Fiery Embers on a Cold Day
Ling Yun had never liked the cold particularly.
The nights that followed were a tremendous trouble to deal with even for him.
On his wanderings in the various cities of the Kingdom of Zhao a ubiquitous sight that he could see in such nights was the commoners huddling before rag-tag fires in a bid to receive some desperate warmth.
Their minds never seemed to have the possibility that with all that people , so close to the flames a great fire was all but waiting to happen.
He had tested that once by tossing some drops of oil as he passed one such 'huddle'
The inferno that followed burned half of the city down.
Next day , the people were back once more salvaging embers from the ground to light up a fire once more.
They never learn now , do they ?
The sight of a familiar door ended his reminiscence.
He promptly proceeded to open it and enter inside.
Ling Yun who had by now managed to reach the secure confines of his room settled down his bags and took a deep breath before seating himself on the floor.
He carefully pulled out the various spoils that he had collected these included various pills and the symbol talismans which could prove to be helpful in his assessment later on.
He carefully set aside the talismans , he wasn't willing to experiment before he had gained some knowledge regarding them .
Unfortunately Meng Yun had just been too poor and inexperienced to have ever used a symbol talisman before , which meant that apart from recognising one he literally knew next to nothing about any of them.
Which means that he would need to take a trip to the market again.
Regarding the pills he wasn't exactly sure .
According to Meng Yun's memories after ingesting them , all one had to do was carefully circulate their qi to ensure that the medicine disperses throughout the body allowing for greater absorption and speedy effect.
But he wasn't willing to do it at once. For one thing after his 'last experiment' had ended up in such a disastrous manner he couldn't help but hesitate before trying this.
However he knew that without the usage of external means bringing his cultivation to the requisite level so soon was pretty much impossible.
He sighed . His dilemma was showing no chance at resolving itself at all.
He looked at the large pile of low level pills neatly arranged in front . A large fraction of this had come from exchanging the Mid grade pill that he had been 'gifted' earlier by that Fang clan's old man earlier.
As a policy he preferred to not accept any gifts from strangers even if he was forced to do so not using them was certainly an obvious conclusion especially when he had been gifted so exorbitantly right out of the blue.
That reminded him that there was another pressing problem affecting him right now.
That old man had used his qi to create a 'seal' on his neck that supposedly forced his obedience . He had tried to dislodge it earlier with the help of his qi but try as it might it didn't work with the foreign qi still remaining inside his neck.
Based on what he figured out the qi should be almost certainly be able to be dislodged by a higher rank qi . Still what was surprising was the fact that that old man who was certainly capable would use a redundant means such as this.
From what he could figure out although he was strong , he was still in the Refining Qi state and therefore wasn't he worried that if he , Ling yun managed to gain entry into one of the five sects after steady cultivation he would be dislodge the seal on his own ?
Which meant that he had already had some hidden means planned.
A dagger in the dark.
Most likely then it was in the Pill Bottle . The true 'seal' therefore must be on the pills which was why he had discarded them earlier.
It would be interesting to see what would happen as a consequence.
But meanwhile he had to take a much more pressing decision .
He gritted his teeth weighing the pros and cons ,one last time.
Eventually he figured out that even if he would end up being poisoned he would still have to drink the liquor in front of him.
What was the point of fearing death when one had already died ?
At worst , he would end up in that empty void once again.
He gulped down , gathering his confidence before taking a pill bottle and emptying all of the pills into his mouth in one go.
Unfortunately nobody had taught him or the previous Meng Yun regarding the proper way of ingesting pills.
These weren't candies !
Ingesting too much at a go could cause a great deal of problems and in worst case cause the phenomenon of 'Qi Deviation' which was when all of the qi in the body rioted and acted in a berserk manner causing irreparable damage to the body as a result.
Too late.
Ling Yun barely felt the bitter taste of the pills before an insuppressible heat welled up from all of the pores in his body.
He gritted his teeth and bit back on his tongue as he did his best to hold back the pain that was devastating his body right now.
It felt as if a raging wave of heat was rampaging across his meridians that trampled everything on its path , blood , muscle , organ , viscera even bone was torn apart under the tremendous momentum .
It was as if nothing could stand against it being like a wrathful typhoon laying waste to everything in its path.
"Aaaarghhh! " , in the end he couldn't suppress the pain any more and it slowly surged outside into the world through the means of a howl showcasing extreme agony .
The pain didn't last for much long as he began to feel more and more numb , had his nerves been destroyed as well in the relentless onslaught ?
Ling Yun neither knew or cared anymore .
By this time he had been reduced to a mere shell of a man , his gleaming eyes and crimson red skin being the only signs that he was living and not a corpse.
But for how long would that last ?
He wasn't too sure.
Just as he felt his remaining senses sinking into the darkness
"Ba-Bump !"
A mysterious thumping rang out in his heart sending a strange sensation surging right through him like ripples on the surface of a pond it rang throughout his body right down to his feet.
The raging wave of heat as if it had got a signal began to stop destroying aimlessly and instead started to drift along in a fixed direction.
Suddenly as if it had seen its prey the wave surged along upwards and slowly impacted a certain unaffected region in his neck .
'Boom !'.
It was as if an explosion rang in the depths of Ling's Yun body .
Ling Yun woke up with a start.
Words couldn't describe the astonishment and surprise he felt.
Clearly something had happened earlier otherwise he could have recovered from such a perilous situation earlier.
He tried running his qi.
"Ba-Bump!"
His heart thumped in response before sending waves of qi surging through his body.
When he tried to estimate the amount of qi he was shocked to find out that not only had he had managed to somehow promote to the Third Level of Refining Qi but had in fact managed to promote to the peak of that level !
What exactly had happened here ?
Meanwhile inside a bustling hall located in the sprawling complex belonging to the Fang Clan an old man winced for an instant
"The brat somehow managed to escape from my seal ! " , he muttered to himself , 'It seems that there really is an expert behind him .Even so it doesn't matter at all."
"After all the true 'dagger' is the Contract Gu I hid in the pill I gave him ."
"Even if he is a direct disciple of an Immortal Foundation expert there is no hope ."
His face curled into a devilish facsimile of a smile.
"Still since when did an expert of such calibre start messing around with mortal Martial arts ? Surely , I would have heard of it ."
He went into deep thought.
"Lao Jiang ! Why are you spacing out for ? Give your opinions on today's incident .Do you think that it was a threat officially sent from the State of Yue ?"
The old man woke up from his reverie with a start.
"Oh Yes , you see what I believe is that ....."
Even as Fang Xingchen walked down the hallway he could hear the whispers in the corner as the servants rattled out to each other.
Some of them after having seen the 'supernatural ' event had already started praying to their Gods whoever they were.
Such fools even after living among cultivators for so long they still believed in such stupid notions.
But it was good that they were so foolish , it made using them all the more easier.
Still what happened today had come as a shock even for him , after all it wasn't any day that you could see the mystical arts of a legendary expert at the Nascent Condensation stage .
Whether that action was the result of just another eccentric throwing his weight around or had a far deeper meaning wasn't his concern .
The five sects were for deciphering that , precisely.
But if the situation got any worse he honestly would have to reevaluate his plans .
Still he wasn't here for that reason.
A far more interesting matter had occurred.
A message in the dead of the night had only confirmed his suspicion that he had felt during the day.
He stared at his quarry who was leaning across a balcony peering into the gardens below.
His brow furrowed. His arrival was all too apparent. Yet he was ignored so rudely ?
"Out with it . I got your letter. I don't know what your true purpose is . Convince me why I shouldn't report you to the elders right now.''
The person turned his head revealing the smiling face of a very familiar person.
Not so familiar now.
Fang Guichen smiled at him and said , " Do you know the difference of a tamed dog and wild dog ?"
Fang Xingchen rolled his eyes in response and decide to humour him , "I'm sure that you would tell me ."
The other person reached out and pulled out a token the sight of which blanched Fang Xingchen's face.
"A tamed dog is cared for by its master and obtains all that it could ever want as for a wild one it just gets killed for its disobedience."
Sweat dripped down Fang Xingchen's brow like beads tied to a string.
"Come on ! Bark for me ! Woof ! Woof !"
Ling Yun who had by then reached his peak state set off for the market .
There were hardly any people to be found that day most being already secure in the shelter of their homes.
The ground was piled to the inch with the black snow and the amount only increased rather than decrease as snow descended gently into the earth from the vast heavens high above.
The skies were closed , they being shrouded with deep black clouds darkening the land below.
Luckily there was sufficient illumination to allow him to go about his activities.
He hadn't stopped to wonder about the bizarre weather since for all he knew that in the world of cultivators , it could be that it rained snow in the middle of the summer .
Who knows ?
In a world where almost all of the common sense that he had accumulated in his long years could get turned on its head the only invariant that he believed in was the nature of people.
Many huddle before the fires in a cold winter's day seeking warmth from the fiery embers most just end up getting burnt .
The only ones who did not were those owned fires , all for their own use.
Apart from collecting knowledge regarding symbols , he also needed to figure out what exactly happened when he ingested the pills earlier.
If something like that happened later he couldn't guarantee if he could escape like how he did it before.
On the way he could see some activity in the deserted city square .
They were already people putting up stalls and pavilions from what he could gleam since in usual situations setting up of a structure of any kind was prohibited there this meant this was an 'unusual' situation.
Whether it was to deal with the sudden peculiar weather or the oncoming entrance examination he wasn't sure .
Perhaps it was to deal with the both.
Besides calculating the time the five sects the Azure Cloud Sect , the Spirit Beast Pavilion , the Clear Wind Sect , the Sky Sword sect and the Nine Cauldrons sect should begin their outer sect entrance examinations any time now.
That was fine by him.
He would have a look-in on his way back.
For now there were far more pressing matters to deal with .
He brushed off the excess snow that had once more piled up on his robes and went on his way without turning back.
The snow that he had dislodged on the already huge pile lying on the ground.
Though the pile of snow due to its hue seemed far more like a pile of coal or ash.
Akin to the last remaining embers from a spluttering fire on a cold day.