The wind swept dust past the broken shack. Chen Wuya had just swallowed a mouthful of cold water, but the bloody sweetness in his throat had yet to fade. His fingers still gripped the wooden sword, his back drawn taut and stiff.
Bai Zhi's gaze sharpened, her eyes fixing on the diagonal rear.
He did not turn around. He merely set the waterskin gently on the table, then casually wiped his palm, secretly smearing the blood he had coughed up onto the inside of his sleeve. That warm stickiness clung to his skin like a fuse—Misaligned Practice Connects to Spirit feared depletion most, yet it was also best at borrowing the remnants of momentum to reverse-engineer a path.
Footsteps approached.
Not one person, but three walking abreast, their boots crushing dry grass in perfectly synchronized rhythm.
Green City Sect's second bout had arrived.
The man at the front was a fellow disciple of the one defeated earlier. His face was cold and stern; though the longsword in his hand remained sheathed, it already emanated a chill. The two behind him stood to either side, advancing in a triangular formation, their footwork secretly following a certain rhythm.
Chen Wuya slowly rose to his feet. The old wound near his shoulder blade twitched with every breath, as though fine needles were piercing back and forth through the gaps in his bones. Without showing it, he shifted his weight to his left leg, while the fingertips of his right hand lightly tapped the sword hilt, probing the circulation of True Qi within him.
Sluggish.
He had forcibly reversed the flow of his meridians in the first two bouts. Though Misaligned Force had won him victory, his Spleen Meridian and Governing Vessel Meridian had already developed cracks. The slightest exertion now made his five