Netherworld Painted Skin Scroll

Chapter 335 The Wounded

However, the two of them realized what was going on in the next moment. Tong Xu must have kept the fact that there were Blood God Cult corpse demons on Qingpu Mountain a secret, but this disciple had somehow discovered it and that's why he came to Dapan Mountain—things spread pretty fast in this area, and the people of the Qingpu Sect already knew that he was on Dapan Mountain.

However, it would be truly unjust if she lost her life because of this "major matter".

The medicine took effect, and it was too late to wake her up. So Li Wuxiang and Xie Qi went to the outer room of the alchemy room to ask what had happened.

When he arrived, he saw several disciples of the Shangchi Sect standing outside the door. Xie Qi beckoned to one of them: "Hu Wei, come and talk to the Master."

"True Man." This was the first time Li Wuxiang had heard someone address him as such. Back in Jinshui, the town lord Chen Xin had said that he had once called Zhao Qi "True Man Zhao," but Zhao Qi replied that he had not yet attained the Yang Spirit realm and therefore could not be called a True Man.

Li Wuxiang is currently only at the Nascent Soul stage, so he can't be called a True Person yet. However, unlike Zhao Qi back then, he didn't cause any trouble, so he didn't object.

The Shangchi Sect disciple named Hu Wei was a young girl of about eighteen or nineteen. She had fair skin with a rosy glow, much like the girls Li Wuxiang had seen in videos in his previous life who wore makeup. Her skin looked so delicate and fair that it seemed as if it could be scratched with the slightest touch. Her voice was soft and sweet, and she barely dared to look him in the eye—

"Reporting to Master Li, it was I who found her at the foot of the mountain—"

Like the Tianxin Sect, the Shangchi Sect also governs many villages and towns. After the calamity, those villages and towns were in complete chaos, and many people wanted to leave to find a way out. Li Yin was foolish and cowardly, but he was still reasonably intelligent. He knew that it wouldn't be good if the people in the surrounding villages and towns were all gone, so he had to try to save them if he could.

So he sent some of his disciples to visit the surrounding villages and towns, persuading the people there to stay and not wander around. He also provided them with some food and medicine and organized some militia teams among them.

Hu Wei was one of the disciples sent out. For the past few days, she had been staying with her two senior brothers in Mingyuan Town, a hundred miles away. These past few days, another group of refugees arrived in the town, almost all able-bodied young men. They had formed a self-defense force and were heading towards Dapan Mountain, believing that its proximity to the Shangchi Sect's headquarters would make it easier to survive. With these people arriving, the town's food supply was running low. Therefore, her two senior brothers asked Hu Wei to return to the mountain to ask the sect leader how to handle the situation and whether to keep the young men there.

Hu Wei hurried along and finally arrived at the foot of Dapan Mountain this evening. Her cultivation level was not high; she had not yet reached the Qi Refining stage. So she planned to rest in the forest for a while before continuing her climb, but then she heard the sounds of fighting.

She was at the bottom of a cliff, and the sound was coming from above. The cliff was very high, about ten zhang (approximately 33 meters), and she could only vaguely hear the sounds of clashing swords and whistling wind. Not long after, she saw someone jump down from above—in theory, he should have been killed, but many trees grew on the cliff, and the branches stopped him, knocking down pine cones, so he was only half-dead from the fall.

The leaders of the Shangchi Sect, Shendao Sect, and Qingpu Sect were quite familiar with each other, and the disciples within the sects often interacted. Therefore, Hu Wei recognized her as a senior sister from the Qingpu Sect just by looking at her attire. Feeling that this senior sister had encountered some villains, she immediately carried her away from Dapan Mountain.

They hadn't gone far when they saw the people from above circling down the mountain to search—and it turned out that the people from above were also two disciples of the Qingpu Sect.

Logically, each sect has a strict order—if you encounter internal strife among the thirty-six sects outside, you are not allowed to intervene unless you can distinguish right from wrong. Hu Wei was momentarily confused, wondering whether she had saved a good person or a bad one. At this moment, the person on her back caught his breath and managed to squeeze out a sentence in her ear: "Take me up the mountain."

Going up the mountain naturally meant going up Dapan Mountain. Hu Wei intuitively felt that the senior sister she was carrying was probably a good person, so she continued running with her on her back.

This was the territory of Dapan Mountain. The two Qingpu Sect disciples searched in vain and, unable to find anything, decided to leave. Hu Wei carried her on her back and took a long detour before daring to climb the mountain. After that, Xie Qi took over.

Hu Wei was slightly out of breath as she spoke, indicating she had been quite exhausted. She had previously been a low-ranking disciple of the Shangchi Sect and had never even seen Xie Qi. Now, with two Nascent Soul cultivators suddenly questioning her, one of whom was a "True Person" or "Divine Lord," she became even more nervous, but managed to explain herself, albeit haltingly.

Fearing she would become even more nervous, Li Wuxiang stopped asking questions for the time being and simply told her to rest for a while before going into the alchemy room.

The female disciple of the Qingpu Sect was fast asleep, her breathing gradually becoming even. Li Wuxiang placed his hand on her neck and examined it, finding that the injury wasn't actually serious; it was just excessive blood loss and depletion of her vital energy. He adjusted his internal energy, discerning the frequency of her vital energy circulation, and slowly channeled a bit of his Nascent Soul true energy into her—he discovered that her breathing was slightly disordered, as if her practice was improper, causing her vital energy to wander in places it shouldn't.

Once the Nascent Soul's true energy was transferred in, the Qingpu Sect disciple awoke after only four or five breaths.

She seemed quite alert; her eyelids twitched slightly, and she immediately widened her eyes, straining to sit up. Li Wuxiang quickly reached out to support her, saying softly, "Don't panic, this is Dapan Mountain. I am Li Wuxiang, remember me?"

The woman paused, stared at him blankly, and then exhaled, "I...remember."

The next moment, he immediately said, "On our mountain—"

“There are Blood God Cult corpse demons.” Li Wuxiang nodded. “You just mentioned that. Junior sister, what’s your name?”

The woman slowly took two breaths: "I...I'm called Tong Ling."

Li Wuxiang sat down on the small stool next to her and smiled: "Is it the 'ling' of clever and quick-witted, or the 'ling' of skillful and dexterous?"

“Ling, like in Linglong Pagoda,” Tong Ling said. Because of Li Wuxiang’s smile and those two sentences, she seemed less nervous and was able to look into the room again, but she seemed to not know what to say next.

Li Wuxiang kept her silent for a while, then said, "Junior Sister Tong, would you like to tell us what happened now, or rest for a bit? You're perfectly safe here, you can do whatever you want."

“In our clan—” Tong Ling began, but after saying those four words, she suddenly frowned and reached out to cover her right rib. But as soon as she touched it, she cried out in pain and quickly removed her hand—sweat immediately appeared on her forehead, as if the touch had caused her unbearable pain.

Li Wuxiang immediately reached out and grasped her pulse point to sense her internal energy, wanting to see if there were any internal injuries he hadn't noticed. But the next moment he realized it was unnecessary—below Tong Ling's chest, on her right rib, a patch of red blood was slowly seeping out, which should be an external injury there.

Hu Wei said that Tong Ling fell from a very high cliff, and it's possible that a tree branch got stuck in her at that time. No wonder he felt that there was something wrong with her body before.

The location of the wound could be a minor or major problem. She hadn't noticed it before, possibly because her adrenaline was surging. Now that she had calmed down, she immediately felt it. Tearing open the clothes on her back to heal the wound was no problem, but the location was really awkward. Li Wuxiang immediately stood up and said to Xue Baoping outside the door, "Baoping, take a look at her injury."

Xue Baoping quickly came in, and Li Wuxiang quickly went out and closed the door. Tong Ling was in pain and her body curled up slightly, but she didn't dare to curl up completely. Xue Baoping walked to her side and held her shoulders: "Junior Sister Tong, let me cut open your clothes to take a look. Try to lean back for a moment."

Tong Ling seemed to be in too much pain to speak, only gritting her teeth and nodding, supporting herself with her hands behind her back. On the couch where she was lying were the scissors Xie Qi had used to cut her clothes, but Xue Baoping took out her own flying sword—this thing was much sharper than the scissors.

She grabbed Tong Ling's Taoist robe by the chest, and with a slash of her small sword, the robe tore open, revealing a wound—not a tree branch, but something resembling the hilt of a small sword, the kind without a wooden handle, very short and thin, with only a section about the size of a thumb showing.

Xue Baoping was stunned, not expecting it to be something like this. Like Li Wuxiang, she thought it was something that had been pierced by a tree branch when she fell.

The location was extremely dangerous, just below her left chest, slightly to the side, and it looked like the blade had entered through a gap in her ribs. Cultivators naturally know the location of internal organs, and Xue Baoping realized that the sword might have just avoided Tong Ling's liver, thus avoiding a fatal blow. However, the area around the organs is rich in blood vessels, and with Hu Wei carrying her and moving her around, and then sitting up and bleeding, the blade might have already severed a blood vessel. Trying to remove it now would likely be even more dangerous.

She couldn't help but glance at Tong Ling, only to find that Tong Ling was also looking at her—Tong Ling's gaze was strange, as if she didn't care much about her wounds, but rather about Xue Baoping in front of her.

The thought had barely crossed her mind when Tong Ling raised one hand and gripped the short hilt of the sword as if she were about to pull it out.

Xue Baoping immediately raised her hand to grab hers, trying to stop her. But then she thought that if she used too much force, she might displace the blade again, so she pulled her hand back slightly.

Just then, Tong Ling swiftly pulled the object out of the wound. Xue Baoping only saw a flash of cold light before her eyes—

In an instant, Tong Ling's small sword had stabbed her more than a dozen times in the chest and abdomen. Then, there was another flash of cold light and a scream—

The door to the alchemy room was blasted into pieces with a loud bang, and Li Wuxiang rushed in—

Seeing Xue Baoping standing three steps from the bed, reaching up to touch her stomach. Lying on the ground was a severed hand and a handleless knife—Tong Ling, clutching her broken wrist with her other hand, huddled in a corner, tears and snot streaming down her face from the pain.

Before Li Wuxiang could speak, Xue Baoping said, "I'm fine, I'll wash the gold gauze."

She was wearing the gold-washed gauze that Xie Qi had given her at the foot of the mountain. She was stabbed more than a dozen times in an instant, but her skin was not even injured.

Xie Qi and the others outside rushed in. At this moment, Tong Ling's eyes shifted, staring at the scissors beside the bed, and she reached out to grab them. Li Wuxiang pointed a finger, and the scissors snapped into pieces, immediately splattering dense bloodstains on Tong Ling's face.

Tong Ling screamed again, but raised her hand to slap her own face. Li Wuxiang snorted coldly, raised his hand again, and a bloody hole immediately appeared in her left shoulder. She tried to move again, but both her knees burst open, splintering into a cloud of bone and flesh.

Even the strongest person couldn't endure such pain. Tong Ling opened her mouth and screamed loudly. Li Wuxiang strode over and pressed several acupoints on her body. The bleeding from the wound stopped, and the screams ceased, but Tong Ling's skin quickly turned red, and her eyes bulged as if they were about to pop out—his acupoint pressing technique could stop bleeding and silence a person, but it also made her feel more acutely and in greater pain.

This pain was far beyond what ordinary people could bear; Tong Ling only lasted three breaths before fainting.

Li Wuxiang raised his hand and injected a stream of Nascent Soul energy into her body to awaken her, but he did not release her acupoints. As soon as Tong Ling woke up, she immediately felt extreme pain again, and this time she fainted in just two breaths.

Li Wuxiang protected her heart meridian a second time and woke her up, then a third and a fourth time. Only after waking her up for the fifth time did he raise his hand to release her acupoints.

Tong Ling immediately vomited a mouthful of blood, her body trembling like a leaf. Only then did Li Wuxiang speak, his tone extremely cold: "You won't live. But you can choose to die quickly or suffer for a whole day before dying—did Tong Xu send you?"

Tong Ling was incapable of speaking at this moment. Seeing that she didn't speak, Li Wuxiang raised his hand again.

She immediately nodded, then kowtowed, and then banged her head against the wooden bed repeatedly, as if trying to relieve the pain.

Li Wuxiang sneered: "You can't even bear this little bit of pain, yet you want to become a suicide soldier? Let me ask you one more time: if you can't speak up, you'll still have to suffer for a day before dying—why is that?"

Tong Ling began to speak, her throat spasming from the pain, but she still tried to make "ha" sounds, making herself sound like she was speaking. After a few "ha" sounds, she finally managed to squeeze out words: "...ha...ha...she...said...she didn't like...her...look...when she was talking to her..."

Li Wuxiang turned to look at Xue Baoping. Xue Baoping met his gaze and sighed softly.

Li Wuxiang turned his face away: "Who else?"

"It's...it's just me...really...just..."

Li Wuxiang turned to Xie Qi: "Elder Xie."

Xie Qi finally came to his senses, shuddering all over: "Ah...ah?"

"Keep her alive with medicine, and wake her up when she faints. I'll come back to ask her in an hour."

The scene of Li Wuxiang killing the corpse demons a few days ago was very bloody, but those were corpse demons, not humans. The woman on the bed now, however, was human, and a very beautiful young woman at that. Yet, he showed her no mercy whatsoever, his methods were shockingly ruthless—at least shocking Xie Qi, who had never imagined Li Wuxiang had such a side!
Xie Qi was at a loss for words, but Xue Baoping walked to Li Wuxiang's side and silently watched him. After a moment of eye contact, the stern look on Li Wuxiang's face slowly faded, and then he sighed.

Xue Baoping raised her hand and launched a flying sword from her palm. A red dot immediately appeared on Tong Ling's forehead, and she collapsed onto the couch.

(End of this chapter)