Chapter 54 Dual Cultivation Today? Senior Brother, shall we cultivate together today? —…
What's going on here? Didn't we agree to call each other cousins?
Fu Ming's smile froze on his face. He tried to pull his left hand out of its restraints, but Xiao Huaiyuan held it firmly like an iron clamp. This reminded him of the time a few days ago when he was pinned to the table, and Xiao Huaiyuan was just as unyielding.
This person, not content with just an inch, then proceeded to rub his thin, calloused palm with his rough fingertips.
Xiao Huaiyuan's thinking was beyond comprehension after the poison took effect, and Fu Ming was unwilling to indulge him, so he pinched Xiao Huaiyuan's tiger's mouth hard, leaving a deep red finger mark.
Xiao Huaiyuan frowned slightly, and finally let go.
Fu Ming felt relieved.
Seeing them playfully fighting, the woman, who had a rather unfriendly attitude, suddenly became interested. She grabbed the snake's head and stopped in front of them: "Lovers? They don't seem like it to me. You two aren't conspiring to trick me, are you?"
That black snake had probably bitten many people before. As soon as it was caught, it became energetic and stared at Fu Ming with a fixed gaze. Its drool was practically dripping onto the ground.
The menacing purplish-red snake tongue was truly disgusting to look at. Fu Ming picked up on Xiao Huaiyuan's words and casually made up a story.
"Why would I lie to you? Haven't you heard that the deeper the love, the harder the beating? We eloped, but who knew this bastard would be so unlucky, getting this short-lived disease after only a few days. You tell me, right?"
While laughing and joking, Fu Ming slapped Xiao Huaiyuan hard on the shoulder a few times. The latter was not annoyed and took Fu Ming's anger in stride.
"Yes, I dragged him down." Xiao Huaiyuan admitted this statement with a calm expression.
It turned out to be a fierce yaksha and a spineless henpecked husband. The woman said "Oh," and then lowered her head to fiddle with the snake's tail.
"That would be for the best. Hmph, I might as well be frank with you. A few groups of people sneaked into the village to cause trouble, which made that official very angry. Outsiders like you, with your delicate skin and lazy appetites, had better keep a low profile, otherwise no one can save you."
Several groups of people infiltrated the village, and the missing disciples of the Tianyan Sect?
Fu Ming caught the key information and pressed on, "We all understand the principle, but human life is at stake. My husband has been sick for several days. When will we be able to see the divine doctor and that sir?"
The woman glared at him impatiently: "What's your hurry? He Cuihua, come here and take them to a place to stay."
During the hours that Fu Ming and his companion were interrogated, the one-armed aunt who had brought them to the village stayed outside the house, whether to keep watch or to guard the door to prevent them from escaping, it was unclear.
Hearing the woman inside raise her voice to call her in, the middle-aged woman named He Cuihua hurriedly ran across the threshold and pushed Fu Ming and Xiao Huaiyuan out one by one.
They walked up the mountainside along a narrow path that could only be used by one person at a time.
Boyun Village is nestled among towering, verdant mountains, a place rarely visited by humans due to its high peaks, dense forests, and thick white fog that obscures the sun. The area is shrouded in an atmosphere of extreme gloom.
Only a few terraced fields dot the slightly flatter areas on the mountainside. Along the way, there are a few black-tiled bamboo houses scattered haphazardly. Apart from that, there are all mud houses with uneven walls, and even worse ones are thatched houses with collapsed straw and broken roofs.
They walked for a long time, until the sun was setting, and then Fu Ming asked, "Aunt He, where are we going to stay?"
He Cuihua, still seething with anger, replied irrelevantly, "Oh dear, there's nothing I can do about it. You all angered the fairy as soon as you arrived, which makes things very difficult."
If something is not allowed in principle, then it is allowed; if something is allowed in principle, then it is not allowed. Similarly, if something is difficult to do, then it is possible to do it.
Fu Ming was too lazy to argue with her: "Just tell me what you want."
He Cuihua spread her five fingers and held up five: "Recently, many people have come to the village, and there is a shortage of money everywhere. Judging from your fair complexions, you can be considered young masters. Take out five thousand taels of silver first."
This is outrageous, it's robbery! Fu Ming was born into a farming family a hundred years ago, and back then, ten taels of silver were enough to support his family of five for a whole year.
Fu Ming was about to try to negotiate when Xiao Huaiyuan spoke up before he could: "Okay, but we want to stay in the room on the highest floor."
Money makes the world go round, and Xiao Huaiyuan led Fu Ming to move into the top-class room of Boyun Village as he wished. After pushing open the creaking window, they could see the whole village from there.
The sky outside the window turned a dull, deep blue. No smoke rose from the chimneys; only the regular chirping of mole crickets could be heard.
Fu Ming, lying on his back on the bed, let out a long sigh of relief.
He turned to the person sitting by the window and said, "Xiao Huaiyuan, what do you think?"
Before leaving, He Cuihua touched the bulging pockets at her waist and, unusually, spoke a few heartfelt words to them.
"This house used to be quite nice, but it's a bit ominous." She lowered her voice and looked around. "It's said that several people died here, and their remains have never been found."
unlucky.
This village may look peaceful, but it probably hides a lot of dirty secrets.
He hadn't forgotten why they had come, not to mention what the lord's purpose was in recruiting people with strange illnesses. How could such an ordinary little village have allowed Golden Core and Nascent Soul stage cultivators from the Heavenly Evolution Sect to vanish without a trace?
Xiao Huaiyuan closed the window and sat on the bed, reaching out to press Fu Ming's sore calves: "I didn't sense any spiritual energy fluctuations. Did you remember anything, Senior Brother?"
After being locked underground and unconscious for three years, the muscles in this body had become somewhat sluggish, and its stamina was not as good as before. After Xiao Huaiyuan gently kneaded the over-fatigued muscles for a while, the soreness shot straight to the top of his head.
"Hiss! Let go, let go." Fu Ming pretended to roll to the side, but was pulled back. This was definitely revenge for embarrassing him in public during the day.
After being thoroughly subdued, Fu Ming finally came to his senses.
"—Are you referring to Lord Yun from the Ghost Market in Yongcheng?"
After Lord Yun slipped away unnoticed, there was no trace of him. Interrogating his loyal servants yielded nothing.
Even more strangely, he and Xiao Huaiyuan checked the genealogy of the Yun family, one of the eight ancient clans, and found that the direct line of the Yun family had long been extinct, and the collateral branches had also died young, with none of them able to enter the Dao.
"It's not impossible. Do you think it's possible that Lord Yun learned about the 'Traction Poison' from a book and then modified it, which is why it has become the strange disease that is now ravaging Zhongzhou?"
“That makes sense,” Xiao Huaiyuan replied.
But it was still strange; the more Fu Ming thought about it, the more uneasy he felt.
Cultivators are often wealthy, and even the poorest rogue cultivators have some rare and precious treasures hidden away. Lord Yun opened the Ghost Market to profit from and plunder the wealth of the most powerful and influential figures.
But why bother to harm ordinary people who rely on the weather for their livelihood and can't even afford a few dozen taels of silver?
"Speak, what's your guess?" He kicked Xiao Huaiyuan with very light force.
“I don’t think as much as my senior brother. Although the soul lamp of that missing elder is dim, it is still burning steadily. It is clear that their lives should be safe, but they are just being imprisoned somewhere.”
Xiao Huaiyuan grabbed his well-defined ankle with his other hand and rubbed it back and forth as if it were daytime.
“Before we moved in, the one-armed woman told us that we should go to the stone tablet at the entrance of the village to worship the gods at sunrise the next morning, and then we would know the answer.”
Although the bamboo house was spacious and well-ventilated, it was extremely dark inside. The candles they brought themselves could not be lit no matter how hard they tried, and in the end, only one candle remained, making the house feel eerie.
The darkness made Fu Ming very sleepy. After all, this body had already died twice and was no longer in good health.
Fu Ming was naturally unrestrained, and at this moment his hair was completely down, flowing onto the bed like spilled ink. He was wearing only one layer of cotton and linen clothing, which was light and sheer. At this moment, he was in a casual posture, letting his collar open, revealing his collarbone and chest muscles, making him look like the beautiful ghost that had visited Xiao Huaiyuan's dream when he was young.
Xiao Huaiyuan thought to himself that after that incident, his senior brother would still resist like a hedgehog, but now he had let down his guard and was slowly maturing from his immaturity.
His hand moved upwards imperceptibly.
Fu Ming was engrossed in communicating with the system in his sea of consciousness, and had no time to pay much attention to the outside world.
Since the system update, the task system has undergone a qualitative leap. Simply put, the original task mode was the traditional game mode where the system assigned tasks. Now, tasks can be triggered by Fu Ming's free exploration. As long as the actions and results meet the merit criteria of Heaven's judgment, rewards can be obtained.
Of course, there are also drawbacks. The system can hardly provide him with key information anymore, so Fu Ming can only look through his past mission records in the Ghost Market to find potential clues.
As his thoughts flashed, a line of small-print annotation appeared on a page of the Hunyuan Devouring Heaven Record.
Puppetry, alchemy and medicine making, blood pacts with servants, human body modification, and suspected of plotting against him behind the scenes.
As he wrote, a bold idea suddenly popped into Fu Ming's mind—the ancient cultivators he had seen in the True Immortal's Notes all had these hobbies, could this person actually be a disciple of some ancient great power?
That would be bad. Having a personal old man is like the treatment of a protagonist who's all over the place. I wonder if his protagonist aura and domineering aura will still be useful then.
Fu Ming suddenly opened his eyes, but the flickering candlelight did not provide much illumination, and the scene remained dark.
"Xiao Huaiyuan, I want to talk to you about something."
"Hmm? Senior brother, I also have something to say to you."
At that moment, the two spoke at the same time.
Fu Ming: "Lord Yun is practicing ancient techniques, which may be related to the modification of the Qianji Poison."
Xiao Huaiyuan said, "Senior brother, shall we cultivate together today?"
...
Xiao Huaiyuan, do you even have anything important on your mind?
Fu Ming was disillusioned with his love-struck junior brother.
"Sharpening the axe won't delay the work of chopping wood. Why do you think that cultivating before the battle is a waste of time? There may be many ambushes on this trip. I'm afraid that your spiritual power is insufficient, which is why I think this way."
Xiao Huaiyuan cleverly changed the concept of dual cultivation to cultivation, and then leaned closer to say it.
"I wonder if you've noticed, senior brother, that the spiritual energy here is consumed much faster than in Luo City."
Fu Ming naturally noticed this. If his main body were here, it wouldn't be a problem, but his clone's meridians only flowed out and didn't flow in, so the burden was heavier.
The last vestiges of his male masculinity and his rational considerations based on combat strength manifested as two tiny figures, fiercely battling within Fu Ming's mind. But before they could determine a victor, a breath of hot air brushed against his earlobe, causing Fu Ming to shudder.
Xiao Huaiyuan, without any formal instruction, took the principle of tacit approval for anything exceeding three seconds. Before Fu Ming could reply, he began peeling the tender bamboo shoots with his bare hands, his skill improving with practice, and he was incredibly fast.
Hey, I haven't agreed yet!
Fu Ming's shout was swallowed back down his throat.
The weathered wooden bed creaked and groaned, unaware that a dark shadow had crept up through the paper window.
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Author's Note: I suddenly have a thought to change the title to "The Proud Dragon's Death Escape Fails Again," I wonder how it compares to the current title.
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