Good Deeds Bring Good Rewards

The rain was still falling.

On the street where Chen Haoyan had died, Shouchong appeared out of nowhere. He surveyed the pieces of Chen Haoyan scattered across the ground, a trace of surprise in his eyes.

"Who did this?"

The man had been smashed to pieces. How deep did a grudge have to run for that?

Shouchong marveled as he searched the street, inspecting every crack and rapidly reconstructing the battle in his mind.

"The killer planned this carefully and lay in wait around the corner. But his skills weren't up to it; Chen Haoyan spotted him from far away. Interesting. The weak overcame the strong? Chen Haoyan fired an arrow, and the killer... didn't block it? He took the hit and charged straight up to him, then... hm? Chen Haoyan lost?"

Shouchong's brow furrowed sharply.

But soon he seemed to discover a crucial clue. His frown eased, and a smile even touched his face.

"That footwork, that burst of blood and vitality... was it Lotus in Fire?"

What a kid!

Shouchong looked around, clicking his tongue in wonder.

"I only used it once in front of him. Just once, and he grasped something from it. He even learned it on the spot and put it to use... and made a decent showing of it."

What talent!

"Besides... my Lotus Blade is gone. Otherwise, Liansheng Bodhisattva wouldn't have been affected, and I wouldn't have suddenly lost contact. And the Dragonrise County Seal—did that kid take it too? I fought for half the night, only for someone else to walk away with a fortune."

Shouchong felt rather helpless at the thought.

His plan that night had been simple: appear in person to draw attention while secretly sending Liansheng Bodhisattva to Spirit Wandering Temple in his place.

But two things had gone wrong.

First, Chen Haoyan had the same idea. Liansheng Bodhisattva arrived a step too late, and Chen Haoyan got there first.

Second was the Lotus Blade.

Just as Liansheng Bodhisattva caught Chen Haoyan and was about to kill him, the Lotus Blade suddenly vanished. The backlash immediately struck Shouchong himself.

The chain reaction brought Liansheng Bodhisattva to a halt as well.

That gave Chen Haoyan his chance to escape. By the time Shouchong recovered and pursued him, all he found was a corpse scattered across the ground.

"...Forget it." Shouchong shook his head and quickly composed himself. "I'm the one who lost out most. I didn't get the pills from Spirit Wandering Temple. But Liansheng Bodhisattva still achieved its objective and harvested this season's incense offerings. At least I'm not leaving empty-handed."

Besides, strictly speaking, Wang Ping was also a disciple of the White Lotus Sect.

However he counted it, the fat had stayed in the family.

"And... this is an opportunity."

Beneath the rainy night sky, Shouchong looked into the distance. At the center of Longxing County, the imposing county office crouched upon the earth like a massive beast dozing with its eyes closed.

By rights, with Chen Haoyan, an Inner Force Martial Master, gone, the county office should no longer have posed any threat to him. Yet that was not the case.

In Shouchong's senses, Chen Haoyan's death had not diminished the danger he felt from the county office. It had intensified until his life was at stake.

He knew why.

A cold smile curled Shouchong's lips. "Your trusty blade broke unexpectedly, and now you have no blade left to use. You're being forced out into the open."

"Hmph... let's see how much longer you can hide."

He withdrew his gaze and swiftly suppressed his aura. After clearing the scene of every trace of battle, he strode away.

Wang Ping no longer had the attention to spare for whatever else had happened that night.

He had returned to his little courtyard and changed out of his soaked clothes. Then he set a bulging bundle on the table.

Even now, he was replaying the fight.

Compared with his fight against Xie Shi, the battle with Chen Haoyan had been far more perilous. In theory, Wang Ping should never have emerged the victor.

"Killing Xie Shi only looked dangerous. In truth, timing, terrain, and people were all on my side. All I had to do was strike, and everything fell into place. There were no surprises... Chen Haoyan was different. Killing him was seventy percent luck. When I got close and struck first, he chose to cut off my arm."

At the thought, Wang Ping rubbed his shoulder again.

The phantom pain from losing his arm had yet to fade. The aftereffects of pushing himself too hard remained too; his muscles ached so fiercely he could barely move.

That was the result of tempering his sinews but not his flesh.

He had strength and explosive power, but his body could not withstand the damage that followed. His endurance was terrible. He could not even last three minutes.

"If that strike had gone for my neck instead of my arm, I'd have died on the spot. I wouldn't have had a chance to use Perish with the Sun."

"But it wasn't that he underestimated me. At the time, the hand holding the blade was the greatest threat I posed to him. One look at my injuries told him I wouldn't live long. As he saw it, dealing with that hand would guarantee my death. Naturally, he made what seemed like the safest choice."

Wang Ping reviewed the clash over and over in his mind.

With the Desire-Realm Celestial Body, he could keenly sense Chen Haoyan's shifts in emotion. That helped him reconstruct what Chen Haoyan had been thinking during the fight.

It was valuable combat experience.

When he finished, Wang Ping reached a conclusion. "With Qi Suppression and Perish with the Sun, trading wounds for wounds suits me best."

"And... my martial arts are too weak."

"Overcoming the strong from below isn't my style. Bullying the weak with overwhelming strength suits me better. My biggest problem this time was that Chen Haoyan's martial arts were better than mine."

"Otherwise, he wouldn't have spotted me so early."

"I need to fix that. Fortunately, Spirit Sense and the Desire-Realm Celestial Body let me train quickly. What I lack is a weapon that suits me."

After a moment, Wang Ping sat upright again.

He formed a hand seal and used Qi Suppression to convert True Qi, circulating it through his body for several cycles. His flagging energy and spirit recovered by more than half.

Then he turned to the bundle on the table.

He had noticed Chen Haoyan keeping it tucked against his chest, guarding it like treasure. That was why Wang Ping had made a point of taking it before he left.

"Let's see..."

Wang Ping stepped forward and opened the bundle.

The next instant, twelve porcelain bottles appeared before him, accompanied by a rich medicinal fragrance. Each had its own label.

"What the hell?!"

Wang Ping's eyes went wide. The words on those twelve labels nearly blinded him; excitement made his hands tremble.

"Good deeds really do bring good rewards..."

Wang Ping murmured to himself, then rubbed his eyes, still scarcely able to believe it. As though waking from a dream, he finally broke into a relieved smile.

They were all pills!

Wang Ping had learned a little about pills while chatting with Liu Ye. Supposedly, only the court's Transcendent alchemists knew how to make them.

"One pill can replace a month of nourishing food!"

"Was this why Chen Haoyan forced his way into Spirit Wandering Temple? Did he strip its pharmacy bare?"

Wang Ping carefully took stock of the medicines.

Heartbreak Pill, Gu Poison Pill, Skill-Dissolving Powder.

Tendon-Transforming Pill, Bone-Forging Pill, Marrow-Cleansing Pill, Qi-Replenishing Powder, Antidote Pill, Body-Tempering Pill, Heaven-Reversing Rebirth Pill, Snow Ginseng Icefruit Nectar, Heaven's Will Soul-Returning Pill.

"Three poisons and nine tonics."

Wang Ping stared at the bottles and fell into thought. A question had occurred to him. It might have sounded paranoid, but he could not afford to ignore it.

"Do these pills actually match the labels on the bottles?"

He picked up a bottle marked Body-Tempering Pill. What if it actually held Heartbreak Pills?

"If it were me, I'd put one set of labels in plain sight and use another system in secret, deliberately misleading outsiders who didn't know better."

It was a basic precaution against theft.

Spirit Wandering Temple stood there for all to see. Could the Wandering God True Person really have made pills without ever considering that someone might steal them?

Wang Ping did not believe it!

"In this world, nobody gets ahead by being decent. Decent people don't live long... It never hurts to be careful and think things through."

But that presented another problem.

"I don't know anything about medicine."

With Spirit Sense, he could analyze the pills' ingredients. Without knowledge of pharmacology, though, even that would not tell him precisely what they did.

"...Looks like I need someone to test them."

After thinking it over, Wang Ping pushed open the door and entered the stable beside the courtyard. He led out the Curly-Mane Horse assigned to him by the county office and patted it affectionately.

For safety's sake, his horse would have to suffer a little.

Wang Ping activated his Spirit Sense, drew a little powder from the pills in each bottle, and fed the samples to the Curly-Mane Horse one by one. Then he waited patiently.

To be safe, he took powder from the surface, the core, and the middle layer of each pill. He wanted to make sure every part was free of poison. After all, what if someone had wrapped a poisonous pill in a harmless coating? A careful sailor could steer a ship for ten thousand years. He would rather waste some medicine than fall for a trick.

Throughout the process, he watched with Spirit Sense.

From the moment the powder entered the horse's stomach to the moment it took effect, he saw exactly which organs it affected and how strong the effects were.

An hour later.

After feeding a little Antidote Pill powder to the Curly-Mane Horse, which was foaming at the mouth and thrashing on its back, Wang Ping returned to his room, his face livid.

It turned out he had not been paranoid.

Every label was wrong. The true way to distinguish the medicines was by the patterns on the bottles—clearly some kind of secret code.

Not a single decent person in this damn place!

If I hadn't been a step ahead and remembered how that old bastard Shouchong screwed me over, if I hadn't taken one more precaution, wouldn't I have had to die and come back all over again?

"Bastards!"

Wang Ping cursed for a while, then rearranged the twelve bottles. Fortunately, while the labels had been switched around, the names written on them were genuine.

There were still only three bottles of poison and nine kinds of tonics.

"Heartbreak Pill, Gu Poison Pill, Skill-Dissolving Powder. Put those three together. Deadly poison."

"Tendon-Transforming Pill, Bone-Forging Pill, Marrow-Cleansing Pill, Qi-Replenishing Powder, Antidote Pill, Body-Tempering Pill... these target the body. They're suitable for martial artists who train externally."

"Heaven-Reversing Rebirth Pill, Snow Ginseng Icefruit Nectar... these two increase Inner Force. Taking them introduces a strange current of energy into the body, but without enough cultivation, they do more harm than good. The Curly-Mane Horse nearly dropped dead after eating them. Good thing I reacted fast enough to wash its stomach."

"And the last one..."

Wang Ping picked up the final bottle. Its label read Body-Tempering Pill, but it should have contained the Heaven's Will Soul-Returning Pill.

The problem was that he had no idea what it did.

"After the Curly-Mane Horse took it, its body didn't change. None of its organs changed either. I can't even tell whether it's poisonous. Hard to judge."

Wang Ping suspected this pill had been Chen Haoyan's true objective.

The other eleven medicines were precious, but few were useful to Chen Haoyan—certainly not useful enough to risk his life stealing them.

"If so, this is quite the prize. If anyone finds out I killed Chen Haoyan and took these medicines, could it bring trouble down on me?"

Wang Ping immediately stored the Heaven's Will Soul-Returning Pill separately and put the Heartbreak Pill in the bottle labeled Heaven's Will Soul-Returning Pill.

He also put the remaining two poisons, the Gu Poison Pill and Skill-Dissolving Powder, into the bottles labeled Heaven-Reversing Rebirth Pill and Snow Ginseng Icefruit Nectar. Then he tucked all three bottles against his body. It was only a precaution taken on a whim, but it might work wonders.

Only then did Wang Ping return to bed.

"I've only just begun learning Cloud-Piercing Heaven-Shaking Bow. To reach minor mastery, I need to achieve Bones Like Tigers. That means tempering my bones..."

With that thought, he took out the Bone-Forging Pill.

He dropped it into water and drank it down in one gulp.

At first, he felt nothing. But soon, it was as though a fire had ignited in his belly, spreading swiftly through his limbs and every bone in his body.

Then came the itch. An unbearable itch!

It came from deep in his bones, beyond the reach of any scratch. Wang Ping knew the medicine was taking effect and dared not delay. He immediately took the Black Chi Bow in hand.

"Whew!"

He activated his Spirit Sense, suppressing every stray thought and sensation. His mind sank swiftly into its connection with the Black Chi Bow as he absorbed the surging power of the Bone-Forging Pill.

Feeling the heat coursing through him, Wang Ping grew more excited.

"It took me less than three days to reach the initial stage of Blood Like Fire with Spirit Sense's help. With a pill to assist me, one night will be enough to reach minor mastery of Bones Like Tigers!"

The next morning.

The rain had passed, leaving a clear sky. Beneath the rising sun, a rainbow arched overhead, and fresh air rode the breeze through the county town after its stormy night.

Bang!

After sitting on his bed all night, motionless as a stone statue, Wang Ping suddenly opened his eyes. A sharp report burst from within his body.

It came neither from his mouth nor from his abdominal organs. Every bone in his body vibrated, setting his muscles, skin, and organs trembling with it. The tiny sounds joined into one, like muffled thunder rolling across the sky and tigers and leopards growling low. They heralded a transformation down to his very bones.

"It worked!"

When the sound faded, Wang Ping was drenched in sweat. Yesterday's muscle pain had vanished without his noticing, and a light seemed to shine in his eyes.

Bones Like Tigers!

Like sinews and blood, bones had four grades: Spirit Cat, Striped, White-Browed, and Mountain Lord. Once again, Wang Ping had attained the highest grade: Mountain Lord Bone!

With True Dragon Sinew, Supreme Yang Blood, and Mountain Lord Bone bolstering him, Wang Ping could clearly feel another surge in his stamina and endurance. Even twisting his whole body together to release power, as he had when using Lotus in Fire, felt much easier than before.

Especially when his sinews and bones worked together.

True Dragon Sinew and Mountain Lord Bone: when he threw a punch, dragons and tigers roared together. Wind whipped around his fist while heat rose from his blood and sweat, as though wind and clouds truly followed his strike!

"Excellent!"

Wang Ping moved his arms and legs and let out a low growl. The unmistakable increase in strength felt even better than the instant of explosive power he gained from practicing Iron Ox Skill.

Only after a long while did Wang Ping stop.

He wrapped and sealed the remaining medicines. Then, with Spirit Sense to guide them, he had the Curly-Mane Horse swallow them one by one, hiding them in its stomach.

"That should keep them hidden for at least a day or two, maybe three."

Wang Ping used Spirit Sense to adjust the medicines' positions in the horse's stomach, making sure they would not be passed out. Only then did he relax and turn toward the county office.

Unless something unexpected had happened, the county office had surely learned of Chen Haoyan's death by now.

Rebels killing each other, the chief constable dead—news that sweet to the ears ought to be enough to make the county magistrate, who had rarely shown his face, unable to sit still.