Tainted Blood

by Tinalynge

  Xue Wei shook his head. He felt very weak at the moment. His entire body was drained of Qi, and the Qi dragons in his meridians had become sparse, but at least the Azure Dragon Spirit in his dantian was nonstop replenishing the lost amount.

  Unfortunately, it was a long way away from him being fully energized and able to continue fighting.

  While he was resting, Xue Wei watched the fight between Hei Gou and the other Primordial Beast.

  Lin Xiao had gone over to help but had been stopped by Hei Gou. He had wanted to finish the battle on his own, and although he had several wounds on his body, he was far from being done.

  The Primordial Beast saw that he was alone. He no longer held any faith in defeating all four of his opponents. He wanted to flee as soon as possible.

  Instead of waiting, his body suddenly enlarged. He no longer was a human, having transformed into a large horse with hooves, a lion tail and a horn.

  Its skin was red, like blood, and flames erupted from his hooves and mane.

  This was a Nightmare Stallion! Even in Chang’an, this race was flourishing, and the natural talent of the Nightmare Stallion was outstanding.

  In Chang’an, one of the elders in the Council of Elders was a Nightmare Stallion, so everyone’s faces turned serious when they saw the appearance of this horse-like beast.

  Hei Gou’s eyes also turned solemn, and decided to change his body’s shape as well. He suddenly sprouted wings on his back, his legs turned into the legs of a massive dog, and his hands turned into paws, but his body and face did not change.

  “He is quite daring,” Bai Tianyi praised. “To face a Nightmare Stallion like this, I don’t know if I should call him reckless or brave. Let’s see if this is enough to stop that pony!”

  Chapter 47 - Bragging about Losing

  Xue Wei snickered when he heard Bai Tianyi refer to a Nightmare Stallion as a pony. He was not worried. He had complete faith in Hei Gou’s abilities, and the fact that he had not fully transformed meant that he did not feel a need to do so yet.

  The wings gave him a speed that even Xue Wei could not rival, and he was able to quickly catch up with the fleeing Nightmare Stallion. The moment he did, he landed on the back of the horse, with the claws of both his front and hind legs digging into the stallion’s hide.

  One front paw dragged down the claws, all the way from the neck and down the back, leaving deep, brutal gashes down the stallion’s rear. Blood flowed unhindered and patches of mangled fur and flesh grotesquely stuck in Hei Gou’s claws.

  Hei Gou’s eyes were serious, but he was also slightly disappointed when he saw that the stallion did not stop to fight. Instead, it just bucked wildly and tried to throw him off his back while continuing to flee as fast as it could.

  They had already gotten rather far, and Hei Gou understood that his test of his strength was now over. He sliced the throat of the Nightmare Stallion, killing it instantly as it began to crash to the floor. Blood spurted out from its throat and coated the black fur on his paws.

  As the massive stallion-beast collapsed, Hei Gou leapt off and had already begun changing back to his human shape. The blood which previously had been hidden by the black fur could now be seen.

  HIs clothes, which had been intact when the battle began, were now in tatters and wounds of varying degrees were riddled all over his body.

  Of the four of them, Hei Gou seemed as if he had had the hardest battle. He was the one with the most apparent injuries, at least.

  Lin Xiao was also rather injured, but what he had injured was not the body but the soul. His face was pale and his eyes slightly dim.

  Bai Tianyi was not much better. He had used too much sword energy so he was feeling incredibly feeble. While medicinal pills could heal Lin Xiao and Hei Gou, Bai Tianyi would not be able to participate in a fight until he had restored enough sword energy.

  Xue Wei was the one in the best shape. Although his hand had been seriously wounded, it was already healing at a rapid speed, and his exhaustion from using the Sacrificial Stab was also being dealt with by the Azure Dragon Spirit.

  Xue Wei looked at his bracelet now that the three bandits were dead, and his eyes widened in surprise.

  “When we killed the other seven, we got seventeen merit points, but by killing this group our score has climbed all the way to eighty-nine.”

  The others looked at their bracelets, but their results were not as exaggerated as Xue Wei’s.

  “Yours skyrocketed because you dealt with the four-eyed woman and gave her the killing blow,” Bai Tianyi was the first to realize why his merits had jumped as much as they had.

  “Oh, so the rest of you have not gotten as many points as I have?” Xue Wei asked dejectedly. The others shook their heads.

  “I am at eighteen merits,” Bai Tianyi said casually. He did not care too much about merits. He was a sword spirit. He could always give up his physical body and return to the body of a sword, although if he did so he would have to recreate his body from spiritual energy, which would take him quite a long time.

  But this ability made sure that he could follow Xue Wei anywhere. Hei Gou and Lin Xiao did not have the same possibility, but Xue Wei was certain that they could gain enough merits for all four of them to be allowed to go aboard with the ambassador that was going to the Demon Phoenix Continent.

  “For now, let us retreat to one of the more outer areas of the grasslands,” Xue Wei decided. “We need to heal our bodies and souls completely before we engage in more combat. The ones in this area are rather strong. One mistake and we will end up dead instead of the opponent. Risking our lives is one thing, but suicidal behavior is another.”

  Bai Tianyi, Hei Gou, and Lin Xiao looked at one another. Although they had just ended a battle, they were not too tired. If they were really pushed, then they would be capable of fighting back, but they prefered fighting when they were at peak condition to take as few risks as possible.

  Since this was the case, they nodded their heads and moved back the way they had come. Xue Wei administered some pills he had in his storage treasure, pills he had created previously.

  All the pill recipes that Xue Wei had were the most common pills that were all over the market. He did not have any pill recipes that were rare, as they had all been prepared by Bai Tianyi, and he did not have the finances to invest in some rare recipes.

  Therefore, all the pills that Xue Wei took out were the most ordinary kind, but even so, they were of high purity and their effect was better than nothing.

  He gave four Blood Coagulating pills to Hei Gou and took four himself. Although pills could not be taken as candy, the high purity combined with the low medicinal strength of these pills enabled them to take this many.

  Hei Gou saw that Xue Wei put all four pills into his mouth and chewed lightly. If he could handle it, then Hei Gou obviously could too, as his physical body was many times stronger than Xue Wei’s.

  Xue Wei also handed another set of pills to Lin Xiao. These pills healed the soul. Although they took a longer time to work, they were able to draw soul power into the soul and help it mend and nurture the soul back to its original state.

  The only one he could not help with pills was Bai Tianyi, and he looked apologetically at his friend, but Bai Tianyi just waved his hand with a carefree expression on his face.

  Xue Wei was unaware of how long it would take before Bai Tianyi’s sword energy would recover, but a look at his face told him that the paleness had already been replaced by a rosy complexion. It was clear that he was not as strained as before.

  On the return trip, they encountered neither friends nor foes. A few Fierce Beasts appeared and looked at Xue Wei with curiosity, but they did not dare move too close out of fear for the other three.

  “Let us rest for a bit here,” Xue Wei said after they had traveled for a few hours. There was no one in sight and their current position gave them a clear view on all sides.

  Lin Xiao and Hei Gou were quiet as they instantly sat down and started
cultivating. They started mending their body and soul while at the same time training the Soul Guard.

  Seeing them train, Xue Wei took the task of observing their surroundings. The pills he had taken were enough to heal him after a bit of time. He could watch their surroundings while cultivating to some degree, though it would not have the same effect as stationary meditation, but this was the best course of action now that they were in enemy territory.

  Bai Tianyi sat down with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, and started emitting a pulsating, strange grey energy around him.

  It went out of his body, rotated around him and returned to his body again in time with his breathing. This was the sword energy that he controlled. It was clear that with each breath, the energy that moved grew in size.

  Xue Wei had been worried that the sword energy would take months to restore, but looking at Bai Tianyi’s current state, it might not take all that long.

  Time went by slowly. Xue Wei was eager to get merits, but he was not silly enough to rush his team when they were healing and cultivating.

  Suddenly in the distance, Xue Wei noticed a group of experts that seemingly had noticed them as well. The group was heading towards them, but Xue Wei hesitated to wake up his comrades.

  If the arriving experts were from the academy, then they could continue their training, but if they were bandits, then they had to fight.

  Fortunately, it turned out that they were from the academy. Xue Wei went out to meet them so that they did not interrupt Bai Tianyi and the others.

  When they noticed the black wristband on his hand, the academy students turned disappointed, and then they looked curiously at Xue Wei and the other three.

  “Are you the newcomers from another continent?” the leader of the other group asked curiously. He had seen that all four had two eyes each and that they seemed to not have the distinct humbling behavior of a two-eyed expert from Yan Dalu.

  “That would be us,” Xue Wei nodded his head.

  He did not see any condescension in the eyes of these experts, nor did he see much disdain. He was surprised to see that they were all friendly and open towards him.

  “You defeated Tang Liu and later helped him break through to the Ordinary Knight rank with his Qi levels. This piece of news, he is even bragging about it back in the camp,” the leader said, laughing out loud. “Normally, a defeat is nothing to rejoice about, but because he managed to become an Ordinary Knight with his Qi levels, he was quite hard to get back down to earth. Everyone who has been in the camp already knows about it.”

  “We are also aware that you have some abilities which are highly ranked compared to the Qi skills here in Yan Dalu.”

  Hearing this, Xue Wei was slightly alert. Were they interested in his techniques? He was not willing to give them away just like that.

  Seeing him tense up, the entire group smiled and shook their heads. “Don’t worry, we are not so starved for Qi techniques that we will make enemies with you over it,” the leader assured him. Xue Wei felt a bit calmer hearing this.

  “Well, we will continue our expedition,” the group got ready to head out once more. Xue Wei said his farewell. He had already managed to get a bit of information from the leader of the group and he was quite happy that they were not bandits.

  When he returned to his friends’ side, he quickly found that Hei Gou had awakened from his cultivation.

  His eyes were looking around him with a sharpness that had not been there before. There was a certainty and self-confidence emanating from Hei Gou that he did not have earlier.

  The experience from that battle had given him the confidence he needed. He had started to understand that, after two mutations, his body was now no longer that average Celestial Dog he had been when he met Xue Wei.

  He was now an overlord amongst the Primordial Beasts. He was now a beast that had been granted a heaven-defying talent. He was someone who could be considered a supreme genius. Everything about him had been changed, and it had been changed for the better.

  But what race was he now? He himself had not even seen his full shape, but he understood that he could no longer be considered a Celestial Dog. He was now a completely new race of Primordial Beasts, a race that had never appeared before.

  Chapter 48 - Gathering Point

  They sat up camp for the rest of the night. Lin Xiao was, surprisingly, the one who needed the most time to heal.

  Xue Wei and Bai Tianyi were on high alert all night. They spread out their spiritual sense to keep watch for enemies in the darkness.

  Hei Gou spent the night to improve his Soul Guard skill, and Lin Xiao was healing his soul while also cultivating the Soul Guard skill.

  The time went by slowly. The night was black as ink before, slowly, the sun started rising in the east.

  With the rising sun, there was a beautiful display of crimson colors on the sky, looking so beautiful that even Xue Wei could not drag his eyes away from the wonders of nature.

  Lin Xiao was the first to stand up. He released a breath of foul air and looked at the others with gratitude. He knew that his wounds had caused them to spend more time recuperating than what they had wanted, but they were a team. No one was left behind.

  “Let us advance again,” Xue Wei said. Together, the quartet moved deeper into the grasslands once more.

  On the way, they saw signs of a furious battle; corpses were left on the ground, some complete with only their souls missing, others with incomplete bodies, having been ripped to shreds by the attacks.

  Of the ones they saw, the bandits were not the only ones that had lost their lives. They also came across corpses with the black wristband on their arms, and when they saw this, their mood turned somber.

  This could have been them, had they not been extra careful. Even now, if they were not careful, it was obvious that they would end up dead.

  Xue Wei and the others advanced carefully. The energy in Yan Dalu was different from the energy back in Chang’an. Where his spiritual energy had been capable of extending more than a hundred kilometers for surveillance back in Chang’an, he could only reach one kilometer in range here, making it much easier to just look with the eyes.

  Feeling that he could no longer scan a large expanse of land around him, Xue Wei felt slightly weakened, but he understood that the other members of Yan Dalu were in the same position as himself.

  Although they cultivated spiritual energy, Xue Wei understood that they had the same suppression on their spiritual energy as he had. They could not see much further than him unless their rank was much higher than his.

  “Oh look,” Hei Gou was the first to talk while they were walking, and he pointed into the distance. “A group is coming towards us.”

  Although he spoke casually, Xue Wei and the others tensed up right away. If someone was coming towards them, there was a fifty percent chance that they were enemies.

  Knowing this, they all prepared for battle. However, a few moments later they noticed the black wristbands on the arms of the advancing group.

  Although the advancing group should have seen that Xue Wei and his friends were wearing black wristbands, they were not stopping and continued towards them, causing Xue Wei to frown.

  “Hello, fellow students,” someone from the group said with a cheerful voice. It was a three-eyed expert with spiritual energy at the Earth Knight rank.

  “Hello,” Xue Wei greeted them with a nod. He was slightly apprehensive and unsure of what exactly they wanted, but he did not feel any hostility so he was also rather polite.

  “We are gathering all the students into a large group now,” the leader said. “We are going to start the final push on the bandits, but to do so we need everyone who can participate in the battle.”

  Xue Wei was surprised, but he quickly nodded his head. It made sense.

  “So where do we meet?” He was not against teaming up with the others. There were a few things he had yet to fully understand, but a free for all melee would be ideal to him and his fr
iends.

  In a free for all melee, everything would descend into chaos, allowing Xue Wei and his friends to inch close to people and execute them with their superior physical strength.

  As long as they did not encounter too many Primordial Beasts specializing in Qi, they should be fine.

  “How do we split the points?” Xue Wei asked. The one who had taken the initiative to greet them flashed him a great smile as he answered, “Don’t worry, anyone who gets the killing blow will get the points. That is how the black wristbands are made to work.”

  Xue Wei nodded his head, but then he frowned. “Won’t that mean that many will try to steal the final blows?”