Li Bufan slumped on the icy snow, his back against an ancient tree, gasping violently for a long while. Waves of searing pain from his left arm battered his nerves, while dizziness from blood loss washed over him in turn.
He did not dare linger there. Forcing himself onward, he tore off a relatively clean strip of inner lining, gripped it with his teeth and worked with his right hand, recalling the rudimentary methods of stopping bleeding Doctor Liu had taught him. With great difficulty, he simply cleaned and bound the bone-deep wound on his left arm.
By the time he finished, cold sweat covered his head, and his lips had turned somewhat pale from blood loss and pain. Yet he did not dare rest for long. The stench of blood here was too strong; he had to finish dealing with things and leave as soon as possible.
He struggled to his feet and first walked toward Wu Hai's corpse. Looking at that face frozen in death, eyes still wide open, an arrow buried in the center of his brow, Li Bufan felt little turmoil. Such were the laws of the jungle: the weak were meat for the strong. Had he not used every means at his disposal and broken through in the midst of battle, he would be the one lying here now.
He crouched down and began carefully searching through the spoils.
First were the arrows. He cautiously pulled out the two arrows lodged in Wu Hai's brow and right leg, then found the arrows he had previously knocked aside or shot wide in the surrounding snow.
After counting them carefully, including the two on Wu Hai's body, only five of the Armor-piercing Arrows he had brought remained. Three had cracked shafts or chipped arrowheads and could no longer be used. Only two were truly intact.
"Only two left..." Li Bufan frowned, his heart heavy. Coach Qin had allowed him to take these Armor-piercing Arrows from Lin Manor's archery grounds. Though they were meant for hunting, losing too many would likely bring trouble to Coach Qin.
"After I return, I'll have to find a blacksmith to make twenty imitation arrows and turn them in." He pondered silently. "Huaiyuan County should have some skilled blacksmiths, but forging the heads of these Armor-piercing Arrows won't be easy. The cost probably won't be small..." This unexpected expense made his heart ache, but to avoid owing favors and inviting trouble, it had to be done.
He put away the two intact Armor-piercing Arrows separately from the three damaged ones.
Next, he picked up Wu Hai's quiver. There were still seven or eight arrows inside, their shafts black and their heads sharp. They were fine hunting arrows and would conveniently replenish what he had used. He accepted them without ceremony.
Then he quickly went to the tree against which he had punched Wu Hai. He opened the pack Wu Hai had dropped, untied its bindings, and dumped everything inside onto the snow in one sweep.
The first things that caught his eye were several well-preserved pelts!
Li Bufan picked them up for a closer look, and his heart stirred. Three were Snow Fox pelts, snowy white from head to tail, their fur pure and smooth to the touch. The fourth was somewhat smaller, but at the center of its forehead was a conspicuous tuft of silver fur that still flowed with a faint gleam in the dim light!
"Silver-Crowned Snow Fox!" Li Bufan cried out softly. "He actually hunted one too! And two ordinary Snow Foxes!"
It seemed Wu Hai had likewise discovered the Snow Fox anomaly in the mountains and had tracked them down for a harvest. His younger brother's death must have had something to do with their splitting up in haste to pursue the Snow Foxes. In the end, Wu Hai had followed the trail here, only to run headlong into Li Bufan and trigger this fight to the death.
Besides the Snow Fox pelts, there were also two grayish-white Wolf Pelts. They were intact and appeared to be from Snow Wolves. Though they were not as valuable as Snow Fox pelts, they were still decent gains.
Li Bufan packed up the valuable pelts, silver, and useful supplies and carried them on his back. Naturally, he also accepted the clearly superior saber with a smile, using it to replace his hunting knife, whose blade had already begun to curl.
Once he had done all that, he gave Wu Hai's corpse and the chaotic battlefield one last look. After a brief hesitation, he still laboriously dragged the body behind a patch of hard-to-notice bushes and roughly covered it with accumulated snow. As for the unusable arrows and miscellaneous items, he scattered and discarded them separately.
After cleaning up the battlefield and concealing the traces, Li Bufan endured the piercing agony in his left arm and the exhaustion in his body, yet did not immediately leave this place of strife. That faint, strange cold fragrance, like an invisible hook, kept tugging at his mind. Wu Hai's appearance and the Snow Fox anomaly both pointed to this place. Unless he investigated it clearly, he could not leave in peace.
He took a deep breath, concealed his presence once more, and, relying on the agility of the Spirit Monkey Three Leaps and the cover of the snow, cautiously made his way toward that enormous frozen mountain wall.
The closer he drew to the mountain wall, the more distinct that chilly sensation became. At the same time, the clear, remote fragrance grew sharper and easier to smell. After inhaling a breath, even his body, chilled by blood loss, felt a trace of warmth, and the pain in his arm seemed to lessen somewhat.
At last, he arrived beneath the mountain wall again. The Silver-Crowned Snow Fox he had tracked earlier had long since vanished without a trace. Several pitch-black openings at the base of the mountain wall lay silently open, like the mouths of giant beasts, emanating an aura of mystery and danger.
The source of the strange fragrance came from the largest of those openings.
Li Bufan held his breath and listened closely for a while. The cave was deathly silent, with only the faint whimpering of wind passing through cracks. He drew the newly acquired saber, held it across his body, and carefully ducked into the largest opening.
The passage was narrow at first, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, and the light was dim. But after walking only several yards, the view suddenly opened up!
Inside was an enormous natural cavern. Its high dome was hung with countless icicles, like a crystal palace. The temperature inside was lower than outside, yet it did not feel unpleasant. Instead, it brought a sensation of clearing the heart and calming the mind. Most eye-catching of all was a small patch of earth at the center of the cave.
It was not covered in ice or snow. Instead, a small tree roughly half a man tall grew there. Its trunk and branches were dark green and gnarled, as though cast from metal, while its leaves were sparse and withered yellow, giving it an extremely peculiar appearance. Yet on those seemingly withered branches hung three fruits the size of longans, blood-red throughout and crystal-clear!
The fruits gave off a rich, strange fragrance. After merely smelling them a few times, Li Bufan felt the qi and blood he had exhausted earlier faintly stirring and reviving!
Yet the sight on the ground around that small tree was enough to make one's hair stand on end—seven or eight small animal carcasses lay scattered there. Most had frozen stiff and shriveled, but their fur and forms still vaguely revealed them to be Snow Foxes! Their deaths were bizarre. Their bodies bore no obvious external wounds, but most had swollen abdomens, and some even had dark-red frozen foam lingering around their mouths and noses, as though some powerful force had burst them apart from within!
Li Bufan's gaze abruptly swept back and forth between the scarlet fruits and the Snow Fox corpses. A passage from the Herbal Compendium flashed through his mind like lightning:
"Cinnabar Fruit, a rare treasure. It often grows in places of extreme cold and deep gloom, drawing in the chill qi of the earth veins, yet bearing fruits of crimson yang. It is shaped like a longan, colored like cinnabar, and its strange fragrance assails the nose. Consuming it can greatly increase qi and blood and strengthen sinews and bones. It is a precious medicine for tempering the body and practicing martial arts! Yet its medicinal properties are tyrannical and blazing. Those without a robust physique and abundant qi and blood must not consume it lightly. Otherwise, the weak cannot bear the nourishment and will instead suffer harm, with the danger of their bodies bursting apart and death following..."
Then he looked again at the Snow Fox corpses on the ground, clearly burst apart alive by surging qi and blood, as well as the Snow Fox that had survived by luck, its fur evolving into a silver crown and its speed and strength greatly increasing...
Everything became clear in an instant!
"Cinnabar Fruit! These are actually Cinnabar Fruits!" Li Bufan could not help crying out in a low voice, unimaginable ecstasy exploding in his eyes!
No wonder the Snow Foxes had gathered so abnormally! They had been drawn here by the strange fragrance of the Cinnabar Fruits! Ordinary Snow Foxes could not withstand the tyrannical medicinal power of the Cinnabar Fruit. After swallowing it, their bodies had been burst apart alive by the sudden torrent of qi and blood! But the very few with unusual constitutions or extraordinary luck might have only licked a little juice, or barely endured the medicinal power, and thus undergone mutation, becoming more powerful Silver-Crowned Snow Foxes! They craved this treasure, yet instinctively feared its might, which was why they had anxiously lingered outside the mountain wall!
"Hahaha! Heaven is helping me! What a tremendous stroke of fortune!" Li Bufan could not stop himself from laughing. He was so excited that even the wound on his left arm seemed to hurt less.
The value of these Cinnabar Fruits far surpassed that of the Silver-Crowned Snow Fox! Even the value of an entire tiger and Black Bear combined likely could not compare to a single Cinnabar Fruit before him! This was a spirit fruit capable of directly raising one's Martial Arts Realm!
He forcefully suppressed the excitement in his heart and did not immediately step forward to harvest them. The greater the treasure, the more likely it was to have danger guarding it. He carefully observed his surroundings and listened intently for a long time. Only after confirming that there were no signs of other living creatures besides the wind did he cautiously approach.
The closer he came, the richer the strange fragrance became. Breathing it into his lungs felt like drinking sweet spring water, leaving his entire body relaxed and comfortable. He counted carefully. There were three Cinnabar Fruits on the tree, each red and translucent, as though containing boundless energy.
He hesitated no longer. Using the tip of his saber, he gently severed the fruit stems and removed the three Cinnabar Fruits one by one. The fruits felt warm in his hand, their strange fragrance filling his nose, and he could even sense the surging energy flowing within them.
Looking at the three Cinnabar Fruits in his hand, enough to drive countless Warriors mad, then at the tragic Snow Fox corpses on the ground, Li Bufan took a deep breath and warned himself that he must not repeat their mistakes.
"With my current Initial Muscle Tempering cultivation, and with my injuries not yet healed, I absolutely cannot consume a Cinnabar Fruit. If I rashly take this tyrannical spirit fruit, not only will it do me no good, it may instead make my qi and blood surge and worsen my injuries."
He carefully wrapped the three Cinnabar Fruits in the softest Snow Fox pelt and tucked them safely against his body. Then he immediately took out the several hemostatic herbs he had found in Wu Hai's pack.
Ignoring the cold, he found a relatively flat rock, placed the herbs on it, and carefully crushed them into dark-green medicinal paste with the hilt of his saber. The herbs' distinctive clear, bitter scent spread through the air.
He clenched his teeth and cautiously untied the cloth strips he had hastily wrapped around the wound earlier. They had already been soaked through with blood and stuck to the wound. Tearing them away brought a piercing pain that made cold sweat bead across his forehead once more. Beneath them lay a horrifying wound with torn flesh, deep enough to reveal bone.
He drew in a breath of icy air and carefully applied the crushed medicinal paste over the wound. When the paste touched it, there was first a sharp sting, followed by a trace of coolness. The blood that had been steadily seeping out visibly slowed.
Li Bufan did not dare delay. He swiftly bound the wound tightly again with clean cloth strips, ensuring that the medicinal paste could fully contact the injury. Only after finishing did he let out a long breath, feeling the fiery pain in his left arm slightly suppressed by the herbs' cooling medicinal effects.
"I hope this works." He muttered softly. His most urgent task was to stabilize his injury first; only then could he speak of anything else.
Before you continue