“Retreat!”
Seeing their objective achieved, the black-clad figures swiftly withdrew, vanishing into the curtain of rain in an instant.
The survivors, having narrowly escaped death, clutched their chests and gasped for breath.
Shang Yueli hurried forward to examine Mu Yunsheng’s injuries.
“Yueli, how is Yunsheng?”
Wang Shi’s face was deathly pale, her legs too weak to stand.
Shang Yueli felt an unprecedented calm. She shook her head and replied to Wang Shi, “The arrow pierced his left chest. It must have been poisoned—the blood is black.”
“What!” Wang Shi looked as if struck by lightning, her expression frozen in shock.
Xiao Fu quickly supported Wang Shi to prevent her from collapsing to the ground.
Shang Yueli broke off the excess part of the arrow shaft. “We need to find shelter from the rain first. Otherwise, he’ll die from hypothermia before the poison takes effect!”
Su Moli suddenly spoke up, “I saw a cave over there. Should we take shelter there?”
Her lips were pale, clearly shaken by the ordeal.
Shang Yueli followed her pointing finger but saw nothing but trees.
Everyone turned to look at Su Moli.
Su Moli shrank back somewhat guiltily and said indignantly, “Why is everyone staring at me? Going there is better than staying here getting drenched, right?”
Shang Yueli firmly supported Mu Yunsheng with her right arm under his knees and her left arm across his back supporting his shoulder blades. “Lead the way!”
“Alright!”
Su Moli stumblingly led everyone to the cave.
The interior was spacious, with a small spring inside.
Shang Yueli gently laid Mu Yunsheng on the ground, carefully cut open the fabric on his chest, and retrieved a pierced Token from within.
The arrowhead was tightly embedded in it, nearly touching the skin of his chest.
Shang Yueli threw the Token to the ground and breathed a sigh of relief.
Facing the puzzled looks from everyone, she offered no explanation and instead took out external medicine to treat Mu Yunsheng’s other blade wounds.
Wang Shi regained her composure, wiped away her tears, and urgently asked, “Is Yunsheng going to be alright?”
Shang Yueli cleaned his wounds with Spirit Spring water and shook her head. “It’s still uncertain. Although the Token blocked the fatal strike, the blood from his other wounds is black—clearly a sign of poisoning.”
She could barely manage external injuries, but when it came to poisoning, she was truly helpless.
Mu Yunsheng’s body trembled, his purple-tinged lips slightly parted as he murmured something.
Shang Yueli leaned in to listen but heard nothing. Instead, she was startled by his scorching breath.
She said to Gu Mang, “Brother Gu, can you still start a fire?”
Gu Mang shook his head regretfully. “The dry firewood is all soaked by the rain. It won’t burn.”
Outside, the heavy rain poured down. The cave was chilly, and the temperature inside was only getting colder. Everyone shivered uncontrollably, their lips pale.
Shang Yueli suddenly remembered something, took her bundle, and pretended to retrieve novels stored in her space from it.
Holding the thick stack of papers in her hand, Shang Yueli felt none of the usual joy of reading novels—only a desperate hope for how long they could burn.
Over a thousand pages, five hundred sheets—enough to burn for at least half an hour.
She took out several more books from her space and stacked them together.
Seeing this, Lin Zhiman quickly handed her the books from her own bundle. “Yueli, I have some here too. They’re a bit wet on the edges, but the middle is still dry.”
Earlier, she had been upset for a long time after her money went missing, but she hadn’t thrown these books away.
For one, paper was inherently expensive, and she could sell them someday for a decent amount of money.
Secondly, she couldn’t read any of the characters in the book. What if it was a rare surviving copy left by some important figure? Wouldn’t she stand to gain enormously?
So even though the book was heavy, she had carried it all the way here.
She hated spending money, but she feared freezing to death here even more.
Lin Zhiman steeled her heart, threw all the books on the ground, and ran away with her eyes closed.
As long as she couldn’t see it, she wouldn’t feel the pain!
She covered her eyes and crouched in a corner: “Niece-in-law, hurry up and burn it, or I’ll regret it later!”
“Mm!” Shang Yueli nodded emphatically.
She tore off the soaked parts, piled all the dry sections together, and used the fire starter Gu Mang had given her to light the books.
Flames surged, illuminating the entire cave and warming the surroundings.
Shang Yueli moved Mu Yunsheng closer to the fire to ward off the cold and fed him some Spirit Spring Water.
Before long, she noticed Mu Yunsheng had stopped trembling, and his complexion looked much better than before. She secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Thankfully, the Spirit Spring Water had added detoxifying effects—otherwise, in this remote wilderness, Mu Yunsheng might not have made it.
Thinking back carefully, she recalled that in the original novel, Mu Yunsheng had also encountered assassins during his exile, been pierced through the left chest by an arrow, poisoned, and fallen into a prolonged coma from which he couldn’t wake.
That’s why Shang Yueli had slipped the Token into Mu Yunsheng’s chest before returning to the relay station, just in case—and unexpectedly, it had actually come in handy.
Earlier, outside, she had kept it from everyone because she feared the assassins hadn’t gone far and might hear, then return to finish the job.
Shang Yueli remembered that in the novel, Mu Yunsheng was critically injured. Later, the female lead, Su Moli, stumbled upon a cave to shelter from the rain and coincidentally discovered the legendary medical book of the world’s top divine doctor, Wang Quanjiefeng, inside the cave, which ultimately saved the male lead.
However, on the way here, she had closely observed Su Moli’s behavior.
Su Mili clearly wasn’t familiar with the terrain of this mountain range, yet she managed to lead everyone accurately to this cave as if she had a navigation system.
The journey was bumpy, but her goal was clear and the route precise.
As far as she knew, the place they came from was a full kilometer away from this cave. Moreover, the cave entrance was entangled with vines—unless one was very close, it would be impossible to notice there was a cave here.
So Su Moli must be hiding something, just like her.
Was it a System?
Or did she have some other golden finger…
Shang Yueli was deep in thought when a sharp cry interrupted her train of thought.
“Shicai!”
Jiang Xia limped hurriedly to the spring, trying to fish out her son who had fallen in.
Lin Zhiman: “What happened?”
Su Moli shrugged indifferently, “He tried to snatch my food and fell in himself. Serves him right!”
“Did you push him?” Lin Zhiman asked, shocked.
“I did not! Don’t falsely accuse me!”
Su Moli held up the half-eaten jerky in her hand, showing it off. “Look, his teeth marks are still on it!”
“He was just coveting my jerky, tried to grab it, tripped over a stone, and fell in. Don’t try to pin it on me.”
Jiang Xia looked distraught: “You just watched him fall and didn’t even try to save him!”
“Huh?”
Su Moli was frightened by her fierce glare and quickly ran back to her brothers.
“In chaotic times, kill the saints first. If you want to save him, do it yourselves—I’m not going!”
She stuck out her tongue.
Even though she had been the city’s champion in underwater swimming in college, she wouldn’t dive into the water for a scoundrel like Mu Shicai.
Whether he lived or died—that was his fate!
Jiang Xia screamed, wanting to lunge at her, but collapsed to the ground from exhaustion.