The green mist scattered like smoke.
Su Yan plummeted from the sky and landed with a heavy thud. His feet hit the ground squarely. He stood firm.
Ding Quan froze. A man with shattered bones does not land on his feet. He does not stand steady. Yet Su Yan stood perfectly still.
But this was nuo sorcery.
Nuo masters opened the secret chambers hidden within the human body. They comprehended the ways of heaven and earth, refined their inner cultivation, and unleashed arts that defied mortal limits. A single vine from Ding Quan could snap a mighty tree in two. How could Su Yan survive such a blow?
Even an iron god would have been pulverized.
"So," Su Yan said, wiping blood from his lips. He drew a long breath. His bones crackled. "Even as the Zhou family's hound, they never taught you true nuo arts. Had they given you the real methods, I would be dead now. Instead, you opened your secret chambers and seized the advantage, yet you still could not kill me."
Ding Quan's pupils shrank. He had pledged himself to the Zhou family. They had helped him unlock his first secret chamber and made him a nuo master. But he was not born a Zhou. The cultivation methods they taught him were rudimentary. The arts they passed down were low-grade. No matter how exceptional he believed his talent to be, he could never advance to the higher realms.
Su Yan drove his qi and blood into a frenzy. Thunder rumbled from within his body. The sound gathered into a single line, then transformed into the bellow of an elephant.
Behind him, his qi and blood condensed into a towering figure, half-elephant, half-man.
Su Yan fixed his eyes on Ding Quan, standing in the pool. He stamped his foot. Earth flew. He shot forward like a loosed arrow and closed the distance in an instant.
His fist punched through the air. The elephant-headed figure behind him mirrored the blow. Elephant-force erupted. The water surface exploded. Wind and waves surged toward Ding Quan.
Countless vines rose from the water, weaving together into a massive green shield.
Su Yan's fist shattered it.
Ding Quan countered with his own punch. Vines wrapped around his fist, swelling larger and larger. More vines coiled around his arm like tensed muscles ready to burst. The two fists collided again. Water sprayed into the air, whipped by the wind.
The vine-fist cracked apart. Ding Quan drifted backward. His feet moved, and the vines rooted to his body tore from the earth, breaking countless tendrils. Then they dug back in, dissipating the force of Su Yan's blow.
Ding Quan swung his left fist. Vines shot toward it, entwining to form another massive fist. Other vines clung to his body, their roots wrapping around his frame, tensing like bowstrings, granting him incomparable strength.
He did not cultivate the martial path, but nuo arts were so exquisite that they let him rival Su Yan's elephant-force.
Their fists clashed once more. Ding Quan retreated another step. More vines ripped from the ground to serve as his muscles and tendons.
Su Yan possessed only a mortal body. His muscles and tendons matched any ordinary man's. But a nuo master like Ding Quan could multiply those muscles and tendons many times over, compensating for raw strength and rivaling the divine.
Meanwhile, vines whipped toward Su Yan from every direction.
Su Yan stomped on one vine and unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks, shattering the green tendrils. His qi and blood surged. He hammered another fist toward his enemy.
Ding Quan blocked more than ten blows and retreated more than ten steps, back out of the pool and into the forest.
Su Yan pressed the attack, pushing the Titan-Ox Demon Fist to its limit. His qi and blood blazed with light from within, like a great sun rising from his lower abdomen, pouring boundless power into every strike.
His momentum grew stronger. But the trees around him seemed to come alive, attacking from every direction, even from below.
Su Yan knew he could have crushed a minor god like the Green-Robed Deity with ease. Yet against a nuo master, all his strength could not land cleanly. Ding Quan's arts always deflected his power at the last moment.
Ding Quan felt his own fear rising. Each blow he blocked felt like being rammed by a ten-thousand-pound elephant. His arms and legs shook with pain.
This boy was only fourteen, yet he wielded inhuman power, and it kept growing.
Still, with these vines, even elephant demon-strength could be endured.
"And this is my battlefield," Ding Quan thought, meeting Su Yan's attacks head-on. "In the forest, every tree and blade of grass is my weapon. I can wear you down at my leisure."
He blocked another punch. Countless vines exploded. Then more vines slithered in, connecting to his right fist.
But at that moment, one vine near him moved with impossible agility. It did not wrap around his fist. It wrapped around his neck.
Ding Quan felt a flash of confusion. Then the "vine" opened its mouth, revealing gleaming venomous fangs, and bit into his throat.
"Su Yan, I got him!"
The "vine" slid from his body with a gleeful cry. It was Yuan Qi, the snake yao.
"Snake yao?"
Ding Quan panicked. He waved his hand, and vines lifted the great serpent. Then his mind went dark. His vision blackened.
"Such potent venom?"
Ding Quan staggered, fighting to stay upright. He summoned every ounce of power from his secret chamber, struggling against the snake poison with everything he had to preserve his life.
Yuan Qi nearly died, strangled by the vines. Only when Ding Quan lost his strength did the snake escape. He turned back and shouted, "My venom ranks fifth under heaven. You are beyond saving!"
Ding Quan heard none of it. The flesh at his neck rotted with terrifying speed, as if it would chew through the entire throat and send his head tumbling. But then a mysterious force erupted within him. The rotting flesh fell away. New flesh grew with equal speed.
He seemed to be unraveling even Yuan Qi's legendary venom.
But Yuan Qi was no ordinary serpent. The venom was not so easily defeated.
Ding Quan's neck rotted again, faster than before. Light bloomed across his forehead. Green qi rose from his face. Flesh grew, then rotted, then grew again, a war of poison and life raging at his throat.
Su Yan punched through the wall of vines and barreled toward him like a mad elephant. His fist slammed into Ding Quan's chest.
Ding Quan grunted. Blood poured from his mouth. Su Yan's fingers found his ribs and danced across his body, dislocating every joint.
This was the snake catcher's secret art.
Ding Quan fell, unable to move. Vines surged wildly, burying him.
Su Yan punched again and again, tearing through the vines. But they connected underground. Tunnels of roots had already carried Ding Quan away.
Su Yan followed the tremors in the earth. He leaped, raining blow after blow onto the ground, carving craters into the forest floor.
Yuan Qi watched in terror as Su Yan went mad, striking the earth a hundred times, leaving a hundred pits.
"Magistrate Ding!" A voice called from the distance. "Are you casting nuo arts? Have you found that criminal Su Yan?"
Su Yan's face changed. He struck a few more times. Blood bubbled from the pits.
"Little Ying, we need to go now!" Yuan Qi whispered urgently.
Su Yan had no time to check if Ding Quan was dead. He slipped into the forest with Yuan Qi, vanishing into the distance.
"Get on my back," Yuan Qi said. "I crawl without leaving tracks."
Su Yan leaped onto the serpent's back. Yuan Qi sped through the mountains, evading the pursuing officials.
"That nuo master, is he dead?" Yuan Qi asked, uncertain.
Su Yan recalled Ding Quan's terrifying regenerative power and shuddered. "With your fifth-ranked venom and all those punches, he must be dead."
He did not sound convinced.
Ding Quan could regrow a rotted neck. Su Yan had never seen anything like it. He had always heard nuo masters were fearsome. This was his first real clash with one, and it was worse than the stories.
"Qi, thank you," Su Yan said suddenly.
Yuan Qi paused, then laughed. "You thought I ran? I am not that kind of yao. You avenged the villagers, risked your life to kill a god. We yaos value one thing above all, loyalty. You showed loyalty, so I could not abandon you."
Su Yan was moved. "I am human, not yao."
"Don't be so sure. What if you are not?"
"I have never heard of a human mastering yao arts so quickly."
Su Yan felt a sudden unease. Was he truly not human?
"No, I am definitely human. I am from Sujiaping. My parents were from Sujiaping." He told himself silently.
Meanwhile, several young officials raced to the pool, following the trail until they found Ding Quan.
Ding Quan was not dead.
Broken vines shielded him as he emerged from underground. The officials stared in shock at his condition. His limbs were shattered. Countless ribs were broken. His internal organs had suffered devastating injuries. And his neck was a mass of blackened, rotting flesh, reeking of poison.
Yet he still lived.
He had opened the Mud Pill secret chamber, the hidden vault within the human body that contained boundless vitality. It sustained his form, making him nearly unkillable.
But Ding Quan had only unlocked the first level of the Mud Pill chamber. When that vitality ran dry, so would his life.
He was already close to death, his breath faint, the first level's energy nearly exhausted.
The officials rushed to save him. They cut away the rotten flesh and set the broken bones. One official in black and red robes pressed a finger to Ding Quan's brow, channeling vitality from his own Mud Pill chamber to suppress the poison. The other two officials did the same, helping his shattered bones knit together.
As for his internal organs, those were too delicate for others to handle. Ding Quan would need to heal those himself once stable.
His breathing gradually steadied, though his joints remained dislocated, leaving him paralyzed and speechless.
The official in black and red recognized the dislocation and quickly reset his joints. "Brother Ding, who did this to you?"
Ding Quan relaxed and recounted his encounter with Su Yan and the snake yao's ambush, ashamed. "That Su Yan cultivates yao arts, and the snake yao attacked from behind, which is why I was so thoroughly beaten..."
The officials exchanged glances, smiles playing at their lips. They had worried Ding Quan would claim the glory. Now, with such severe injuries, he could forget about it.
"Rest well, Brother Ding. Capturing Su Yan is best left to us." The three laughed and departed.
Ding Quan felt displeased but helpless. He sat in meditation posture, then touched his robes. His face went pale.
"No."
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
In his robes lay a scroll, the Mud Pill Hidden Scenery Qi Refinement Method. It was the cultivation art the Zhou family had taught him when he pledged his service. The Zhou family strictly forbade any copying or transmission of their arts. Violators faced extermination of their entire clan, destruction of their three souls, dispersal of their seven spirits. Any outsider who so much as glanced at the text would have their eyes gouged out and their mind wiped, reduced to a drooling idiot.
Ding Quan had secretly copied the method from memory. Now the scroll was gone.
"Did I lose it during the fight with Su Yan?"
Sweat poured down his face. He struggled to his feet and retraced his steps, searching everywhere. But he found nothing.
"Unless..."
He remembered Su Yan dislocating his entire body. A chill ran through him. "Did he steal it from my robes then?"
His vision swam. He nearly fainted.
If the Zhou family's cultivation art leaked, he would face their cruelest, most frenzied punishment.
"I must eliminate Su Yan and recover the art."