"Repay me? Naturally!" The voice laughed. "Otherwise, how could this old man possibly have reached out to save you when we were strangers? Open your mouth!"
"What?" Xiao Hua froze, suspecting he had misheard. But just as he opened his mouth to ask, the cultivator's pressure descended again, pinning Xiao Hua so completely that he could not move. A jade-green shadow flashed past, and a thumb-sized pill was tossed into Xiao Hua's mouth. The moment it entered, it dissolved into a stream of sweet medicinal liquid that flowed into his body. Yet what happened next left Xiao Hua utterly baffled. Like the Qingyi Pills and other medicines he had taken before, the liquid transformed into medicinal power and entered his meridians. But unlike the Qingyi Pill's medicinal power, this pill's power swiftly circulated through Xiao Hua's meridians once, then became a thin film that clung to them!
At that moment, the cultivator's pressure withdrew like a length of silk, and Xiao Hua's entire body returned to normal!
After inspecting himself briefly and finding nothing else amiss, Xiao Hua asked uneasily, "S-Senior, is this... this pill potent poison?"
"Hmph, who do you take this old man for? How could I force you to swallow poison?" As he spoke, the middle-aged cultivator emerged from the foothills.
"Oh!" Xiao Hua was startled when he saw the cultivator's appearance. The man was far from the composed figure Xiao Hua had seen earlier. His face was waxy yellow and utterly wan, while his robe was tattered, even stained with blood!
"Senior, you..." Xiao Hua finally understood why this cultivator had not come out to face Cai Hongfeng directly earlier.
"What happened to me is none of your concern!" The cultivator rolled his eyes. "You should worry about yourself first!"
Xiao Hua gave a bitter smile,