Jiang Chen turned back after all.
He knew full well the danger, knew that going back was a near-suicidal gamble. But White Lotus had saved his life once; he could not simply walk away. He could not pretend not to know her plight, could not hear it and let it go unheard.
He crept forward with the utmost caution, careful not to betray the faintest trace of battle intent lest he be detected.
But the clash between White Lotus and Ji Xuan was terrifying in its might. He could not even withstand the aftershocks, and so he withdrew again and again, circling ever outward. He kept searching for an opening, but a battle on such a scale was simply not something he could take part in. He shifted position a hundred times, tried angle after angle, yet he could find no way in.
He pressed his hand to his sword for a long while — and the blade would not come out of its sheath!
He was waiting, waiting for a single strike that would split the heavens and shake the earth, waiting for the possibility of that most glorious of moments. But Ji Xuan was no Xiong Wen, and he was not being crushed beneath White Lotus. A peak of the Inner Palace realm was not to be compared to the Soaring Dragon realm. Once one passed through the Gate of Heaven and Earth, each realm became an entire world unto itself. Those words were no idle boast.
To hold one's sword in readiness through such a battle was a gain beyond all telling. The crisis tempered the heart; the Dao heart whetted the blade. If he could loose even a single stroke this night, the world would be different from that moment on.
...
After a dizzying exchange of blows, White Lotus was suddenly sent flying by a single thunderous blow.
And it carried her directly over the patch of grass where he lay prostrate.
There was no time to think; his body moved faster than his thoughts. In that first instant he surged forward and caught White Lotus in his arms.
The sword never left its sheath — but with that movement, he had already delivered his stroke!
Before the eyes of the Inner Palace masters, this youth threw himself into the fray.
Pff!
The instant his body touched White Lotus's, the lingering force of Ji Xuan's fist slammed into him, tearing through his Dao-essence defenses like a storm sweeping dead leaves.
A gout of blood shot from his mouth.
He was knocked flying, crashed to the ground, and rolled.
He scrambled to his feet in one motion and sprinted away with White Lotus clutched to his chest. The Four-Spirit Body Refining Art ran at full force, replenishing his strength — never had he run so fast. He heard only the wind, the wind, the howling wind.
He knew in his heart that he might not escape, but he had to try.
Not until a roar like a surging wave echoed from behind did he realize the situation there had changed. But he dared not even stop to glance back. And so he never learned what had happened behind him.
He did not run straight toward Maple City. Instead he made first for the direction of Riverview City, then doubled back to the east, wheeled about, and turned again, only at last heading north. With two Star River Dao Vortexes now formed and his Dao essence in abundant supply, he could in principle have sprinted the whole way back to Maple City in one breath. But he did not. After covering his tracks, he slipped at random into a stretch of mountain woods.
He did not know what had happened to keep Ji Xuan from giving chase at once, buying him precious time. But he understood very well that his own speed was far inferior to Ji Xuan's; once his whereabouts were exposed, he would be run down with ease. And a man sprinting wildly down the road this night was the most conspicuous of targets.
So he chose to find somewhere to hide.
He found a cave, gave its occupant — an ordinary black bear — a sound thrashing, and then crawled inside with White Lotus in his arms. He did not kill the bear, but kept it pressed inside the cave to serve as cover.
Only then did he have time to examine White Lotus's injuries.
...
The cave was dry; this bear evidently had standards when it came to its living quarters.
Gently he laid White Lotus flat upon the ground. With a wave of his hand he gathered a ball of fire and hung it in the air to light the place. The black bear was plainly terrified, but when Jiang Chen shot it a glare, it resumed its seat, obedient and still.
White Lotus had fallen completely unconscious, and those bewitching, soul-capturing eyes of hers were closed as well. Her black robes had been torn in many places, revealing a fair and stirring sight beneath. The black gauze that masked her face, however, was fully intact — it must have been no ordinary cloth.
Jiang Chen steadied his breath.
The worst wound was about her abdomen, where the whole ring of flesh was a bloody ruin, scraps of cloth and torn flesh churned together, with not a single patch left whole. The Fetal-Nourishing Art, a mid-grade technique of the third rank, was the only healing Dao art Jiang Chen had ever learned. In principle all it did was gather the vital essence of the wood element to help the wounded revive their vigor and speed their own recovery. Against a wound such as White Lotus's, it was better than nothing.
But Jiang Chen could only try.
After forming the hand seal, a ball of green vapor drifted slowly toward White Lotus's abdomen and reacted with her wound. There was a flash of white light, and the green vapor dispersed without a sound. At Jiang Chen's level of the Fetal-Nourishing Art, he could not possibly heal wounds left by Ji Xuan.
Yet the very moment that green vapor touched White Lotus, something wondrous happened.
The Green Dragon Chapter of his Four-Spirit Body Refining Art was complete, and he had always been highly sensitive to the vital essence of the wood element. He clearly perceived the dispersal of the Fetal-Nourishing Art — and did not fail to notice, in that same instant that flickered past, a change in the black candle within his Celestial Palace.
That black candle had been lit.
Inside the Celestial Palace, it burned of its own accord, with no flame to start it.
Strangely, Jiang Chen understood at once, as if by instinct, that this black candle could burn for the space of a quarter-hour, and that when it was spent, it would vanish. But he did not know how it had been lit, nor how it was meant to be lit. He did not even know how to extinguish it before it burned out.
In short, everything was a haze of confusion.
The only thing clear to him was that it was somehow connected to White Lotus.
The black candle guttered out, shortened by a section. It had taken up residence in his Celestial Palace for some time now, showing nothing remarkable beyond being pestered by the Spirit of the Dao Meridian. Yet in this moment it had lit itself, and quenched itself.
And with that instant of flame and light, a Dao art appeared within Jiang Chen's mind. That single moment should never have cost it so much of its length — it must have been this Dao art that had consumed it.
"Flesh anew upon the bone, the soul back to the rotted frame..."
Half-unconsciously Jiang Chen murmured the words, his right hand tracing a seal without thought, until at last a layer of white light came to blanket him.
The light was an off-white, deathly shade rather than a blazing white, and should have been grim — yet it carried a strangely holy quality. When he laid this pallid radiance over White Lotus's belly, the torn flesh there began to writhe visibly, beginning to mend. In the end, White Lotus's very breathing eased into calm.
And Jiang Chen did not even know where this white light had come from, what its principle was, what power it drew upon.
All he knew was the name of the Dao art that had surfaced in his mind — the Flesh-Restoring Soul-Return Art.
That black candle that had appeared so abruptly within his Celestial Palace... it seemed to be no ordinary thing.
Jiang Chen was wholly absorbed in his ministrations, and so did not notice that behind him, the black bear had curled itself into a tight ball, trembling with fear.
...
When White Lotus swam slowly back to wakefulness, the day was already broad and bright. Sunlight had even crept into the cave, letting her see the black bear with perfect clarity. It was propped against the cave wall, sitting most primly, both its paws laid this way and that before it, utterly still.
Then she caught a strange smell. Her gaze shifted, and she saw Jiang Chen.
He was holding something that might charitably be called a "bowl," and walking slowly toward her. The sunlight fell across his face, and for no reason she could name, White Lotus found it rather pleasant to look at.
"Awake, are you?" Jiang Chen said, his tone warm.
"Mmm." Perhaps because she was only just recovering from grave wounds, White Lotus's voice was unexpectedly soft.
"You kept calling out for rice while you were asleep." Jiang Chen held up the thing in his hands by way of explanation. "I thought you must be hungry. But it isn't easy to cook anything out here. So I found some wild greens and simmered you a bowl of soup."
"Rice..." White Lotus paused, then said, "Simmered... for me?"
"Ah." Jiang Chen looked a little sheepish. "When I was small, my family sold medicinal herbs, so I can tell herbs from wild greens well enough. Don't worry, none of it's poisonous. The bowl I hollowed out of a stone as we went — and for cooking I control the fire with Dao arts..."
"Bring it here." White Lotus cut him off.
"Oh." Jiang Chen drew near and offered the bowl of wild-greens soup before White Lotus.
She struggled to raise her upper body, took one look — and immediately wanted to lie back down. That "bowl" was rough in the extreme, at best a stone with a hollow in it. And the soup... if that chunky, slimy, motley-hued liquid could be called soup. Now that it was close, that strange smell was even more fearsome...
"Drink it." Jiang Chen pushed it a little closer, expectant and earnest.
"No one has ever simmered soup for me."
She steeled herself and took the "bowl" into her hands.
"You're a patient now; you're entitled to some care." Jiang Chen said.
White Lotus could not deny it. Setting aside its ugly look and foul reek, this bowl of soup carried for her a tenderness she had barely ever known.
Being cared for...
She had never, ever been cared for.