Chapter 260: Near Death

The air before me was thick with a yellow fog of swirling sand. I ran about a hundred meters into the haze, losing all sense of direction. I nearly slammed headfirst into a rock that materialized out of the mist, leaving me spinning in circles. Just as I came to a halt, I spotted an idiot standing nearby, clutching a rifle and squinting desperately through the yellow fog.

I wasn’t about to let such a gift go to waste. I picked up a stone the size of a brick, weighed it in my hand, and crept up behind him. As he started to turn, I slammed the stone into his face. Blood erupted from his nose as he collapsed, unconscious. I immediately crouched down and stripped him of his rifle and every last round of ammunition.

On closer inspection, the rifle was a high-end piece of hardware, a semi-automatic. It made our old manual bolt-action junk look like toys. No wonder they nearly turned us into Swiss cheese back in Inner Mongolia. If we’d had one of these for every man in our group, we would have wiped their squad out long ago.

As I moved, I noticed the yellow fog thinning out. After a few more turns, the haze dissipated completely. I rounded a corner and had just poked my head out when a flash of cold light caught the corner of my eye. Instinctively, I threw myself back three steps, narrowly avoiding a lethal strike from the team leader.

He held a sharp blade in a reverse grip. His movements were strange, yet incredibly fast. His hawk-like eyes were locked onto me. He had been aiming for my throat; if that blade had connected, I would have been dead on the spot, no hospital trip required.

I backed away to maintain distance and raised my rifle to fire. He leaped onto a rock in two bounds. I swung my muzzle to follow him, peppering the upper rocks with bullet holes, but the man was simply too fast. His core strength and explosive power were immense. I fired ten rounds and only hit him once. This leader was no amateur; he was capable of dodging long-range fire from an automatic rifle.

I knew many famous figures in the underworld, but the only person I knew with this kind of ability was Lu Ayao. However, Lu Ayao’s skills were grounded in solid fundamentals; you could see every step he took, yet he could dodge bullets through sheer mastery of the basics he’d practiced since childhood.

The man before me was different. His footwork was so ghostly that I suspected he had practiced some kind of dark art, perhaps to the point of obsession. Every move he made was unexpected, causing my aim to lag behind.

Suddenly, he lunged at me with lightning speed. Before I could retreat, he kicked the barrel of my rifle, throwing me off balance. I fell flat on my back. He became a blur of shadow, lunging with his blade. I raised the rifle with both hands, using one to push back against him and the other to brace the barrel against his blade’s tip.

The man possessed incredible strength and endurance. As I struggled to push him back, my strength began to fail. The silver tip of the blade hovered inches above my head. As I grabbed his sleeve, I caught a glimpse of a black lotus tattooed on his wrist. He was masked, but at this distance, I could practically see his face through the fabric.

I strained against the knife, feeling my energy drain away. At the last second, I jerked my head aside. The blade plunged deep into the sand right next to my head. The leader yanked the knife out to strike again, but at that moment, a massive tree root suddenly swung through the air. It slammed straight into his face, sending him flying dozens of meters away.

I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was seeing things. It really was a massive, thick tree root. After the leader was sent flying, Tian Xiaoqi emerged from behind it. He Yu tossed down the heavy root he had been carrying on his shoulder. I had no idea where he’d found such a thing. The core of the root had been hollowed out by insects, but a piece of wood that size was heavy enough to knock someone unconscious on impact.

Tian Xiaoqi helped me up, though I was covered in dust and grime. All three of us looked like a complete mess. We didn’t know if the leader was dead or alive after that fall, but we couldn’t afford to care. These people had freakish stamina. With a single shared look, the three of us turned and bolted without looking back.

We sprinted along the stone path until we reached a very narrow crevice in the ground. Not daring to look back, we ducked our heads and crawled inside. After crawling for a while, He Yu, who was in the lead, finally stopped and wiped the sweat from his face.

“Are you two okay? Is everyone alright?” He Yu asked, lying flat up front and twisting his body around to look back at us.

Tian Xiaoqi had already lost her jacket. She pulled down the cloth covering her face, leaving her in just a T-shirt. A layer of dust shook off her with every movement. Her neck was filthy, and a bloody scratch ran across her face. My side had just been like a dog chasing a rabbit, so their situation couldn’t have been much better. Even one or two of those people were hard to handle. If the dust and sand falling off the corpses hadn’t created that big wave of yellow fog, I didn’t know what kind of mess I’d be in right now.

I coughed. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Those people stick to you like dog-skin plasters^[1], impossible to shake off. Tian Xiaoqi really saved the day this time. How are you two doing?”

Tian Xiaoqi waved a hand, gasping heavily for breath. “I’m fine. But seriously, what kind of deep hatred do they have against our ancestors? Is it really worth chasing us to this extreme?”

My mouth felt bone-dry. Staring outside, I said, “I don’t know, but the grudge can’t be small. Their stamina is insane, chasing us relentlessly. If it weren’t for that wave of yellow fog brought up by the corpses, I might have been finished.”

The moment I finished saying that, Tian Xiaoqi suddenly reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. I turned back to look at them, startled, only to find both of them staring at me as if they were looking at a monster.

My throat felt itchy, and I coughed again, giving an awkward laugh. “What… why do you two have that look on your faces? Is there something on my face?”

“You said you were the one who brought up that yellow fog?” Tian Xiaoqi pressed down on my shoulder.

I didn’t know what was wrong. I instinctively wiped my nose, only to feel something coming out. When I shone my flashlight on my palm, it was a pool of bright red blood. Just then, I felt something dripping continuously from the corners of my mouth. He Yu’s flashlight beam swept over, and I saw that a puddle of blood had already gathered in the sand beneath me.

I swallowed hard, finding that blood was still dripping from my mouth. I’d been running so hard earlier that I didn’t even know when it had started dripping. There was no way I’d run myself into this state; listening to Tian Xiaoqi, it had to be the yellow fog. There was something wrong with that yellow fog!

I tried to open my mouth to speak, but before I could get out a single word, my throat began to itch intensely. It set off a fit of coughing, and the more I coughed, the more blood accumulated on the ground. I quickly covered my mouth with my hand, and soon my entire wrist was covered in my own blood.

Tian Xiaoqi immediately scrambled over with agile moves. She circled around from the side behind me, grabbing my wrist and forcefully pulling my hand away. “There’s something in there! Cough it out, quick!”

As soon as she spoke, she began pounding on my back. With my hand pulled away, my coughing grew even more violent. It felt as though something was being coughed up from my throat. Along with the blood, I spat it out onto the ground, a small, pale white fragment.

For some reason, after spitting out that mouthful of blood, my vision went completely blurry. My entire body went limp, and my limbs stopped obeying me.

Seeing that I was about to pass out, He Yu hurried over from the front and pinched my philtrum hard. “This kid didn’t know there was corpse poison in that yellow fog! Do you have an antidote?”

“How could I have an antidote for corpse poison? We couldn’t even tell which dynasty those body bags were from. Even if the corpses produced rot toxins, it definitely wouldn’t be just one kind. He stayed in that toxic mist for way too long, fighting and running around. The poison has definitely seeped deep into his organs.”

Tian Xiaoqi spoke exceptionally fast. He Yu’s pinch had brought me back around, and as the two of them propped me up, I caught bits and pieces of their conversation. I couldn’t process her meaning right then; the words just rattled around inside my head like some incomprehensible incantation.

“Then what do we do? You’re the only doctor here, think of something! If he faints again, he won’t wake back up!” He Yu tore off his sleeve to wipe the blood from my mouth.

Tian Xiaoqi was in a complete panic. As she pulled gauze from her backpack to stop the bleeding, she said, “Why is he bleeding so much? It’s like it won’t stop. This doesn’t make sense; poisoning shouldn’t cause this much bleeding! Could he have injured an internal organ when he fell earlier? Quick, help me check him for external wounds!”

The two of them crowded around me. He Yu felt my abdomen and blurted to Tian Xiaoqi, “Nothing! There aren’t any external wounds at all!”

Tian Xiaoqi scratched her head. “That’s really bizarre. How can he bleed this much from just poisoning without any organ damage?”

“Forget the reason for a second! Do you have a solution? At this rate, Xiao Yao is going to kick the bucket in less than half an hour! Quick, think of how we can save him! Didn’t you bring some kind of miracle medicine from the Tian Family?” He Yu was getting frantic.

“The Tian Family are Feng Shui masters, not doctors! What bullshit miracle medicine?” Tian Xiaoqi paused mid-sentence.

Hearing her say that, He Yu pulled me into a tight embrace and burst into tears, slapping his thigh as he wailed, “Brother! I’ve let you down! I’m useless! Now your Fourth Brother is dead off somewhere for all we know, and the outside is choked with yellow mist so we can’t get out. He isn’t coming to save us either! If you die, I won’t last much longer myself!”

“Shut the hell up!” Tian Xiaoqi barked. “A grown man like you whining the moment something happens! We have to keep crawling deeper inside. If we keep going, we might actually find a miracle medicine.”

“What do you mean? I might be dumb, but don’t you trick me.”

Tian Xiaoqi was already leading the way, holding her flashlight as she crawled deeper into the crevice. “The Five Masters insisted on coming to find this ancient battlefield because it’s the last major black spot marked on the Nine-Ring Jade Casket,” she said. “Coincidentally, the Burial Bone Testament marks this spot as well. If the Houtu Blood the Five Masters are looking for isn’t in the Gune Kingdom, then this is the last possible place where it could be hidden. The Burial Bone Testament was drawn by Master Jiyun. Master Jiyun was human, so he definitely had his own calculations. If we can find this legendary Houtu Blood, it might just save his life.”