"You seem to be injured!" Yang Kai said.
The woman grew fiercer: "Nonsense. My own affairs—what business is it of yours to comment?"
They weren't exactly hitting it off! Yang Kai chuckled, not wanting to get entangled with her any further, but still offered a kind warning: "Then you'd better run quickly. Several warships are heading this way—they're probably looking for you."
The moment those words left his mouth, the woman's expression changed. She turned to look in the direction Yang Kai had pointed and indeed saw several massive warships rapidly approaching. It was clear they had discovered her trail. She couldn't help but grit her teeth: "Relentless ghosts!"
With that, she spun around and fled in the opposite direction.
But after flying only a short distance, she suddenly doubled back. Under Yang Kai's stunned gaze, she grabbed him by the collar and dragged him along as she fled, cursing as she went: "Are you brainless? Were you planning to stay there and wait for death?"
Yang Kai didn't know whether to laugh or cry. By now, it was obvious that this woman had a grudge against those warships. She had been hiding on a dead star, probably trying to shake off her pursuers, but who would have thought that he would end up refining the dead star, stripping her of her hiding place and exposing her all at once.
Still, the fact that she had doubled back to bring him along showed that despite her fierce demeanor, she wasn't heartless. Most people in this situation wouldn't have cared about anyone else's life or death—saving their own skin would have been the only thing on their minds.
Yang Kai had no strong feelings about this woman either way, but her gesture did make him feel a bit of goodwill toward her. He couldn't help but ask: "I have no grudge against them. Surely they won't do anything to me?"
The woman glanced at him and sneered: "Which cultivation star did you come from? How have you survived this long with such a naive mind? Haven't you heard—where the Sand Scorpions tread, not a blade of grass grows?"
"Sand Scorpions?" Yang Kai raised an eyebrow.
The woman snapped: "Less talking! If you want to live, shut your mouth, or I'll drop you right now!"
A dignified High-rank Demon King, the Halo Star Region's Guardian, getting berated by a mere Void King First Stage cultivator until he couldn't even lift his head—Yang Kai was truly speechless. Though he didn't know what the Sand Scorpions were all about, he could guess that the warships behind them were star pirates.
Star pirates existed in every star region—more or fewer, stronger or weaker. They dealt in no-investment trades, roaming through the starfields, preying on the weak, robbing and plundering. When warships or merchant convoys encountered them while traveling through the stars, they either paid the toll or fought a bloody battle.
The Halo Star Region once had two major pirate groups—the Star River Spine and the Abandoned Nest—but ever since Yang Kai became the Star Region's Guardian, he had uprooted both of them entirely. Yet star pirates were like bamboo shoots after rain—one group was destroyed, and another sprang up in its place, endlessly.
The moment that woman had appeared, those warships had spotted her trail, and they were now in relentless pursuit. Although the woman's cultivation was considerable, she was injured first and foremost, and now she was dragging Yang Kai—this "burden"—along with her. Her speed had greatly diminished, and there was no way she could outrun their elite forces and powerful warships. The gap between them was closing steadily.
Having been scolded, Yang Kai had behaved himself for a while, but seeing that the woman couldn't shake her pursuers and was about to reach a dead end, he couldn't help but ask again: "Don't you have a Star Shuttle?"
The woman kept her face cold, eyes fixed straight ahead: "It was shattered!"
Yang Kai said "Oh," and added: "This isn't looking good. You're about to be caught."
"Can you shut up?" The woman turned her head and glared at him viciously. She found this man impossibly noisy—she was fleeing for her life in desperate urgency, and yet he kept chattering away.
Yang Kai gave an awkward laugh and obediently shut his mouth.
A moment later, the woman sighed deeply: "I've dragged you into this after all. We can't escape. When the time comes, I'll create an opening for you—run for your life. If you survive, go to the Wuya Sect on Azure Cloud Star and tell them to evacuate immediately. Otherwise, when the Sand Scorpions take their revenge, total annihilation awaits."
Yang Kai was stunned: "You're going to fight to the death while telling me to run?" What noble sentiment! He couldn't help but feel a touch of emotion. Compared to that, his own sneaky concealment of his strength—tagging along to watch the show—suddenly seemed rather shameful. Then again, he hadn't done it deliberately; he had simply happened to be there at the wrong time.
The woman gritted her teeth: "You think I want this? We can't escape—my only option is to fight with everything I have. Or would you rather go hold them off while I run? With your level of cultivation, you'd probably die without even getting a burial site in a single exchange!" After speaking, her expression softened considerably: "Besides, you probably can't escape anyway... but there's always a sliver of hope. All in all, I've dragged you into this. If we end up dying together, don't blame me on the road to the underworld."
Yang Kai sniffed: "How exactly did you provoke them? They're chasing you like this."
The woman sneered: "The Sand Scorpions are brutal—everyone wants them dead. All I did was kill their Third Commander."
Just then, an aged voice rang out from the warship behind them. It was incredibly shrill, like metal grinding against metal, piercing straight into one's heart—as though cat claws were scratching at the organ, making one feel utterly miserable: "Mei Jiao'er! You killed my Third Brother! If this grudge goes unavenged, the Sand Scorpions cease to exist! Rest assured—when I catch you, I'll make sure you can neither live nor die! That Wuya Sect, that Azure Cloud Star—they too will be stripped bare, not a chicken or dog left alive, to be buried alongside my Third Brother!"
"That ruthless?" Yang Kai was shocked.
The woman called Mei Jiao'er sneered: "That's the Sand Scorpio way—it's always been like this. Whoever crosses them gets annihilated—not just the person, but their sect and their cultivation star as well." She turned to look at Yang Kai and mocked: "Scared?"