Chapter 23 My whole body aches terribly!
Hearing the voice, he felt like a live shrimp on a grill. He instantly wiped away the tears that were about to spill, jumped out of He Mu's arms, turned his back, and covered his cheeks.
She was just acting cute and throwing a tantrum at He Mu, and being unreasonable...
They were all...
I was seen... I was seen?!
He was so angry at the sound of people talking that he felt like he was about to burst into flames. If he could transform back into his original form in front of everyone, he would have drilled a hole in the ground and hidden there for the rest of his life.
He Mu coughed awkwardly, forcibly pulled Wen Rensheng over, and explained dryly, "He... uh, he was just scared. He's timid and prone to crying, so it's normal."
"Didn't you just say you missed your master and clan leader?" He tugged at Wenrensheng's sleeve and asked in a low voice, "Why are you covering your eyes and refusing to see them now?"
Hearing voices, he opened his fingers a little and cautiously peeked at his master and clan leader.
Surprisingly, neither of them showed any sign of disgust.
Wenren Jing, clutching the rabbit in his arms, was looking him up and down as if he were looking at some beautiful treasure, his eyes full of surprise and curiosity.
Even Yi Jinxiang, who usually has a sour face, now has a gentle expression of reunion after a long separation, without a trace of impatience.
Yi Jinxiang shook her fan and said helplessly, "Fine, you've been locked up for so long, I'll let you act cute today. I'll just pretend I didn't see it."
Hearing the voice, he slowly lowered his hand, then blankly looked up at He Mu.
He asked hesitantly, "Have I changed a lot?"
He Mu shook his head and said, "I can't tell."
Not much has changed...
So it's the same as before, nothing has changed?
Upon hearing voices, his eyes lit up instantly, and the gloom and worry from before vanished.
He jumped twice on the spot, then pounced forward and hugged Yi Jinxiang tightly.
"Greetings, Master!"
Before Yi Jinxiang could react, Wen Rensheng immediately released her embrace and ran towards Wenren Jing, bending down slightly to gently hug the elderly clan leader.
"Greetings, Chieftain!"
Finally, he kissed the rabbit in the chieftain's palm, patted its head, and said, "Hello, I'm your brother."
Wenren Jing was a short old man, but five years had passed and Wenren Sheng had grown much taller than him.
While Wenrensheng was still bent over, he reached out and ran his hand through Wenrensheng's long hair, chuckled, and said with a sigh:
"Your hair is so long! And the clothes you're wearing... is that the one the mountain god gave you?"
Hearing the voice, she twirled around like she was dancing and returned to He Mu's side, proudly helping him up by the waist.
"Isn't he handsome?" he said. "This is what the future number one swordsman in the world will look like. Clan leader, you should take a good look and remember it well."
He Mu leaned closer to him and teased him in a low voice, "Are you going to remember how you clung to me and wouldn't let go just now?"
!
Hearing voices, he immediately shuddered.
He instantly dropped his smug expression and glared angrily at He Mu.
"certainly--"
"certainly?"
"Of course not!"
He shouted this, then turned and grabbed his master and the clan chief, running away while shouting, "I'm going to ignore the mountain god for an hour!" and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
He Mu, who was standing still, put one hand on his waist, sighed helplessly, and said, "It's so noisy."
Strangely enough, this little monster, though clearly a wolf demon, grew more and more beautiful, with a very special eye color, completely unlike the appearance of a person from Xiangcheng.
He Mu stroked his chin and murmured, "Could it be that I was mistaken, and it wasn't a wolf demon, but a fox demon...?"
As he finished reading, Se Sha appeared at just the right moment, hovering in front of He Mu as if he wanted to say something.
While pondering, He Mu glanced at Se Sha and casually flicked it.
"What's it to you?"
*
The customs clearance was delayed too late today, so the welcome banquet that was originally planned has been postponed to tomorrow, which means there is much more time in the evening.
Excited by the sound of people, it ran around the temple twice, opening almost every closed door to peek inside and see if anything had changed from what it remembered.
With nothing else to do, Mu followed the running wolf with his sword, patiently waiting for it to search the entire huge temple inside and out.
In the end, he was completely exhausted. Hearing voices, he lay down on the ground, panting and muttering, "So tired, so tired."
"You're tired but you're still running?" He Mu walked over slowly, looking down at Wen Rensheng. "Have you finished watching now?"
Hearing the voice, he breathed a sigh of relief and nodded: "I've finished reading."
He Mu leaned down and asked again, "What did you figure out?"
Hearing the voice, she blinked and counted on her fingers as if listing a treasure: "There are more books in the library, the statues have been cleaned again, my room is clean and smells nice, there are a lot of rabbits living in the northeast, and it's hotter in the southwest, that must be where Master lives..."
After babbling on and on, he grinned at Mu and said, "And Mountain God, you've become handsome."
This statement is unfounded.
Once a cultivator enters the Golden Core stage, their physical appearance will stop growing. He Mu has already ascended for hundreds of years, and his appearance will no longer change. He will look the same even if he lives for tens of millions of years to come.
But hearing human voices made me realize that the mountain god was somewhat different.
He couldn't quite put his finger on what was different, but he was completely consumed by him, wishing he could shrink to the size of the little rabbit in the chieftain's palm and perch on the mountain god's shoulder every day.
Thinking of this, Wen Rensheng couldn't help but glance at He Mu a few more times.
Upon realizing that Mu Ye was staring at him, Wen Rensheng immediately felt guilty and quickly blinked, turning his gaze away.
"...Why are you staring at me?" someone cried out, "I didn't get a flower on my face."
He Mu smiled and gently stroked Wen Rensheng's cheek with his knuckles: "You're pretty."
"Beautiful?" Wen Rensheng said, "I don't want to be beautiful, I want to become a very, very handsome knight-errant."
“I didn’t say you weren’t handsome,” He Mu scratched his chin. “Are you sweating? Come with me to the mountain spring today. After soaking in ice water for five years, I’ll help you get rid of the cold.”
Hearing voices, he immediately sat up straight.
"A hot spring?" he exclaimed excitedly. "I want to go!"
He Mu pulled him aside and said, "Go back to your room and pack your things. There are soapberries and spices over there."
Hearing human voices, the energy he had just exhausted immediately returned.
He stood up, hurriedly ran back to his room, picked out his bathrobe and towel for his fasting and put them into a small wooden basin, and then went to the mountain spring with Mu.
Shanquan is a hot spring on the north side of Fangze Mountain. This place was built by Mu himself a hundred years ago. It can be reached by going through a wild path from the mountain gate and walking down for dozens of miles.
Hearing voices, I parted the bamboo leaves and peered inside. I discovered a misty pavilion with large rocks surrounding a hot spring, all hazy and indistinct, like a paradise on earth.
He Mu took off his shirt and sat down by the pool first, waving to Wen Rensheng.
“Your spiritual energy is severely stagnant. Let me clear your meridians first. Go into the water; it won’t be cold.”
“Ah,” a voice said, “then don’t look at me yet.”
He Mu didn't turn around immediately this time. He lifted his chin and looked at Wen Rensheng, asking in return, "Why do you always make me turn around?"
Hearing a voice humming, "Because I'm fifteen now."
"Aren't you ashamed?" He Mu laughed at him. "I raised you, how can I not be able to look at you?"
Hearing someone's voice, he retorted, "You only raised him for one year; the next five years he grew on his own."
Despite his arrogance, upon hearing voices, he slowly walked to He Mu's side, untied his belt, took off his outer robe, and then his inner garment.
He Mu stopped staring at him and instead looked at the clothes on the ground, one by one, piling up higher and higher, accompanied by the sound of silk rubbing against each other.
For some reason, the sound made him feel a little uncomfortable.
He Mu rubbed his forehead and simply closed his eyes.
"..."
Hearing voices, he continued to strip down to his inner clothes, finally getting himself completely naked. He then slid into the hot spring, like a dumpling falling into a pot, splashing up a few tiny water droplets.
He Mu didn't go into the water. He moved over and sat behind Wen Rensheng, tying all of Wen Rensheng's hair into a simple bun.
"After you woke up today, did you notice any changes in your Heavenly Spiritual Root?" He Mu asked while holding her arm.
Hearing the voice, her eyes darted around, and she said, "It doesn't seem like it... I just feel hungrier and can eat a lot more."
He Mu smiled and said, "Your spiritual root was incomplete before, and your body was a bit delicate, so it's normal for you to get hungry easily now."
Wen Rensheng doesn't think he's being spoiled. When he was ten years old, he was able to kill a Mahayana-stage sword cultivator with only half of his spiritual root. This is clearly something only a genius swordsman could do.
But he didn't argue with He Mu, and instead raised his hand to splash some water.
"What do we need to do to open up the meridians?" He made a Tai Chi gesture and said excitedly, "Do you need me to help you sink your Qi to your Dantian and circulate your Qi throughout your body?"
Behind him, He Mu had already started rolling up his sleeves.
"You don't have to do anything, it just hurts a little, can you bear it?"
Hearing the voice, he nodded confidently: "Of course I can endure it, I'm very good at enduring—"
Before she could finish speaking, a subtle, dull pain came from the back of her neck, abruptly cutting off Wenrensheng's second half of the sentence.
"Hmm!"
He Mu pressed down on the acupoint on Wen Rensheng's spine with one hand, and with a skillful push, forcibly cleared the first blockage in his meridians.
Hearing human voices brought no joy at the smooth flow of spiritual energy; the slight pain from before traveled along a nerve throughout his body, causing him to shout.
"it hurts!"
But Mu seemed not to hear his cries for help. He slowly moved his fingertips down the shallow groove on Wenrensheng's back and pressed on the second acupoint nearby.
This action made Wen Rensheng tremble violently. He grabbed the edge of the pool with one hand and couldn't help but straighten his back.
"Wait, wait a minute," he realized something was wrong, "I haven't... uh!"
As soon as he finished speaking, He Mu pressed on his acupoints again. The pressure was not strong, but just hearing the voice made him feel numb all over, with pain and soreness.
He couldn't straighten up, nor could he bend over. He groaned a few times, twisting his body like a live fish, trying to escape.
Helpless, Mu held him down tightly, making it impossible for him to move.
He now deeply regrets saying "I can hold back"!
"Hiss—" Hearing someone's voice, he breathed out a small sigh of relief, squeezing out a sentence through his teeth, "...It's alright now, ha, I can feel my meridians opening up, I don't need to..."
He Mu knew perfectly well whether the meridians were open or not.
But there was nothing that could be done. He Mu already knew Wen Rensheng's body inside and out. If it were someone else, this little guy would have suffered many times more.
"Alright, alright, it'll be over soon," He Mu coaxed patiently. "Just bear with it a little longer, okay, my dear hero?"
Hearing the voice, he was already in tears from the pain. When he heard He Mu call him a hero, he bit his lip and forced out a "hmm" sound from his throat.
He Mu breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the third acupoint on him.
Saying it would end soon was obviously a lie.
Unblocking the meridians takes at least one or two hours; it's not something that can be done so easily.
He had no choice but to lie again and again, believing the voices of others with tears in his eyes time and time again, until his face turned red but he still didn't utter a sound.
More than an hour later, Mu checked the pulse of hearing human voices again and found that it had been completely opened.
Now, any spiritual practice will be completely effortless.
He Mu breathed a sigh of relief, stood up, and looked behind Wen Rensheng.
After the massage, several noticeable red marks appeared on Wenrensheng's delicate skin, scattered across her entire shoulder and neck, looking quite pitiful.
He was about to hug and comfort the person when, unexpectedly, he suddenly remembered the faint mole that he had been so concerned about during the day.
I'm very interested in it and really want to know where it came from.
He couldn't help but search behind Wenrensheng's neck and quickly found that tiny spot.
The person who heard the voice had fair skin, and the mole happened to be right next to the fingerprint she had just left, clearly indicating that she was in a rather cramped situation.
"Could it be... caused by the Heavenly Spiritual Root?"
He Mu stroked his chin and pondered.
The Heavenly Spiritual Root is a rare thing in the world. As long as it stays quietly in Wenrensheng's body, the Heavenly Court will not find out.
But if someone has tampered with it, things won't be so simple.
"..."
The voice in front of him still had tears in it, and he miserably touched his shoulders and back, repeating to himself a thousand times, "I hate the mountain god," "I hate him so much."
But despite his words, he knew perfectly well that this was the necessary path of cultivation, something that a great hero had to do.
After suffering, whenever she heard someone's voice, she would always want to act cute with He Mu and ask him to carry her back.
"I can't walk anymore," Wenren said tactfully. "I may have to stay here all night. Mountain God, you should go home first."
But this time he didn't receive a reply from the mountain god; all was quiet behind him.
"Mountain God?" a voice called out again, "Why aren't you speaking?"
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Author's Note: [pats head][pats head][pats head]
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