Sect Leader's Rise to the top!

The woman was moved quickly and instantly appeared before Kai, slicing at him with incredible speed. Kai blocked his vitals while keeping track of her but still hadn't made any attempts to attack.

She released a flurry of attacks that landed on Kai's body but soon noticed the hardness of the strange scales covering his body. However, to her delight, she saw them slowly cracking and even breaking off under her constant assault.

Kai also noticed this and inwardly commended the woman on her brute strength. Kai had Qi-enhanced his scales so he was surprised that they were being penetrated so easily.

The red thunderbolts continued to spark out of Kai's hands, then slowly moved to cover his entire body while slowly infusing into his scales. Kai's golden-brown scales seemed to have been influenced by the red-thunderbolts as they slowly turned into a sinister crimson-red color.

When Kai's entire body had transformed, he bent his knees then kicked off, quickly vanishing from the spot. The woman was shocked by his sudden speed. She had initially thought that he was a defensive type fighter due to his strange technique, so she figured that as long as she was faster, she would eventually win, but now that idea was thoroughly crushed.

Kai rammed into her with his shoulder at high speeds, but she reacted fast enough to block it with her sword so she suffered minimal damage. The woman seemed to be further enraged as her hair covered her face messily.

She kicked off again but this time focused a large amount of Qi on her hand.

"Secret Technique: Lions Claw!"

Large images of claws flashed briefly as Kai felt an impending sense of danger. He tried to move away but was still struck by the attack. Four white lines appeared on Kai's chest, forcing him to the ground. The claws also cut throw the ground behind Kai, leaving four deep gashes on the ground. The attack ripped through and destroyed his armor, but to the woman's surprise, the red scales were still intact.

Kai was surprised by the devastating power of the attack but was a lot more annoyed that his armor had been destroyed, so he flashed towards the woman and encased his fist in the crimson-red thunderbolts. Kai delivered a powerful Qi-enhanced fist aimed at the woman's gut, but it was quickly intercepted by her sword. However, to the woman's surprise, His fist was a lot heavier than before. 

As it landed on her sword, she felt the massive amount of power coming off it. She dug her feet into the hard ground and tried to endure it, but to her horror, her sword cracked then shattered into little pieces. The impact was so severe that it sent her barreling backward for at least 100 meters.

"That armor was given to me by one of my precious disciples. Tell me, how are you going to compensate for my loss?", Kai said while stepping over the shattered remains of the sword and slowly moving towards the woman".

She got up to one knee then looked at the hilt in her hand. "This was a [Grade-3] artifact. Just how was he able to break it with one attack...", She whispered as she wiped the blood off the side of her mouth. She saw Kai slowly moving towards her and shuttered in fear for a moment.

"Am I...scared?", She thought to herself while slowly getting back to her feet.

"Who are you, what is your objective?". She asked while quickly popping a pill.

"Objective?... I just wanted to explore around for a bit, but everyone keeps showing up and wasting my time...", Kai said while glancing at the two who were still on the carpet. They jolted in dread when they saw his gaze.

The woman looked around and decided to try de-escalating the situation. She had a few more cards up her sleeve but she felt that she would have to put her life on the line to fight this man. Had he been that serious from the start, she would have died a long time ago.

Kai walked over and enhanced his fists with the crimson-red thunder Qi again. When she noticed this, she quickly spoke. "I'm the great-granddaughter of the Twin-Lions sect's Sect Leader. If you kill me here, you will be hunted down by the entire sect!..."

Hou Zhou and Song Wei were dumbfounded when they heard her words. 

"Is she is the famed sword princess of the Twin-Lions sect?....to believe she would actually be here.", Hou Zhou said in absolute amazement. Kai remembered hearing about her from old man Song. 

"Be that as it may, if I let you live now, what guarantee do I have that you won't come after me later?. I'd prefer to cut down any potential dangers while I can", Kai said in a calm tone that amazed even himself.

He had unknowingly become cold and indifferent when it came to killing. He didn't know if it was because of all the beasts he had killed up to now that dulled his emotions, or maybe a fundamental shift in his thought processes. 

"I can guarantee on my name, Wu Xianhai, Inner disciple of the Twin-Lions sect, that no harm will come to you if you let me go". She said while wearily watching his movements.

Kai didn't believe her. She was clearly just trying to buy time for her escape, but he decided to use this as an opportunity to try out one of the new martial arts skills he got from manual combining.

"Look into my eyes for a moment...", Kai said as he walked closer to the woman. At that moment, an odd light flashed in his eyes but quickly disappeared.

The woman looked into his eyes and was about to speak but couldn't find the words. She saw illusions of herself standing in a dark empty void as all her thoughts flashed past her mind. After some time, she slowly found herself slowly losing consciousness. She tried to look away but it was too late. "What did you do to...me...". Her words slurred as she fell to the ground.

"OK, let's see if this will work...", Kai said while putting his hands on her forehead then closed his eyes. As he did so, he was able to see the memories of himself from her perspective which was quite interesting. Kai couldn't see any memories that didn't involve him so he could only see the last few minutes of her memories. 

"She was telling the truth at the end...", Kai said incredulously while looking down at the passed-out woman. 

"Ugh, this woman is hard to read. She has such intense killing intent,  but there is no mistaking it, she meant what she said...". Kai said as he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. 

Kai had focused on two moments. The first was when she tried to capture him, and the second was when she promised that she wouldn't retaliate. Kai felt her emotions during both moments and felt that she had no intentions of letting any of them live initially, but in the end, she sincerely meant what she said about not retaliating against Kai which confused him. 

Kai would think about what to do with her later. He noticed the two still sitting on the carpet and walked over to them. When they saw him approach, they shook in fear but seemed unable to move.

Kai noticed that they had odd-looking collars on their necks and quickly inspected one of them.

[Bond-Collar] [Grade-2] [Qi- 879]

"Well, that's interesting. How do these collars work?", Kai asked Hou Zhou with some interest. Hou Zhou didn't know what to say as he looked at Kai whose scales were long gone, making him look like a regular young man.

"I'm not sure, but with these on, we're unable to move on our own. They also seem to feed off our Qi to function..."

"I see. So these are collars made to keep Internal cultivator prisoners. These could come in handy.", Kai said as he put the unconscious woman on the carpet. Kai then proceeded to search every inch of her body which prompted strange looks from Hou Zhou as well as a look of disgust from Song Wei.

"Hey hey, don't get me wrong here. I just need to take away any weapons she may have. This woman is dangerous after all. Her original plan was to kill all three of us once she got what she wanted..." Kai said in a serious tone.

Hou Zhou nodded his head. He had a feeling that the woman wasn't going to let them go based on her action, but couldn't actually do anything about it.

"Why do you care?, you left us back there to die to those creatures!", Song Wei said in anger.

Kai could only shrug his shoulders. "You chose to follow me of your own volition. Don't blame me for your bad decisions. You should have just stayed with the rest of the group and none of this would have happened..."

"Haha, you are indeed correct. My curiosity got the better of me, I must apologize...", Hou Zhou said while bowing his head slightly. He couldn't actually move his body but this much was still possible.

Kai looked at the man and felt he had misjudged him. Sure he tried to kill him once during the Lee family battle, but Kai had also tried to kill him earlier, so he felt they were somehow even".

"Don't worry about it. Although I feel like she's going to be annoyed once she wakes up. Since it's come to this, I'll have to take all three of you with me until I can figure out what to do with you all. My apologies",

Hou Zhou nodded his head in understanding while Song Wei pouted while looking away. They both seemed to understand that in this world, the victor got to choose whether the loser lived or died.

Kai removed the spatial ring from Wu Xianhai's finger then focused on it. To his amazement, he found that the ring had a space 10 times larger than that of his spatial bag which stunned him. The space was also full of all types of strange-looking items ranging from pills to beast materials and even piles and piles of women's clothing. 

Kai found another [Bond-Collar] inside of the ring and placed it around the woman's neck.