Escape from Peril

Seeing Lu Xiaotian's sudden movement, several wolves leaped out to charge directly at Lu Xiaotian and the spirit beast Leopard.

Roar! The spirit beast Leopard opened its mouth with utter ferocity, clamping down straight onto its opponent's throat and ending its life.

Lu Xiaotian's face turned abruptly cold, and he drew his short sword to hack down at the head of a charging wolf. Aowu! A gash split the wolf's head open all the way from its ear to its nose. In the blink of an eye, two wild wolves were dead. Yet out in the distant white fog, a dozen more wolves of varying sizes came surging forth.

"Run!" Lu Xiaotian issued this command to the spirit beast Leopard, swung his sword to force back another wild wolf, grabbed the rope with one hand, and decisively leaped down from the cliff. The pack of wild wolves was far too numerous, and among them were even one or two demonic beasts whose momentum was not much inferior to the Leopard. If he stubbornly persevered and held his ground here, he would undoubtedly end up devoured by the pack of wolves. Thus, Lu Xiaotian did not hesitate in the slightest to have the Leopard flee; as for whether it could escape with its life, that would depend entirely on the Leopard's own fortune.

The Leopard looked back to see that Lu Xiaotian had already jumped off the cliff, let out a fierce howl, and charged toward a sparse section of the opposing wolf pack.

The pack of wolves howled incessantly from above. As his body slid downward, Lu Xiaotian felt a sudden strange vibration travel through the rope in his hand. When he looked up, he was shocked to see that two wolves had actually begun gnawing on the rope; these beasts possessed no small measure of intelligence. Lu Xiaotian cursed under his breath, accelerated his descent, and simultaneously kicked hard against a rock on the cliff face, using the momentum to swing himself toward a patch of green vines growing on the cliff. He grabbed a vine with one hand. Just as he borrowed the force, the rope above was bitten clean through by the wild wolves.

Lu Xiaotian muttered a close call, caught the severed end of the rope, and relying on the leverage of the green vines, safely descended onto a protruding rock on the cliff.

Atop the precipice, several wild wolves paced back and forth for a while before letting out a few disappointed howls and scattering away.

He wondered how the Leopard was doing right now. Lu Xiaotian quickly shook his head again; right then he could barely look after himself, let alone worry about the Leopard.

Setting the severed rope aside, Lu Xiaotian raised his head to look upward. The patch of green vines on this precipice grew about five or six zhang from the top of the cliff. By climbing up the vines and then throwing the broken rope back up to catch on a tree trunk on the cliff, he could still escape this perilous situation. With his retreat assured, Lu Xiaotian's mind settled down; what he needed right now was to match patience with the wolf pack.

Although he could not hear any activity from the wolves above, based on past experiences of going deep into the mountains with his father when he was a child, wolves were animals that held the deepest grudges. Even though the sound of wolf howls had temporarily ceased atop the cliff, those wild wolves might not have truly left; there was no telling if a lone wolf was still standing watch and giving warnings up above.

Having temporarily shaken off the crisis, Lu Xiaotian felt a wave of pain in his shoulders, elbows, and chest.

He lifted his clothes and rolled up his sleeves to take a look, discovering numerous purplish-red bruises caused by impacts on his arms and chest. In many places, blood was even seeping out—injuries sustained when he hit the rocks on the cliff face while leaping down from the precipice earlier. Fortunately, his tendons and bones were unharmed; he could just tough it out.

Yet Lu Xiaotian quickly realized that his current predicament was far from good. Having previously been trapped in a baffling terrain, then chased by the wolf pack and fleeing all the way here, he had completely lost his bearings. After sitting cross-legged to recover a portion of his vital energy, he soon noticed that the sky was growing somewhat darker. Right in the middle of this precipice, the cold wind was also gradually intensifying, whistling loudly past his ears.

Every night in the canyon, the temperature plummeted drastically, to say nothing of being right on a sheer cliff. With his stomach still empty at the moment, the cold and hunger come nighttime would likely prove all the more agonizing.

At this thought, Lu Xiaotian searched left and right across the dozen-odd square feet of rock, until his gaze finally landed on a speck of withered yellow nestled among the green vines growing on the cliff face, instantly making his eyes light up.

He pulled out his short sword, walked over to the green vines, and parted the verdant fronds on the outside to reveal a multitude of dead vines within.

They must have grown here for years and finally withered away. They should work well enough for starting a fire to warm the body, making the night a little less agonizing.

Crack! Lu Xiaotian swung his sword to sever a withered vine. Just as he reached out to grab the chopped vine, a faint, low hissing sound made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Lu Xiaotian retracted his left hand like lightning and looked closely, only to discover a grass snake mottled with earthy yellow and greenish-blue slithering among the withered vines, darting its scarlet forked tongue right at him. Its triangular head kept retracting and extending. This grass snake had been hidden amidst the foliage; had it not attacked proactively and instead remained completely still inside, it truly would have been difficult to spot.

Lu Xiaotian muttered a close call to himself; if he hadn't cultivated the Primordial Unity Scripture, making his senses far sharper than before, he probably would have already been bitten by this unidentified grass snake.

He had barely escaped alive from the wolf pack's pursuit, only to almost perish in a snake's jaws; this canyon was truly immensely treacherous, where the slightest carelessness could lead to encountering unknown dangers.

The grass snake slithered out from among the vines, revealing a snake body as thick as an arm. The grass snake reared its triangular head angrily, closing in on the intruder.

Lu Xiaotian narrowed his eyes; certain predators in the mountain forests possessed an extremely strong sense of territory, and it seemed he had intruded upon this grass snake's domain.

Yet he was already driven to a dead end, and this protruding slab of rock was only about a dozen square feet in size, offering nowhere at all to hide. Since that was the case, he had no choice but to fight desperately for survival.

Hiss! The grass snake let out a low sound and lunged to bite Lu Xiaotian right in the face. Lu Xiaotian hastily jerked his head to dodge while simultaneously swinging the short sword he had already clenched tightly.

With a soft thud, the triangular snake head dropped to the ground, and the grass snake's body writhed amidst the vines for a moment before falling off, blood gushing forth.

Lu Xiaotian unstrapped his pack, took out the small iron pot and salt inside, and then, as if unearthing a priceless treasure, picked up the snake body from the ground. After draining it of blood, he deftly stripped off the snake skin and chopped the serpent into dozens of small sections, tossing them into the iron pot.

Next, he carefully pulled out the earlier withered vines from among the green foliage, arranged them slightly, used a flint to ignite a fire, and directly stir-fried the snake meat. It was a pity there was not enough water, otherwise making a snake soup would have been even more delicious. Fortunately, the canyon fog was heavy, and every morning when he woke up, a good deal of dew would accumulate on the tree leaves, so he wouldn't run the risk of dying of thirst.

Lu Xiaotian's belly was stuffed tight, and he rubbed his stomach. It seemed he would have to spend the night right here today; the little green ants in the dwelling had no one to feed them, and he estimated that not many would be left by the time he got back.

Lu Xiaotian shook his head with a wry smile, mocking himself inwardly; under his current circumstances, whether he could even make it back at all remained an unknown, yet he actually had the leisure of mind to worry about the little green ants inside the dwelling. The old man in the black robe lacked a shred of humanity and had no interest in teaching him either—that dreary dwelling was better left unreturned, saving him from a whipping upon his return. The old man in the black robe struck with ruthless force, and that whipping last time had almost beaten him to death.

He wasn't going back! Lu Xiaotian silently made this decision.

As the night grew deeper, the cold wind howled across the precipice, plunging the temperature to extreme lows. Buffeted incessantly by this raw, bone-chilling wind, he had no way of falling asleep at all.