Fighting

Chapter 6: The Skirmish

Chu Xiaotian clutched the jade pendant, eager to uncover its hidden mysteries, yet no matter how he tried, it remained unresponsive. The pendant felt truly like nothing more than an ordinary piece of stone. After tossing and turning for half the day to no avail, Chu Xiaotian let out a soft sigh and resigned himself to draping a makeshift grass cloak over his body once more. Afterward, he lay flat on the ground, gazing up at the dense canopy overhead.

He had abandoned any plans of leaving. Having become a creature that was half-man, half-corpse, he feared what might happen if he ventured out and transformed into a zombie at night. He did not want to harm anyone, so he had no choice but to remain in these mountains and forests, settling for preying on wild beasts instead.

By day, he relied on wild fruits to stave off hunger and thirst. Once night fell, he lost all willpower, devolving into a zombie that knew only how to drink blood. Many beasts in this forest had met a tragic end; night after night, without them ever realizing it, he would drain the lifeblood from their bodies until they perished.

Time passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, Chu Xiaotian had spent a full half-month in the dense forest. From his initial terror, he had reached a point where he could calmly face the condition of his own body. He did not enjoy devouring the lifeblood of living creatures, but he understood clearly that such blood contained immense yang energy. He consumed it solely to allow that yang energy to suppress the corpse poison within him. If he were to stop now, he would be completely consumed by the poison, losing even the status of a zombie in the end.

In fact, this was the primary reason why zombies preyed on living creatures. Of course, the fact that this blood could increase a zombie's cultivation was another factor. Just like now, after half a month of consumption, Chu Xiaotian could clearly feel his body growing much stronger. He had tested it: a boulder weighing over two hundred catties could be lifted by his hands with ease.

Being able to lift a two-hundred-catty boulder with one hand was something Chu Xiaotian would never have dared to imagine before, yet now it was a reality, leaving him feeling as if he were living in a dream.

Repeating this life every day, Chu Xiaotian did not feel much annoyance for the time being; after all, he was at least free from the worries of food and clothing here. Still, at times, he would think of his friends and family in the small mountain village, and the ten corpses of the uncles he had brought near the village—he wondered how they were faring. Beyond that, in his spare time, Chu Xiaotian spent most of his hours studying the jade pendant around his neck. He remained unwilling to give up, desperate to find the secret within it so he could thoroughly control the corpse poison in his system.

But all was in vain. In his hands, the pendant showed no abnormalities; it was as ordinary as could be. However, during this period, he discovered something else that brought him great joy: the spiritual energy of this place.

The Corpse-Guiding Technique he practiced, according to his grandfather, was an ancient Taoist art from Maoshan. The various talisman techniques within it possessed power capable of shaking the heavens and earth. Yet, in the place where he had lived before, there was virtually no spiritual energy, and the talismans he inscribed could only serve to guide corpses. Upon arriving here, he suddenly discovered that the spiritual energy was more than a hundred times denser than in his previous home.

This discovery filled him with immense excitement. Where he had lived before, the lack of spiritual energy rendered his talisman arts useless, but here, with an abundance of it, Chu Xiaotian's hopes were rekindled. Could the talismans he had mastered reach the terrifying levels described in the records? Thinking of this, he immediately began to practice inscribing them with fervor.

The Maoshan talisman arts were quite simple in theory: one inscribed specific runes onto talisman paper, and depending on the power of those runes, they would produce different effects. Chu Xiaotian naturally had no talisman paper, so he could not draw actual talismans, but he could practice the runes themselves. After all, even without paper, he could still practice the shapes of the runes.

As for how to draw them, his grandfather had given him a precious Talisman Scripture said to have been passed down through their ancestors, which recorded the methods for at least ten thousand types of runes. Back then, when he had nothing to do, he would often practice drawing them. Although without the support of spiritual power, those runes were merely empty shapes, Chu Xiaotian remembered their forms and functions with perfect clarity. Of the ten thousand runes in the scripture, he could remember at least several thousand—nearly half.

To inscribe a rune, one had to absorb spiritual energy from heaven and earth and infuse it into the rune for it to possess true power. Previously, the Corpse-Guiding Talismans or Water-Evading Talismans he had drawn relied on the cinnabar itself to absorb the faint, negligible spiritual energy of the world, which was why they only had a marginal effect. Now, in a place with such dense spiritual energy and without cinnabar on hand, he prepared to use the most common method of drawing talismans recorded in the scripture: the Spirit-Drawing Talisman Method.

This method involved using one's own body to draw in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, condensing it into a rune, and then inscribing it onto paper. Only talismans drawn with this Spirit-Drawing Talisman Method could be considered true talismans; they were incomparably more powerful than those drawn with cinnabar that relied on the material to automatically absorb the world's energy.

Of course, the prerequisite for this method was the ability to channel the spiritual energy of heaven and earth oneself. In the world he came from, where spiritual energy was almost non-existent, Chu Xiaotian had never even attempted it.

Now, he wanted to try and see if he could draw those true talismans in this energy-rich environment. However, once he actually began, he realized he had been a bit too naive.

Following the instructions in the Talisman Scripture, he focused all his mental energy, striving to sense the spiritual energy of the surroundings, hoping to slowly condense it at his fingertips and draw. Yet, the result was not as he had imagined. Although he could sense the energy, when he tried to control it, the energy ignored him entirely, continuing on its own way.

He tried for an entire morning without any progress. Instead, his intense concentration left him feeling mentally exhausted and drowsy. Chu Xiaotian stopped in frustration, but he did not fall asleep. Instead, he sat cross-legged and began to recover his mental state using a breathing technique recorded in the Talisman Scripture.

This was also a minor form of cultivation, though its effects were naturally not like those in novels, where one could suddenly gain immense mental power and become capable of flying or moving mountains. Its purpose was simply to restore one's spirit so as not to be overly fatigued.

When night fell again, Chu Xiaotian succumbed once more. Another five days passed, and his life continued without change. This peaceful and boring existence was finally broken on this day.

He had just finished struggling with the runes for half an hour and had restored his spirit through breathing, preparing to find some wild fruit for breakfast, when he suddenly heard the sounds of a fight coming from the nearby forest. He could faintly hear a woman's sharp cries and the roars of beasts.

In this forest, besides the giant rats and two-tailed foxes he had seen before, Chu Xiaotian knew there were giant wolves, tigers, and bears over three meters long. In his eyes, each of these beasts could easily tear him apart, yet every morning when he woke up, he would find their corpses—drained of all lifeblood—scattered around him or along the paths he had traveled.

The sounds of the fight he heard now included the howling of wolves; he knew that giant wolves were present. Without much hesitation, Chu Xiaotian immediately sprinted toward the noise. Meeting a person and asking where he was had always been something he wanted to do, but he had abandoned the idea after learning he turned into a zombie at night. However, since someone was here now, and it was daytime with the yang energy at its peak, it would be safe to go out and ask about his confusion. After all, he had many questions about this completely unfamiliar place. He was certain that everything he had seen here could not possibly exist in his previous world.

To survive in a completely strange world, the most basic requirement was to first understand it.

Breaking a branch as thick as a bowl from a large tree to use as a weapon, Chu Xiaotian sped toward the source of the fighting. It was a forest clearing, about five or six zhang in radius. Currently, the clearing was surrounded by at least twenty giant wolves—the fire-red, three-meter-long variety. They howled incessantly, leaping from time to time to pounce on a figure in the center.

In the middle of the wolf pack was a young woman in white robes, holding a long sword. Her movements were like a butterfly, drifting rapidly through the pack, so fast that Chu Xiaotian could not even make out her features. The long sword in her hand danced in a flurry of silver light, forcing the pouncing wolves back. A few unlucky ones were pierced through their vitals by the girl's blade, twitching on the ground before falling still. By the time Chu Xiaotian arrived, five giant wolves had already perished at her feet, and at least seven were wounded.