Chapter 4: Making a Pact and Starting to Save the Dog
Whenever she thought about what happened later, she couldn't help crying. When she woke up her grandfather, Uncle Hei was lying in a pool of blood. Half of his left ear was bitten off, and one of his front legs was torn off. Blood was constantly oozing out of a fist-sized blood hole, and a palm-sized piece of flesh was torn off the neck of the vicious dog. He was lying on the ground dying.
She didn't know how Uncle Hei had the strength to fight the vicious dog that was twice his size. She only knew that if it weren't for her, Uncle Hei would have died of old age and lived out his old age in peace.
Now, this black dog that looked so much like Uncle Hei was lying in front of her, as if pulling her back to the nightmare of that night.
At that time, she covered her head and huddled together, her nose filled with the smell of blood, and she could do nothing but cry.
Now, fortunately, she knows a little about medicine, and fortunately, she has grown up.
After bandaging it hastily, she lifted the black dog onto the ice sword and flew towards the Beast Taming Sect at the fastest speed.
Flying into the courtyard, she kicked Fang Zhiming awake from his nap on the recliner and said urgently, "Call Master Gu Nuo over."
Fang Zhiming looked at the black dog in the yard. In just a moment, the blood dyed the ground beneath it red. He immediately summoned his sword and stepped on it.
"Please invite the beastmaster monk who is in the Jindan stage over here."
Fang Zhiming nodded in agreement and in the blink of an eye he was a hundred meters away.
Xu Qingqing took out the tools she had prepared earlier, carefully disinfected the black dog's wound, and re-bandaged it. After finishing, she transmitted spiritual energy to the black dog.
Although she was a student majoring in veterinary medicine, it was obvious that the black dog had suffered more than just superficial injuries. The conditions here were too simple, and she was alone now without the appropriate equipment, so it would be easy to make things worse.
When Gu Nuo arrived, he saw Xu Xing'er, covered in blood, kneeling on the ground, transferring spiritual power to the black dog beside her. She seemed unaware of the bloodstains on her cheek, and she was not aware of her messy hairpin.
Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and she looked even more miserable than the day she was with her senior brother.
"Uncle Master, please save it quickly!" The crying tone was still there in her voice. During this period of time, she had cried in front of him several times. She cried when the injection hurt, she cried when she quarreled with her father, and now she cried when she saw the black dog was injured. She cried more times than in the more than 20 years before he knew her.
At the beginning, he also suspected that Xu Xing'er had been possessed by someone else, but after secretly investigating and finding nothing unusual, he finally felt relieved.
Later, he would inadvertently recall her appearance when she was young. At that time, she was like a glutinous rice dumpling. When she suffered a little grievance, she would cry and open her little hands and ask him to hold her.
He was so busy that he couldn't even remember when she started to keep to herself and when she became silent.
Now seeing this scene, he suddenly felt that Xing'er like this was truly alive.
Yes, if it weren’t for their expectations, Xing’er would have been so lively.
It's the men like them who should worry about saving the world, why bother making things difficult for such a little girl?
Seeing that Gu Nuo was walking calmly as usual, Xu Xingxing suppressed the urge to curse: "Master, could you please walk a few steps faster? This dog is almost dying!"
"Although I'm a medical practitioner, I haven't practiced animal cultivation. Why did you call me here?" Even as he said this, Gu Nuo still walked over to the black dog, carefully inspected it from head to toe, and sighed, "It's too late to save it. Let's bury it."
I'll bury you!
She barely managed to swallow the insults, then pleaded, "Uncle Master, no one in Kunlun can compare to you. If you're at your wit's end, I really don't know who to turn to. Consider this a plea from Xing'er. Could you please think of another solution?"
Gu Nuo placed one hand on the black dog's head, closed his eyes, and channeled his spiritual power. After a moment, he withdrew his power, took out his needle bag, and began acupuncturing the black dog while saying, "This dog's veins are all severed. Healing techniques are useless. Now I can only use needles to seal its blood vessels and stop the bleeding. This will alleviate its pain and slow down the loss of its spiritual energy."
After a pause, he added: "Even so, it can only live for two more hours."
As soon as he finished speaking, Fang Zhiming and a tall man flew to the ground. The man had a serious face and ran over to check the black dog's condition. He looked carefully for about a quarter of an hour, then stood up straight as if disappointed, clasped his hands together and said:
"I am incompetent."
Seeing Xu Xingxing about to cry again, the man hurriedly said, "There is another way..."
Noticing that Gu Nuo's peach blossom eyes were glancing at him lightly, he shuddered and stopped talking.
Xu Xingxing was extremely anxious: "What is it? Tell me quickly!"
"Did you know that there is a beast-taming monk living in this mountain?" Gu Nuo said first.
"But I didn't see anyone here..." Before she finished her words, she suddenly remembered the clean stone steps and houses, and what Fang Zhiming said last night.
"Fang Zhiming, did you tell me yesterday that all the steamed buns you brought with you disappeared?"
"Right, right, right!" Fang Zhiming said, "Yesterday I thought I remembered it wrong, but I never thought—"
"Uncle Master, how can we find him? Does he have a way?" Xu Xingxing grabbed Gu Nuo's sleeve tightly, as if holding a life-saving straw.
Gu Nuo patted her hand and said soothingly, "Even your father would call him Uncle Shi. If he can't do anything about it, then this dog deserves this fate."
Without waiting for Xu Xingxing to speak, he continued, "His whereabouts are always difficult to track. The three of us will go to the mountains to look for him, and you stay here to guard the dog."
That's all there is to it.
After the three people left, Xu Xingxing did not dare to sit idle. She went to the Beast Taming Sect's study to read, hoping to find a way. The text was difficult to understand, and she became more and more upset.
She flipped through the books one by one, but still couldn't find what she needed.
Suddenly, she had an idea and realized that someone had entered the yard, so she hurried to the yard where the black dog was.
From a distance, I saw a man squatting beside the black dog. I didn't know what he was doing, but it didn't look like Gu Nuo and the other three!
When she walked in, she found that the man was pulling out the fine needles from the black dog's body!
"What are you doing!" A sky full of icy blades attacked the man, but he raised his hand to dissolve them.
The man threw the needle aside, clapped his hands and stood up: "Okay, let's get started."
The man had messy gray hair, hastily tied up with a branch. His eyebrows were so thick that they almost covered his eyes, and his beard was as messy as hay. He was dressed in rags and his body was dirty. A foul odor could be smelled from a long distance away.
Xu Xingxing seriously suspected that he had just finished feeding the pigs.
"Start what?"
"Save the dog."
The man tickled his nostrils with his little finger, pulled out an unknown object and flicked it away. Without changing his expression, he looked at Xu Xingxing, who was about to retch: "Don't waste time. In another quarter of an hour, it will die."
Even if Xu Xingxing didn't want to admit it, he had to believe that this person was probably the master.
She didn't dare to delay and followed her master's instructions to sit cross-legged a few meters away from the black dog.
Suddenly, golden light appeared under her and the black dog, and two formations appeared at the same time.
"Hands together, put aside all distracting thoughts, focus your mind, and sink your Qi into your Dantian."
Xu Xingxing closed her eyes and did as she was told. The golden light around her became stronger and stronger, and her spiritual power was like the wind, causing her clothes to flutter and her hair to drift.
Suddenly, everything around her disappeared, the sound of the wind and the chirping of cicadas disappeared completely, and she felt that she was now in an unknown cave. She did not open her eyes, because she could feel the black dog was with her not far away.
She seemed to be able to see it, feel it, and even hear its faint heartbeat.
This connection grew stronger and stronger, and later she could even see its broken meridians and fading spiritual power.
"Repeat after me." The master's voice sounded like a voice descending from heaven.
"Virtue carries all things, following the way of Heaven, without any end in sight, the universe is dark and yellow."
She followed along quietly.
"All things are born from each other, abandon ignorance and selfishness, great sounds are silent, and life is long and visible."
"Harmony and unity are born together, and separation is impossible. The veins are connected, and the souls are connected."
"The contract is complete."
Xu Xingxing seemed to see his meridians flowing towards the black dog like water. It started as a thread, then became a strand, and when the last word fell, the meridians wrapped in spiritual power surrounded the black dog like a rushing river, and did not dissipate for a long time.
After an unknown amount of time, the cloud-like spiritual power returned to its body.
After finishing, she opened her eyes and saw the master squatting beside the black dog again. The black dog's horrific wounds had already shown signs of healing, and its breathing had become steady. He rubbed the black dog's head and said, "From now on, this dog will be your natal spirit beast."
Xu Xingxing felt extremely weak at this moment, and before he passed out, there was only one thought in his mind:
Take your dirty hands off my nose!
——
When she woke up again, she was already lying in the room. Gu Nuo stood beside the bed with a frown on his face. The master was sitting at the table by the window, picking his feet earnestly. Without even looking up, he said, "What are you worried about? Isn't he awake?"
After saying that, he blew away the mud he had just picked off his hands.
"Yue Baiyin, do you know what her identity is that makes her take such risks? Why do you want her to sign a beast contract when she is still seriously injured? Can you afford the consequences if she makes the slightest mistake?" Gu Nuo's peach blossom eyes, which were always lazy and half-open, were rarely filled with anger.
Fang Zhiming, who was standing at the door, noticed that the atmosphere was not right and quickly said, "Master, would you like some tea? I'll go get some!"
"No tea, give me a bowl of rice soup with more rice." Yue Baiyin patted his feet, put on his shoes with several holes in them, looked up and instructed, "Add some scallion oil."
"Ha...haha." Fang Zhiming's smile was more awkward than polite. "Look at my brain. It's so late and everyone hasn't eaten yet. I'll do it! I'll do it!"
When leaving, he pulled away the man from the Beast Taming Sect who had little presence and was looking at Yue Baiyin with admiration.
Yue Baiyin sneered, "What are you pretending for, Gu Nuo? You didn't let her sign the beast contract for her health? Or for her cultivation? And you pretended to go to the forest to look for me, just to buy time, right?"
"So what?"
Gu Nuo was already furious. "She has pure ice-type water spiritual roots, and it took her twenty years of hard training to reach the Nascent Soul stage! Now that the beast contract has been signed, she has to start all over again—"
"Nascent Soul Realm?" Yue Baiyin glanced at Xu Xingxing, who quickly closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
He then waved his hand and said nonchalantly, "No need to start from the beginning. Sect Leader Xu's daughter is very talented, and this dog is a high-level spirit beast. If it were uninjured, you wouldn't necessarily be able to defeat it."
Gu Nuo snorted coldly, "So what if it's a high-level spirit beast? To save this so-called spirit beast, she's wasted half of her spiritual power, and even aggravated her old internal injuries. How could I let her do something so costly that the gains wouldn't make up for the losses!"
The temperature around suddenly dropped, and there was a strong wind outside the door, with sounds like thunder.
"how?"
Yue Baiyin's face was extremely cold, and his tone was like ice: "The life of a spirit beast is not a life?"
Gu Nuo circulated his spiritual energy and released it outwards, causing his pure white robe to flutter everywhere. He showed no fear and said angrily, "What happened back then was a helpless act. It's just that you still can't get over it after all these years. Looking at you now, you don't have even a sliver of the high-spirited spirit you had back then!"
“Yes, yes!”
Xu Xingxing knew that if she didn't jump out, she would be lying in the center of a tornado. She jumped out of bed and stood between the two men. "Master, you are so heroic and majestic. Don't listen to his nonsense. I can tell from your current appearance that you were so extraordinary and otherworldly back then."
"It's athlete's foot." Gu Nuo added coldly.
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