The big man’s mouth was still stretched in a grin when his expression abruptly turned to shock. “No… impossible… You’re not dead? That thing is poisoned! It kills the moment it draws blood!”
“No kidding it kills once it draws blood.” Xia Yunzhao raised his hand and tossed something aside. A sleeve dart landed on the ground with a clink. “It didn’t even break my skin. How exactly was it supposed to kill me?”
He rubbed his stomach again and sucked in a breath. It was definitely going to bruise!
Xing Wenyu let out a long breath of relief. Seeing that the big man was still frozen in shock, he took the opportunity to step forward and twist his neck until it broke.
The man Xia Yunzhao had kicked away was still groaning in pain. Xing Wenyu walked over to him as well and snapped his neck, cutting the cries off instantly. He looked frail and scholarly, but when he acted, he was clean and ruthless.
Three corpses lay scattered across the ground.
Xia Yunzhao sighed softly. Perhaps the original owner’s memories had affected him. There had been far too many corpses of people who had died violent deaths in those memories, so seeing bodies now barely stirred anything in him.
“These were people who deserved to die,” Xing Wenyu said. “If you hadn’t killed them, they would have killed you. If you encounter people like this again, you must never show mercy.”
“I understand.” Xia Yunzhao was not the sentimental sort to begin with, and he quickly brightened again. “Come on! Time to loot the drops!”
Loot the drops? Xing Wenyu did not even understand what he meant before Xia Yunzhao had already thrown himself at the three corpses and begun searching them.
“Come on, Brother Xing! Anyone who sees the loot gets a share. We’ll split everything fifty-fifty!”
Xing Wenyu rubbed his forehead. In all his life, he had never divided spoils from dead men with anyone before, but there was nothing for it. He walked over and helped Xia Yunzhao search the bodies.
Sure enough, when it came to making money, robbing the robbers really was the most profitable business. The three brothers were carrying quite a few spirit pearls. Altogether, they had more than four hundred. After splitting them evenly, each man received over two hundred spirit pearls.
Even Xing Wenyu was somewhat surprised. A whole Blackwind Hound carcass only sold for a little over two hundred spirit pearls, so four hundred was by no means a small amount.
Xia Yunzhao was even happier. He had not even owned two hundred spirit pearls in total before this! Grinning from ear to ear, he promptly tucked his share away.
Apart from the money, they found several other items. The first was the sleeve-dart launcher the burly man had just used to ambush Xia Yunzhao. It was a black cylindrical tube roughly as thick as a finger, strapped to the wrist, with a mechanism that fired a hidden dart when triggered. The second was a white porcelain bottle containing medicinal powder, which Xing Wenyu recognized as medicine for treating injuries. The third was a set of three spirit herbs, and finally, there was a piece of ore.
The ore was pitch-black with a metallic sheen. It was the same kind as the fragments they had collected from the shattered trap before.
Xia Yunzhao looked helplessly at the items. “Brother Xing, do you know what these are?”
Xing Wenyu pointed at the spirit herbs. “These are Level-One spirit herbs called Qingling Grass. They’re worth around ten to fifteen spirit pearls each. The ore is Black Iron Ore, a lowest-level spirit ore. One piece is worth roughly three spirit pearls. Both are fairly common resources around Liancui Mountain.”
Xia Yunzhao nodded attentively. He really did lack too much basic knowledge. He needed to find an opportunity to learn more.
He looked again at the Qingling Grass. If he remembered correctly, the first material listed on the artifact blueprint for the Azure Cloud Shoes was Qingling Grass.
Xiao Xia pointed at the three skinny-looking spirit plants. “I’ll take these. You can have everything else.”
Xing Wenyu shook his head helplessly and picked up the concealed weapon, the Qingling Grass, and the ore.
Xiao Xia immediately protested. “Hey, Brother Xing, I really do want the Qingling Grass…”
Before he could finish, Xing Wenyu placed all three items in front of him and kept only the medicinal powder. “You won’t need this, so I’ll take it.”
Xia Yunzhao froze, then understood. He looked at Xing Wenyu admiringly. “As expected of Brother Xing. Your eyes really are sharp.”
Xing Wenyu sighed faintly. The sleeve dart had moved so quickly just now that even he had failed to see it clearly, yet the child in front of him had come away without a scratch. This medicinal powder was intended for ordinary people. If Xia Yunzhao had that kind of ability, then naturally he would have no use for it.
Xia Yunzhao did not stand on ceremony and put all three items away. At worst, once he figured out how to refine the Azure Cloud Shoes, he could make Xing Wenyu a pair as well.
With the matter settled and the day still young, Xing Wenyu still needed to continue deeper into the mountain to search for medicine. Xia Yunzhao did not know exactly what he was looking for, but judging from things so far, the search did not seem to be going particularly well.
Xia Yunzhao had no intention of going back either. Since he had already come all this way, naturally he might as well gather some Lingwei Grass before returning.
Xing Wenyu was much more at ease leaving him alone now, and the outer reaches of Liancui Mountain were not particularly dangerous. He merely warned Xia Yunzhao not to enter the valleys. The fog had been especially heavy there these past few days, and slaughter beasts sometimes crept through it.
As Xia Yunzhao gathered Lingwei Grass, another idea suddenly occurred to him. While moving around the camp, he had seen treasure hunters selling spirit plants and spirit ores several times. He remembered the appearance of quite a few of them. If he could find those spirit items based on memory and then bring them to a buyer, wouldn’t he be able to learn both their names and values?
Once the thought struck him, he immediately acted on it. He searched according to what he remembered and actually found quite a lot!
One plant had purple flowers blooming at the top and leaves resembling chives. He remembered seeing someone sell one for five spirit pearls. His luck was good, and he found three at once.
There was another spirit plant shaped somewhat like a mulberry leaf but standing only as tall as a palm. He had seen someone bring one to a buyer before, though he had not heard the sale price. He found five of those.
Another plant had utterly ordinary-looking leaves, but its roots were extremely long and had to be dug out intact. Xia Yunzhao had seen people gathering this kind before and knew it required great care to extract the complete root system. Unfortunately, the portion growing aboveground was extremely difficult to distinguish, so even after searching carefully, he found only one.
Fortunately, his memory was excellent. By thinking back carefully to what he had seen, he managed to identify four or five different kinds of spirit plants.
He also found a large cluster of emerald-green mushrooms. Their color resembled kingfisher feathers, vivid and brilliantly green, and just looking at them made him crave mushrooms. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about the mushrooms in this region and had never seen anyone selling this variety in the camp, so he did not dare touch them. He could only stare longingly for a moment before leaving.
Xiao Qing was still asleep inside his clothes. Whether it was dreaming or something else, it occasionally gave a small tremble.
Xia Yunzhao had gotten into the habit of talking to it. “All right, we’ve gathered about enough around here. It’s already afternoon, so let’s head ba—”
Before he could finish the word “back,” the bronze furnace inside his clothes suddenly moved and somehow rolled straight out.
The timing could not have been worse. Xia Yunzhao happened to be standing above a valley. Xiao Qing hit the ground with a clang and immediately went rolling down the slope!
Xia Yunzhao lunged for it and missed. His foot slipped, and he went tumbling down after it.
“…”
Man and furnace went crashing down the slope in a chorus of clang, clatter, bang. If drawing qi into his body had not drastically strengthened his physique, Xia Yunzhao would probably have broken both arms and legs.
Halfway down, he suddenly felt something jab him. The impact forcibly knocked him in another direction, and only then did he finally reach the bottom.
“Ow… I’m dizzy…” Xia Yunzhao clutched his head while the world spun around him. His first reaction was to grab the alchemy furnace that had fallen with him and stuff it back inside his clothes. “When we get home, I’m making you a little net bag. You keep moving around for no reason every single day…”
Before he could finish, Xia Yunzhao abruptly fell silent.
Sure enough, the bottom of the valley was filled with dense fog. He could not see far into the distance, but that did nothing to stop him from seeing what was directly in front of him.
A giant snake lay there—a massive purple serpent nearly as thick as a person, its tail stretching deep into the fog with no indication of just how long its body was. Its enormous head was pressed against the ground, pierced through by a white sword that pinned both serpent and earth together. The sword’s hilt was held in the hand of a man dressed in white.
The intense pain made the serpent writhe violently. Its tail tore through the fog and whipped up a fierce wind, sending the thick mist rolling like ocean waves while a rank, bloody gust rushed outward.
The man did not move in the slightest. Dressed in white as pure as snow, he stood with his back to Xia Yunzhao, his posture perfectly straight. Holding the sword in a reverse grip, he casually pinned the enormous serpent to the ground as though he had merely skewered some tiny insect.
Before long, the serpent’s body went limp and its crimson eyes turned dull.
The man pulled out his sword and flicked his wrist. Red serpent blood flew from the blade in a string of droplets and sank into the earth, leaving the sword gleaming clean and bright. He reversed the weapon, slid it into its sheath, and turned around.
Even through the thick fog, Xia Yunzhao could tell that the man was extraordinarily handsome, his expression cold as frost. His black hair was bound flawlessly beneath a jade crown. There was not a single unnecessary ornament anywhere on him, nor the slightest excess expression on his face. He glanced at Xia Yunzhao.
Xia Yunzhao blinked. For some reason, he felt as though that single glance had seen straight through him.
The man gave him a small nod, casually swept one hand through the air, and the dense fog ahead immediately parted. He was just about to leave when Xia Yunzhao hurriedly raised a hand.
“Wait!”
The white-robed man tilted his head slightly. Xia Yunzhao firmly believed that if you had a mouth, you could always ask for directions, so he asked for help without the slightest hesitation. “Um, Fellow Daoist, can you fly? Could you give me a lift?” He pointed toward the top of the valley. “I think I twisted my ankle when I fell down just now.”
Elio’s Notes: “Fellow Daoist” (道友) is a common form of address between cultivators, roughly meaning a fellow practitioner of the Dao.
＊
Thirty minutes later, with the white-robed man’s help, Xia Yunzhao finally climbed out of the valley.
He fanned himself, sweaty from the exertion. “So even high-tier cultivators have to climb mountains.”
The white-robed man shook his head slightly and spoke for the first time. “I’m unable to use sword flight at the moment.”
His voice was very pleasant. Xia Yunzhao rubbed his ear, then focused on what he had actually said. Well, sure. I can’t fly on a sword right now either.
He encouraged him enthusiastically. “It’s fine. You’ll improve eventually! I’m even worse than you. I only just managed to draw qi into my body!”
The white-robed man: …
Xia Yunzhao rummaged through the bamboo basket he had carefully protected during the fall. “Thanks for pulling me up and treating my ankle. Let me give you something in return… Although all I have are medicinal herbs. Is there anything you need?”
The white-robed man had already noticed his overflowing little basket. It contained nothing but lowest-level and Level-One spirit plants, so he merely shook his head. “No need. If fate allows, we’ll meet again.”
Before Xia Yunzhao could try to keep him there, the man had already turned away and taken one unhurried step. In the next instant, he was far in the distance. After one more step, he vanished completely.
Xia Yunzhao stared after him in envy. He may not be able to fly, but he sure can travel fast!
＊
Xia Yunzhao had twisted his ankle earlier, but the white-robed man had merely touched one finger to it and the injury had healed. It was astonishing.
It made Xia Yunzhao want to ask how spiritual power could be used to treat injuries. The bruise on his stomach still hurt! Unfortunately, he was not familiar enough with the man to feel comfortable asking.
Seeing that it would soon be dark, Xia Yunzhao rested briefly before returning to the camp.
The moment he entered through the camp gates, he sensed that something was strange. Everyone seemed slightly tense and guarded, whispering among themselves about something.
Xia Yunzhao frowned faintly. It took him only a short while to piece together the general situation.
Something had happened on the mountain.
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