The mountain path was rugged, so he decisively abandoned his horse and followed the bloodstains along the trail.
His quarry was a lame mountain goat. He caught a fleeting glimpse of it halfway up the slope before it vanished into the dense woods.
Sunlight couldn't pierce the forest, and deep shadows lay everywhere. It was midday, yet last night's dew still clung to the myrtle berries. Leaves of every shape and color carpeted the ground, hiding old roots twisted together in knots that could easily trip someone.
Tracking was difficult in terrain like this, but he still spotted a few drops of blood on the leaves and a small tuft of fur caught against a tree trunk.
That was right. It had gone this way.
Mountain goats did have a habit of climbing to higher ground when threatened.
He hurried uphill, oblivious to the pair of eyes fixed on him from the shadows of the woods, thirty feet ahead.
Those eyes blazed with astonishing fury and hatred.
After climbing over a boulder on the ridge, he spotted the mountain goat again, lowering its head to lick its injured leg. He had just reached for the bow on his back when a blur shot toward him from the corner of his eye, fast as lightning.
What was that...?
Before he could finish the thought, it had already pounced on him.
It was an enormous leopard, nearly as big as a tiger. Its forepaws were larger than his head, and its coat looked as though it had been bleached, faded to the color of sand.
The giant leopard opened its jaws, and its foul breath struck him full in the face. He instinctively raised an arm to shield his vitals. With a sharp crack, the armored forearm was bitten straight through. He had no idea whether the bone had broken. The force of the impact left him unable to keep his footing, and he tumbled down the ridge.
The leopard grappled with him, tearing and biting wildly. He couldn't help screaming, but that didn't stop his other hand from drawing the short knife at his waist and stabbing his opponent more than a dozen times!
The weapon could slice through iron as though it were mud. It had badly wounded the leopard's innards, and the two stabs to its chest alone had sent blood spraying over his head and face.
All creatures had an instinct to survive. Even the fiercest beast should have abandoned its enemy and fled at this point.
But this one didn't!
It dragged him along as it charged outward, leaving a trail of blood behind.
Looking into the leopard's blood-red eyes, he realized it had gone mad.
A Sand Leopard had no business being here. Where the hell had this cursed thing come from? It even roared at him in human speech:
"I'll never let you have the Divine Bone!"
"Let go! Let go already!" He was scared out of his wits. He stabbed the leopard three times in the neck, straining with all his might to break free.
There was no surviving what lay below!
Yet no matter how badly wounded, the leopard wouldn't stop. The next moment, they were both in midair.
Man and leopard tumbled together into the hundred-zhang abyss.
The leopard even managed to cause trouble as it died, clamping its jaws around his neck.
With a soft snap, the protective pendant hanging from his neck flared red and shattered.
The last image frozen in his vision was four bloodstained fangs!
￥￥￥￥￥
"Ah—!"
He Lingchuan cried out and bolted upright, terrifying the people around him.
The maid closest to him stumbled back three steps. Then a nondescript-looking man appeared from nowhere and moved to his side, scanning their surroundings. "Young master?"
Before him was an exquisite private box. Two screens displayed mountains and winding rivers, and a stage stood in the center. The performers were dressed in full costume. Below, the audience munched on melon seeds, sipped tea, and chatted. More than two hundred people had all turned to look his way.
Right, he was in a private box on the second floor. Sweet Pear Tent Incense burned in the corner, and beads of water still clung to the grapes and melons on the silver platter beside him.
This was a theater called Immortal Picking Pavilion, not the edge of a hundred-zhang cliff. He Lingchuan came to his senses and instinctively pressed a hand to his neck. "I'm fine."
There had once been four deep tooth holes there, barely half an inch from his carotid artery. But they had healed, replaced by tender pink flesh. He had at least a dozen such fresh scars all over his body.
A necklace still hung around his neck.
He clearly remembered the round protective jade pendant breaking under the leopard's tremendous strength, cracking into eight pieces. Somehow, after he woke up, it was hanging intact around his neck again.
At some point, he had picked up the habit of touching it whenever he had nothing else to do, as though he and the pendant shared some inexplicable connection.
Another wealthy young master was in the box with him. His name was Liu Baobao. Seeing what had happened, he snapped his fingers at the page beside him. The boy immediately went to the railing and called down, "The young master's awake. Carry on!"
The operas popular in the Yuan Kingdom tended to be short and fast-paced, full of novelty and surprises. They plunged straight into the action, with no long, drawn-out arias, so young people enjoyed them too, like stories. Immortal Picking Pavilion had prepared two new plays for the day, with famous performers to headline. But not long after the show began, Young Master He had fallen asleep upstairs. The next scene was an intense fight, and Liu Baobao had called a halt midway for fear of disturbing his sweet dreams.
The wait had dragged on for more than half an hour, and the audience below had begun to grumble. Luckily, the guest of honor had finally woken.
The strings and flutes started up below, and a clear, cool male voice sang, "Now, the Xiluo Kingdom's guardian divine beast, the Golden Bull, charged forth, unstoppable—"
He Lingchuan frowned.
This one again?
He had just fallen asleep listening to this play, and now they were starting it again?
Liu Baobao noticed his expression and immediately smiled. "Brother Chuan, you don't like it?"
He Lingchuan drawled, "It drags."
In truth, this was a special performance Liu Baobao had arranged. He was the one paying, after all, and he had even handpicked the lead performers more than two months ago. Immortal Picking Pavilion had spent a fortune bringing the entire troupe from the heartland to Blackwater City, a place so remote even birds wouldn't lay eggs there.
But the real big shot in the box was the sleepy-eyed young man. He added, "Next time, pick another theater. Don't call it 'Immortal Picking Pavilion.' Are immortals peaches you can just pluck whenever you feel like it?"
Liu Baobao smiled. "It used to be called 'Star-Plucking Terrace,' but the owner thought 'Immortal' was better for business. People name things after what they're missing, after all."
He Lingchuan half-closed his eyes. "Oh? Blackwater City is short on immortals?"
"Not at all, not at all. Blackwater City has Lord He, and that's plenty!" Liu Baobao hurriedly said. "What are immortals, anyway? Elusive things from legend, fit only for storybooks. Who could possibly miss them?"
He swiftly changed the subject. "Shall we switch to Blade-Fixing Mountain, the play about Lord He?"
"Fine." Since he'd invoked his father's name, how could He Lingchuan refuse?
He leaned back and sprawled on the soft couch, eyes half-closed. The middle-aged man waved the attendants away, then asked in a low voice, "Those nightmares again?"
"Heh." He scoffed and denied it. "No!"
"Impossible!" He Lingchuan's tone sharpened, leaving no room for argument. "Uncle Hao, watch the play."
It was an unnecessary remark, but it suited his personality. The middle-aged man, Uncle Hao, didn't argue. He fell silent and stood nearby.
The lead performers were excellent, and the audience below applauded again and again. He Lingchuan watched for a while, then shifted his gaze to the thin wisps of smoke rising from the incense burner and drifted off into thought once more.
The truth was, he wasn't He Lingchuan.
The real He Lingchuan was probably gone by now.
He was just an insignificant nobody from another world, inexplicably occupying someone else's place.
His everyday life consisted of an ordinary job at an ordinary workplace, for an ordinary salary. As a young man in the prime of his life, he often felt that things were unfair. But no matter how fired up he got in private, railing against everything under the sun, the moment he stepped in front of people, he had to pretend all was peaceful and harmony came first.
The beatings handed out by society could always turn a person into the screw it wanted.
The economy was in a downturn, and his workplace was already three months behind on wages. But he couldn't just brazenly declare, "I quit. You can all go to hell!" and walk away with a pat on the backside.
How had he ended up here?
He couldn't say. He only remembered pacing back and forth outside a restaurant that day. In the end, he'd decided to help out the food stall on the corner. Business was hard enough when you had to stand in the wind and cold in the middle of winter.
"Boss, one jianbing, extra scallions and sauce... no egg or meat... right, neither."
No sooner had he finished speaking than he saw a car hurtling toward a little girl by the roadside. The driver panicked and sped up.
Disaster was right before his eyes. Without thinking, he did the bravest thing he'd ever done in his life:
He lunged forward and scooped up the girl...
You'd think the car had hit him? No, not at all.
He was completely unharmed. He returned the girl to the couple who came rushing over, scolded her a little, and told her to "remember to watch where you're going" in the future. Then he turned away.
He hadn't taken two steps when a flowerpot plummeted from above and landed squarely on his head.
And that was how he got sent here.
When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in bed, hurting all over. The room was decorated in an antique style, and the people around him wore delighted expressions. A handsome middle-aged man had tears in his eyes as he cried, his voice thick with emotion, "Lingchuan, you're finally awake!"
He touched his head and discovered that he had become He Lingchuan, the eldest son of He Chunhua, Prefect of Qiansong Prefecture in Jin Province of the Yuan Kingdom.
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