Whoosh~~~
The fierce wind howled past his ears as the wild grass swept by in patches.
Zhou Hao swung his arms as he ran, pushing off the ground with his feet and driving each stride with the strength of his waist and abdomen. Every step carried him two or three meters.
At this speed, if he were on a city street, he'd be moving even faster than a car. Ordinary people would only catch a blur—a whoosh—and then his shadow would already be gone.
But he was now running across a desolate wasteland, devoid of human life.
...As he ran, Zhou Hao glanced back out of the corner of his eye.
More than a dozen gray wolves, each as big as a wild buffalo, were still hot on his heels.
"I only killed one of your pack! Is there really any need to chase me this long?"
"Are you all running on gasoline? Don't you ever get tired?"
He knew wolves had excellent stamina and could track prey for dozens of kilometers without stopping. Still, ordinary wolves only ran at around fifty or sixty kilometers per hour.
These wolves weren't just several times larger than normal, as though they'd mutated. They were also more than twice as fast.
From the looks of it, they could keep running for dozens more kilometers without trouble.
But Zhou Hao was nearly at his limit.
The strenuous exercise had generated a tremendous amount of heat inside him. It strained to burst through his pores and pour out as sweat.
But Zhou Hao had sealed his pores tight with internal force, so the heat inside him couldn't escape.
"If they keep chasing me, I'll lose my qi and be done for."
Zhou Hao's eyes were bloodshot. The heat in his body made him feel swollen all over, as if he might explode at any moment.
This was the illusion that came when the art of refining essence into qi reached its limit.
Whenever he'd reached this point in training before, Zhou Hao would slowly come to a stop. First, he'd perform his boxing forms to sink the heat in his body down to his lower abdomen, then gradually circulate it throughout his body.
This could transform his vitality and physical strength, making it ideal for maintaining health and cultivating qi.
But once he went past his limit, his pores could no longer hold the qi in. All the qi inside him would surge out, and in an instant, he'd be drenched in sweat.
It was like a dam full to bursting suddenly giving way. Not only would it do nothing to preserve his health, it could leave him drained and weak. In severe cases, he might even collapse unconscious or die.
Many ferocious generals who fought on ancient battlefields had died of exhaustion after a great battle in precisely this way.
For those who practiced Internal Martial Arts, such a situation was especially dangerous.
But Zhou Hao couldn't stop now.
When he'd first appeared in this unfamiliar wasteland and encountered that gray wolf, he'd had to use every trick at his disposal just to kill it.
Now there were more than a dozen gray wolves behind him, and the alpha leading them was several times bigger than the others.
"Master, it looks like I'll be joining you at the Three Pure Ones' abode today..." Zhou Hao wailed inwardly.
He'd only just finished handling the funeral arrangements for his master, True Person Daoyi. Now it was his turn. He probably wouldn't even have a whole corpse left...
"Awoo~~~"
The alpha wolf seemed to be growing impatient with the chase. It howled as it ran, and the other gray wolves immediately picked up speed.
"Damn it! Even if I die, I'll take a few more of you beasts with me."
The panting of the gray wolves drew closer and closer. The hot breath from their jaws seemed about to brush against his back. Zhou Hao knew he couldn't keep running.
If he ran any farther, the moment his qi escaped, he'd have no hope of surviving at all.
He spun around abruptly, the strength of his waist and abdomen driving his arm as he slammed his right fist into the nearest gray wolf.
At last, the heat that had been churning inside him at the very edge of its limit found an outlet. Force burst from his fist and struck the gray wolf squarely on the nose.
Bang!
Blood and sweat sprayed through the air.
The gray wolf crashed heavily to the ground. Its body skidded more than ten meters before finally coming to a stop.
Zhou Hao didn't bother checking whether it was dead or alive. His eyes swiftly swept over the positions of the other wolves. He shifted aside to evade the claws of another gray wolf leaping at him, then drove his left elbow into its belly like a cannonball.
The gray wolf's thick fur offered some protection, but Zhou Hao's explosive force still penetrated its body and shattered its internal organs.
Thud!
Another gray wolf hit the ground.
"Come on, you beasts!"
Madness filled Zhou Hao's eyes. Driven to the brink, he no longer cared about anything.
He knew that if he wanted to claw his way back from death, he had to be fiercer than the wolves.
Carnivores were clever. If he could make them believe he was stronger, they might well shrink back and retreat.
Zhou Hao glared savagely at the pack.
Two gray wolves had fallen in quick succession. For a moment, the others didn't dare make a move.
"Whooo..." Zhou Hao slowly regulated his breathing, careful not to let the slightest hint of weakness show.
The high-speed run and his sudden burst of attacks had left both his legs and arms trembling faintly.
But he had to hold on.
If he couldn't, he was dead!
"Best if I can kill the alpha." Zhou Hao looked toward the alpha wolf bringing up the rear.
It was pacing toward him unhurriedly, its green eyes fixed on Zhou Hao.
"This wolf..."
When Zhou Hao met the alpha's gaze, he clearly saw scorn, cunning, and cold malice in its eyes.
"Could this wolf have become a spirit!?" Zhou Hao was startled.
It was far bigger than an ordinary wolf on Earth, and those eyes didn't look like the eyes of an ordinary beast...
"Could this place not be Earth? Did I... travel to another world, like in those fantasy novels?"
He remembered how the Taiji Stone Diagram, which his master had treasured above all else, had suddenly shattered and glowed when he was sorting through his master's belongings. Then he had appeared in this unfamiliar wasteland.
Zhou Hao had a vague idea of what might have happened.
"Awooo!"
At the alpha wolf's sudden howl, the remaining ten gray wolves lunged at him from every direction.
Zhou Hao could even smell the rank stench from the jaws of the four wolves closest to him.
"I'll fight you!"
Suddenly—
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Four silver-glinting arrows streaked over from the distance.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The four gray wolves in front were struck at once. Each had a bowl-sized hole blasted through a vital spot, and the arrows passed right through them, piercing three more wolves behind.
Everything happened so fast that Zhou Hao and the wolves hadn't even had time to react.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Another four arrows came flying.
The remaining three gray wolves and the enormous alpha were struck in an instant.
The arrow that glimmered silver pierced the alpha through the eye and straight through its skull. Its entire head burst apart with a pop!
Gray wolf blood sprayed over Zhou Hao, but he couldn't spare it a thought.
A lithe figure swept toward him from the distance like the wind. In the blink of an eye, a radiant young woman stood before him, clad in animal hide and holding a bow and arrows.
"She was three or four hundred meters away, wasn't she? Her arrows are faster than bullets, and she shot right through wolves that big..." Zhou Hao was stunned. "Is she some kind of immortal or demon?"
He'd already suspected that he might no longer be on Earth, that he'd crossed over to another world just like in the novels.
But the fact that the one with such extraordinary archery skills was a young woman still left Zhou Hao gaping.
"What immortals or demons?"
The young woman had sharp ears and heard Zhou Hao's astonished muttering.
"You mean cultivators and great demons, right?" she said with a smile. "But they were only a few gray wolves. They weren't even demon beasts. If they'd really been great demons, I wouldn't have dared come save you."
Her voice was clear. Her language and accent were a little strange, but he could still make out what she was saying.
"There really are cultivators and great demons?" Zhou Hao looked at the young woman, his gaze suddenly burning with excitement.
"Of course there are." Being stared at by an unfamiliar man made the young woman's cheeks feel warm. "Didn't the elders of your tribe teach you?"
"This really isn't Earth." Countless thoughts flashed through Zhou Hao's mind. "There are cultivators and great demons... This isn't an ordinary world!"
At that thought, Zhou Hao looked down at his left arm.
When he'd struck the gray wolf with his elbow just now, the force had burst out and torn his sleeve to shreds.
On his exposed, fair-skinned arm were nine extremely fine tattoos.
Each of the nine tattoos looked like a dense pattern of Cloud Seal script from the Daoist tradition. Winding around his arm, they looked like a blue-green armlet.
"Master, please protect me. Three Pure Ones, please bless me... In this life, your disciple finally has hope!"
Zhou Hao's lips curled upward. As his mind relaxed, a boundless weakness suddenly surged over him like a tide and swallowed him whole.
In a haze, Zhou Hao seemed to hear the young woman cry out. Then he completely lost consciousness.
"...This man!"
Looking at the young man collapsed on the ground, the young woman felt helpless.
"He fainted before even telling me which tribe he's from."
She gave him a quick examination. Finding no wounds on Zhou Hao, she breathed a little easier.
The young woman grabbed the front of Zhou Hao's clothes and his arm, as though she meant to lift him up.
But when she saw him covered in blood, she hesitated slightly. Then she took a soft piece of animal hide from her breast and carefully wiped the blood from his face and body.
"He's so skinny. He doesn't look like a warrior from our tribe at all. He looks more like one of the young masters from a great family."
Mm... He was quite handsome, too.
I'm a little excited about launching a new book, so I'm going by Suifeng now!
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