"It's here... It's here!"
It finally came!
A flash of insight struck Di Xin, and in an instant, he understood what those Daoist Sect members were up to.
Perhaps the tiger that had appeared earlier was just a little appetizer. The real feast was waiting here!
The cliff was a hundred zhang deep. Forget them—even a powerful Qi Cultivator might not come out unscathed after a straight fall from that height.
Their opponents had truly gone to great lengths!
They had actually tampered with Tiger Head Cliff.
The tiger-head rock hadn't broken when Yin Jiao was alone on it, nor when Di Xin had just stepped onto it. It had broken only when Di Xin was two zhang away from the Crown Prince.
There was no way he could sacrifice himself to save him. Unless... he used Magic Power!
But wasn't that exactly what those Daoist Sect members wanted to test?
If he didn't use Magic Power, the Crown Prince would surely die, and he might not survive either.
How... truly vicious!
And though he knew it was their scheme, he had no way to counter it.
Either die or expose himself!
This move was even more insidious than Yang Jian turning into the Sky-Howling Dog and biting him.
Di Xin understood all this in an instant, but he was already plummeting rapidly. Yin Jiao was falling just as fast below him. With his hands and feet bound, he was practically a log.
What should he do?
Just as that question flashed through Di Xin's mind, two lines of text suddenly appeared before his eyes.
At last, the system had shown him a way forward.
He didn't even have time to read the description of the first option. His gaze went straight to the second.
[Option 2: Let things take their course. Quest reward: Three sets of materials for crafting basic puppets.]
Let things take their course... Let things take their course...
Di Xin quickly glanced at the first option. When he saw that it was still about the Immortal Beast Azure Ox, he paid it no more attention and instead rapidly considered what those four words meant.
It meant he couldn't die, no matter what. As long as he did nothing, he would still survive.
The Daoist Sect members wouldn't dare kill him so inexplicably—not now.
He just had to let things take their course.
But what about Yin Jiao?
Would Yin Jiao die?
"Jiao'er..."
"Jiao'er..."
Di Xin shouted, swinging the saber in his hand at a nearby rock face.
Unfortunately, he was falling too fast. The blade only managed to throw off a string of sparks against the cliff wall; it couldn't dig into the rock at all.
His body continued plummeting at high speed, the scenery around him blurring into streaks. For the first time, he felt death so close.
Should he use Magic Power to save Yin Jiao first, then leave the rest to fate?
The thought had barely circled through his mind when, the next moment, he was astonished to realize that the distance between him and Yin Jiao was gradually shrinking. They had been about two zhang apart; now they were no more than one.
It was the saber in his hand—the General-Slaying Saber.
The saber weighed fifty-six jin, and Di Xin had held it the entire time. Its weight added to his own, making him fall much faster than Yin Jiao.
With that realization, he gave up on using the saber to slow his fall by driving it into the cliff. Instead, he bent his arm and tucked the saber close, making his body and the blade one whole to reduce wind resistance, then plunged straight toward Yin Jiao.
Eight chi...
Seven chi...
Six chi...
As the canyon floor drew closer, the distance between Di Xin and Yin Jiao continued to shrink.
Below the cliff, the enormous tiger-head-shaped rock had crashed into the lush shrubs with a rumble, making a dull thud.
The uneven boulder looked like a monster ready to devour everything, waiting to welcome the two falling figures, one large and one small.
"Uuuh..."
Bound hand and foot, with a rag stuffed in his mouth, Yin Jiao kept making sounds like a wild beast.
He could see the hard rock drawing closer and closer. Above him, his Father King was plummeting toward him as well.
Their fate seemed already sealed, and Yin Jiao's cries were full of despair.
"Whoosh..."
As Di Xin plummeted, his robe flapped sharply in the fierce wind.
At last, just before they were about to hit the boulder, he grabbed Yin Jiao.
He flung away the saber, then wrapped both arms around the Crown Prince, ready to use his own body to cushion the impact at the very last moment.
Just as he was about to hit the rock and was preparing to lift Yin Jiao high above him, a huge patch of white cloud suddenly appeared out of thin air atop the boulder, right between Di Xin and the rock.
Di Xin landed on the cloud as if he had fallen onto a thick pile of cotton. The jarring sensation of weightlessness was still intense, but he wasn't hurt at all.
He stared in astonishment at the cloud beneath him, watching it slowly fade away on its own. By the time it vanished, he and the Crown Prince were already sitting on the boulder.
"Jiao'er, are you all right?"
Di Xin quickly removed the ropes from Yin Jiao and pulled the rag from his mouth, then asked with concern.
"Father King... Your son is unharmed..."
Yin Jiao had barely finished speaking when he threw himself into Di Xin's arms and burst into tears. It was the first time in his life that he had felt his Father King's concern for him.
Though he was still young, he had understood that his father had been willing to use his own life to protect him.
"Good, you're all right. Good!"
Di Xin patted Yin Jiao's head, leaped down from the boulder, and looked around in every direction.
Though he saw nothing, he still bowed in every direction and called out loudly, "Di Xin thanks the immortal for saving us!"
He knew perfectly well that the one testing him hadn't dared let him die just like that, which was why the white cloud had appeared.
But if Di Xin weren't a Qi Cultivator, and the system hadn't stolen those Daoist Sect members' treasures, his actions would have been entirely reasonable.
In fact, if both those conditions were true, by all logic Di Xin shouldn't even have known why Yin Jiao had been brought here, or why he and the Crown Prince had fallen off the cliff.
Di Xin called out several times, but there was no answer—only echoes from the surrounding mountains.
Instead, a message appeared before his eyes, informing him that his system reward had arrived.
The three sets of materials needed to craft basic puppets had appeared in his system inventory.
"Jiao'er, did you see who brought you to the cliff?"
After glancing over the materials, Di Xin asked.
Yin Jiao recounted what had happened. He only knew that the large man who had abducted him had left him here; he knew nothing else.
Di Xin could tell that Yin Jiao had no useful clues, so he asked no more.
After spending some time searching, he found the discarded General-Slaying Saber. Then he led Yin Jiao along a path down from the cliff toward the foot of the mountain.
After several twists and turns, they encountered Huang Feihu and his party, who had come looking for him. Di Xin remained tight-lipped about what had happened and said nothing at all.
Huang Feihu didn't press him. At least the Crown Prince had returned safely. Surrounded by the others, Di Xin found his Carefree Horse, and the whole party headed back to Chaoge in a grand procession.
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