Before Qiao Ruohe could even react, a green beam of light streaked across the horizon.
Instantly, the green radiance pierced through his bone marrow, contorting his arm into a twisted shape. The pain nearly caused Qiao Ruohe to faint. With a face as pale as paper, teetering on the verge of collapse, he cast a startled gaze at the green-robed fairy who had materialized behind the green mist.
"Shameless villain," she spat, pinching a glowing green leaf between her fingers.
Realizing that the unnatural bend in his left arm was caused by this very leaf, Qiao Ruohe involuntarily retreated two steps.
"Junior Sister, come over here at once. You have just entered the sect; why are you mingling with a man?"
Behind the green-robed woman, an older female cultivator raised her arm toward a young girl with dark red hair. The girl looked evasive, clearly terrified of the newcomer, and meekly walked over to Second Senior Sister's side.
At that exact moment, the green-robed woman hurled a second glowing green leaf, and Qiao Ruohe crashed to the ground with a thud.
"Eldest Senior Sister, don't kill him!" the young girl cried out anxiously.
With her third green leaf gripped in her hand, Eldest Senior Sister glanced at the junior girl and flung it without a moment's hesitation.
Qiao Ruohe watched as the green beam hurtled straight toward his eyes, threatening to end his life on the spot. But how could a mortal without a shred of spiritual power possibly evade it?
In the nick of time, the older Second Senior Sister conjured a wooden sword with her spiritual power and sliced the green beam into two halves. Yet the two severed pieces of light continued onward toward Qiao Ruohe, one striking his left shoulder and the other hitting his right arm. The combined force of the two impacts, striking front and back, sent him spinning into the air before he crashed face-first onto the ground.
He felt a scorching, hot liquid welling up in his nose and mouth.
"Qingxuan, you cannot kill him."
Taking advantage of Second Senior Sister speaking up for him, the young girl ran over to Qiao Ruohe, wanting to help him up.
"How dare you still entangle yourself with this scoundrel!" Lin Qingxuan barked, stopping her in her tracks.
The young girl could only stand there trembling, watching Qiao Ruohe as he lay face-down, struggling in vain to get back up.
Never had Lin Qingxuan expected her Second Junior Sister to intervene and block her. She stared in astonishment, her eyes flashing with a silent demand for an explanation.
"Eldest Senior Sister, I once saw him tending the stove and cooking outside the wooden cabin in Fengyu Forest. He must be a newly accepted disciple of Elder Fengyu," Second Senior Sister quickly replied, raising her hands in a modest bow.
"This scoundrel must be an accomplice of that thief who used fire spells to steal treasures from Master's secluded residence! Why else would that fire magic be used to save him?" Lin Qingxuan gazed down at the immobile Qiao Ruohe, a green radiance once again gathering around the fourth leaf in her palm.
"He possesses not a shred of cultivation, yet he is able to walk about freely in Fengyu Forest," Second Senior Sister said, looking down at the man on the ground. "If we simply kill him like this, I fear it will be difficult to give Elder Fengyu an account later. Once Master emerges from seclusion, she might punish us all."
At the mention of their master, the green light in Lin Qingxuan's hand gradually dissipated. Glancing at the charred corpse nearby, she urged the other two, "Hurry and bury Little Seventeen."
Second Senior Sister and the young girl exchanged glances. They knew very well that Eldest Senior Sister was simply afraid of bringing the body back to Blooming Flowers Valley. If the other junior sisters were to see it, word would spread behind her back that she had been bested by a masked rogue cultivator, tarnishing her reputation as Eldest Senior Sister. Even more, she dreaded this matter reaching the elders and disciples of the other valleys and forests in Divine Wood Palace, which would bring dishonor to their master's name.
Without further ado, Second Senior Sister lifted Little Seventeen's body and placed it into a deep pit nearby.
Noticing that the young girl kept looking back toward the man lying on the ground—evidently concerned for his injuries—Second Senior Sister shook her head at her, gave her a meaningful look, and whispered under her breath, "You cannot save him. Whether he lives or dies is up to his own fortune."
The burial complete, the three Blooming Flowers Valley cultivators leaped onto their swords and flew away, leaving Fengyu Forest behind.
A fierce wind swept through the trees, causing the wind chimes to clang against one another. The ringing pierced into the ears of Qiao Ruohe, who was still lying on the ground. It coaxed a shred of consciousness back into him, and in a hazy daze, he tried to pull himself up. He did not want to die here; there were still things weighing heavily on his heart.
His right arm and left leg refused to cooperate, utterly motionless. Fine, then he would crawl with his left arm and push with his right leg. Through sheer effort, dragging himself across the mud and moss, he finally reached the edge of a pool of water in the woods. Covered in filth, he reached out to scoop up a handful of water to drink.
Just then, footsteps approached along the muddy bank.
Qiao Ruohe's heart skipped a beat. If Lin Qingxuan had returned, wouldn't that mean he was going to die here after all?
Slowly, he raised his head to look at the newcomer.
It was a man dressed entirely in black, his face veiled except for a pair of blood-red eyes. The man stared fixedly at him, splashing through the mud and water as he circled around him. Mud and water splattered onto Qiao Ruohe's face and into his mouth, prompting him to spit a mixture of mud and phlegm right at the man in black.
To his utter surprise, this ordinary mortal spitting an ordinary substance caused the man in black to react as if facing a formidable enemy. Startled, the man recoiled backward, leaping into the air and hovering more than ten feet above the surface of the pool.
Qiao Ruohe was equally astonished. Propping himself up with his muddy hands, he kept his eyes locked on the figure above. He had no idea who this person was or what he wanted. Yet from the conversation between Lin Qingxuan and her Second Senior Sister, he had learned that someone had sneaked into Blooming Flowers Valley to steal treasures—could this be that very thief?
The man in black stared intently, realizing that what Qiao Ruohe had spat out was merely mundane filth. Extending his Spiritual Sense, he probed the young man and found that he possessed not a shred of spiritual power—he was no different from an ordinary mortal. This came as a genuine surprise to the man in black.
Yet what on earth was that dark shadow inside this kid's body? Given his current cultivation and abilities, he shouldn't have been able to see the dark shadow residing near Qiao Ruohe's Origin Core. But the Dharma Treasure vibrating violently at his waist did not lie; this kid's background was far from ordinary.
The man in black decided to test him. Conjuring a ball of flames in his hand, he hurled it straight toward Qiao Ruohe's face.
As the raging inferno threatened to engulf him, Qiao Ruohe instinctively shut his eyes. The flames enveloped his body—yet before they could even singed a single hair, they were swallowed whole by the dark shadow within him, vanishing without a trace.
The man in black stood aghast, his heart pounding. This kid was truly bizarre.
Though Qiao Ruohe did not know that the shadow inside him had absorbed the fire, he could feel a raging, unyielding blaze burning incessantly through his internal organs. The scorching heat caused a suffocating tightness in his chest and shortness of breath, plunging him into unconsciousness.
Hours seemed to pass.
Until finally, Qiao Ruohe felt as though his chest was clogged with countless impurities, his belly crawling with what felt like thousands of fiery ants. At last, those fiery ants crawled out through his nose and mouth.
Qiao Ruohe opened his eyes and woke up, coughing up a pool of stagnant blood onto the ground. Parched with thirst, he scooped up mouthfuls of cool water and swallowed them.
Suddenly, his blood and Qi surged violently, and this time he vomited a mouthful of blood flecked with fire. Terrified, he scrambled backward three or five paces, staring wide-eyed at the tiny flame burning atop the dark mud.
The flame was snuffed out by the night breeze as silver moonlight spilled across the pool, illuminating two cultivation manuals radiating a fiery glow lying in the mud from unknown origins.
He crawled forward two paces and grabbed the booklet-like manuals.
Could these have been left behind by him?
He swept his gaze left and right, but the man in black was nowhere to be seen.
Right now, he couldn't stand up, nor could he crawl far. Forget going to Blooming Flowers Valley to seek pills and medicine, he couldn't even crawl back to Elder Fengyu's wooden cabin. He felt his left arm snap and his right leg crippled, yet his heart was not discouraged. As long as he had a single breath left in him, he would never give up.
Since his elbows could no longer support him, he flipped onto his back in the mud, staring up at the night sky.
Now, the wind chimes were silent; only the stars shone brightly.
Clutching the two Daoist secret manuals in his hands, he squinted through the starlight to examine them.
One was titled "Spirit Controlling Notes", while the other was inscribed with "Fire Spells Handout".
A sudden flash of memory brought back the events of the past half-month. Although Elder Fengyu had treated him merely as a handyman and had never taught him the ways of cultivation, the elder had once mentioned that Spirit Controlling was none other than Qi Refining, the very source of immortal cultivation.
Could these Spirit Controlling notes truly be the method of cultivation?
At that thought, the wind rose, and the chimes rang out.
He grabbed the "Spirit Controlling Notes", flipped open the first page, and his eyes widened instantly.
Remembering the brutal cruelty with which the green-robed fairy of Blooming Flowers Valley had treated him, he made up his mind. One day, he would surely force her to bow her head in remorse and beg him for mercy.