Chapter 9 Weak Body
The rain curtain was thinning, and the silence at the deep mountain temple remained as it was when Xu Yuan and his companion had left; the pool of blood from the bodies at the entrance had already congealed.
Suddenly,
Two figures descended from the sky, landing on the patch of ground stained red by the blood from the bodies.
A man and a woman, both were clad in tight-fitting clothes, similar to the dozens of uniformly dressed corpses on the ground.
Black with red edges, the back of their robes embroidered with a golden pattern of a fierce dragon.
Black boots stepped into the blood that was nearing congealment, making a thick, liquid flowing sound.
The man had stubble on his face and carried a sword on his back. His flippant eyes surveyed the tragic scene, covered his nose, and gently shook his head,
"Tsk, tsk, tsk... how tragic. It seems that the person who took the Third Young Master is not simple."
The woman had a stern face, long hair down to her waist, tied into a high ponytail fluttering behind her, a slender waist, and her well-filled chest was wrapped in a form-fitting outfit. Her eyes swept over the bodies on the ground,
"Can you tell who did this?"
Strolling casually among the bodies, the man stared at the corpses around him, shook his head nonchalantly, and spoke with a bit of interest in his voice,
"How would you tell? They were all slashed with ordinary Sword Qi, no sword techniques were even used."
The woman's eyes slightly lowered as she surveyed the position of the bodies on the ground, whispered softly,
"They had formed an array."
The man nodded,
"I know... the cuts on these people are not deep, just enough to kill them, and it all happened in an instant."
An instant?
The woman frowned upon hearing this and looked at the man, "Can you do that?"
The man raised his hand to rub the back of his head, glanced at the woman with a somewhat amused expression, and said,
"So in your eyes, I'm that incapable?"
Pausing,
The man then shook his head gently and pointed to a corpse seated against the wall of the temple grounds near a dry well, squinting and smiling,
"But you're right, I indeed can't do that, at least not the way Zhou Yuan died."
As the words fell, the woman looked intently.
The corpse by the dry well was a middle-aged man with a beard. Through his clothes, one could vaguely make out his bulging and explosive muscles, but at the moment, both sleeves were empty, his forearms cleanly severed at the base, and the fatal wound was a fine sword mark at his throat.
How he died was clear at a glance.
A Sword Qi had shot out from the main entrance; the middle-aged man, the focal point of the array, had tried to block it with his hands, but the Sword Qi had penetrated his protective Qi, chopping off his arms and just precisely enough to slit his throat and kill him.
Not a bit of extra force was used.
"I could kill him with one sword strike, but I can't be as precise as this with a martial arts expert like Zhou Yuan."
With that, the man pretended to hold a sword, laughing and mimicking a couple of strikes in the air toward the corpse,
"If I made a move, his head would have come off directly."
After that,
The man let out a small sigh, glanced at the pitch-dark interior of the temple with a profound look in his eyes,
"And that Spiritual Buddha inside, I wouldn't be able to slash it with one strike without using 'Origin Qi'."
He then said, his eyes revealing a trace of seriousness,
"That person might be stronger than me."
The woman was silent.
The man then lazily rubbed his messy hair, heaved a sigh,
"The Eldest Son has already taken the initiative to rush from the Imperial Capital to Jingjiang City because of the Third Young Master's affair. Now, quite a few people have died in the city. Go back first and report to him. The person who made a move this time is very likely a Great Grandmaster."
The woman looked at the man and asked,
"What about you?"
The man raised his hand to his stubble-filled chin, grinning,
"Of course, I continue the pursuit. Even if it is a Great Grandmaster carrying the Third Young Master, he won't be able to run fast. I will leave marks for you on the way. Remember to hurry back and forth, otherwise, by the time you catch up, I might have turned into a corpse~"
Having said that,
The man patted the woman's shoulder and, without waiting for a response, leaped up, disappearing above the blood-stained clearing in front of the temple.
The woman stood silently in place for a long while, eventually turning into a fading shadow as she sped away in the opposite direction of the man's disappearance.
........
Two days later.
The curtain of rain had already ceased, and the sunlight broke through the clouds, casting a golden glow. A few rays of sunlight pierced through the treetops into the woods, suffused with the scent of fragrant grass and fresh soil.
"Ha... huff... ha.. ha..."
Xu Yuan leaned against a bystander, a towering tree, and struggled to utter two words from his mouth:
"Rest... rest."
The black-clothed woman walking ahead turned back to glance at Xu Yuan's pale, wan face, said nothing, and stopped to sit on the ground, beginning to close her eyes and recuperate.
Xu Yuan directly sat down on the ground, gasping for air with a sweaty forehead.
He had never imagined anyone's body could be so weak, let alone that it could be his own.
Even on flat ground, after walking just a few kilometers, his legs began to tremble uncontrollably, his steady breathing became rapid, and a searing sensation spread in his chest.
After a while, he could feel a dull pain starting in his lower back.
During these past two days, Xu Yuan sometimes truly felt that, if Ran Qingmo hadn't captured his original body this time, he might have died atop a woman within a few years.
It wasn't just the sexual desires that were disregarded; he hadn't bothered to exercise either.
And most fatal of all was the occasional craving that arose within this body, similar to a nicotine addiction but many times more intense.
This made Xu Yuan almost certain that the original Third Young Master was definitely on drugs.
Transcending time and space hadn't reset the body's issues to factory settings; instead, Xu Yuan, the unlucky soul, inherited them as they were.
And the multitude of infirmities due to the body's frailness had slowed their journey through the Wanxing Mountain Range's forest to a crawling pace.
During rest, Xu Yuan's breathing gradually steadied, and he looked toward the black-clothed woman sitting opposite, resting with her eyes closed.
The sunlight filtered through the treetops into the forest, casting speckles of light that brightened her fair skin.
Looking at her, Xu Yuan suddenly spoke:
"Ms. Ran, at our current pace, it might take another month to reach Tianmen Mountain."
"I know," Ran Qingmo replied, her eyes still closed, her voice indifferent.
Xu Yuan pondered briefly, then softly said, "If we take too long, we could be caught at any time."
"...." Ran Qingmo did not reply, but simply opened her eyes and quietly watched him.
Xu Yuan smiled awkwardly with a slight laugh.
Of course, he knew that all these delays were because of his body, but every time they stopped, he had insisted until he had reached his body's physiological limit, it was just that the limits were embarrassingly low.
After a pause, Xu Yuan, with some hesitation, softly suggested:
"So, could you... perhaps catch a Demonic Beast for me to ride? Um... as a means of transportation."
After contemplation, Xu Yuan still made the suggestion.
There was a risk, but it was small.
If there were any issues with the Demonic Beast, with Ran Qingmo's strength, she could certainly dispose of it before any trouble arose.
Ran Qingmo pondered for a moment, nodded slightly, took up her sword, and stood. After two seconds, she glanced sideways in one direction and instantly disappeared from sight.
In Xu Yuan's moment of astonishment, a thunderous tiger roar had already traveled from a kilometer away.
"Ao howl!!!!"
Then there was a dull thud.
"Boom!"
"Roar!!!!!!"
"Boom!"
"Ao woo..."
"Boom!"
"Woo...."