Supreme Purity True Technique

"You certainly slept soundly last night!"

Outside the Nine-Foot Daoist Temple, Li Jiao's voice carried a note of resentment.

Zhang Xuezhou pursed his lips, unsure how to explain himself for a moment.

It had been time for him to get up, and he certainly hadn't been in the dream.

The agonized wails of the two deputy generals, Zhao Mu and Zhou Cang, couldn't affect him. No matter how miserably they cried, they had no effect on him whatsoever.

Zhang Xuezhou couldn't be bothered to explain why he had gotten up, and he couldn't have made it clear to Li Jiao anyway.

"Want some porridge?"

Zhang Xuezhou rubbed his hands together.

Several more people had joined them at the Nine-Foot Daoist Temple, and its food stores weren't exactly abundant.

But Zhang Xuezhou had no plans to stay long at the Nine-Foot Daoist Temple. If Zhang Zhong and Lady Yourong came up the mountain tomorrow, he would leave the temple then.

For now, he was doing his best to use everything up, eating as much as he could.

He would also drag Li Jiao and the others into it, constantly inviting everyone to eat and drink so they could share the responsibility.

If Zou Bugui came running back, he probably wouldn't be able to take his anger out on so many people.

Thinking of how Zou Bugui had been frightened into obedience by the Ten Yin Holy Son's name, Zhang Xuezhou knew it was hard to say whether Zou Bugui bullied the weak, but he was certainly afraid of the strong.

As it happened, the Flying Feather Army had a formidable name.

Having thought it through, he deftly put millet in a large pot and tossed in plenty of dried meat. He fed a handful of dry firewood into the earthen stove, and red flames immediately bloomed.

"Do you have anything here besides porridge?" Li Jiao asked. "I mean, does your master have some secret hiding place, or did he leave behind a couple of pills?"

Watching two powerful deputy generals turn from strapping men into frail, consumptive figures overnight, Li Jiao felt terrible at the sight of their lives slipping away.

By now, Li Jiao no longer hoped to obtain detoxification pills outright. He only hoped to find two ordinary healing pills; if they could hold the poison wounds in check for a while, every moment would count.

"There should only be porridge. Want some?"

He looked hopefully at Zhang Xuezhou, but Zhang Xuezhou's response made Li Jiao's heart sink.

Zhang Xuezhou hadn't stopped Li Jiao from searching around. The temple was only so big, and Li Jiao had already searched it inside and out.

He wondered if there was some secret place where valuable things were kept, but Zhang Xuezhou's response confirmed that this really was an empty temple, unlikely to contain anything of value.

"No porridge, no porridge! I don't want any damn porridge!"

In the temple's main hall, Zhao Mu raised his head slightly, his blackened face full of distaste for porridge.

Beside him, the meat porridge he had been fed earlier lay vomited all over the floor. Even the porridge had turned somewhat black and foul-smelling.

Zhou Cang was nearby, looking just as miserable, but he nodded.

Zhang Xuezhou's false identity carried considerable weight. Zou Bugui's student could be weak, but he at least understood medicine, and a doctor had to be obeyed.

Even if they ate and vomited, then vomited and ate again, they still had to stuff food into their stomachs.

That night, they had eaten more meat porridge in succession than ever before in their lives, and vomited up more than ever before as well.

Of course, the golden toad poison remained.

Perhaps because they had swallowed and vomited so many times, their conditions now showed signs of worsening.

Zhou Cang felt the only benefit of drinking more meat porridge was that they would become ghosts with full bellies, rather than go hungry before they departed.

But they still had to listen to Zou Bugui's student.

What if...

All their resistance was no match for those two words: "What if?"

The hope was slim, but compared with certain death, struggling before the end was better than not struggling at all.

He asked for a serving of porridge. When Zhang Xuezhou had finished cooking it and handed it over, he ignored how scalding it was and poured it straight down his throat.

"I'll have some too!"

Zhao Mu glanced at Zhou Cang, his weary eyes twitching slightly, and then asked for a serving as well.

"As long as you want it, we've got all the porridge you can drink!"

After delivering the porridge, Zhang Xuezhou eagerly set about dragging the others into it too, calling for everyone to eat and drink together.

He gulped down the meat porridge, thinking how wonderful it was to have this group of people around.

Once he left tomorrow, there would be people here to take the blame for all these things, and it would be difficult to trace them back to him.

Besides, Zhang Xuezhou and Zou Bugui had only looked into each other's eyes through a crack in the door. In the future, they would surely go their separate ways down the wide road, passing each other without recognizing one another.

Zhang Xuezhou took a deep breath. Feeling the seedling in his body growing ever stronger, he felt that the Yao Qi within him was becoming weaker and weaker.

The power of the venomous python meat that had helped him strive for Realm Entry had already waned. The seedling formed from the white seed was even drawing it out continuously, and the remaining traces had nearly vanished.

Zhang Xuezhou gave no thought to what he would do after Realm Entry.

Although he knew how to do nothing, Zhang Xuezhou was bursting with confidence.

Compared with his state in Zhang Household Village, he was now an important figure who had achieved Realm Entry, with a source of Law Power for casting Techniques growing inside him.

That was completely different from before.

And he no longer had to fear ordinary mosquitoes, insects, rats, or ants. The emanations from his body alone could drive those little creatures away.

"Ugh!"

Zhou Cang's repeated vomiting interrupted Zhang Xuezhou's train of thought.

A mouthful of black blood sprayed out along with the meat porridge, and the stench of decay instantly filled the temple's main hall. Zhou Cang visibly deteriorated at a rapid pace. His flesh turned bluish, and countless capillaries on his chest rapidly turned gold as he breathed out, then swiftly turned gray.

"See you in the next life!"

Zhou Cang's eyes widened, then gradually lost their focus. He murmured those words, and his head drooped.

But only a few seconds later, someone grabbed his head and lifted it again.

A stream of gentle blue Law Power turned into rain and dew and flowed into his body, forcibly propping him up.

Zhou Cang felt as though his ruined body had been pumped full of chicken blood, and he gained a little strength in an instant.

"My lord, there's no need to waste your Law Power on us!"

He looked back at Li Jiao, who was casting a Technique behind him without a word, knowing full well that this state would last only a short while.

Distant water couldn't quench an immediate thirst. Li Jiao's Supreme Purity True Technique couldn't save his life.

A flood of water could keep him standing for a time, but without the Supreme Purity True Technique, his body would deteriorate again, eventually returning to its present state before he died in agony.

Rather than having death delayed again and again, Zhou Cang felt that if he couldn't be saved, a quick death might be a blessing.

As he sat there in a daze, he heard a soft, rustling voice asking a question beside Li Jiao.

"Amazing! That Technique is wonderful. Can it be taught to outsiders?"

The rules governing Techniques were extremely strict. Every school and sect had its own rules, and they did not spread them indiscriminately.

Even though the Supreme Purity True Technique was a high-level Technique Method listed publicly by the Northern Border Military Region, and anyone with enough military merit could cultivate it, it was not something that could easily be passed on to outsiders.

Passing it on rashly would inevitably bring punishment under military law.

Zhang Xuezhou's request to learn the Technique as soon as he saw it was plainly reckless. It wasn't something a normal person would ask.

For comparison, it was probably akin to Zhang Xuezhou saying to a rich person in real life, "Your money is really nice. Can you give me some to use?"

"As long as you can find a way to treat Zhao Mu and Zhou Cang, what harm is there in teaching you the Supreme Purity True Technique?"

Li Jiao replied calmly.

His answer made Zhou Cang anxious, but after only a brief moment, Zhou Cang quieted down again.

Zou Bugui's student seemed to have a way to treat them after all, and had gone on to discuss it further with Li Jiao.