Healing Injuries

It's unclear how much time has passed.

In the dim mountain cave, Yuan Ming's eyes slowly opened with difficulty. His eyes felt sore and painful, and as he instinctively reached up to rub them, he suddenly felt a chill around his neck.

"Don't move if you don't want to die," a cold, clear female voice said.

"Chen Wan... Senior Sister?" Yuan Ming called out hesitantly.

"I'll give you one chance to explain. What exactly is going on?" Chen Wan asked.

She remembered talking with Kuntu and the others in the temple and eating grilled meat. She remembered feeling very sleepy and falling asleep.

While unconscious, she seemed to have dreamed of fighting a fierce beast.

When she woke up, she found herself lying in the embrace of this Furred Beast Slave, asleep in this deep, dark cave.

Yuan Ming blinked hard, his vision still blurry and his head groaning.

"You were conspired against and harmed by Kuntu and his group. They drugged the meat they gave you. After you fell asleep, they tried to take advantage of you, and I saved you," Yuan Ming said, organizing his thoughts.

"You and I are not related. Why would you save me?" Chen Wan clearly didn't believe him, and the cold object in her hand pressed forward slightly.

"They wanted to silence me too, so I had no choice," Yuan Ming replied.

Chen Wan frowned upon hearing this.

She had always known Kuntu coveted her. She had been very reluctant to be in the same team as him this time, but she never imagined he would resort to such despicable means.

"You're lying. If Kuntu could silence you, could he also silence Bada and Yang Chan?" Chen Wan's expression remained cold, but her tone softened slightly.

"Even as an outsider, I can see that Yang Chan is jealous of you, and Bada lusts after you. They banded together to deal with you. Otherwise, where do you think the drug that knocked you out came from?" Yuan Ming sneered.

Chen Wan's heart sank.

"And later, the Fire Python that chased us in the cave, you thought it was coming to save you? It was coming to silence us," Yuan Ming continued.

Hearing this, Chen Wan quickly felt in her sleeve and found that a Crimson Fire Thunder was indeed missing. She realized then that it hadn't been a dream, but a real experience.

She still had some doubts about what Yuan Ming said, but she retracted the dagger from behind Yuan Ming's neck.

Chen Wan rubbed her slightly sore temples and waved her hand, a ball of fire igniting before her.

The condensed fireball hovered in mid-air, illuminating the surrounding darkness. Only then did Yuan Ming see clearly that they were in a huge underground karst cave.

The surroundings were cold and damp, with stalactites hanging from the ceiling, dripping water with a "drip, drip" sound.

Opposite him, Chen Wan, in her red dress, had messy hair, a face smudged with dirt, and her clothes were disheveled. She looked somewhat disheveled, yet also a little pitiful, evoking a sense of tenderness in anyone who saw her.

He averted his gaze after just one glance.

Chen Wan instinctively tightened her clothes, but the outer garment, already torn by Kuntu, could no longer be restored to its original state.

Her gaze fell on Yuan Ming opposite her, and she couldn't help but frown slightly.

His body was covered in abrasions and bruises. Although they were no longer bleeding and had formed scabs, they still looked quite shocking.

"You're injured," Chen Wan said.

Hearing this, Yuan Ming looked down at himself. He saw that the clothes on his arms and legs were torn. He turned his head to look at his shoulder.

The slightest movement sent a sharp pain through him, making him wince.

His back felt a burning pain, seemingly more severe than the injuries elsewhere.

"Turn around, let me see," Chen Wan said upon seeing this.

Yuan Ming hesitated for a moment before enduring the pain and turning around.

The moment Chen Wan saw Yuan Ming's back, her eyes widened instantly, and she couldn't help but cover her mouth.

His entire back was charred black. Almost all the skin on his back had been burned black, and both shoulder blades were exposed, white and bare. The injury was clearly extremely severe.

How could he endure such a serious injury? Chen Wan wondered to herself.

Looking at herself, apart from her disheveled clothes and minor scratches on her hands and feet, she had no other wounds. She couldn't help but think: Did he sustain such severe injuries to protect me?

Yuan Ming, unaware of her thoughts, asked doubtfully, "Are you done?"

"Your back burn is severe. It will be difficult to recover with just your own vitality for a while. Don't move, I... I'll apply some medicine for you..." Chen Wan snapped back to reality, paused slightly, and said.

"No need, I..." Yuan Ming instinctively wanted to refuse.

Just as he was about to turn back, he heard the person behind him sternly say, "Don't move."

Yuan Ming was startled and truly stopped moving.

Immediately after, he heard the sound of a stopper being pulled from a bottle behind him, and then a searing pain suddenly shot through his back, making him let out a low groan.

"Ugh..."

Yuan Ming suppressed the groan. The burning pain on his back only lasted for three to four breaths before quickly turning into a cool, peculiar sensation, and then becoming slightly itchy.

He could feel the woman behind him working meticulously, sprinkling the powder on every wound on his back.

At this moment, the fireball suspended in mid-air suddenly extinguished, and Chen Wan's movements stopped.

"The Jade Screen Powder's medicinal effect is fast. Your wounds will all scab over in half a day at most, and it will take three days to fully recover," Chen Wan's voice came from the darkness.

"Thank you," Yuan Ming said.

He moved a little and found that the pain in his back had lessened considerably. He immediately pulled the White Ape Beast Hide tied around his waist and draped it over himself.

In the darkness, neither of them spoke again, and silence fell for a moment.

After a while, Yuan Ming broke the silence and asked, "This place isn't suitable for staying long. We need to find a way out."

As soon as he finished speaking, a fireball lit up again, soaring upwards with a "whoosh," straight towards the high ceiling of the underground cave, splashing a shower of sparks.

"Before you woke up, I checked. We fell in from the vertical shaft above, but the turn in the shaft has collapsed. There's no way to go back the way we came," Chen Wan said.

Yuan Ming looked up, struggled to stand, stumbled, and said, "Then let's look for another way."

With that, he looked around to his left and right.

"This is a culvert carved out by an underground river. It should be completely submerged during the flood season. I've checked, and there are no exits on either side," Chen Wan sighed and said.

Hearing this, Yuan Ming walked forward more than ten steps and indeed saw an underground river stretching before him. The water flowed smoothly, its depth unclear.

He reached out and touched it; the cold was bone-chilling.

At this moment, Chen Wan also walked over. After just one glance, she suddenly frowned, "The river is rising. When I checked before, the water level wasn't this high. How has it risen so much in just this short while?"

"Although it's not the flood season now, it rained quite a bit yesterday. It's not strange for the underground river's water level to rise, but I don't know how much it will rise," Yuan Ming mused.

As he spoke, he walked back to the stone wall on the other side and looked up and down, his brow furrowing.

"What's wrong?" Chen Wan sensed something and asked.

"Look, there's a distinct waterline mark on the stone wall. The part above is slightly dry and has moss, while the part below is more damp and smooth. This indicates that this place has likely been frequently submerged by water recently," Yuan Ming said.

Chen Wan's expression changed slightly when she saw the waterline, which was more than a zhang high.

"If the water continues to rise, it will eventually reach here. We can't just sit here and wait to die; we have to find a way to escape," Yuan Ming continued.

"How do we escape? There's no way out here," Chen Wan said.

"There's no way on land, but we can go through the water. The underground river must have an exit," Yuan Ming said, looking at Chen Wan.

Chen Wan looked troubled and hesitated, "I... I can't swim."

"Then... I'll go explore underwater first. You wait here for a moment," Yuan Ming said after a slight pause.

With that, he took off the Bronze Longsword hanging from his waist, removed the White Ape Beast Hide from his body, and took out a piece of beast hide, black in color with a bumpy surface, from the inside of his tattered clothes, draping it over himself.

He walked to the riverbank, activated his mana, and performed the Furring Technique.

Immediately, the black beast hide wrapped around his body like a living thing, quickly covering every part of him and completing the transformation.

His entire body was covered in black beast hide, with bulging black lumps on his back, looking very sturdy. Webbing had grown between his fingers and toes, and his eyes had shifted upwards.

He looked very much like a humanoid toad.

Chen Wan was startled by his sudden transformation and couldn't help but take a step back, putting some distance between them.

Yuan Ming moved his body, opened his mouth, and inhaled sharply. He felt a surge of air in his chest, his entire abdomen seemed to expand greatly. He suddenly pushed off the ground with his legs, leaped up, and plunged directly into the river.

A bone-chilling cold washed over him, causing Yuan Ming, who was in the water, to shiver. He immediately kicked his legs and dove underwater in a frog-kick style, heading in the direction of the river's flow.

A splash of water rose to the surface, which quickly subsided, and Yuan Ming's figure disappeared.

Chen Wan stood on the bank, waiting quietly.

However, a long time passed, and there was no movement from underwater. Yuan Ming never returned.

Just then, muffled thunder-like sounds began to echo from within the underground cave, rumbling ominously, making Chen Wan's heart pound.

After the fireball extinguished, she immediately conjured another one, illuminating the surroundings.

At that moment, her feet felt a sudden coolness. She looked down and saw that the water level of the underground river had risen again, seemingly faster than before.

Chen Wan quickly retreated, feeling a sense of anxiety and worry.

The more anxious she became, the more rapid the rumbling in the cave grew, and the underground river also became more turbulent.

Looking at the surging waves and the clearly faster-flowing underground river, Chen Wan knew it was a bad sign – the prelude to a flash flood. The water level would likely rise rapidly soon, submerging the entire cave.

But Yuan Ming was nowhere to be seen.