In the underground stone chamber, the aftermath of the explosion gradually subsided. The air was thick with the acrid stink of burning and potent fire poison.
Mu Li coughed violently, waving away the smoke and dust before him.
Several large holes had been burned through his brocade robe, and his Dou Qi Gauze Robe was riddled with cracks. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
He could only stare fixedly at the enormous breach blasted through the rock wall and the unfathomably deep underground river beyond it.
"Commander!"
The deputy commander ran down the secret passage with several guards. The sight of the devastated stone chamber left their legs weak with fear.
"He escaped."
Mu Li's voice was icy. He walked to the edge of the breach and looked down at the rushing underground river, veins bulging on the back of the hand gripping his broadsword.
He turned and walked back into the stone chamber, his gaze sweeping over the empty rosewood chest and the shriveled corpse of the Crimson Flame Lizard inside its iron cage.
"My Fire Spirit Marrow is gone!
My treasury is gone too!"
Mu Li roared,
"Find out who he is!"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Deputy Commander Mu She scrambled to his feet.
"Wait!"
Mu Li suddenly spoke. He walked over to the Crimson Flame Lizard's corpse, crouched down, and carefully examined its wounds.
"The spot between its brows was crushed from within by some kind of gravity Dou Technique, yet its only external injuries came from the exploding ore vein.
The mechanism at the entrance to the secret passage was disabled from outside. The technique was extremely practiced."
Mu Li stood, a sinister gleam flickering in his eyes.
"This was no ordinary petty thief. He could use a gravity Dou Technique and even bypass my mechanisms?"
"Since when did Qingshan Town... have someone like this?"
He walked to a corner of the chamber and picked up a fragment blasted from the rock wall. An extremely faint trace of a cold, sinister presence lingered on it.
"A cold, sinister attribute?"
Mu Li narrowed his eyes.
"Somewhat similar to the poison Qi on Zhao Tu."
"Commander, you mean...?"
The deputy commander asked cautiously.
"Zhao Tu is dead."
Mu Li said coldly,
"He was still keeping watch in town this evening, but now he's disappeared."
"This is probably the person who killed Zhao Tu. Go investigate everyone who entered or left Qingshan Town between this evening and late tonight, especially mercenaries and independent cultivators connected to cold, sinister-attribute Dou Techniques."
Mu Li slammed his broadsword against the ground.
"Also, send people to Wutan City to ask whether any new experts have appeared recently."
"Yes!"
"And another thing." Mu Li looked toward the underground river. "Send people downstream along the underground river to search. He's badly wounded. He couldn't have gone far.
Find him! Dead or alive!"
"Yes!"
The deputy commander hurried away with the guards.
Mu Li stood alone in the devastated stone chamber, the hand gripping his broadsword trembling slightly.
The Fire Spirit Marrow was the key to his breakthrough to Eight-Star Great Dou Master.
Now that petty thief had stolen it, and even the ore vein was gone. This might even draw the attention of others with ill intentions.
"Whoever you are,"
Mu Li's voice echoed through the empty stone chamber,
"I'll tear you into ten thousand pieces!"
The underground river.
An unnamed cavern.
With a splash, Lu Ze broke through the water's surface.
He gulped down ragged breaths. The burns on his back throbbed with heart-piercing pain after soaking in the river.
The dazzling sunlight made him instinctively close his eyes. Icy river water poured down through a fissure in the rocks overhead.
It struck his shoulders with a muffled roar. He was directly beneath a waterfall.
The waterfall was not high, only thirty or forty feet, and its flow was modest, screened by dense vines on either side.
Damp moss covered the ground around the pool, and the air was thick with a rank smell of rotting leaves mingled with earth.
The muscles in his left arm had torn from forcibly using Suction Palm and Great Curving Pointing Finger, leaving it completely numb.
The Dou Qi within him was utterly exhausted. He could not squeeze out even a thread.
But he had survived. As long as he lived, there was hope.
Lu Ze lay on a rock, looking at the faintly glowing fluorescent moss on the cavern ceiling.
His chest heaved violently, and at last, the long-delayed notifications sounded in his mind.
[Absorbed residual blood and Qi from a rank-two fire-attribute magical beast. Absorbed earth-vein fire-attribute essence.] [Deduction Points +20. Current Deduction Points: 32]
He gripped the moss-covered rock wall with one hand, trying to push himself up onto the bank.
The instant he exerted his left arm, knife-twisting pain shot through its torn muscle fibers, and the entire arm spasmed uncontrollably.
He grunted, his chin striking the rock hard enough to split it open.
He could only use his right hand. Gritting his teeth, he pulled with that one arm, dragging himself ashore inch by inch like a stranded fish.
The burns on his back scraped against the rough rock. Blisters burst one after another, and tissue fluid mixed with blood seeped out, staining the moss beneath him dark red.
He dragged himself into a vine-screened crevice beside the bank. It was shallow, but it could shelter him from the cold wind.
He stripped off his scorched, blood-soaked blue-green combat clothes and wrung them out hard.
Icy river water dripped from the hem, carrying away what little warmth remained in his body.
He wrapped the wet clothes around himself again to keep rapid evaporation from stealing his body heat.
Then he took a spare refined-steel dagger from his Storage Ring.
He had no fire striker to start a fire, and deep in the Magical Beast Mountain Range, even a wisp of smoke would attract magical beasts from ten li around.
Lu Ze pressed the dagger's edge against the rock wall, channeling the last thread of Dou Qi in his body through its hilt.
As the Dou Qi rubbed against the rock, a dull red glow gradually appeared.
Reversing his grip, he gently pressed the red-hot dagger against one of the worst burns on his back.
Hiss!
The stench of scorched flesh instantly spread.
Lu Ze's body went rigid. Veins bulged on his forehead as he clawed fiercely at the rock beneath him.
His fingernails split, oozing blood.
He bit his lower lip until he tasted blood, refusing to let himself make a sound.
The heat seared the dead tissue and sealed the bleeding wound.
By the time he had treated the most life-threatening burns, he was drenched in cold sweat.
But this was only the beginning. The real threat was the fire poison running out of control inside him.
When he detonated the Crimson Flame Crystal Copper Ore Mother, he had been too close to the center of the explosion.
Although the cold underground river water had extinguished the flames, the rank-two fire poison, mixed with earth-vein fire Qi, had still invaded his internal organs.
Now his dantian felt like an iron pot roasting over a fire. Any newly recovered thread of Dou Qi burned into nothingness before it could complete even half a circuit.
Stabbing pain pulsed through his meridians, as though countless red-hot needles were roaming through his blood vessels.
Lu Ze closed his eyes and forcibly suppressed the tickle in his throat.
He reached for his Storage Ring and found the stalks of Coldwater Grass he had picked beside the pool earlier.
This plant grew beside frozen water and was extremely cold in nature, its sap like ice.
He laid the Coldwater Grass leaves on a rock and crushed them little by little with the back of his dagger, squeezing out deep-blue sap.
Then he smeared the sap around the freshly cauterized wounds on his back and over several major acupoints on his chest and dantian.
The frigid sap seeped through his skin and collided violently with the fire poison inside him. Ice and fire clashed within his body.
Lu Ze clenched his teeth and formed the hand seal of "reaching the Three Gorges, a beggar's question," using the properties of the immortal art to forcibly draw the Coldwater Grass's frigid Qi and the fire poison inside him into collision.
Every fusion brought the agony of his veins being torn apart and reassembled.
From time to time, he had to open his Storage Ring and take pills to replenish his Dou Qi.
He repeated this over and over.
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