Dead Corpse

Hearing Yu Ci's taunt, the monk almost coughed up blood, yet his feet dared not stop until he was thirty feet away. Feeling that Yu Ci was not pursuing him, he finally halted. He wanted to open his eyes, but they were forced shut, unable to bear the irritation, and he actually began to shed tears. He hurriedly covered them with his sleeve, though his complexion was already iron-blue.

Seeing this, Yu Ci was also slightly startled, but he had no intention of saving face for this thievish monk. He immediately burst into laughter, the sound cutting like blades straight into the monk's heart.

The monk's face flickered between green and red, his teeth grinding audibly. When he had first launched his sneak attack, he had never expected such an end. Qi and blood reversed in his chest, a mouthful of fresh blood rising to his throat before he managed to force it back down. After weeping, his eyes finally felt somewhat better, and he narrowed them, struggling to gaze at the hateful junior opposite him.

The sight that met his eyes caused his heart to clog up once more.

In Yu Ci's hand, the Nine Yang Talisman Sword hummed repeatedly as a ring of fire spread outward from beneath his feet, reaching a radius of ten spans. The surrounding grass and trees were ignited, and while it had no true lethality, the momentum was quite astonishing.

"The Nine Yang Talisman Sword?" The monk's voice reached the absolute extreme of shock and rage.

Hearing this, Yu Ci looked up without a word, merely cracking a grin. This was more venomous than any words, and the monk seemed to understand something. His face shifted from blue to red, finally swelling to a purplish-red, and unable to endure it any longer, he gnashed his teeth and spat viciously:

"Junior of Bai Ri Mansion, I will make you wish you were dead!"

His tone sounded more like a poisonous snake hissing and spitting its tongue, but he was clearly mistaken. Of course, only a fool would stop to argue at a time like this!

Just as his voice fell, a long whistle rose from the distant mountains, the sound waves crossing the barrier of the forest to ring out clearly in both their ears. Though called distant, it was actually only about ten miles away. Hearing this sound, the monk was overjoyed, and just as he was about to purse his lips to whistle in response, he saw that the Bai Ri Mansion brat had already exerted his strength and plunged into the woods in the blink of an eye.

At the very start of the whistle, Yu Ci had already captured the change in the monk's expression. How could he fail to realize the situation had shifted? He made a prompt decision and fled at the very first moment, choosing a due northern direction. Having gained the upper hand, he retreated the moment he said he would. Behind him, the monk—whose eyes had not yet fully recovered—could only stamp his feet and curse:

"Junior of Bai Ri Mansion, you caused Hu Ke's death, let the ghost beast escape, and snatched the Star-Shooting Mirror! The Wanling Sect will not let you off!"

To the filthy water splashed by the monk, Yu Ci merely spat: That's only if you and your Bai Ri Mansion can find me first!

In the time it took to utter that single sentence, the figure who had whistled had already closed to within three miles, and the whistling still had not ceased. Yu Ci ran a few more paces before hearing whistles rising all around the mountain forest. Within a range of dozens of miles, at least seven or eight individuals responded one after another. Each sound was like thunder, shaking pine needles down in showers and causing even the ground to tremble.

As for the fellow to the front who had whistled first, he abruptly cut off, and the monk's curses abruptly ceased as well.

There were factions at work here too... Did that thievish monk's lot count as a blunder of their own making?

Yu Ci quickly discerned the situation and couldn't help a stifled laugh, though he had also gotten a true taste of the atmosphere as winds and clouds gathered from all eight directions into Zhongzhou. He felt that any one of the whistlers, picked at random, possessed a cultivation base above his own, which once again raised a strong wave of curiosity in his heart: Just what on earth was going on here?

Recalling the monk's final curses, he tried to string the various factors together: the dead corpse from earlier was undoubtedly Hu Ke; the monsters and ferocious beasts spoken of by the various medicine-gatherers were the ghost beasts in the monk's mouth; the so-called "Star-Shooting Mirror" was stored inside the Storage Ring; as for the Wanling Sect... what a familiar name that was!

Setting aside this external factor for the moment, according to Yu Ci's conjecture, the act of luring the ghost beast out of the Sky Rift should have been intentional on the part of the deceased ahead, Hu Ke. He must have had a long-laid plan to set an ambush here, utilizing the Star-Shooting Mirror to deploy a high-powered spell formation to capture or take the ghost beast alive. Yet he had not anticipated that the ghost beast's might would far exceed his expectations; the trap he laid failed to produce the proper effect, and amidst his panic wanting to flee, he was instead slain by the ghost beast.

As for that monk and his companions, they might have been Hu Ke's accomplices, though it was even more likely that they had caught wind of the matter and wanted to come scavenge a cheap victory, only to arrive a step late and find Yu Ci taking the spoils ahead of them.

At that moment, great chaos erupted within the pine forest. After Yu Ci had bolted over ten miles, the wind carried an ill-boding aura from behind as someone—it was unclear which faction—gave chase.

Yu Ci was very interested in ghost beasts and the like, but he had no desire whatsoever to become entangled here, and immediately slapped a Divine Movement Talisman onto himself. This talisman also went by another moniker, one renowned even in the ears of ordinary folk: the Jia Ma!

The spiritual talisman slapped against his body, and instantly his feet left the ground and his body became as light as a swallow, a sensation that felt exceptionally crisp and exhilarating.

Under the surge of speed, the layers of long pine branches like the arms of demons rushed toward him, only to be left behind in the blink of an eye. Yu Ci seemed to transform into a wisp of light smoke, wildly careening through the gaps of branches and leaves. That was not all; as the talisman's efficacy surrounded his entire body, the circulation of true qi within him seemed to echo in response, resonating with it to stimulate even more astonishing energy, making him run faster and faster, more and more comfortably, to the point where he didn't even wish to stop.

Along the way, Yu Ci sprinted entirely at top speed. The pursuers behind had initially been able to keep pace, but Yu Ci was in prime condition right then, and he simply slapped on Divine Movement Talismans back-to-back. With scores or even hundreds of spiritual talismans stacked together, after half an hour, the people behind were no longer anywhere to be seen.

His sensations were exceptionally fine, exceptionally marvelous.

Though he was rapidly pulling away from that right-and-wrong-filled place and from that gathering place of cultivators, Yu Ci felt as though a massive portal between heaven and earth had cracked open a sliver, allowing the true visage of the colorful world beyond to reveal itself.

That place was the path of cultivation, the place he yearned for beyond measure.

Clashing with that Poisonous Snake Monk, including the series of events leading up to it, could be said to have been entirely accidental, yet he had used precisely this method to touch that world and sprint toward it in great strides.

Yu Ci was running with surging spirits, and spent yet another hour or more afterward passing in high-speed flight.

While running, sustained by the spiritual talismans, he hadn't felt it, but the moment he stopped, Yu Ci nearly thought he had run the breath right out of himself. Yet, exhausted to the point of death though he was, the effect was exceedingly obvious: by this moment, he had run at least five hundred miles, far exceeding his previous personal best. Calculated at this speed, and factoring in necessary rest periods, traveling a thousand miles by day and eight hundred by night was by no means an impossibility.

Even so, Yu Ci's physical strength had truly reached its absolute limit, dragging his excited mood down into a rapid ebb as a wave of exhaustion rolled over his entire body. Knowing what constituted an irresistible force, he casually found a spot that seemed reasonably concealed and prepared to heed the summon of the sleep demon, sleeping soundly to recover his vigor. In that state between sleeping and waking, he suddenly remembered that in these wild, desolate mountains, he could not go without some form of defense.

In a daze, he fished the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror out from his sleeve. Sensing his weak breath, a hazy azure mist flickered across the mirror's surface. He thrust his fingers inside and began absentmindedly drawing talismans, sketching the Five Directions Spirit Communication Talisman. Only this talismanic script could issue a warning to him when beasts approached. As for whether it could shock him awake from a deep slumber, only heaven knew.

Yu Ci was far too exhausted. When drawing the talisman, he was already in a semi-comatose state, executing this consecutive series of actions entirely through years of habit. Barely finishing the final stroke, and caring not whether the talisman had succeeded or failed, he let out a yawn and drifted straight off to sleep.

Bathed in moonlight, Yu Ci's completely emptied body breathed in and out. Without conscious direction, he simply followed his habits of the past twelve years, tracking the sun and moon, exhaling the old and inhaling the new, drawing in the qi of the Great Yin. Beside his hand, the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror seemed to resonate with this as well, its azure mist slowly expanding and contracting like breath.

This time, the force that shocked Yu Ci from his deep sleep was a sudden, terrifying nightmare.

The nightmare arose entirely without source, as if he beheld in a dream a grey hawk plunging down from a height of a thousand zhang. In his trance, his mind split into two halves—one half in the heavens, one half on the earth. On one hand, the clouds at a height of a thousand fathoms flowed like streams; on the other, vicious intent and malignance pierced straight into his body, startling him into breaking out in a cold sweat as he instinctively flipped over and sprang to his feet.