Chapter 1023: Do You Want to Meet Him or Kill Him?

The woman who appeared here could be none other than the demon princess Autumn.

Without a cultivation realm as high as hers, it naturally would not have been so easy to cross the Northern Frontier Great Wall without being discovered.

She held a flying sword in her hand called Autumn Beyond the Tower, which had also been discovered within this yellow-mud temple.

At the time, for some unknown reason, that flying sword had insisted on choosing Autumn as its sword master. One had to know that at that time, Autumn was not even a sword cultivator.

But after obtaining that flying sword, Autumn later acquired a strand of sword qi from a sword cultivator above Nepenthe, one that should have belonged to a Fuyun Realm sword cultivator. Through that strand of sword qi and several sword scriptures, Autumn had now become a female great sword immortal.

It could be said that her ability to reach this point today all began when she pursued Chen Chao to this yellow-mud temple.

But compared to what she obtained, she saw even more.

Within that multi-colored Divine Mountain, she saw a divine medicinal herb that had yet to mature.

She did not tell her father about this matter. If her father had known, he would have personally come here and taken away that divine medicine.

For her father to take away that divine medicine was actually a very good choice, because no matter what, the divine medicine would then belong to the demon race.

But Autumn still did not do so. It was not that she did not want the divine medicine. She simply did not want the Demon Emperor to obtain it.

As for the reason behind this, outsiders did not know.

Only Autumn herself understood.

Standing beside this dilapidated yellow-mud temple, Autumn remained silent for a long time. No one knew what she was thinking. In any case, she was not thinking about taking that divine medicine away.

Although a divine medicine was an extraordinary treasure, there was a Divine Daughter watching over it.

Autumn had already witnessed how powerful that Divine Daughter was.

Back in the desolate north, the Demon Emperor had delivered a sword strike from ten thousand miles away, briefly blocking the Demon Emperor.

She was naturally aware how powerful her father was. Since that Divine Daughter could fight her father, it meant that she too was a Fuyun Realm powerhouse.

Therefore, before stepping into that realm herself, Autumn would absolutely not harbor any improper thoughts toward that divine medicine.

She had come here only because...

She suddenly came back to her senses and looked toward the forest not far away.

Some people were walking out from within it.

Their auras varied in strength and weakness. They appeared to be cultivators.

After seeing Autumn, the cultivator at their head sized her up. When he noticed the flying sword in her hand, he cupped his fists and smiled. "We are cultivators from Inviting Moon Mountain. We are currently assisting the imperial court in clearing out the demon creatures in these mountains and forests. If we have offended you in any way, Fellow Daoist, please forgive us."

His words were extremely well-considered. In the north, Inviting Moon Mountain was the largest sect among independent cultivators and could be mentioned alongside the Morning Dew Sect of Ying Prefecture as one of the two great itinerant cultivator sects. He then mentioned that they were working together with the imperial court. With those two points established, even if they had offended this female sword cultivator who did not appear easy to deal with, it would not be a major problem. After all, among the cultivators of today's world, there were probably very few who dared to take the initiative to provoke the imperial court.

Especially since that young Lord Warden Commander had only recently forced back the Demon Emperor. Among the human race, his prestige had already reached an unparalleled height.

Nowadays, anyone who provoked him was probably someone who had truly eaten the heart of a bear and the gall of a leopard.

It was just that they would never have imagined that the woman before them was not some female sword cultivator, but a demon lord.

She would not care about such things.

However, Autumn merely looked at them. After remaining silent for a moment, she simply asked, "How many demons have you exterminated?"

The leading cultivator smiled and said, "I wouldn't dare speak for other places, but within Xinliu Prefecture, I'd estimate that around seventy percent of the demons have already been cleared out. The remaining thirty percent are all relatively high-realm ones. Right now we're waiting for the imperial court to dispatch some experts. Once they arrive, we can finish everything in one push and rid Xinliu Prefecture of demon troubles."

"Among the demon creatures you've killed, have all of them eaten people? If there were demons that had never eaten people, and you still killed them, was that the right thing to do?"

Autumn looked at them and asked this question. It seemed like a very simple question, but perhaps if these people answered poorly, they would be facing the last day of their lives.

Perhaps they had truly been stumped by Autumn's question, because none of them spoke for a long time.

But after a while, a young man suddenly spoke, "Some of them indeed never ate people, but they still had to be killed."

Autumn listened to those words, fell silent for a while, and then asked, "Why?"

"We can't be certain whether they'll eat people in the future, whether they'll start eating people the day after we spare them. If we let them go simply because they haven't eaten people before, then when they do start eating people, we'll be accomplices."

"Of course, whether we're accomplices isn't important. What's important is that if we spare them, then ordinary people may end up being eaten by them."

The young man spoke very directly. The others thought the same way, so no one refuted him.

Autumn also asked directly, "Because there's a possibility, that alone makes it acceptable to kill them?"

The man said, "Yes. We have to consider such things. The lives of ordinary people are the most important. Everything else can be set aside."

Autumn thought for a moment, nodded, and said, "You're right."

Then she waved her hand, "You may leave."

That group of people did not know why Autumn had asked such a question, but in any case, they did not dwell on it. They soon departed.

Then Autumn looked toward that dilapidated yellow-mud temple.

......

......

The Divine Mountain was still the same, very quiet.

The thatched hut by the lakeside was still as green as ever, and in the flower bed before the hut grew a single blade of grass.

A white deer was dozing beneath the eaves.

The Divine Daughter in a black dress walked out of the thatched hut and looked toward the great lake.

For many years now, she had always been alone.

Some guests had come here before, but only briefly, because those guests were merely passersby. They were never meant to belong here, so they came and left, and once they left, they never returned.

The Divine Daughter walked to the lakeside, scooped up a handful of water, then slowly walked back and sprinkled it into the flower bed. That blade of grass grew a little taller, but it still looked as though it would require a very long time.

A person might need only ten or so years to grow up. A tree might require a hundred years to mature.

For a divine medicine to mature, a thousand years would probably not be enough.

Suddenly, the Divine Daughter raised her head and looked elsewhere.

A woman was walking over from the distance.

The Divine Daughter looked at her and felt somewhat surprised.

Never before had a guest come here once and then returned.

The woman before her seemed to be the first.

The Divine Daughter looked at her without speaking, merely using her gaze to ask why she had come.

Autumn got straight to the point, "I came here to wait for someone."

The Divine Daughter smiled, "You want to see him."

Autumn shook her head and said, "I want to kill him."

The Divine Daughter sighed, seemingly unwilling to believe such a statement from Autumn, "If you truly wanted to kill him, you wouldn't be here."