Loading...
The rain curtain had thinned. The mountain temple deep in the wilderness was as silent as it had been when Xu Yuan and Ran Qingmo left. The pool of blood by the corpses at the entrance had already clotted.
Then suddenly, two figures dropped from the sky and landed in the bloodstained clearing left behind by the dead.
A man and a woman, both dressed in fitted combat gear, their clothes somewhat resembling those worn by the dozens of corpses on the ground. They wore black cloth with red trim, and on the back of each robe, a vicious coiled dragon embroidered in gold.
Black boots stepped into the half-congealed blood on the ground, making thick, sticky sounds as the liquid shifted underfoot.
The man had stubble across his face and a sword strapped to his back. His frivolous eyes swept over the miserable scene around him. Covering his nose, he clicked his tongue and shook his head lightly.
“Tsk tsk... What a slaughter. Looks like the one who kidnapped the Third Young Master isn’t simple at all.”
The woman beside him had sharp, chilly features. Her long hair reached her waist and was tied into a high ponytail that swayed behind her. Her waist was slim, her fitted uniform hugging the fullness of her chest. Her eyes swept across the corpses on the ground.
“Can you tell who did it?”
Strolling casually among the bodies as though he were out for a walk, the man studied the corpses around him and casually shook his head. His voice carried a trace of amused interest.
“How am I supposed to tell? They were all killed by ordinary sword qi slashes. Not a single sword skill was used.”
The woman lowered her eyes slightly, scanning the positions of the corpses scattered across the ground, and said softly, “They formed a battle array.”
The man nodded. “I know. Mhm, the cuts on these people aren’t deep. Every strike was just enough to kill, and it all happened in an instant.”
“In an instant?” The woman frowned at that and looked at him. “Could you do it?”
The man raised a hand and rubbed the back of his head. He cast her a sidelong glance and laughed. “So that’s how little you think of me?”
After a pause, he shook his head again and lifted a hand, pointing toward a corpse slumped beside the dried-up well in the temple courtyard. Narrowing his eyes with a smile, he said, “But you’re right. I really couldn’t do it. At least, not if I had to kill Zhou Yuan like this.”
At those words, the woman focused her gaze on the body.
The corpse by the dry well was a middle-aged man with a full beard. Even through his clothes, the heavy, knotted muscles underneath were obvious. But now both sleeves hung empty. His forearms had been severed cleanly at the roots, and the fatal wound was a thin sword mark across his throat.
It was immediately obvious what had happened before he died.
A streak of sword qi shot out from the main hall. The middle-aged man at the center of the formation tried to block it with both hands, but the sword qi shattered his protective aura, sliced off both arms, and with the force that remained, cut his throat with perfect precision.
Not one shred of strength had been wasted.
“I could kill him with one sword strike,” the man said, “but for a martial expert like Zhou Yuan, I couldn’t do it that precisely.” As he spoke, he made a show of gripping an imaginary sword and casually slashed twice through the air at the corpse with a grin. “If I were the one striking, his head would’ve come clean off.”
When he finished, the man let out a faint sigh and glanced into the pitch-black interior of the temple, his eyes growing deeper and more serious.
“And that spirit Buddha inside... if I don’t use source qi, I can’t cut it down in one strike either.” As he said this, a trace of gravity entered his gaze. “That person may be stronger than me.”
The woman fell silent.
The man, meanwhile, lazily rubbed at his messy hair and sighed. “Because of the Third Young Master, the Eldest Young Master has already left the Imperial Capital and rushed to Stillwater himself. Quite a few people have already died in the city. Head back first and report to him. The one who moved this time is very likely a Grandmaster.”
“And you?” The woman stared at him.
The man stroked his stubbled chin and bared his teeth in a grin. “Obviously I keep chasing. They couldn’t have gotten far. After all, the Third Young Master is just an ordinary person. The kidnapper has no way of getting around that limitation, even if they’re a grandmaster. I’ll leave marks for you along the way. Remember to get back quickly. Otherwise, by the time you catch up, I might already be a corpse.”
With that, he patted the woman on the shoulder. Without waiting for any response, he leaped into the air and vanished from the blood-red clearing before the temple.
The woman stood there in silence for a long while. In the end, she too turned into a blur and shot off in the direction opposite to where the man had disappeared.
ᯓ➤
Two days later.
The rain had long since stopped. Sunlight broke through the clouds and poured down in sheets of gold. A few strands of light filtered through the treetops into the forest below, where the air was thick with the scent of grass and fresh earth.
“Hah... Huff... Ha...” Xu Yuan braced his hands on his hips and leaned against a towering tree at his side. With obvious difficulty, he forced out two words from between breaths. “Rest... Break...”
Ran Qingmo walking ahead turned back and glanced at Xu Yuan’s pale, handsome face, the kind of face that practically screamed kidney deficiency. She said nothing, merely stopped, sat down on the spot, and closed her eyes to rest.
Xu Yuan dropped straight onto the ground, drenched in sweat and gasping for air. He had never imagined that a person’s body could be this weak. Even less had he imagined that the body in question would be his.
They had only walked a few kilometers over flat ground, yet his legs had already begun trembling uncontrollably. Even his steady breathing had turned ragged, and a burning sensation was slowly spreading through his chest. As soon as the walk went on a little too long, he could feel a dull ache starting in his lower back.
Over the past two days, Xu Yuan had honestly begun to feel that if Ran Qingmo had not kidnapped the Third Young Master, then in a few more years at most, the man probably would have died on top of a woman. It was one thing not to practice restraint, but the bastard did not even exercise.
Worst of all, every now and then this body would send up a restless craving, something like nicotine withdrawal, only several times stronger. That was enough for Xu Yuan to be nearly certain that the Third Young Master had definitely done drugs too.
Transmigration had not reset his body to factory settings. Every last problem had been passed on intact to the unlucky Xu Yuan. And thanks to the whole series of issues that came with this frail body, the two of them were moving through the forest of the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range at a speed not much faster than a crawling turtle.
As he rested, Xu Yuan’s breathing gradually steadied again. He looked toward the woman across from him, who was sitting there with her eyes closed, quietly resting. Sunlight filtered through the treetops into the forest, scattered patches of light brightening her pale skin.
Looking at her, Xu Yuan suddenly said, “Miss Ran, at our current speed, it’ll probably take us another month to reach Heaven’s Gate Peak.”
“I know.” Ran Qingmo kept her eyes closed, her voice calm as ever.
Xu Yuan thought for a moment, then said softly, “If this keeps up, we could be caught at any time.”
Ran Qingmo did not reply. She simply opened her eyes and looked at him in silence.
Xu Yuan gave a slightly awkward smile. Of course he knew all of this was because of his body. But every time they stopped, it was only after he had pushed himself all the way to his physical limit. The problem was that this body’s limit was pathetically low.
After a pause, Xu Yuan hesitated slightly before offering a suggestion in a quiet voice. “So… could you catch a demonic beast for me to ride?”
After weighing it for a long time, he still said it. There was some risk, but not much. If there was something wrong with the beast, then with Ran Qingmo’s strength, she could kill it before it had the chance to do anything.
Ran Qingmo thought for a moment, then gave a slight nod. She rose with her sword in hand, stood in place for two seconds, then turned her gaze toward a certain direction.
The next instant, her figure vanished.
Xu Yuan was still staring blankly when a massive tiger’s roar sounded from over a thousand meters away.
“ROOOAAARRRR!”
Then came a dull thud.
BANG!
“ROOOARRRR!!!”
BANG!
“Aoooowu...”
BANG!
“Whine...”
