'd expected, "Can you handle it?" Instead, he just dumped the responsibility on her like an unwanted spirit beast.

"...Prick."

Still, she summoned two ice lances in her hands. "Leave it to me."

Whoosh!

Su Xiaobai didn't answer. He had already vaulted upward, landing atop Beibei, his Lightning Crane.

He stared down at the approaching horde of Marshals.

Hunters.

Not corrupted, not demonic.

Different.

Their cores radiated unstable energy, the kind no sect had managed to harness or refine.... Yet.

That made them valuable.

And Su Xiaobai?

Wanted them.

He needed to bring those cores back to the Immortal Rain Valley for experimentation.

____

"Keke....Why is he coming toward us—?"

The leading Marshal, a horrific fusion of white-furred rhino, one-tailed lion, and scaly lizard, froze mid-flight.

They were seven Integration-level monsters.

This lone cultivator & a bird was heading straight for them?

Suicidal?

"WHOOOO—BOOOOOOM!!"

Too late.

A beam of condensed dragon breath exploded from Su Xiaobai's mouth.

It wasn't a flame.

It was a weaponized furnace, brighter than their fate.

The rhino's pupils shrank.

He opened his mouth to scream, then turned to ash.

Puchi! Puchi!

Behind him, two Marshals lost their arms mid-escape, their limbs caught in the tail end of the blast.

"Don't shatter their cores. I need them this time," Su Xiaobai reminded Beibei as he leapt from her back.

Fortunately, he could now control the beam's burn radius.

Unfortunately, the rhino was already vaporized.

"Chiiek! (Oops)" Beibei cried out, embarrassed.

Last time they fought a weaker colony, she'd shattered every core.

____

"Oh? He's collecting? Good!... He really is disgusting, I like him."

Ye An's eyes gleamed in delight, watching Su Xiaobai's dragon beam light the crater like a false sunrise.

A treacherous thought crept in: 'Is he trying to die early just to avoid my punishment?'

She sneered, but her heart fluttered like the wings of a butterfly in relief.

At least now, she didn't have to protect anyone.

She could let loose.

She turned her gaze slowly to Sykarra and Vaelzaar.

A silent question: "Who's protecting you now?"

"Humph. Don't smile so soon!—RAMPAGE!"

Sykarra's voice cracked like metal dragged across bone, the hatred in her voice… real.

Next moment—

"RAAAAARGH!"

Her body burst .

Skin tore.

Arms split open, sprouting ten new limbs, each disgustingly different.

One was covered in insect chitin.

One oozed tar and had fingers made of bone spikes.

Another, a withered human arm, twitched with trapped spiritual signatures, faint voices whispering, "Help… please… let us out…"

One limb dragged itself forward on hooked claws made from someone's ribcage.

Sykarra roared again as her spine rippled, her back breaking to support the weight of stolen anatomy.

Blood gushed from her sides.

Puchi!

The beasts inside her screamed.

Their souls had been half-devoured, not gone, just tamed, trapped in her flesh like prisoners nailed to a war drum.

"M-Mother… where's Mother—!?" came one muffled voice from beneath her shoulder.

"Silence," she spat.

A hand—a human child's—grew from her thigh. (It had belonged to a pregnant warrior woman Sykarra absorbed during the ongoing tournament.)

It waved, as if trying to escape.

Vaelzaar's body cracked in answer.

Her face split vertically, blood gushing like a geyser.

From the wound emerged three heads, twisting, mewling, fighting each other.

Each bore traits of a different devoured race, one horned and scaled, another eyeless and fish-skinned, the last made entirely of twitching human muscle.

She grew two more legs, but not hers, one was a tiger's, the other was canine, still twitching with confused life.

"Devour and inherit," Vaelzaar growled, her triple-voice echoing, "We are evolution."

Dozens of mouths opened across her chest, chattering in mismatched voices.

"Please help—"

"Kill me—"

"I miss the sun—"

Faces emerged along her arms, faces of prey devoured whole, blinking, mouths opening silently as if begging for release.

Ye An's face darkened.

She took one slow step forward, then another.

"You call that evolution?"

Ye An spat into the ash, dark, clotted.

"You're not evolution. You're a blight—a pus-swollen parasite festering beneath heaven's toenail."

She stepped forward, her claws dripped blood. Her voice? Steady, but her heart, howled.

The thing before her, Sykarra, Vaelzaar, wasn't alive.

It was an infested tomb.

Hunters weren't born. They grew, by consuming.

Others.

Enemies.

Even each other.

Every kill fed their flesh. And those not devoured whole? Stored, trapped inside.

It wasn't just slaughter.

It was assimilation.

When a Hunter died, those absorbed inside were released, but never as themselves.

They emerged as... Hunters. Reborn in their killer's image, unless their soul was shattered fast enough.

You never knew how many would crawl free from a single corpse.

Sometimes dozens.

Sometimes tens of thousands.

That's why you didn't just kill a Hunter.

You erase them.

"...?" Ye An's eyes, so calm just moments before, shuddered.

Not from fear.

From disgust.

They were going to do it again.

She could feel it...something… coming out.

Splash!

Blood splashing, a mouth opened from Vaelzaar's shoulder.

Not a Hunter's.

A human's.

"G-Guardian…? Is that you…?"

Ye An breathing froze, she had expected it, this filthy trick they loved to play, but still… from the twisted muscle of Vaelzaar's upper torso, a head began to emerge: bloody, trembling, eyes wide with hope.

It was Chen Xu.

Third-generation disciple of the Amber Leaf Sect, one of the sects affiliated with her. A kid with a crooked smile who used to bring her tea after sparring matches. A junior who once asked her how to polish his blade without damaging the inscription.

"G-Guardian Ye… please, I—I don't want to be in here anymore…"

"No."

Ye An's voice dropped.

From Sykarra's midriff, another face bulged out, skin pale, eyes fluttering.

"Holy Nun… you remember me?" It was Yin Meihua, youngest core disciple of the Ice-Thread Palace. Twenty six, young, shy, smiled too much. She had given Ye An a handmade talisman after they met by chance in the Galactic Fringe, while Ye An was inspecting a set of routes.

Now her half-formed face stuck to the flank of a creature too ugly for godhood.

She wept. "It hurts. Please… please cut me out."

More voices followed.

From arms.

From thighs.

From exposed ribs.

"Guardian... Ye An…"

"Help us… we can still think…!"

"Don't let them use us…!"

Faces, recognizable and not, surfaced from the flesh of these two monstrosities, all victims of the Hunter's curse.

They weren't just devoured.

They were stored.

Absorbed.

Used.

Their souls didn't move on to the reincarnation, their bodies weren't buried. They were turned into flesh puppets, trapped, awake, inside living dungeons.

Vaelzaar laughed.

"Do they sting, Guardian? The juniors, you call them? The weak ones you left behind?"

She patted the side of her thigh, where a half-formed leg stuck out, still twitching.

"Some of them still twitch at night... Ah... So warm."

"You…" Ye An's voice trembled, not with fear.

But with pure, ancient grief.

Then rage.

So much rage.