In the heaven-grade guest room.
Lin He sprawled shamelessly in a brocade-covered armchair and let out a long, satisfied burp.
Looking at the spacious, bright room before him, then at the soft bed big enough to roll around on, he practically wanted to cry.
"Now this is a life fit for a human being." Overcome with emotion, Lin He crossed his legs, making the armchair creak faintly beneath his weight.
Su Qiuran leaned back in her wheelchair, holding a cup of hot tea provided by the inn.
She took an unhurried sip and ruthlessly threw cold water on his delight. "Stop showing off. Count the days. Isn't today exactly the eighth day since you last tempered your body with the essence of the sun?"
Lin He's bobbing foot abruptly froze. He rubbed his chin and counted. It really was.
"Come on, Young Hero Lin. Strike while the iron's hot." Su Qiuran set down her cup and stared at him intently.
Lin He swallowed.
Whenever he remembered the inhuman torment of pure essence of the sun entering his body for the first time, as though he were being sliced apart piece by piece and put back together, his stomach cramped.
But in this fucking cultivation world, if he wasn't ruthless enough, he wouldn't even know how he died.
"All right! Let's do it!"
Gritting his teeth, Lin He stood, walked behind the screen, and sat cross-legged on the wooden couch.
He took a deep breath and carefully pulled the emerald-green Jade Gourd from inside his clothes.
Removing the stopper, he poured out a drop of golden essence of the sun, letting it fall directly onto the back of his hand.
Boom-
Almost the instant the golden liquid touched his skin, an utterly violent torrent of heat surged through the blood vessels in his arm into his internal organs like a wild horse breaking free of its reins.
Lin He's eyes flew wide, their whites instantly bloodshot, and an intensely suppressed growl escaped his throat.
Pain!
Indescribable pain!
His muscle fibers felt as though they were being torn apart inch by inch, then brutally kneaded back together.
His bones felt as though they had been tossed into a blacksmith's blazing furnace and hammered over and over.
He curled up like a shrimp on the wooden couch, huge beads of cold sweat mixed with grayish-black grime pouring madly from his pores.
But he clenched his teeth and stubbornly refused to scream, afraid of bringing the inn's waiter running.
Outside the screen, Su Qiuran gripped her armrests nervously, her knuckles whitening slightly as she fixed her gaze on the contorted silhouette cast upon the screen.
The inhuman torment lasted a full incense stick's worth of time.
As the heat gradually subsided, Lin He lay sprawled on the couch, looking as though he had just been hauled out of the water, gulping down breath after breath.
"You're not dead, are you?" Su Qiuran's voice came from outside, carrying a barely perceptible tremor.
"Still... still breathing..." Lin He barely managed to roll over and look down at himself.
He was sticky and foul-smelling, covered in a layer of grayish-black impurities.
Yet in stark contrast to his disgusting appearance, he felt as though a prehistoric beast lay dormant within him. Simply clenching a fist filled his joints with explosive strength that made his scalp prickle.
He hurriedly jumped into the bathing tub already prepared in the room and scrubbed himself clean at top speed.
When he emerged in clean clothes, Lin He felt light enough to float.
"How do you feel?" Su Qiuran looked him up and down, raising her eyebrows slightly.
Although Lin He still looked lean and slender, his skin now had a faint tautness to it.
Without speaking, Lin He turned, walked to the table, and drew the short-handled woodcutting cleaver.
"What are you doing? Hurting yourself?" Su Qiuran jumped in alarm.
"An experiment." Lin He took a deep breath, raised the cleaver, aimed its edge at his left arm, and slashed down hard.
"Holy fuck!" Su Qiuran nearly sprang out of her wheelchair.
Yet the anticipated spray of blood never appeared.
Lin He moved the cleaver aside and looked closely. There wasn't even a white mark on his arm, let alone a wound!
"What the fuck..." Even Lin He sucked in a sharp breath.
Disbelieving, he put down the cleaver, pulled a fine-steel wolf-fang arrow from his quiver, and stabbed his arm with all his strength.
Clang-
The arrowhead bounced away as though it had struck an iron plate, while Lin He's arm remained as smooth and unblemished as before.
"Impervious to blades and spears?!" Su Qiuran sucked in a sharp breath, her peach-blossom eyes filled with shock.
"I really have become an iron turtle..." Rubbing his completely unharmed arm, Lin He couldn't help grinning like a two-hundred-pound idiot.
"Now I've got something to back me up! With this body, I could crush ten of that bushy-bearded bastard to death with my bare hands!"
"Ahem! Keep a low profile, a low profile!" Su Qiuran took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.
"Mortal weapons can't hurt you, but those are mortal weapons. Don't forget, this is the cultivation world! With your current strength, where exactly do you stand compared to those Qi Refinement Realm cultivators?"
Those words were like a basin of cold water dumped over Lin He's head.
He thought back to Lin Fu, the potbellied steward of the Lin Household.
Lin Fu was at the Qi Refinement third layer and could use the Light Body Technique. Supposedly, he knew a few other techniques too.
His strength was monstrous now, his reactions incredibly fast, and blades and spears couldn't hurt him. But what about cultivators' fireballs and ice spikes? Could he withstand those?
"I don't know." Lin He shook his head, his expression turning grave. "We know nothing about cultivators' actual combat abilities. Until we figure out how people fight in this cultivation world, we still need to lie low."
"At least your head's still clear." Su Qiuran nodded in satisfaction.
Lin He glanced at the sky outside the window. The setting sun was nearly below the horizon.
"All right, stay here in this heaven-grade room. Lock the door from inside, and don't open it no matter who knocks."
"I need to go back to Emerald Mountain Village, return the cart I borrowed from the village chief, and take Old Man Sun his share of the spirit stones while I'm at it. I can't leave something I promised someone undone overnight."
"All right. Be careful yourself. If you run into trouble and can't win, run. With your stamina, you can definitely outrun them," Su Qiuran reminded him.
Lin He waved and turned to leave.
After heading downstairs and greeting the inn's waiter, Lin He took hold of the battered wooden cart parked in the backyard and raced toward Emerald Mountain Village with long strides.
After the second body tempering, his stamina had reached an utterly inconceivable level.
As he pulled the cart, wind howled past his ears and the trees on either side flew backward, yet Lin He wasn't even breathing hard.
In less than an hour, he was back in Emerald Mountain Village.
He first returned the cart to the village chief's home and slipped him twenty copper coins as thanks, making the chief's wrinkled face bunch up like a chrysanthemum with his smile.
Then Lin He hurried straight to Old Man Sun's shabby thatched hut without stopping.
"Elder Sun, have you gone to bed?" Lin He knocked on the door.
The courtyard gate creaked open. Old Man Sun had a tattered padded jacket draped over his shoulders and still held his rusty tobacco pipe.
Seeing Lin He, his cloudy eyes brightened slightly. He hurriedly pulled him inside, poked his head out to check beyond the gate, then carefully closed it.
"Young Lin, why are you back at this hour? Where's your wife?" Old Man Sun asked in a hushed voice.
"She's settled in an inn in town, perfectly safe." Lin He smiled, took the faintly glowing low-grade spirit stone from inside his clothes, and pressed it into Old Man Sun's callused hand. "Elder, as promised. Your share."
Old Man Sun clutched the spirit stone, his hand trembling uncontrollably.
His lips quivered, and his eyes reddened. "We... we've already earned it? Young Lin, this old man has really basked in your reflected glory!"
"Those are the rules of the trade. We all know how much each person contributed. You earned this spirit stone." Lin He waved a hand.
"By the way, how were things in the mountains today? No fallout from that bushy-bearded fellow's business, right?"
At those words, the excitement quickly drained from Old Man Sun's face, and his brows furrowed deeply.
He took two hard pulls on his pipe and said gravely, "Nothing's happened over that bushy-bearded fellow. A person or two dying in the mountains is perfectly normal. But Young Lin, things were very wrong today."
"How so?"
"Starting midway through the afternoon, people from town, the neighboring villages, and even outsiders from far away came pouring onto our Green Mountain like mad. All those rundown houses in our village that usually stand empty are packed with people staying the night."
Old Man Sun lowered his voice, a trace of anxiety in his tone. "They're all here for those Fanged Spotted Rabbits! From the looks of it, they practically mean to turn Green Mountain upside down!"
Lin He's heart sank. The Li Household's bounty had a far greater pull than he had imagined.
"Young Lin, take my advice. If you want to earn a few more rounds of money, you'll have to head into the mountains first thing tomorrow!" Old Man Sun's gaze burned. "Another two or three days at most, and I'm afraid these people will catch every last Fanged Rabbit on Green Mountain, leaving none to carry on the line!"