"Whew—"
"I spent my whole life playing with eagles, only to have one peck my eyes out in the end!"
The disheveled scholar had ultimately lost too much blood and run out of strength. He could no longer flee, and had to brace himself against a tree to stay on his feet.
"Truly, I never saw this coming..."
"Not one of Wu Zhaode's sons is easy to deal with."
Panting heavily, he lowered his head and watched the blood drip into a pool at his feet. The dizziness was growing worse, and the world spun around him until he swayed. He took several deep breaths in a row, trying to clear his head. He was very close to Heyin Commandery; if he could just hold out until he got there, he'd have a seventy or eighty percent chance of making it to safety. But that short distance now seemed like an impassable chasm.
That was because the blood flowing from his wounds wasn't its normal color.
The blade that had injured him was poisoned!
An ordinary person who ran this far would have their Qi and Blood circulate, carrying the poison through every meridian in their body. They'd be dead in no time. He'd managed to hold on this long only because Literary Scholars had powerful bodies, and because his literary qi had continuously protected his Heart Meridian from the poison.
He summoned all his strength and tried to move his right leg.
His knee buckled, and he collapsed face-first onto the ground.
"...It seems I'm going to die here..." The disheveled scholar's life flashed before his eyes, all of it coalescing into a bitter smile. With difficulty, he sat up and leaned against the tree trunk. Feeling the poison rampage through his meridians, he murmured to himself, "Young Master