Breaking Through the Predicament, A Crisis Emerges

The thunder of hoofbeats rolled closer, shaking the ground violently. Chen Wuya's fingers, braced against the sand, trembled faintly. The bloody cracks across his palm split deeper, and the blood that seeped out gathered into a small dark stain on the sand. He did not wipe it away. He merely slowly curled his five fingers, clutching the blood into his palm.

Torchlight shone over the enemy shields, casting a swaying patchwork of red and yellow. Twenty cavalrymen had already formed up. The front rank pressed forward behind round shields, while the archers behind them nocked arrows and drew their strings. The flanking squad on the left was fewer than fifty paces away, and the right side was steadily closing in as well.

"They're about to loose a volley," Bai Zhi said softly, shifting half a step forward to shield his side.

Chen Wuya did not answer. He closed his eyes. Misaligned Force ran through his meridians like molten iron—wherever it flowed, the flesh swelled with pain as though it might burst apart. That feint just now had drained the last of his strength; even gathering his breath was difficult now. But he knew he could not wait any longer.

He raised his right hand and smeared the blood from his palm across the front of his robe. His fingertip traced downward from the Shanzhong Acupoint, past his navel, and stopped at his dantian. This was the route the system had automatically completed when he had memorized the incantation wrong at the academy—clearly mistaken, yet somehow it had worked.

[Running the incomplete cultivation method in reverse—Reverse Surge Extraordinary Meridians]

The true qi inside him abruptly stalled, then surged upward through the Ren Meridian like an incoming tide flowing backward. Sweetness rose in his throat, but he forcibly swallowed it