Chapter 55 Someone was outside the window. Fu Ming called out in a high-pitched voice, "Husband, you..."
Dual cultivation differs from ordinary cultivation techniques. It does not require high aptitude, but it emphasizes cooperation and tacit understanding between the two individuals.
Two streams of spiritual energy circulated within their intersecting meridians. Fu Ming's spiritual energy was fire-based, intense and restless, while Xiao Huaiyuan's was metal-based, stable and heavy. One still, one dynamic; one cold, one hot; they intertwined and merged as they circulated their cultivation techniques. This not only helped to regulate Xiao Huaiyuan's disordered spiritual flow caused by the poison, but also replenished Fu Ming's dantian, which was unable to accumulate spiritual energy.
Aside from the somewhat undignified posture and movements, the cultivation results of the fox clan's secret techniques were indeed quite good. Fu Ming tilted his head to the side, deliberately avoiding Xiao Huaiyuan's gaze, in order to maintain a calm state of mind.
Amidst the dull thud, Xiao Huaiyuan still had time to turn Fu Ming's face towards him and whisper in his ear.
"Senior brother, are you still harboring resentment towards me because you seem so distracted?"
"You're overthinking it. It's just cultivation."
Fu Ming was sparing with his words, clenching his teeth and swallowing the rest of the embarrassing sounds. While he was still conscious, he was determined not to show any weakness.
Compared to cooperating with men, Fu Ming still finds it more unacceptable to have cultivated for a hundred years only to return to the state before he entered the Dao. As long as Xiao Huaiyuan stops dwelling on his excessive techniques, everything will be fine.
But clearly, Xiao Huaiyuan was not satisfied with his answer. Suddenly, he pressed down hard on his lower abdomen, causing the flood to burst.
Under immense pressure, Fu Ming was forced to let out a short scream, followed by a cold sweat.
Stroking Fu Ming's distraught and distorted face, Xiao Huaiyuan seemed to gain a secret pleasure. Pressing his advantage, he became even more ruthless, and in an instant, he drove the limp Fu Ming to the brink of despair.
Xiao Huaiyuan said quietly, "Now, senior brother, will you hate me? Hate me for keeping you trapped in this useless body? Hate me for forcing my feelings on you?"
There was only one bed in the bamboo house. The wooden bed was narrow and poorly made. Fu Ming struggled to stay upright in the limited space, and he was afraid that it would collapse at any moment.
Oh no, what exactly did he touch on Xiao Huaiyuan's most vulnerable nerve this time?
Between breaths, Fu Ming hurriedly said, "I have never, ever hated you in my life."
I'd rather you hate me.
Along with Xiao Huaiyuan's heartfelt words came a roaring torrent of water rushing into the sea, engulfing Fu Ming and sweeping him into an endless abyss.
Fu Ming was soggy from being soaked that he became somewhat dazed.
The candlelight was too far away, and nothing could be seen in the dim light. It was as if a drop of hot water had splashed and broken on Fu Ming's face.
Did Xiao Huaiyuan cry?
Why are you crying, child? You're the one who's suffering.
Although he was clearly a tall and strong adult, standing up, he was half a head taller than him, but Fu Ming couldn't help but mistake his junior brother for the child he had raised since childhood.
He actually had no younger siblings, neither in his past life nor this one. So, when teaching the little boy Xiao Huaiyuan, he was clumsy and whimsical, feeding him all sorts of random mortal food and sneaking off the mountain with the child when the gatekeepers weren't looking. Watching the skinny child who never wanted to speak slowly grow into a teenager who was much more reliable than him in dealing with people, he naturally couldn't bear to hold a grudge against Xiao Huaiyuan, even though Xiao Huaiyuan hated him to death.
She said she didn't hate him, but she still cried. Why was that? She probably wouldn't be happy if she just said she hated him. Fu Ming couldn't understand it.
He subconsciously wrapped his arms around Xiao Huaiyuan's shoulders and neck, his palms moving from the back of Xiao Huaiyuan's head down his spine, over and over again, just like when he saw Xiao Huaiyuan struggling to hold back his tears when they were young.
"Alright, stop crying, junior brother. I'll buy you some candied hawthorns."
Knock knock.
The two of them were stunned at the same time.
"Junior brother, are you so moved that you're pounding the bed?" Fu Ming straightened up and asked Xiao Huaiyuan, suddenly realizing that two hands were pinching his waist. "No, someone is knocking on the door outside."
They had already bolted the door, but considering that there might be legitimate cultivators in the village, using spiritual power would alert them, so they did not set up a barrier.
When there was no response from inside, the knocking became shorter and more urgent, three times in a row, accompanied by the sound of long fingernails scratching a wooden board, which gave one goosebumps.
After waiting a while, the person outside the door finally spoke a few words in a loud voice with a thick local accent: "Young man, it's me, He Cuihua. The fairy has something urgent to tell you. Please let me in quickly. It's really urgent. Please open the door."
Xiao Huaiyuan shook his head in the darkness and transmitted his voice to Fu Ming, who was still connected, saying, "The thing outside the door is not a person, but something else."
Ghosts? Spirits? Or some other kind of evil spirit?
If some naive disciples of the Tianyan Sect were to come, they might be intimidated, but Fu Ming knew that something was amiss here, and he would not allow anyone, even if they were alive, to enter. The question was, what did they want to do by knocking on the door in the dead of night?
Bang bang bang! "He Cuihua" pounded on the door while yelling, "What are you doing in there, dawdling? If the fairy maiden gets angry, you won't be able to see the divine doctor!"
"Hey, what are you doing?"
What are you doing?
"Where are you..."
...
It was an ear-piercing noise, and I wondered if the dilapidated bamboo planks could withstand it.
"Fine, didn't you want to know what they were doing busily inside?" Fu Ming's rebellious spirit suddenly arose.
As if singing a folk song, he used a sweet, affected voice to call out, "Husband, you're hurting me so much—"
To make the performance complete, Fu Ming rolled over and sat on Xiao Huaiyuan's lap, shaking the headboard with all his might, creating a lively scene.
He Cuihua, as expected of the most powerful aunt and uncle in the village, was so angry that she forgot all about banging on the door and just kept cursing them out.
"Well, you two little bastards, so this is what you do behind closed doors!"
Fu Ming was overjoyed that his attention had been so easily diverted. He clung to Xiao Huaiyuan's chest, chuckling unsteadily.
"I'm truly about to collapse, my husband is truly mighty and powerful, so incredibly strong!"
This wasn't the first time Xiao Huaiyuan had pretended to be Fu Ming's lover, so he naturally knew the rules of accepting the role: "It's obvious that my wife is too alluring, and I can hardly resist her."
The dull groans and crisp slapping sounds overlapped, interspersed with many vivid phrases, such as coming, going, leaving, living, dying, wanting now, not wanting that now, and having been to both heaven and hell.
He Cuihua finally gave up arguing with them and walked out alone, cursing.
"Pah! They're a shameless adulterous couple, damned devils who can't be reasoned with!"
The bamboo house returned to silence.
The mountain night was chillingly cool, and the stains dried quickly.
Although Xiao Huaiyuan made rapid progress in some aspects, the initial configuration was still not quite right, which ultimately made it difficult for Fu Ming to adapt.
Fu Ming, whose wounds had not yet healed, was restless and watched Xiao Huaiyuan change the bedding while holding a candlestick. This guy never usually carried such things in his pouch, but for some unknown reason, he had stuffed quite a few sheets, clothes and towels into it for this long journey.
There were also wound medicine and white jade ointment displayed prominently, though they hadn't been used yet.
The dim, flickering light cast Fu Ming's profile onto the wall, where slightly peeling plaster had grown many mold spots, indicating that no one had lived there for a long time.
How did the people who lived here die? Did the disciples and elders of the Tianyan Sect also disappear here? Fu Ming's thoughts began to wander again.
He turned to Xiao Huaiyuan and asked, "That He Cuihua hadn't been breathing or showing any signs of life just now. Is that why you think she's not human?"
"That's not all. After practicing the family's inherited techniques, I can distinguish subtle fluctuations in spiritual energy and soul, breathing and pulse, heartbeat and body temperature. As long as a person exists in the world, there are signs, but cultivators who are not proficient in this field can hardly notice them."
While making the bed, Xiao Huaiyuan also took the time to patiently reply, looking every bit like a virtuous young wife.
Fu Ming had no idea that his junior brother, who was the head of the Tianyan Sect and a descendant of the Xiao family, was also a master at managing household affairs. Xiao Huaiyuan carefully smoothed out every crease on the bed and even took out a soft feather pillow.
This pillow seemed to be some kind of key prop; it made Fu Ming's lower back ache at first glance.
Xiao Huaiyuan always insisted on placing the pillow under Fu Ming's waist, saying it would make it easier to observe him.
"Then when you have time later, teach me the method of observing qi. As for me, I don't rely on any particular skill to make my way in the world, but rather on intuition and experience."
Fu Ming looked away, tapped his forehead to make it easier to understand, and then naturally grinned with an air of ease.
"Many seemingly unrelated clues, when connected, can point to the right path, for example—"
"Here! Xiao Huaiyuan, stop messing with that blanket and come check what's under the bed!"
Fu Ming's intuition was indeed extremely sharp. The flickering candlelight only brushed past for a moment before he caught sight of the blood-red words buried under the dust.
He crouched down and gently blew away the accumulated dust, revealing the dark brown, fragmented characters.
save.
Spiritual power.
The words "spiritual power" were even deliberately erased, as if the person who wrote them realized they had made a mistake.
There was also a small line of messy cursive writing in the mold on the wall near the door, which read: "Don't go out."
The handwriting is different, so they are two different groups of people?
The one under the bed means something happened inside the house, and the one on the wall means something happened after the door was opened. But in any case, considering the literacy and illiteracy rates in the cultivation world, Fu Ming believes that the person who left the writing is most likely from the Tianyan Sect.
"The second part is easy to understand; it means we shouldn't open the door. As for the first part, I guess it means we shouldn't use our spiritual power. Do you have any other ideas?"
Fu Ming nudged Xiao Huaiyuan's waist with his elbow. His junior brother had been frozen in place ever since he saw the blood-written words, refusing to move an inch.
"These lines of text belong to three different people. The words 'spiritual power' that were erased are Elder Mo's handwriting."
Xiao Huaiyuan frowned and pondered, his face showing difficulty.
"Elder Mo's cultivation level is stable at the late Nascent Soul stage, and he is especially skilled in agile shadow techniques. Logically speaking, even if he couldn't rescue his disciple, escaping on his own shouldn't be a problem. But it seems that he didn't last long."
"Oh, right, there's also bad news."
Fu Ming, as if handling a funeral as a celebration, poked his junior brother's scratch-covered back and pointed to direct Xiao Huaiyuan's gaze toward the window.
Several dark shadows were tightly adhered to the thin layer of window paper. Judging from their shape, they looked like seven or eight small children's hands with long, sharp fingernails, crawling around actively without making a sound.
It's really scary, but they don't seem to be able to get in.
Fu Ming held his breath and sat with Xiao Huaiyuan by the bedside until dawn.
As dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight shone through the window, those dark hands vanished instantly, but they still waited a while before going out.
The sacrificial site was already crowded with people in small groups.
From a distance, He Cuihua pointed and whispered about Xiao Huaiyuan and Fu Ming, who had huge dark circles under their eyes:
"I knew it! Those two homosexuals must have shaken the bed apart after working all night!"
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