CHAPTER 3
“Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Gao Xing opened his eyes, only to feel blinded by the morning light.
“This is your fault,” Gao Xing groaned, sitting up and rubbing his face. Qi surged through newfound, sensitive meridians, and boiled in his dantian. His skin felt like it was on fire. His body burned with the qi coursing through it.
When was it that he fell unconscious?
The shuffling of feet alerted Gao Xing faster than anything else could. He wasn’t, in fact, speaking to the spirit.
His bleary eyes cleared in a blink, and he found himself face to face with a young man, who looked like a deer caught in headlights.
In a second, Gao Xing was to his feet and backpedalling. It took the other a moment to realize he had moved.
“Whoa now, wait a second, you’re still inj-”
Gao Xing snapped. “What did you do?!”
It took only a moment of self-examination to find the extremely obvious dart. For all that it was crudely made, it had still easily punctured his chest and stuck itself there. He squinted. It caused barely a pinprick of pain.
Gao Xing pulled it out without too much consideration. It was clearly poisoned - even its sharpened wooden tip was somewhat rotted. He couldn’t see the wound, the tip too slight to create a sufficient opening in even his dirty robes.
“The poison is mortal rank trash.”
Gao Xing nodded and calmed down. As the term inferred, a mortal rank poison was potent against mortals. It didn’t have the mystical properties to defeat a cultivator’s qi.
In fact, he had never felt better.
“Tsk. It’s nothing special,” the young man, no longer pretending, smirked. He didn’t seem very bothered that Gao Xing was still standing. “Boys, come on out.”
The ravine was simple, and only had two directions. Gao Xing could go forward, or he could go back. Before he could do anything, however, two dangerous-looking men moved out of hiding behind the young man.
Gao Xing turned and saw two more blocking the path behind.
Perfect.
“Empty your pockets and we might let you go. Good deal, right?”
“Yanluo Wang,” Gao Xing whispered, “do you have any techniques I can use?”
A few seconds passed wherein the bandits steadily lost their patience.
“Senior Yanluo?”
“You’re too weak for any of my techniques.”
It didn’t matter, but it’d been worth trying.
Gao Xing settled into a basic martial arts stance and eyed the young man with dismissal. He hadn’t been the prince of the Gao family for nothing, anyway. While cultivation is unavailable until of age, he couldn’t have avoided practicing martial arts even if he wanted to.
He breathed calmly; in, and out. He sensed the flow of qi through his meridians and was even startled by its responsiveness. His energies eagerly jumped to his limbs and his muscles eagerly gobbled it all up. It flowed through his limbs with his breathing, alien sensation sprouting from his extremities.
Even while bound by strange feelings, Gao Xing didn’t hesitate when the young man revealed another dart from his sleeve.
It wasn’t as exaggerated as moving several steps in an instant, but Gao Xing was upon him before the young man could make any kind of response.
Gao Xing’s palm cracked against his chin, and the young man instantly went down.
The two older men behind the younger one reacted much quicker. Instead of turning away or moving to dodge Gao Xing’s follow-up, they mutually dashed in and attacked him together.
For all their troubles, Gao Xing adjusted and caught both their punches. He found himself moving faster than ever, his body responsive, fighting simple and withstanding the force easy.
The two men stopped cold. Gao Xing smiled.
Then he heard the rustling of cloth. Gao Xing ducked without a second thought, and the shadow of a sleeve flicked past where his head had been, a sandal clearly visible.
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Gao Xing kicked off the ground and bashed the back of his head against the chest of the opportunistic assailant. A snap echoed from the impact, but Gao Xing felt completely fine. The man was down for the count, and Gao Xing momentarily eyed the other behind him before smiling politely and twisting to avoid the first two.
In seconds, he beat the two of them black and blue. Now, four men were suitably knocked around and the fifth was carefully trying to avoid attention.
“You.”
Gao Xing pointed, and the last man standing instinctively gulped.
“Sir…”
“Come here.”
Reluctantly, the older man did so.
“I apologize, sir. I got a family to feed, a wife to buy out, a-”
“I don’t want your life story,” Gao Xing grumbled. It felt heartless, but he wasn’t willing to go down such a rabbit-hole.
An instinct flared, and Gao Xing was struck. It felt like he’d been punched in the small of his back, and it sent Gao Xing stumbling, almost falling forward.
“You little-”
The older man took his chance and sprinted, long gone by the time Gao Xing pulled himself together and twisted.
The young man tossed his blowpipe and Gao Xing slapped it out of the air. He easily avoided the follow up blow and kicked the young man back to the ground.
Gao Xing reached to his back and pulled another dart from his back. He frowned, rubbing the spot and examining the dart more closely. It was large, and smelled totally wrong. Repugnant, like bugs and shit. It wasn’t the same poison.
He didn’t feel anything yet, though. Gao Xing shook his head and calmed his racing mind. He stepped heavily on the young man’s chest and peered down at him.
The world seemed to slow down like this. The panic etched on the young man’s face, with Gao Xing’s foot inches from crushing his chest… did something for him.
Something about it was exhilarating. A sense of power, a position of strength that Gao Xing was never able to experience in his other life. It was a feeling he had felt often in this life.
Yet, it was a stark difference to his position the previous day.
He pushed down on the young man’s sternum, the warning clear yet inaudible.
“Do you have a name?”
His captive didn’t answer, breath heavy and eyes hateful. Gao Xing was in a vaguely similar position not long ago…
This world was unique in that way, Gao Xing mused. “I asked you a question.”
The unidentified man spat and sneered.
“Do I look like-”
Creak.
Gao Xing’s foot pressed down ominously. The bone beneath made sounds that nearly made him uncomfortable. Growing up as a prodigy in this life had given him a small ego that he was perfectly aware of, and he didn’t appreciate sass from someone that might have killed him.
Seconds passed very slowly like this. Whatever the poison, it was either slow-acting or ineffective. Sweat trickled down the grounded man’s forehead, and eventually, he gave in.
“I-it’s Feng Wei! My name. My name is Feng Wei.”
Gao Xing nodded.
“What was on that dart, Little Feng?”
Feng Wei’s expression morphed into a grimace. Gao Xing slowly pushed down, and the would-be pickpocket’s ribs creaked under the pressure.
“It was just moonpetal,” Feng Wei huffed, and Gao Xing raised a brow. “It should have stopped your qi flow. That’s all! It didn’t work.”
Gao Xing cocked his head. Now that he looked for it, his qi stumbled a bit when it flowed to his back. But his channels were wide, full, and numerous. The blockage was small and irrelevant.
In fact, it felt like it was getting worn down by the flow of his qi already. He pressed.
Feng Wei’s realization set in a step too late. His eyes widened.
An awful squelch rebounded off the ravine walls as the heel of Gao Xing’s foot squished the man’s heart into paste.
“Dramatic.”
Gao Xing shook off his bare foot and momentarily wiped it against the hard rock of the ravine floor.
“Senior Yanluo, what is my cultivation level?”
“Emperor Yanluo, Gao Xing. You’re in the third layer of qi refining.”
Gao Xing nodded. He knew that reaching the third level of the body refining stage should have taken months, maybe even years with a mortal-grade martial spirit. There might really be credence to his spirit’s claim to be above gods.
“Can we continue cultivating right now?”
“Your body would fall apart. The spirit vein couldn’t take the damage either. There won’t ever be any cultivating in this area again.”
“Permanently?!”
“Nothing is truly eternal.”
So, permanently. Great. Would that effect the Gao family?
Gao Xing winced at the thought. Should he care? Yes, they had taken him in as a child. Yes, they’d treated him exceptionally well. Yes, they’d given him premium learning resources. But equally, when he couldn’t birth a martial spirit…
Only now, at this moment, did Gao Xing realize the overwhelming number of paths before him.
He was effectively a dead man.
He looked to the sky. It was still cloudless. It was early morning, so the sun hung to the east. Given what he saw of the stars the night before, he felt he was somewhere south of Gao Village.
Gao Xing stretched his back and cracked his knuckles. For several long, pleasurable minutes, he simply enjoyed being alive and relatively painless. He used the silence to think.
He eyed the ravine walls that enveloped him, and then the path that the escaping hooligan had run off through.
There was no point wandering through this ravine like a headless chicken.
Gao Xing took a few measured hops, carefully gauging his strength. Then, with a breath to steady himself, he leapt.
“Huah!”
He fell slightly short, but his hands caught the edge of the ravine. With a careful twist of the wrists and a precautionary reinforcing of qi, something that came naturally, Gao Xing flung himself up and landed on his feet.
It was incredibly satisfying.
“Gao Xing.”
“Yanluo Wang.”
He could have sworn he heard grumbling in the back of his mind. A smile flit across his face as he turned to the east and started walking.
“It may be valuable to tell me your situation. How did you end up in the ravine? Where are you going? What are your goals?”
“Hard to say. What are your goals?”
“To reclaim my body, of course.”
Despite Gao Xing’s sass, the Emperor of Hell clearly sought cooperation. Somehow, it felt unsettling.
“What happened to your body?”
There was a lull in the conversation after that. Yanluo didn’t respond. Gao Xing used the time to gain his bearings and up his pace.
In the beginning, he moved relatively slowly. It was a period of adjustment – the last time he had been awake, Gao Xing was a mortal human. Now, he had the reinforcement of qi that spurred his muscles and reinforced his flesh.
Amongst all of Gao Xing’s memories, running post-cultivation was quite the unique experience.
His strides covered several meters, and the sticks and branches and thorns were as if air brushing his skin. Behind, broken greenery fluttered amongst the wind left in his wake.
Occasionally, Gao Xing directed qi to his eyes and would leap a little higher, clearing some of the trees for a better view. It served little but for enjoyment.
After a while, Yanluo Wang answered.
“Perhaps, the gods might know.”