Shisan Lang had suffered severe trauma to his chest, with his breathing and heartbeat stopping abruptly, but his pupils had not yet dilated and his body was still warm.
Wei Xun knew well that he had practiced the “Prajna Repentance” internal cultivation method since childhood, making his muscles and bones solid and far superior to ordinary children. Though the external injuries were severe, his internal organs might not have sustained fatal damage. If he exerted all his strength to rescue him now, there might still be a thread of hope for survival.
But Bao Zhu had just been abducted. If he immediately gave chase, with his own speed, regardless of who the opponent was, he had an eighty percent chance of catching up in time. However, the price would be abandoning his junior martial brother’s life.
In an instant, Wei Xun found himself caught in a dilemma, forced into a desperate situation: both options faced irreversible consequences, yet he had no time to deliberate.
Since Chen Shigu’s death, this junior martial brother who had not yet completed his training had always followed by his side. The bond between the two martial brothers was worlds apart from their other fellow disciples who merely maintained superficial harmony. No matter what, he could not watch Shisan Lang die before his eyes.
Wei Xun had no choice but to painfully halt his pursuit and quickly tore open his junior brother’s clothing. He saw a dark red patch in the center of his chest, caused by heavy punches, with bones shattered and beaten into a concave depression.
Wei Xun made a desperate gamble, using the gentlest technique from the Twilight Misty Waves Palm, the “Mirror Flowers, Water Moon” style, striking Shisan Lang’s left chest side. He compressed his palm force to the minimum, penetrating through the ribs to stimulate the already stagnant heart. A trace of weak breath escaped from Shisan Lang’s lips, but he still showed no response—it was merely residual air from his chest cavity. Wei Xun turned him over, added a fraction more force, and struck another palm from behind.
With these two palm strikes front and back, he forcibly cleared the blocked meridians, and the heart that had just stopped began to beat again with difficulty. Shisan Lang coughed violently once, spitting up a mouthful of congealed blood. On the verge of death with confused consciousness, he opened his eyes, his gaze scattered and unable to focus.
Though young, he was from the Remnant Sun Courtyard and possessed an innate stubborn determination. With one foot already stepping through the gates of hell, what lingered in his heart was still that obsession before death. He forced out a single word from his throat: “Jiu… Jiu…”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to chase after them right now!”
Wei Xun knew that although he had managed to catch his breath, his pulse was intermittent and extremely weak. If left unattended, it would still be a path to death. He decisively carried Shisan Lang on his back, using torn cloth strips to bind him tightly, pressing his back against the boy’s chest while secretly circulating his dantian true qi to transfer energy and sustain his life.
If someone with weaker martial arts attempted to save a person with internal energy, the slightest carelessness could cause meridian reversal, injuring oneself, and both parties would be unable to move. Wei Xun relied on his extraordinary innate comprehension to take this desperate risk, continuously transferring qi to the injured while carrying him on his back, then rushed out through the open courtyard gate.
Having delayed for a moment attending to Shisan Lang, the attackers were now nowhere to be seen.
On the road to the right, a young peddler of thirteen or fourteen years was squatting on the ground cursing, with peaches scattered in the mud around him. He had a bamboo basket hanging from his shoulder, and while picking up peaches to put back in the basket, he cursed viciously:
“You rushing-to-reincarnation ghost seeking a violent death! Shit-eating bastard bird! You crashed into your grandfather without knowing to stop and kowtow in apology. Running so fast, are you carrying your mother on your back to report for duty at the King of Hell’s palace!”
Wei Xun’s heart stirred. This clearly indicated that someone carrying a woman had hurriedly passed this way, running urgently and knocking over the peach-selling peddler in the process.
The situation was critical and urgent, with no time for careful consideration. He carried Shisan Lang on his back and chased to the right like a shooting star. After running wildly all the way, he discovered no suspicious persons. He leaped onto rooftops and ran for a while more, with pedestrians in the surrounding streets and alleys all looking up at this youth carrying someone while running along walls, all bewildered.
At another intersection, Wei Xun found nothing and stopped, standing on the wall in a daze: Could she have already been taken into a nearby building and hidden? If this was the work of kidnappers, their usual practice was to drag targets into houses, either threatening or beating them, stripping off their clothes and changing their appearance, making it difficult for families to find them even if they reported to officials.
Doubts rolled up like dark clouds in his mind. Wei Xun made a decisive decision, turned around and returned, rushing back to that small courtyard. But when he returned to the original spot, the young peddler who had been squatting and cursing had long since vanished, leaving only rotten peaches covered in mud on the ground.
He had fallen for a trap! Panic and rage instantly made Wei Xun feel cold all over, his hands and feet numb.
The road in front of the gate split into two branches. Assuming that peddler had been arranged in advance on the right path, he only needed to pretend to be knocked over to easily lead Wei Xun to chase in the wrong direction, without needing to risk confrontation or expend any effort.
In the courtyard, Yang Xingjian’s groaning had not ceased, and the donkey under the tree kept kicking, as if it too sensed great disaster approaching, only unable to run because it was tethered by reins.
Wei Xun threw a rope into the well and pulled up the broken-legged Yang Xingjian, urgently asking: “How many enemies were there? What did they look like? Which direction did they flee?”
Yang Xingjian trembled all over from pain and described concisely: “The water in the tea kettle had dried up. I went to the water vat in the courtyard to get water and was kicked into the dry well from behind. I didn’t see anything else.” He paused, then added: “While I was in the well, I vaguely saw a shadow reflected on the well wall. That person seemed to be carrying something and ran toward the courtyard entrance.”
Before this sentence “ran away” was completely spoken, Wei Xun had already turned and rushed out again.
Yang Xingjian endured the pain and looked left and right, not seeing Bao Zhu’s shadow. Recalling Wei Xun’s pale and livid face, as well as the unconscious Shisan Lang on his shoulder, he was instantly terrified and collapsed on the ground, unable to move.
Wei Xun ran madly toward the left path.
During the night, he had been fully concentrated on guard duty and protection. Who would have thought the enemy would insidiously choose the moment when the sun rose, striking just when his tense nerves had momentarily relaxed. He still remembered that Bao Zhu had casually mentioned wanting to eat cherries in the Changqiu Temple, when there was a sea of people around. He didn’t know which malicious person had overheard this and planted the seeds of today’s disaster.
The enemy first used the bait of “cherry pancakes” to lure him out of the courtyard, predicting that he would soon detect something amiss and return to defend. So after abducting Bao Zhu, they struck to injure Shisan Lang near death, forcing him to spend time on rescue. Then they used the peddler to set up a diversion on the right path, leading him in the wrong direction. These two consecutive delaying tactics, even with his world-class lightness skill, made it impossible to catch up.
The enemy anticipated his every move without using a single blade or sword, succeeding without even showing their faces. They had probably been lying in ambush nearby all along, thoroughly investigating everyone’s preferences and martial abilities. Even if the lure had failed, there would have been other sinister tricks waiting.
At this moment, Wei Xun viewed everyone as suspicious and every corner as questionable. Seeing a porter ahead pushing a cart carrying goods, with the cart seemingly capable of hiding a person, he flew up and kicked the axle to pieces, causing seven or eight baskets of sunflower greens and turnips to fall to the ground.
The vegetable vendor was about to curse loudly, but seeing Wei Xun’s ghostly sinister expression, he thought that if this person could kick a cart to pieces, such force applied to a human body would probably cause instant death. He immediately swallowed his curses.
Wei Xun blocked every cart he saw and overturned every sedan chair he encountered, charging left and right, turning the entire street upside down with people and animals in chaos. He saw a copper shop in an alley with a craftsman sitting at the entrance, various copper wares displayed on the ground to attract business. He rushed up and grabbed the man’s collar, lifting him like grasping the neck of a chicken or duck, sternly demanding: “You’ve been sitting here—did you see any suspicious person carrying someone past here just now?!”
The craftsman was uncertain and fearful, saying in a trembling voice: “Wasn’t that you yourself?”
Wei Xun had no time for explanations. With a “pop” sound, he forcibly flattened a copper pot, threatening: “Think again carefully! If you speak falsely, I’ll make your head like this pot!”
The craftsman realized this martial madman might be searching for someone. After racking his brains for a moment, he said: “Just now there was a thin man in gray short clothing, carrying a large roll of felt, who passed by here running very fast,” pointing out the direction.
Wei Xun, fearing he might again be deceived into the wrong direction, continuously interrogated several roadside vendors and two beggars asking for alms. Indeed, someone had seen that gray-clothed man carrying felt pass by, running southward. When asked about the felt’s length and dimensions, it was exactly right for wrapping a person.
With this clue, Wei Xun carried Shisan Lang on his back and pursued southward, chasing from Cihui Ward to Tongli Ward, all the way to a dead-end alley.
At the end of the alley was a donkey rental shop. The courtyard reeked terribly, with four or five donkeys tethered inside, and inferior saddles and straw for feeding the donkeys piled in the corner. The shop owner lay dead inside the room. Except for a constantly barking dog, there were no other living creatures in the shop.
As soon as Wei Xun entered the room, his eyes went blank instantly. Scattered by the wall were several exquisite garments that shouldn’t belong to this place: the jacket and skirt Bao Zhu had worn today, along with her undergarments and intimate clothing. Together with the sachet containing Auspicious Dragon Brain incense, they had been discarded on the dirty rammed earth floor. The clothes still retained their fragrance—she had been taken away completely naked.
The window was slightly ajar. Wei Xun reached out to push it open and discovered this place led directly to the Southern Market.
Outside the window was a scene of heavy traffic and bustling crowds. Looking out, thousands of shops and tens of thousands of people were crowded in these two wards. Beyond the Southern Market lay Luoyang with its one hundred and three wards and five hundred thousand residents. When a person disappeared into a giant city, it was like a drop of water flowing into a great river.
A wave of dizziness struck, and Wei Xun’s ears rang continuously as he slowly knelt down while carrying Shisan Lang on his back.
He felt intense suffocation. In his trance, doors and windows on all sides began flooding with mud—heavy, thick black sludge continuously rising, drilling into his seven orifices and submerging over his head. This was not the human world; he was about to be swallowed into the underground darkness.
The prosperous scene of Luoyang’s streets before his eyes gradually twisted and distorted, overlapping with the desolation of earth submerged in silt after floods. Embracing the clothes abandoned here, Wei Xun finally experienced firsthand Chen Shigu’s state of mind from years past. The helplessness of searching everywhere to no avail, the sorrow of reaching a dead end, the bone-deep, heart-crushing hatred… So this was what it felt like?
A bizarre and piercing sound rang in his mind—one he should not have been able to hear:
It was from long before his birth, thousands of miles away from this place, on the banks of the Lingshui River in Lingnan—Chen Shigu’s desperate howl that was neither fully human nor ghost.
**Author’s Note:**
The Twilight Misty Waves Palm has thirteen techniques in total: Love at First Sight, Intimate Friendship, Mirror Flowers Water Moon, Extreme Joy Turns to Sorrow, Fish Sink Geese Disappear, No Word from Either Side, Without Trace to Follow, Sink Like Stone in Sea, Heartbreaking and Soul-Crushing, Forever Separated by Life and Death, Dying Lamp and Slanting Sun, Living with Bitter Resentment, A Handful of Yellow Earth.