The next morning, Jiang Fa was awakened by a series of shrill birdcalls.
He opened his eyes and checked the sky through the gaps in the canopy. The sun had just climbed above the eastern peaks, and a thin layer of morning mist hung among the trees.
He rolled his somewhat stiff shoulders, took a dry flatbread from his bundle, and hastily swallowed it with water from his waterskin.
Then he checked the previous night's gains once more.
Only after confirming that the Blood-Coagulating Grass's roots were still moist and that the boar tusks and hide were undamaged did he climb down from the tree and continue deeper into Black Wind Ridge.
By dusk on the third day, Jiang Fa's bundle held another four Iron-Backed Wolf pelts, along with two stalks of Blood-Coagulating Grass he had discovered by chance.
The sun sank westward, and the woods had grown so dim that he had to squint to make out the path underfoot.
Jiang Fa was about to find somewhere to spend the night when his steps suddenly halted.
Not far ahead, a figure covered in blood slumped beneath an old pine.
The figure sat half-reclined against the trunk, loose hair hiding most of his face.
His clothes were torn to shreds, and the claw marks across his chest ran deep enough to expose bone. The flesh curled outward, its edges already turning faintly black.
One leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, and the trouser leg below the knee was soaked through with blood.
His chest rose and fell faintly, his breathing shallow and rapid, as though he would not last much longer.
Jiang Fa stopped, his right hand instinctively settling on his saber's hilt.
He did not approach immediately. Instead, he stayed a dozen or so paces away, sweeping his gaze across the surrounding bushes and canopy. Only after confirming that there was no sign of anyone else did he slowly approach the pine.
When he was seven or eight paces away, the man seemed to notice something and slowly raised his head.
Beneath the blood and grime covering his face, Jiang Fa could barely make out a man in his thirties.
His lips were cracked and bleeding, his eyes sunken.
"Brother... brother..." he managed, his voice dry and hoarse. "I... ran into an Iron-Claw Savage Bear. My companions all died..."
He coughed twice, a trickle of bloody froth spilling from the corner of his mouth.
"Could you... save me..."
Jiang Fa ignored him.
He simply stood where he was, expressionless.
Seeing Jiang Fa remain unmoved, the man could only grit his teeth and say, "If you lend me a hand, brother, everything I've gained on this trip to Black Wind Ridge will be yours."
At those words, Jiang Fa's gaze swept over the man's wounded chest and twisted leg before settling on the bundle beside him.
"Do you mean that?"
"Every word," the man said earnestly. "Please lend me a little help, brother. I'd be endlessly grateful."
Jiang Fa hesitated, then nodded and slowly stepped forward, reaching out to help the man up.
But just as his hand was about to touch the man's shoulder,
something suddenly changed.
A dagger abruptly appeared in the severely wounded man's right hand, which he had kept hidden beneath his body all along.
An eerie blue sheen gleamed along the blade. It had clearly been coated in deadly poison.
The dagger shot toward Jiang Fa's heart with lightning speed.
He clearly intended to kill with a single strike.
Yet, unexpectedly, Jiang Fa, who had seemed completely unguarded all along, reacted the instant the man revealed his dagger.
He abruptly darted sideways, evading the blow.
At the same time, he swung his saber hard. The instant it left its sheath, it became a streak of cold light, cleaving straight toward the man's somewhat startled face.
Horrified, the man rolled violently aside. Before he could turn back around, he felt a chill through his body.
He lowered his head.
A saber had pierced clean through his chest, and blood poured endlessly from the wound.
Jiang Fa remained expressionless as the sensation of the blade biting into flesh traveled up the hilt to his hand.
He slowly withdrew the saber.
Without the saber holding him up, the man's screams cut off abruptly. His body twitched twice before collapsing limply to the ground.
His breathing ceased entirely.
Jiang Fa looked down at the corpse before him and said softly, "Wounded this badly, and you're still coveting someone else's belongings. Are you greedy or just stupid? Alive to take it, dead before you can spend it. Why go to such lengths?"
Jiang Fa's eyes were blank.
This was not the first time he had killed someone.
If you did not kill him, he would kill you. That was how the world worked.
He walked over to the bundle beside the man.
He untied it, finding only a few Azure-Templed Jackal pelts and several stalks of Blood-Coagulating Grass of passable quality.
He packed all of them into the bundle on his back.
Then he searched the man's corpse for a while.
Aside from a few pieces of silver and some copper coins, he found a sheet of mulberry-bark paper folded into a small square and hidden in the shaft of a boot.
He unfolded it and found a simple map of Black Wind Ridge's outskirts, with several spots circled in charcoal.
Beside them, small characters read "water source."
One of those spots
was the very pool where he had gathered Blood-Coagulating Grass.
The man's cultivation realm had been low, probably around Early Ming Jin. Clearly, he too had come to Black Wind Ridge to try his luck.
His luck had simply been poor. Judging by the wounds on his body, they had probably been inflicted by a savage beast.
Jiang Fa dragged the corpse into a mountain gully and casually scattered some soil over it, giving it a hasty burial.
Once all that was done, Jiang Fa climbed back up the old pine.
By the time he leaned against its trunk, the moon had risen above the eastern ridge. Cold, pale moonlight spilled through the gaps in the canopy and fell on his bloodstained clothes.
He closed his eyes and sank into his mind, and the panel silently appeared.
[Realm: Middle Stage of Ming Jin] [Cultivation arts: Mountain-Breaking Stance (Mid Yellow Grade) · Second Layer (308/500), Seven-Colored Glazed Glass Art (Heaven Rank, Upper Grade) · First Layer (342/1000)] [Martial arts: Mountain-Breaking Fist (Mid Yellow Grade) · Minor Achievement (417/500), Cloak Saber Technique (Mid Yellow Grade) · Entry (123/200)]
His Mountain-Breaking Fist proficiency had risen by ten points, his Cloak Saber Technique proficiency by fifteen, and his progress in the second layer of Mountain-Breaking Stance by five.
Leaning against the trunk, he took the mulberry-bark paper from inside his robe and studied it once more by moonlight.
The map drawn on the paper was crude, but the circled water sources were clearly marked.
He had visited two of them. One was that pool, and the other was a stream he had passed the day before.
The remaining three were all along the boundary between Black Wind Ridge's middle and outer regions.
These people specifically chose water sources to strike at, which meant martial artists who had just entered the mountains often appeared nearby.
In other words, these areas should still hold plenty of prey that others had yet to scour away.
The night lay deep.
Jiang Fa folded the map again and tucked it inside his robe. Closing his eyes, he pressed his back deep into the grooves of the pine's rough bark, letting his breathing gradually merge with the low whistle of the mountain wind brushing through the canopy.