The Third Frame

But it was still too late...

It was the same road. He remembered it clearly; he could never forget. Back then, no one had passed by. Or if anyone had, no one had spared a glance for him as he lay there like a dead dog.

The scent of medicine was unfamiliar, as was the touch of her palm. When he sensed she was about to leave, he reached out purely on instinct. He remembered how, when despair had slowly swallowed him here all those years ago, he had wished someone would help him. Just like now.

But in the end, all that had come for him was one wave of despair after another.

He looked at her, trying to read something in her face.

Then silver flashed before his eyes, and he fell once more into boundless darkness.

Qiao Ranran breathed a sigh of relief and withdrew the Silver Needle.

There was no problem one needle couldn't solve. And if there was, she would use two!

She had never intended to reason with him. Anyone who could still muster that much strength while so badly injured had to be stubborn. Besides, judging by his condition, he might not even be fully aware of what he was doing. He was probably acting on the instinct to survive.

So she had simply stuck him with a needle and knocked him unconscious.

She had been afraid to use too much force before. Now she understood that this man was remarkably hard to kill.

She stuck another needle into his wrist and finally freed her ankle. Even after passing out, he had kept a death grip on it. Luckily, nothing was broken, though the ring of bruising looked dreadful.

Qiao Ranran pressed her lips together and gave his shoulder a light kick to vent her frustration. Only then did she apply medicine to her ankle.

Another sound came from behind her. She turned and found herself staring into a pair of enormous, eerie green eyes.

A Demon Beast.

Demon Beasts did roam near Clear Spring Town, but they generally left the townspeople alone. It was rare for one to come this close. Qiao Ranran followed its gaze to the injured man on the ground and understood at once.

The smell of blood all over him had probably drawn it here. And judging by the direction he had come from, he must have made his way around from the dense forest. It was only natural that he had disturbed the Demon Beasts nearby.

"You can't eat him." Qiao Ranran prodded one of the man's wounds and looked at the blood on her fingertip. "He's poisoned." The poison was difficult to identify, but if the Demon Beast took a bite, it would suffer for it.

She took out a Hundred-Beast Pill and held it out. "Here. Let's trade. Go find something else to eat."

Demon Beasts loved Hundred-Beast Pills. A single pill was usually enough to win over one with a good temperament. It had been the first pill she learned to make, so she would have something to offer if she encountered a Demon Beast while gathering herbs on the mountain behind town.

The Demon Beast dared to venture near a human settlement, so it was probably fairly intelligent. The moment it saw the Hundred-Beast Pill in Qiao Ranran's hand, it relented. Though reluctant to give up such a large piece of meat, it chose the pill and vanished into the depths of the forest.

Things went much more smoothly after that. By the time Qiao Ranran found someone in town to help, the man was still lying quietly on the ground beneath her cloak. Clearly, he had not woken again.

She had some ties to the Tao Family Clinic in Clear Spring Town, so the man was properly settled when she brought him there. But Doctor Tao looked at his injuries with a worried frown. "Immortal Qiao, these wounds..." His medical skills were nowhere near enough to treat them!

"It's all right. I'll take care of him myself."

Doctor Tao wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "That's good, that's good," he murmured. As far as an ordinary person could tell, without an immortal's intervention, injuries this severe called for funeral preparations.

But something about Immortal Qiao seemed different from the last time he had seen her.

Basic Spell Arts had little effect when used for healing, and their effectiveness depended on a cultivator's strength and mastery. A powerful Medicine Cultivator could refine a basic Spell Art until it produced the effects of an advanced one.

But Qiao Ranran had no cultivation now. No matter how many advanced Spell Arts she knew, she could not put them to use.

That left her with only the most basic Spell Arts: the Pure Spirit Art and the Life-Saving Art, which every novice Medicine Cultivator knew. With those, she slowly tended to the injuries inside the man's body.

Both arts could be used without cultivation, though their effects were slight. Still, a little was better than nothing. So she sat there, thinking about how to deal with the poison in his body while casting Spell Arts on him. Pure Spirit Art with her left hand, Life-Saving Art with her right. She kept both going at once.

Anyone who knew what they were looking at would have been stunned. Forming hand seals with one hand, casting two arts at once, and doing so with such accuracy and ease—none of it should have been possible for a young girl with no cultivation.

At this point in her previous life, Qiao Ranran certainly could not have done it. Now she could.

Forming hand seals came more naturally to her than eating or drinking. She could choke on food or splutter over water, but she would not make the slightest mistake with a hand seal.

Chapter 3: The Third Frame

When Pei Ling woke again, a warm mattress lay beneath him and a soft quilt covered him. A pale green bed curtain hung before his eyes. Everything was plain and simple, yet it held a peace he had lost long ago.

He had thought that when he opened his eyes again, he would find himself, as he had in his previous life, in that cave filled with Demon Beast corpses, still struggling at death's door. Sometimes he even suspected this was just another nightmare in the Abyss, and that each awakening would bring a deeper despair.

But he blinked, and the warmth around him remained. It carried a faint medicinal scent that clouded his mind. If not for the unmistakable pain of his wounds, he might have— Another Spell Art struck him. The pain eased a little, and his mind cleared.

The Pure Spirit Art and the Life-Saving Art. They were the most basic healing Spell Arts, cast at such a low level that he could not sense a trace of Spiritual Power.