At the foot of the divine mountain, there should have been a vast expanse of fir forest. Their canopies, shaped like spires, stood tall and silent in quiet dignity.
But on this mountain, eternal ice and snow had long since buried them. To the eye, all that remained were uneven mounds of snow scattered across the land.
The mountain foragers searched for treasures by digging through these snow mounds.
After entering the mountain, Gu Qing ran at full speed. With the cover provided by the snow mounds, he had already put some distance between himself and his pursuers.
But this was only temporary. In just a few minutes, they would likely follow his tracks and catch up again.
On the snowy ground, many footprints of varying depth remained.
They had been left behind when Gu Qing was running earlier. He had no time to deal with them, and now they seemed to have become a tempting “bait”.
Gu Qing hid behind a tall fir tree, closing his eyes to focus. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword as he patiently waited for his prey to appear.
The wind and snow howled, and the sky and earth blended into one.
With the red mist obscuring vision, in such conditions, hearing was sometimes more reliable than sight.
—If this life were included, he had already lived through three lifetimes.
His first life was on Earth, where he lived an ordinary, unremarkable existence. In his second life, he was the son of a hunter, learning from his adoptive father to hunt in the mountains from a young age, mastering traps, mechanisms, and close-quarters combat. In his third life, he had again grown up in the mountains, this time as a young physician.
Setting aside his first life, no matter how one looked at it, he could be considered a child of the mountains.
If he were outside the red mist facing two cultivators, even low-level ones from a mortal dynasty, Gu Qing would stand no chance.
Fortunately, this was the divine mountain, a forbidden zone for immortals.
Time passed quietly, second by second, and Gu Qing’s breathing gradually grew slow and steady.
Suddenly, he felt his right foot press against something hard. His brows lifted slightly, and an idea formed in his mind.
***
Following the footprints in the snow, two figures. One tall and one stout pushed through the red mist and advanced forward.
The tall, thin Taoist in front wore a deep frown, his expression dark. He stared at the footprints growing deeper by the step, his gaze flickering as if lost in thought.
“Senior brother, y-you wait for me!”
The shout came with heavy, labored breathing. Wang Erhu wiped the sweat from his face as he struggled to catch up from behind, his bulky body now an obvious burden.
Unable to use spiritual energy, he could no longer keep pace with Zhang Chi.
Hearing this, Zhang Chi stopped.
Wang Erhu assumed his shouting had worked. Panting, he cursed, “That damned bastard really can run. When I catch him, I’ll slice his tendons and throw him into the beast pen…let’s see how he runs then!”
Zhang Chi glanced at him and said coolly, “Instead of wasting breath cursing, you’d be better off saving your strength.”
Accustomed to being scolded, the fat Taoist chuckled awkwardly and didn’t dare talk back.
Then Zhang Chi added, “The footprints are getting deeper. That means he’s running out of strength. He can’t have gone far; he might even be hiding behind one of these trees right now.”
“Heh, makes sense!”
Wang Erhu’s eyes lit up, his demeanor instantly turning arrogant. Curling his lips into a vicious grin, he shouted into the surroundings, “Hey, you brat, stop hiding and get out here! If you hand over that little wretch obediently, maybe I’ll be in a good mood and spare your worthless life!”
His voice boomed through the forest, echoing and shaking loose clumps of snow from the trees.
The young Taoist remained expressionless, as if he had long expected such behavior. Only his right hand had quietly moved to rest on the sword hanging at his waist.
As expected, there was no response.
Wang Erhu hadn’t truly expected an easy success. He was simply used to acting domineering, and seeing that his opponent was nothing more than a powerless physician, he naturally grew even more unrestrained.
Receiving no reply only fueled his anger. He opened his mouth and hurled a string of vicious insults.
They were foul and unbearable to hear. Talk of flaying skin and tearing tendons was nothing out of the ordinary. Licking his thick lips, he leered as he said, ‘I’ve heard you’re quite the famous beauty in Xiqi City… chaste, aloof and proud. Today, I’ll see just how beautiful and aloof can you be—”
Shing!
Suddenly, his stream of foul words was cut off by the sharp sound of something slicing through the air, replaced by a piercing scream of agony.
Intense pain shot through his right knee. The fat Taoist staggered and his huge body lost balance. With pain and shock still frozen on his face, he crashed heavily forward.
And the cause of all this… was merely a small stone.
More precisely, the stone was only the trigger. What truly made him fall was his own weight, along with a half-foot-deep shallow trench beneath his feet.
The trench had been buried under snow, unseen by anyone.
At that very moment, Gu Qing who had been hiding in the shadows finally moved.
He leapt out like a startled swan.
The short sword cut through the swirling snow, flashing coldly as it effortlessly pierced flesh and drove in until the blade was fully buried.
A brief, utterly shrill scream rang out.
The target… was the throat.
The moment he struck, it was the most vicious and lethal killing move.
For hunters, pursuing a one-hit kill had always been the guiding principle. As the finest hunter of Jiang Family Village in years past, that man had taught Gu Qing many things.
Had he not later believed that “all pursuits are inferior to scholarship”, Gu Qing might well have become an outstanding hunter himself.
And hunters excel at ambush.
A skilled hunter can use everything in the surroundings to successfully take down prey many times larger and stronger than themselves.
To him, cultivators stripped of their spiritual energy were no different from prey.
In a one-against-two fight, killing one without injury first…such a result was enough to stir excitement, even exhilaration.
But that thrill did not last long. In fact, it vanished almost instantly.
Amid the softly falling wind and snow, there seemed to be an additional, faint sound.
It was very light… a single “shing”. Like a sword leaving its sheath, the blade brushed against the air with a crisp, clean note.
Gu Qing pulled out his short sword and suddenly spun around, forcibly twisting his waist in an instant.
In the next moment, what had just happened to the fat Taoist was repeated upon him.
It was hard to say how many exchanges had taken place in that instant. From the fat Taoist’s cry of pain, to his shock, to his death; from that decisive, vicious strike, to the counterattack lying in wait.
In the end, a sword tip was driven firmly into Gu Qing’s body, just at the lower left of his abdomen.
Blood flowed along the blade, staining his worn clothes red.
There was no pointless talk. It wasn’t time for that yet. Only when the opponent was completely incapable of resistance would Zhang Chi who was looking down from above declare his victory.
But judging from the current situation, the scales of victory already seemed to tilt overwhelmingly in his favor.
The corners of his lips lifted slightly as Zhang Chi prepared to pull out his sword and deliver the final, fatal blow….when he suddenly met the other’s eyes.
They were bright and clear, calm as still water, quietly gazing at him, without the slightest awareness of impending death.
Zhang Chi froze for a moment.
Then a handful of snow was suddenly flung at his face.
By instinct, Zhang Chi shut his eyes, then immediately opened them again.
The entire process was extremely brief and perhaps took less than a second, but a sense of danger had already surged within him and his pupils shrank sharply.
Once again, acting on instinct, he tried to circulate his spiritual energy. Over twenty years of cultivation had ingrained the habit of fighting with it deep into his bones. Even though he knew it was useless, by the time he realized it, it was already far too late.
Perhaps this was the true reason the Red River had always been called a forbidden zone for immortals.
Gu Qing’s expression remained calm as he closed the distance. In the next instant, a flash of cold light flickered. His short sword swept across the young Taoist’s throat, and blood burst forth in a spray.
The Taoist’s shrill scream was cut off before it could even leave his mouth.
A life traded for a wound. That was all.
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