"A major undertaking?"
Zhou Qingmei frowned slightly:
"What major undertaking does the Black Sha Cult have? Killing me would keep anything from going wrong with it? How come I didn't know I was so important?
"And the person who wanted to kill me was their young cult master? Could that lecher in Guangning City that day have been this so-called young cult master?
"What was so special about that night?"
Fang Shuwen glanced at her but said nothing.
After turning his thoughts over several times, he shook his head gently:
"Maybe we can find a clue in Guangning City. Don't dwell on it now."
"All right."
Zhou Qingmei looked out at the rain:
"Rest a little longer. I'll keep watch."
"It's about time to change shifts. Go get some sleep."
Fang Shuwen got up and sat cross-legged at the entrance to the hollow:
"I can meditate here."
Zhou Qingmei didn't insist. After all they had been through on the road, she really was tired. She had intended to meditate like Fang Shuwen, but her head kept nodding until she tipped sideways and fell asleep curled up.
The rest of the night passed without incident. By early the next morning, the rain had stopped.
When Zhou Qingmei opened her eyes, Fang Shuwen was nowhere to be seen.
Her heart jolted. She sprang to her feet, grabbed her sword, and rushed out of the hollow.
But as soon as she emerged, she saw Fang Shuwen walking toward her with a great armful of wild fruit.
Their eyes met, and Fang Shuwen grinned:
"Don't tell me... you need to pee?"
Zhou Qingmei's face reddened. She was about to tell him he was talking nonsense. She had clearly been worried about his safety, so how had that become a need to pee?
But she had only just woken up, and after everything she had eaten and drunk the day before, she hadn't relieved herself all night. She really did need to go rather urgently.
She shot him a fierce glare with her lovely eyes:
"I'll be right back..."
"Don't go far. If anything happens, shout, and I'll be there right away."
Hearing Fang Shuwen's reminder, Zhou Qingmei blushed even redder and ran faster.
By the time Zhou Qingmei had taken care of her personal business and returned, Fang Shuwen was eating fruit.
When he saw her come back, he tossed her a few:
"They're sweet."
She took a doubtful bite, and her eyes lit up slightly:
"They really are sweet. Where did you pick them?"
"There's a whole patch in the woods over there."
Fang Shuwen pointed casually:
"We'll have a quick bite this morning. If we come across someone's home on the road, we can give them some silver and get a hot meal."
Zhou Qingmei nodded. Although she was the Zhou family's eldest young lady and had grown up clad in brocade and dining on delicacies, she had spent some time traveling the jianghu and was no delicate flower unable to endure hardship.
Once the two had eaten their fill, they continued on their way.
The route they had chosen, strictly speaking, had no road at all. All along the way were towering mountains and steep ridges, with hardly a trace of human life.
The advantage, naturally, was the peace and quiet. Even mountain bandits wouldn't frequent a place like this.
Occasionally they encountered fierce beasts in the forest, but with their martial arts, the beasts not only failed to cause them trouble, they gave them a chance to eat meat instead.
With wild fruit from the forest to go with it, they had both meat and produce, making for a fairly balanced diet.
The drawback was that they had to dine in the wind and sleep in the dew the whole way, without so much as a roof tile over their heads.
Fortunately, their internal cultivation was profound, and flies and insects wouldn't settle on them. Otherwise, resting at night would truly have been torture.
As they traveled, Zhou Qingmei taught Fang Shuwen the palm technique as they had agreed.
The technique was called [Great Black Heaven Divine Palm].
Judging by the name alone, Fang Shuwen had thought the technique had something to do with the black of night. With the Black Sha Cult eyeing him covetously on top of that, he had felt it wasn't a proper martial art.
Only after practicing it did he learn that the whole art came down to one saying: overwhelming force could overcome ten thousand techniques!
There weren't many moves, eight palm strikes in all.
Yet unlike the [Four Seas Dragon Fist], these moves contained endless variations.
Although it was a matter of overwhelming force overcoming ten thousand techniques, every move from the first, [Vajra Tower-Throwing], to the eighth, [Majestic Virtue Subduing Demons], made great skill look clumsy and possessed boundless power.
Fang Shuwen asked Zhou Qingmei about it and learned that Mahakala did not refer to the black of night as opposed to broad daylight, but to the deity Mahakala.
It referred to the wrathful aspect of the Vairocana Buddha of Esoteric Buddhism.
By that reckoning, the [Great Black Heaven Divine Palm] was a palm technique of Esoteric Buddhism.
However, Esoteric Buddhism was based entirely in the far north, and its people were rarely seen in the jianghu.
He didn't know why such a palm technique had been passed down in that cave, either.
Zhou Qingmei told him not to worry that practicing the technique would earn him the enmity of the Esoteric Buddhists... For one thing, no inheritor of Esoteric Buddhism had appeared in the jianghu for decades. As long as Fang Shuwen didn't go to their doorstep, challenge them, and use the [Great Black Heaven Divine Palm] to overturn the image of the Vairocana Buddha, they wouldn't target him.
For another, many things had been passed down from Esoteric Buddhism.
Some martial arts that had become as common as dirt in the jianghu had countless ties to Buddhist and Daoist sects.
If every case were pursued, they would probably have to kill more than half the jianghu.
So those people took a very relaxed view of such matters.
Only after hearing her explanation did Fang Shuwen put his mind at ease and study the technique carefully as they traveled.
In doing so, he opened Zhou Qingmei's eyes.
She found that Fang Shuwen's comprehension was astonishingly good, and his aptitude and natural endowment were far above those of ordinary people.
When she had committed the palm technique to memory, she had relied entirely on rote memorization and hadn't studied it afterward.
Fang Shuwen had memorized it all after hearing it once. In a mere three to five days, he could already perform the entire technique without the slightest error.
It might have sounded unremarkable, but in fact it was extremely difficult.
For an ordinary person practicing such a technique, let alone three to five days, even three to five months might not have been enough to reach that level.
It showed just how exceptional Fang Shuwen's aptitude and comprehension were. No wonder he possessed such profound internal cultivation at so young an age.
Zhou Qingmei didn't know that Fang Shuwen had a cheat.
For one thing, his comprehension had been good to begin with, and the divine art [Muscle Tendon Change] had made up for the shortcomings in his natural endowment.
With his aptitude and comprehension doubled on top of that, he naturally learned everything quickly.
A few days later, Fang Shuwen could already bring out some of the palm technique's power.
While traveling, he struck out casually, and a large tree thirty feet away exploded with a thunderous crash, a palm print three inches deep appearing on its trunk.
When a brown bear blocked their way, Fang Shuwen struck out with his palm before Zhou Qingmei could even draw the treasured sword at her side.
The brown bear didn't know what was good for it and tried to match palm force with him. As a result, Fang Shuwen lost a bear paw.
At last, when he had achieved a small measure of success with the [Great Black Heaven Divine Palm], they emerged from the deep mountain wilderness.
After another half day on the road, they came across an inhabited home before the sky had fully darkened.
They looked at each other, both feeling as though they had survived a calamity.
They hurried forward and knocked. The gate opened with a creak, and a boy of sixteen or seventeen looked at Fang Shuwen and Zhou Qingmei standing outside, excitement flickering in his eyes:
"Dad, Dad, we have guests!!"