Peril

"Tsk, my head hurts. My body's so cold."

As the bleak wind howled, Xu Yuan woke once more from the chaos. A headache that seemed to split him from within and without made him unwilling even to open his eyes.

His clothes were soaking wet. The bone-chilling wind swept over them, steadily stealing what little warmth remained in his body.

Almost instantly, Xu Yuan realized that he was suffering from hypothermia.

He slowly opened his eyes, and the memories from before he passed out came flooding back.

The transmigration, the giant Buddha, and the black-clad woman's whack on the head.

After roughly piecing together his situation, Xu Yuan struggled to move his eyes through the pounding headache and began taking in his surroundings.

It seemed to be a cave, not very large—only four or five meters deep.

The sky outside had brightened. Rain still pattered down, and without the bonfire from the Buddhist hall, the cave was cold and damp.

The black-clad woman sat at the cave entrance, resting with her eyes closed. Her sword lay beside her, and next to its blade was a wooden stick that looked rather familiar.

"..." Xu Yuan.

He pressed his dry, pale lips together and slowly shifted until he was leaning against the cold stone wall behind him.

That simple movement alone left his frail body panting for breath.

In his previous life, his fairly comfortable upbringing had given him plenty of time and money to try all kinds of things. Wilderness expeditions were one of them.

And because of those past experiences, Xu Yuan knew that he was seriously ill.

Hypothermia, a high fever, and even some dehydration.

Xu Yuan looked at the black-clad woman at the cave entrance, her face hidden behind a gauzy veil.

Her smooth black hair clung wetly to her cheeks. Her clothes were soaked too, the black fabric hugging her graceful curves.

Seeing this, Xu Yuan felt no stirring of desire. Instead, he suddenly felt like he was about to have a stroke.

He suddenly understood why, in Cangyuan, Xu Changtian—the Third Young Master—had died in such bizarre ways in several different storylines while being kidnapped.

Back when he'd learned about that part of the plot through his memories, Xu Yuan had wondered why Xu Changtian, a pampered young master, could die so absurdly when a top expert like Ran Qingmo was right there with him.

Now he had his answer firsthand.

This idiotic woman had actually carried him, an unconscious patient, through the winter rain and then just left him here without a care!

A rainy winter night like this was nothing to her, of course. But for an ordinary person, it could be fatal.

Silence filled the cave as the patter of rain drifted softly in from outside.

Drawing a deep breath, Xu Yuan weakly called out:

"Ran Qingmo."

The voice that had once been as warm and clear as jade was now hoarse beyond belief.

At the cave entrance, the woman slowly opened her eyes and looked over at him impassively.

Xu Yuan panted, speaking weakly, one word at a time:

"Were... were you trying to let me die here?"

Ran Qingmo's black veil hid her face, leaving only her beautiful eyes visible. She blinked slightly and shook her head.

When it came to Xu Yuan's life, her opinion was entirely in accord with his.

Xu Yuan fought through his discomfort.

"If you don't want me to freeze to death, then... then help me start a fire."

Ran Qingmo stared at him for two seconds. Her beautiful eyes blinked for a long moment before she answered earnestly:

"But I'm out of fire starters."

Xu Yuan opened his mouth, then changed his question. "What about your qi?"

In this world, qi was practically an all-purpose source of energy.

The game Cangyuan hadn't shown this, but in a supernatural world where the strongest fighters could reduce the vast Capital City to ruins, surely starting a simple fire couldn't be beyond the expert standing right in front of him.

Ran Qingmo blinked twice, rose from the ground, and slowly walked over to Xu Yuan. She held out a slender, delicate hand in front of him.

A flicker of confusion crossed Xu Yuan's eyes.

Soon,

he saw a vortex of air quietly gather in her palm. In the blink of an eye, a block of ice over ten centimeters in diameter had formed in her hand.

Holding the block of ice, Ran Qingmo seemed not to feel the cold at all. She blinked and extended it toward Xu Yuan.

"Some ice. Will this do?"

"..."

Looking at the block of ice she was offering him, Xu Yuan instinctively thought she was messing with him.

Was she trying to keep things fresh with ice?

But when he saw her earnest expression, he swallowed down the urge to suffer a stroke and drew a deep breath.

"I'm sick. I need a fire, hot water, and food."

At that,

Ran Qingmo watched his face for two seconds, seemingly checking on his condition.

Two seconds later,

she silently went to a pack in the corner of the cave and rummaged through it. She found a water flask and a piece of dry flatbread, then returned to Xu Yuan and handed them to him.

Xu Yuan looked at the food and water in his hands, then at the woman in front of him. His lips, already pale from the cold, trembled.

"What about the fire? Right now, what I need most is heat and hot water."

"But I'm out of fire starters."

"..." Xu Yuan.

His vision went dark. He let out a low, irritated laugh, and a suffocating dizziness surged over him.

The drowsiness and dizziness brought on by his illness kept urging him to sink into sleep, but he knew that if he fell asleep now, he probably wouldn't wake up again.

He hurriedly gathered his thoughts and steadied his awareness, then licked his pale lips.

"Could you... could you help me heal by transferring your qi?"

The medical system in this world was rather primitive, but thanks to qi, it wasn't necessarily any worse than the one in his previous life.

But in the middle of these remote mountains, that clearly wasn't an option.

Still, Xu Yuan remembered a clichéd plotline in Cangyuan about healing through a transfer of qi.

At his words, Ran Qingmo tossed aside the block of ice and sat down neatly in front of Xu Yuan. Without a thought for the difference between men and women, she lifted his clothes and pressed a slender, jade-like finger against his lower abdomen.

Feeling a cool sensation seep into his lower abdomen, Xu Yuan was overjoyed.

But in the next instant,

the chill vanished. Ran Qingmo suddenly pulled her hand away.

They stared at each other in silence inside the cave.

Xu Yuan rasped:

"What's wrong?"

Ran Qingmo blinked twice and said quietly:

"You don't have qi. You'll die."

Xu Yuan looked down at himself.

"Why?"

"You don't have qi."

"..." Xu Yuan.

When a detail glossed over in a game became reality, all the omitted details naturally filled themselves in.

Qi really could help heal people.

But healing through a transfer of qi essentially meant using someone else's qi to guide the qi inside your own body, then circulating it through the meridians after they had been opened.

The qi would gradually repair whatever it passed through and devour harmful substances along the way.

But an ordinary person who hadn't begun cultivating would have blocked meridians.

Xu Yuan's entryway was that small. Ran Qingmo's qi couldn't get in, and forcing it through would only make him split apart.

In the literal sense,

split apart.

Now that he understood the principle, silence settled over the cave.

Leaning weakly against the cold stone wall, Xu Yuan realized his body was in worse shape than he'd expected. He didn't even have the strength to take off his wet clothes.

The fever and hypothermia were already making his mind foggy. He hadn't passed out only because his will to survive was keeping him going.

He'd once suffered hypothermia while exploring Iceland in his previous life. Fortunately, one of his companions had been a wilderness survival expert on the level of Bear Grylls, and they had barely managed to save him.

But now?

Xu Yuan glanced at the woman beside him.

Ran Qingmo sat quietly at his side, her slender brows slightly furrowed as if she was troubled by the question of how to stop the hostage from dying of illness.

Being looked after by a Big Ice Block who knew nothing, Xu Yuan didn't think he'd wake up again if he fell asleep.

He searched his mind for ways to start a fire in the wilderness, but rejected them one by one.

Either he had no tools, or he lacked the materials. Even the most basic method—rubbing sticks together—was impossible in this downpour, with no suitable dry branches or wood shavings to be found.

In silence,

time slipped by, second by second.

The world before Xu Yuan's eyes gradually dimmed, and his body slumped uncontrollably toward the ground beside him.

The last scene he saw before his vision vanished was the black-clad woman getting up and walking out of the cave.

Where... was she going?

That was his final thought. Then darkness swallowed his vision.