Tushan Yao stared at the man on the ground.
He was still breathing.
Not completely dead yet.
She crouched down. The moment her fingertip touched the major artery in the man’s neck, a scorching wave of heat surged straight through her limbs and bones.
The sensation was far too domineering.
Her meridians had been cold and rigid from her grave injuries, but when that wave of heat rushed through them, they actually showed signs of loosening.
Tushan Yao’s pupils, which had been somewhat cloudy, suddenly contracted.
A supreme specimen—a walking, humanoid blood-and-flesh lingzhi.
In this era, when spiritual energy had withered away, pure-yang energy of such astonishing purity was even rarer than the elixirs of immortality from a thousand years ago.
The man lay facedown in a pile of decaying leaves. The military uniform on his back had been torn open by a sharp weapon, exposing flesh that gaped outward, the wound deep enough to see bone.
The scent of blood mingled with that alluring pure-yang energy, leaving Tushan Yao’s throat dry.
“Lucky you.”
With a twist of her wrist, Tushan Yao flipped the big man over.
His brows were tightly furrowed, and the righteousness written across his face had not dispersed even though he had passed out.
Tushan Yao had none of the scruples of the mortal world. She reached out and began pulling at the buttons of the obstructive military uniform.
Since Heaven had delivered this lifesaving meal right to her mouth, if she acted coy and refused to eat it, then she deserved to be skinned and dismembered by that wild dog Taotie.
“Hss—”
The moment her fingertip touched the skin of the man’s chest, a streak of golden light suddenly sprang out, scorching her finger until it began to smoke.
The golden light of merit.
This man carried immense merit from saving the world and its people.
If it had been one of those useless little demons inside the barrier, touching it even once would have burned them to ash.
But she was of the Tushan clan.
A divine-beast clan that had received Heaven’s investiture—the thing they feared least was merit.
“What are you being so fierce for?”
Tushan Yao sneered and pressed down on the man’s chest even harder.
Nine illusory fox tails flickered in and out of existence behind her, forcibly suppressing the resisting golden light.
“I’ll borrow a little yang energy to heal my injuries. I guarantee you won’t die. This is a deal where you come out ahead no matter what.”
She bent down.
Her cool lips pressed against his burning skin.
Huo Yunzheng was trapped in a nightmare from which he could not awaken.
All around him were enemies closing in. His ammunition was exhausted, and the cold brought on by excessive blood loss was gradually devouring his consciousness.
He felt as though he were sinking into the freezing depths of the sea.
Just as the air in his lungs was about to run out, something soft and warm pressed against him.
Very cold.
Yet very fragrant.
It was an indescribable, cool fragrance of grass and trees. It domineeringly drilled into his nostrils, driving out every trace of the blood and gunpowder that had filled them.
Then that coldness began to turn feverish.
A pair of bonelessly soft hands roamed over his body. Wherever they passed, the excruciating pain miraculously vanished.
In its place came a tingling itch that made his scalp go numb.
“Don’t move…”
A woman’s voice exploded beside his ear, light and soft, with a hooked allure.
Huo Yunzheng instinctively tried to reach for the pistol at his waist. It was an instinct forged through years of crawling along the line between life and death.
But the moment he raised his hand, his fingers were interlocked with hers and pinned firmly to the ground covered in decaying leaves.
The disparity in strength was terrifying.
He was the dignified battalion commander of the special operations unit, yet he could not break free from that seemingly delicate restraint.
The fever grew stronger and stronger, burning up from his dantian before sweeping through his entire body in an instant.
His reason continued to shout that he was in danger, but his body had already completely surrendered amid this extreme pain and pleasure.
Deep in the primeval forest, the night wind rustled through the fallen leaves.
The moon hid behind the dark clouds.
Two gravely wounded bodies tangled at the edge of life and death, the desire to survive overwhelming every moral and rule.
Tushan Yao’s withered dantian madly devoured the man’s yang energy. Under the washing of this pure-yang power, her damaged meridians rapidly reformed and healed.
No one knew how much time passed.
The eastern horizon began to pale.
The forest’s dew dampened the chaos scattered across the ground.
Tushan Yao propped herself up and sat. Her face, which had been as pale as paper, was now flushed and dewy.
Most of her injuries had healed.
Her spiritual energy was even several degrees purer than it had been before she was wounded.
She lowered her head and looked at Huo Yunzheng, who was still asleep.
All the fatal injuries on the man’s body had scabbed over. That domineering golden light of merit circulated around him, as though angrily protesting the violence of the previous night.
“Tsk.”
Tushan Yao curled her lips in distaste and reached out to gather the remnants of his torn lapels.
This had been an accident.
Once they left this forest, he would be a soldier and she would be a demon. They would each follow their own paths.
Just as Tushan Yao was preparing to rise and leave, something suddenly changed.
The power of merit within Huo Yunzheng seemed to sense that the “intruder” was about to escape. It abruptly erupted in a burst of blinding light.
It was the Heavenly Dao correcting and retaliating against this kind of “violation.”
“Ugh!”
A buzzing sound rang out in Tushan Yao’s head.
It hurt.
As if someone were stirring her brain with steel needles.
The memories of the previous night began to crack, then collapsed piece by piece.
The man’s face, their entanglement in the night, even the sight of this forest—all of it rapidly faded.
Damn it!
Was this the price of gluttony?
Tushan Yao tried to summon her spiritual energy to resist, but this power acted directly on her soul. There was no way to block it.
Her vision grew darker and darker.
With her final glance, she saw only that mass of golden light enveloping the man’s resolute profile. Then she sank completely into darkness.
“Captain! There’s something over here!”
“Battalion commander!”
“Battalion Commander Huo is here!”
A jumble of footsteps shattered the quiet of dawn.
Huo Yunzheng abruptly opened his eyes. His body reacted before his brain did, springing up from the ground in a kip-up as his right hand instantly reached toward his lower back.
The gun was still there.
But he froze completely.
Morning light streamed through the treetops and fell across him.
He lowered his head and looked at himself.
His military uniform had been torn to shreds, strips of cloth hanging from his body.
His entire body was covered in dried blood and mud.
But… it didn’t hurt.
The fatal knife and gunshot wounds that had rendered him unconscious had now been reduced to lines of pale pink new flesh. There were barely any scars left at all.
What was going on?
Huo Yunzheng shook his head hard.
There was a gap in his memory.
It was as though someone had forcibly dug out a piece of it.
He remembered only that he had lured the enemy into the minefield, followed by a devastating explosion, and then…
Nothing.
“Battalion commander! Are you all right?!”
Several soldiers with camouflage paint smeared across their faces rushed over. The moment they saw Huo Yunzheng in this “grievous condition,” their eyes immediately reddened.
“Medic! Quickly! Get a stretcher!”
“Stop howling.”
Huo Yunzheng raised a hand to stop his subordinates’ panic. His voice was somewhat hoarse. “I’m fine. I can walk.”
He really could walk.
Not only could he walk, but his body was also filled with a strength he had never felt before.
It was as if he had just slept soundly for three days and three nights, leaving him so full of energy that he wanted to find a tree and punch it twice.
“Battalion commander, your injuries…” The medic came over to examine him, only to be left baffled by the savage state of his torn clothes and the intact skin beneath them.
This was far too unscientific.
How could someone who had lost so much blood be perfectly fine?
Huo Yunzheng offered no explanation, because he could not explain it himself.
Surrounded by the soldiers, he headed toward the edge of the forest. After taking only a few steps, he suddenly stopped.
That cool fragrance still lingered at the tip of his nose.
It was very faint, yet clung to him stubbornly.
He instinctively raised his hand and smelled his fingertips. Some excessively delicate sensation seemed to remain there.
“Battalion commander, what is it?” the guard asked nervously.
Huo Yunzheng turned around, his gaze locking onto a nearby patch of bushes that had been crushed into a disordered mess.
There was a pool of blood beside it that had not yet dried completely, with several long white hairs hanging nearby.
The hollow feeling in his heart grew stronger and stronger, as though he had lost something important.
“It’s nothing.”
Huo Yunzheng withdrew his gaze and forced that absurd intuition back into the depths of his heart. His face once again assumed the cold, hard expression of a living King of Hell.
“Notify all companies. We withdraw in ten minutes and return to base.”
At the edge of the barrier.
Tushan Yao was jolted awake by pain.
Not pain from her wounds, but a headache.
She steadied herself against a tree and rose, swaying slightly.
“Strange…”
She rubbed the back of her head, her face full of bewilderment.
She remembered that she had just fought Taotie, and then… it seemed she had won?
She lowered her head and looked at herself.
Her white dress was so dirty that its color could no longer be made out. The gaping wound in her abdomen had already healed, and the spiritual energy that had been completely depleted within her had actually recovered by two-tenths.
“Did I eat Taotie?”
Tushan Yao began to question her entire existence.
No, that couldn’t be right. The thing had smelled so foul that she would have had to be insane to put her mouth on it.
But if she had not eaten something tremendously nourishing, how had all these injuries healed?
And also…
She raised her hand and brought it close to her nose.
Apart from the smell of earth and blood, why was there an unfamiliar masculine scent on her body?
It was a little hot, and also made her… knees go weak.
Although she had no idea what had happened, after finishing that battle, she had not only survived but had also repaired a considerable portion of her body.
This was no loss.
Tushan Yao patted the dirt from her skirt and took one last look in the direction of the forest’s outer edge.
Something there was moving away from her.
The inexplicable sense of loss in her heart irritated her greatly.
“I’m going back.”
She turned around and did not think about it any further.
She failed to notice that the instant she turned, a thread of extremely faint golden light silently entered her lower abdomen and settled there in quiet dormancy.
—————————————— Those who dislike side stories may skip this section ——————————————
Side Story:
Battalion Commander Huo (looking at his healed wounds): I keep feeling like something happened last night. My body feels very strong, but my lower back is a little sore.
Guard (staring at the battalion commander’s tattered uniform): Battalion commander, your clothes… What kind of beast tore them? It must have been pretty strong!
Tushan Yao (passing by and sneezing): Who’s talking about me behind my back?