“Aaaah!”
A piercing scream exploded through the narrow alley.
The despair and agony of the dying made one’s scalp crawl.
The sound slammed into the mottled, filthy walls and bounced back, twisting into a hair-raising echo.
Shuang Ling expressionlessly twisted her wrist.
The ice blade buried in the female angel’s body instantly rotated half a turn.
The sharp edge of condensed ice crystals tore through flesh and veins, dragging out scalding blood.
The angel’s body convulsed violently.
The wings that had been emitting faint sacred light hung limp.
Feathers fell one after another, stained with mud and blood on the ground.
Those once proud and cold eyes completely lost their light.
Her head tilted to the side and she fell silent.
After finishing this, Shuang Ling slowly withdrew the ice blade.
Her icy gaze turned toward Ella at the side.
The white-haired girl froze for a moment.
Her lashes trembled lightly.
She blinked once before belatedly realizing that Shuang Ling was signaling her—it was time for questioning.
Ella drew a deep breath and forced down the surging discomfort in her chest.
She stepped closer, one step at a time, toward the battlefield that had just seen slaughter.
The air was thick with the heavy stench of blood, mixed with the scorched smell of hellfire and the faint sacred aura left after holy light dissipated.
The several smells intertwined and were extremely pungent.
The female angel’s corpse lay on the ground.
Her life force had dissipated extremely quickly.
Clearly, without the use of holy light for healing, an angel’s physical endurance was far inferior to that of a demon with powerful self-healing ability.
Ella’s gaze soon fell on Shuang Ling, and her heart suddenly clenched.
In the intense battle just now, Shuang Ling had not escaped unscathed.
There were several cuts of varying depth on her arms, flesh turned outward, blood continuously seeping out and soaking through the dark fabric.
The most shocking was the wound on her lower abdomen.
First it had been scorched into a hideous black by hellfire, the flesh ulcerated.
That dying angel had even viciously added another slash to this fragile wound, cutting deep enough to expose bone.
After exiting combat mode, Shuang Ling’s body was uncontrollably trembling slightly.
Perhaps the surging adrenaline in her body had not yet completely faded, allowing her to maintain a standing posture.
Or perhaps the pain that reached the marrow had already exceeded the limit she could endure, yet the habitually cold woman would not reveal even a fraction of vulnerability.
At this moment Shuang Ling’s left hand was tightly pressing against the wound on her abdomen.
Blood continuously seeped out between her fingers.
Looking at that terrifying wound, Ella could not help but give rise to a horrible thought.
If Shuang Ling ever loosened her hand, would the organs inside her abdominal cavity slide out through the wound?
Merely imagining it made Ella feel a wave of dizziness.
That would certainly be unbearable agony.
With Shuang Ling’s powerful self-healing ability, facing such a severe injury, she would absolutely be unable to throw herself into any further combat in a short time.
Ella could only hope in her heart that the combat strength of the angel and demon they had just encountered was not common within the Alliance.
There was no more time to hesitate.
They had to pry useful information from this demon’s mouth as quickly as possible.
His chest had been pierced by the ice blade.
He was losing blood extremely fast.
His life was rapidly draining away.
The time left for him was not much, and the time left for herself was equally urgent.
Ella steadied herself.
Her gaze fell on the dying male demon on the ground, and she opened her mouth to ask.
“How many of you are there? Who is the strongest in the Alliance?”
The demon man coughed up a mouthful of blood.
His scarlet eyes were full of arrogance and disdain.
He mocked in a hoarse voice.
“You think I’ll talk? You little brat.”
“Her Majesty is asking you a question!”
Shuang Ling had already tensed her muscles, intending to thrust into the demon’s body again and force him to speak with pain.
This time, however, Ella actually moved first.
She extended her right hand and, without the slightest hesitation, seized the outward-turned torn flesh at the wound on the demon’s chest and yanked outward with force.
“Aaaah!”
An even more piercing scream rang through the alley.
The demon man convulsed violently all over.
His features twisted in agony.
Every muscle in his body tightened.
The aura of hellfire surged chaotically inside him, but because of the severity of his injuries he could not condense it at all.
“I’ll ask you one more time.”
Ella’s voice carried a clear tremor.
She was hesitating.
The sensation of her right hand gripping warm, sticky flesh was slippery and nauseating.
With every application of force she could feel the resistance of flesh being torn and the other’s agonized struggle.
Yet Ella forced herself to harden her heart.
She suppressed the fear and physiological discomfort in her chest and stared at the demon before her with icy eyes.
She clearly knew that from the moment she arrived in this Abyssal Sea, any soft-heartedness had to be excised.
In order to live, she had to live…
The demon man was in so much pain he nearly fainted.
When his scarlet eyes looked toward Ella, he could not help but feel dense fear.
In his eyes, this seemingly delicate white-haired girl was already more terrifying than the ice-cold, murderous Shuang Ling beside her.
Shuang Ling’s ruthlessness originated from the coldness and indifference in her bones.
She regarded lives outside the swarm as weeds.
Casual slaughter was simply something she did on a whim.
But Ella was different.
Fear, disgust, and resistance clearly surged in the depths of her eyes.
She clearly loathed all of this, yet because she recognized the necessity of reality, she had forcibly defeated the weakness and discomfort in her heart and carried out such a cruel act.
Her ruthlessness showed through her pupils.
Those scarlet eyes had never been so chilling.
In the shadows of the alley, Zhuluo stood quietly.
Her tone held not the slightest fluctuation, as mechanical as ever.
“Her Majesty has smelled blood. Aren’t you going to stop her?”
Beside her, Yiwen only lightly waved a hand and said nothing.
Her gaze rested on Ella’s thin yet upright back, her expression complex.
Dieyi slightly furrowed her brows.
Her eyes carried worry, along with a trace of almost imperceptible relief.
In the end she only watched in silence and did not step forward to intervene.
The demon man on the ground recovered from a wave of intense pain.
He still refused to soften and instead threatened with bluster that could not hide his inner weakness.
“If you dare kill me, the commander of our demon fleet will hunt you to the ends of the earth! Let me go now. I am magnanimous. I can still let bygones be bygones!”
Upon hearing this, Ella’s face gradually sank.
Obvious displeasure dyed her brows.
From the other’s words she sensed a trait that would make anyone feel disgust: stupidity.
This demon had clearly grown used to running rampant on ordinary days, relying on the power of the Alliance fleet to act tyrannically.
Now reduced to a prisoner, with life and death in others’ hands, he still failed to recognize reality.
He could not even manage the most basic pleading and only tried to intimidate by bringing up the force behind him.
Ella suppressed the impatience in her heart and prepared to ask the next key question—inquiring about their specific deployment and next plans.
But at that moment, the dying demon man suddenly raised his left hand.
A mass of pitch-black hellfire condensed in his palm.
The flames rolled, carrying an aura of destruction.
Clearly he intended to exhaust his last bit of strength to attack Ella.
Shuang Ling’s eyes turned sharp.
She no longer held back.
The ice blade suddenly exerted force.
The sharp ice edge directly pierced through the demon man’s chest and ruthlessly stabbed into his spine.
A crisp crack of bone rang out.
The light in the demon man’s eyes instantly extinguished.
The raised arm fell limp.
The condensed hellfire dissipated with a whoosh, and he completely stopped breathing.
After finishing this, Shuang Ling slowly pulled out the ice blade.
Blood dripped along the crystalline edge.
She looked at Ella, her voice still calm, carrying a trace of apology.
“My apologies, Your Majesty. But your current body cannot withstand that strike just now. I had no choice but to kill him.”
Ella looked at the fallen demon corpse, then at the pale-faced, swaying Shuang Ling, and lightly nodded.
“Well done, Shuang Ling.”
Next, for the first time, Ella spoke to the three behind her in the true commanding tone of a superior.
She turned around.
Her gaze swept over Yiwen, Dieyi, and Zhuluo.
“Come over. Support Shuang Ling. Her injuries are too severe. She needs time to recover.”
After a slight pause, Ella continued.
“We’re going to the Black Market. It’s chaotic there. At the very least it can hide our tracks a little longer and buy us some breathing room. The Pathstrider has already entered the sea. As long as we hold on a little longer…”