I Have a Peerless Art to Learn on the Spot

Not long after the two left, two figures swept into the valley.

The first was tall and broad-shouldered, his brocade robes snapping in the wind. It was Tan Yingshou, who had tracked them here.

Behind him followed a man as thin as a bamboo pole, with a hooked nose, deep-set eyes, and skin stretched over bone. In the dim light, his face looked especially sinister.

The man crouched, reached out to touch the pile of ashes that still retained some warmth, then picked up the chicken bone on the ground, gnawed clean of meat.

"Sect Master." He rose to his feet, his voice hoarse as a saw cutting wood. "They left only moments ago."

Tan Yingshou stood with his hands behind his back. His gaze swept over the chaotic footprints on the riverbank before lifting toward Blood Peck, still circling overhead in the night sky. A smile curled at his lips.

"Gu Zhu, you have done well."

As a master of the underworld who had roamed the martial world for more than forty years, with countless lives on his hands, how could he swallow the humiliation of allowing a novice young monk to escape from beneath his palm today?

Not to mention losing face before everyone. If he did not kill this boy, how could Tan Yingshou show his face in the martial world again?

Gu Zhu tossed aside the chicken bone and stood. "Rest assured, Sect Master Tan." His voice was chilling, and a ghostly gleam flickered in his eyes. "Once my Blood Peck has fixed its eyes on someone, they will never escape."

Tan Yingshou nodded and was just about to speak when he suddenly sniffed.

Besides the scent of smoke and fire, the air seemed to retain a faint, elusive fragrance.

A sharp glint flashed through his eyes. The smile at his lips slowly widened, taking on a hint of amusement.

"Oh? I never expected that little beauty to be here as well."

He threw back his head and laughed, the sound echoing through the silent valley and startling several night birds into flight.

"Excellent. This saves me the trouble of making another trip."

His laughter was full of a hunter's satisfaction at having cornered his prey.

Elsewhere, Zhu Yingxiong pulled Gu Zixian along as they sped through the mountain forest with qinggong.

Dusk deepened, and the forest grew increasingly dim. Branches and leaves flashed backward past them.

He naturally circulated his inner energy, drawing true qi from his dantian and slowly guiding it along the meridians of his arm into Gu Zixian's wrist. This would save her some strength and let them travel faster.

The moment he released his true qi, his heart stirred slightly.

His meridians were several degrees wider than before. True qi flowed through them like a stream entering a channel, smooth and unhindered, moving with remarkable speed.

The true qi of the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Scripture swirled through his dantian, denser than before and a warm, milky white; meanwhile, the mass of blood-colored energy within his Tanzhong acupoint had also subtly grown, spinning faster and becoming increasingly stable.

Both of these divine arts had actually improved.

As he examined his inner breath, he suddenly felt the wrist in his palm tremble.

Gu Zixian stumbled, nearly falling.

"What's wrong?" Zhu Yingxiong tightened his grip to steady her, his brows drawing together. "Has your injury flared up again?"

"N-no, it's nothing..." Gu Zixian hurriedly turned her face away, a trace of barely perceptible panic in her voice.

The truth was, when she felt the true qi flowing from his hand into her, the secret art within Gu Zixian's body suddenly reacted violently.

The reaction came too suddenly and too intensely, unsettling her mind and causing her to lose her footing.

She had been about to tell him to release her wrist so that she could walk on her own.

But before the words could leave her mouth, another change suddenly arose within her body.

The dual cultivation art she had practiced since childhood began circulating on its own, completely beyond her control.

True qi rose from her dantian, winding upward through her meridians. When it reached her arm, it naturally entwined with the true qi Zhu Yingxiong had sent into her.

Gu Zixian's mind boomed.

She realized something.

In an instant, her lovely face flushed scarlet all the way to her ears, and even her neck was tinted with a faint pink.

Fortunately, it was dark now, so it was not obvious.

The two streams of true qi separated at first contact, then joined again, actually beginning to flow through her body.

They carried an aura completely unlike before. Warm and mellow, yet faintly imbued with an ineffable mystery.

As the true qi traveled through her meridians, the hidden injuries she had sustained while contending with Tan Yingshou began to heal, little by little.

She opened her mouth.

The words "Let go of me," which had already been on the tip of her tongue, now refused to come out.

The eagle's cry rang out overhead once more.

Zhu Yingxiong looked up. The sky had turned fully dark, and a bright moon hung above the eastern mountains.

That feathered brute circled beneath the moon's shadow, wings spread wide as it revolved again and again at an unhurried pace, like a cat toying with a mouse beneath its claws.

His heart sank slightly.

He had originally thought that once night fell, ordinary hawks and falcons would be unable to see, and they would surely shake off the pursuit. Yet this beast was even more active under the moonlight than in daylight, its eyes flickering with an eerie glow. It was clearly an unusual breed raised by someone.

He understood that they could not escape like this.

No matter how fast a person ran, they could not outrun something flying in the sky. No matter how abundant their true qi, it would eventually run dry. Once they exhausted themselves, they would become fish on the chopping block, at the mercy of others.

By now, they had reached the top of the valley. The night was deep, the moon bright and the stars sparse, its clear radiance spilling down and turning the wilderness frost-white.

The grass, trees, mountains, and rocks were all edged in silver, clear and distinct both near and far.

At the mountaintop stood a ruined Mountain God Temple. Its broken walls lay hidden in the shadows beyond the moonlight. Its upturned eaves hooked toward the moon, radiating an indescribable loneliness.

Zhu Yingxiong stopped before the temple with Gu Zixian.

"Here will do. We're not running anymore." He released her hand and looked up at the moon, his voice calm as still water yet carrying a certain resolve.

Gu Zixian felt her wrist suddenly empty, and an inexplicable sense of loss rose within her, as though she had lost something to lean on. She lowered her eyes to look at her wrist, where the lingering warmth of his palm remained.

"Lend me your sword."

At his words, Gu Zixian did not hesitate in the slightest. Obediently, she handed him the longsword in her hand. The scabbard still bore the warmth of her palm, while the sword tassel swayed gently in the night breeze.

"I have a peerless technique that should be able to deal with him." Zhu Yingxiong accepted the sword. "I need you to guard me for a while."

Gu Zixian's heart tightened. She thought that, like her, he was preparing to use some self-damaging secret art in a desperate final struggle. She stepped forward. "Why not join forces? We may have a chance to fight him. The price of using a secret art is too great. You... you should not use it lightly."

Zhu Yingxiong shook his head. "There is no price to pay."

"Then..."

"I just need some time to learn it on the spot."

Gu Zixian froze.

She looked at the young monk before her. Moonlight shone upon his face, his features clear and bright, his expression calm, without the slightest sign of madness.

But learn it on the spot? Pursuers were about to arrive, a powerful enemy was nearby, yet he said he was going to learn a sword art now? She opened her mouth, wanting to ask something, but the words only turned into a stunned expression.

Time was pressing, and Zhu Yingxiong offered no further explanation.

He held the longsword in both hands, laying it horizontally before him. The patterns on the scabbard were faintly visible beneath the moonlight. He immediately sat cross-legged, lowered his head with his eyes closed, and placed the sword across his knees.

Before the Mountain God Temple, moonlight lay like frost.

The broken temple doors hung half-open, the darkness inside too deep to see through. Withered vines crawled over the stone steps, while the twisted branches of two ancient cypresses swayed gently in the night wind, scattering fragmented moon shadows across the ground.

In the distance, the eagle's cries drifted near and far through the empty mountains, like a death-knell horn.

The reason he needed a sword was that this weapon was the key to breaking the deadlock.

As they fled just now, he had repeatedly considered the matter. Having exchanged blows with Tan Yingshou, he understood their gap in inner strength better than anyone.

Under the present circumstances, if he wanted to overcome the difference in their inner strength, he could only employ a weapon art of slaughter and battle. Only by using the advantage of a weapon to compensate for weakness could there be a chance of survival.

Though he did not possess a supreme art like the Dugu Nine Swords, capable of breaking all martial arts under heaven, the martial arts he had recorded included the Ananda Precept-Breaking Saber and Dharma Swordplay. These two top-tier arts of saber and sword combat could likewise overcome strength with skill and let the weak defeat the strong.

He had great confidence in both his comprehension and his golden finger, but he still could not reach the realm of "no saber in hand, yet a saber in the heart."

Thus, saber techniques required a saber, and sword techniques required a sword.

Now that there was a ready longsword at hand, he would naturally choose Dharma Swordplay.

In the void, a pale golden interface unfolded and began to "analyze the meaning" of Dharma Swordplay.