Mu Yingxue stared blankly, massive chunks of wood tumbling through the air around her. A huge log hurtled toward her, but she forgot to dodge. Suddenly Qin Mu lunged forward, scooped her up, and dashed away.
No sooner had they moved than the massive log crashed down behind them, a surge of violent energy sending both of them tumbling through the air.
They steadied themselves. Qin Mu set the woman down and looked back. Where Mu Yingxue had been standing moments ago, a deep crater had been carved into the earth by the falling log, with soil and rocks flying everywhere.
Mu Yingxue caught her breath, then suddenly realized something. She quickly pulled several jade vials from her robes and said rapidly, "I'm poisoned. You might have been contaminated when you held me..."
"No need."
Qin Mu swiftly prepared a few antidotes of his own and neutralized the toxin.
They looked around, both feeling somewhat numb. The surrounding valley was filled with piles of black wood, a chaotic jumble stacked into mountains.
Beneath their feet were the roots of the Root Demon—countless twisted tree roots tangled together, utterly still.
Qin Mu hurried over to check on Dragon Qilin and the others. When that unimaginably enormous tree had collapsed, they had not been injured at the base of the roots, nor had they been buried. It was fortunate.
"You win."
Mu Yingxue's expression was somber. "The Western Lands' greatest poison master is still no match for a little brother from the Great Ruins. I have brought shame to the title of Western Lands' first."
Qin Mu shook his head. "There's no need to be sad. I just got lucky this time. My poison contained voodoo from the Loulan Golden Palace, and you had already damaged the Root Demon's qi with your earlier poisoning. That's the only reason I was able to kill it."
Mu Yingxue said despondently, "It had swallowed the Azure Dragon Pearl and could replenish its qi at any time. I didn't help at all."
Qin Mu comforted her, "Actually, I'm not particularly skilled in the art of poison. What I'm good at is curing diseases and saving lives. Besides, I'm not some unknown figure. My name carries great weight."
Mu Yingxue was further struck. Not particularly skilled, yet he had still defeated her?
"You might as well have not tried to comfort me."
Mu Yingxue said coldly, "You won. What are you going to do with me now?"
Qin Mu was taken aback. "Do with you? Why would I? We had a poison duel, and we also eliminated a formidable enemy in the Root Demon. I'm quite pleased. We are fellow practitioners, and exchanging skills is simply part of our duty."
Mu Yingxue fixed him with her dark, round eyes, then suddenly rose on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips. She pressed a small cloth bag into his hand, then turned and darted away, giggling as she went, "I've poisoned you! Lovesickness poison! If you ever come to the Western Lands, don't forget to find me. Don't come through my front door—climb in through the window!"
Qin Mu stood stunned for a moment. He found that the girl's lips were soft, moist, and fragrant. His mind had gone blank.
But this was not from poison.
As the young divine doctor of the Yan'an Kingdom, Qin Mu knew his own body intimately. The young man was still analyzing calmly, "These are symptoms of cerebral ischemia. When she kissed me, my heart skipped a beat, and blood temporarily stopped flowing to my brain, causing the blankness."
Mu Yingxue was heading straight for Dragon Qilin and Xiong Xiyu. Qin Mu was startled and quickly chased after her.
The Azure Dragon Pearl had also been expelled from the Root Demon's body during the collapse, landing in the center of the group. Xiong Xiyu, the nursing Nai Kui of the Temple of True Heaven, was struggling mightily, inching her body toward the Azure Dragon Pearl.
Two white bats were also crawling toward the pearl. They had been poisoned by Mu Yingxue earlier, but the toxin was gradually neutralizing on its own, allowing them to move.
On the other side, the effects of the Bewildering Fragrance on Yu Bochuan and his group were also wearing off, and they too were crawling toward the Azure Dragon Pearl, trying to seize it before anyone else.
Dragon Qilin was moving the fastest. The massive creature, though bulky and normally lazy enough that it would only move when its tail was on fire, was now determined to get that Azure Dragon Pearl. It struggled forward with all its might, surging ahead of the rest.
However, its stamina was poor. After crawling for only a short while, it was already panting heavily, its speed gradually slowing.
The two groups were getting closer and closer to the Azure Dragon Pearl. A Celestial Realm expert was nearest of all, reaching out to grab it.
Seeing this, Dragon Qilin quickly opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue. The tongue grew longer and longer, reaching toward the Azure Dragon Pearl. It looked as though it was about to wrap around the gem.
Mu Yingxue arrived at the scene. Qin Mu, one step behind, raised his hand and waved it. A stream of qi shot forth, coiling around the Azure Dragon Pearl and lifting it.
But Mu Yingxue did not try to seize the Azure Dragon Pearl. Instead, she swept her sleeve and gathered up Yu Bochuan and his group, placing them all on the back of the white elephant.
The black-clad girl paused, her figure drifting upward to stand on the upturned nose of the great white elephant. She waved at Qin Mu, "The head of the Yu family has shown me kindness, so I'm taking them all with me! Nothing stirs lovesickness like thoughts of a young man. Come to the Western Lands soon—"
Qin Mu stared blankly, waving back at her, a strange emotion stirring in his heart.
The small cloth bag Mu Yingxue had pressed into his hand was not large, like a sachet, but it was black in color with mandarin ducks embroidered in gold thread, swimming side by side beside a lotus blossom.
He opened the sachet to find a small handful of bright red beans, like ripe red apples, but much smaller.
"Red beans grow in the southern land," Xiong Xiyu staggered to her feet, gazing at the beans in his hand, and recited softly, "Each spring, how many branches will they bloom upon? I hope you will gather many of them—for they carry the deepest longing." She smiled. "Qin Sect Master, the poison master is inviting you to a matrilocal marriage."
Qin Mu sniffed the red beans and shook his head. "These red beans are poisonous. She's probably trying to poison me! Could it be that there really is a lovesickness poison? Ah, of course! She just kissed me with her mouth, and it was still moist. Her lips must have had another poison on them, and when mixed with the poison from these red beans, it creates a compound toxin... Yes, that must be it!"
Xiong Xiyu was stunned. The former Temple Master of the Temple of True Heaven widened her dark eyes, staring at the Heavenly Sage Cult's leader, full of suspicion. "Aren't red beans used to express longing and love? How did this Great Sect Master Qin jump to red beans being poisonous? And he suspects Mu Yingxue poisoned him?"
She could finally be certain that this Great Sect Master Qin seemed to have some deep misunderstanding about romantic feelings between men and women, and it was a rather severe one.
"It seems someone has filled his head with mistaken ideas," Xiong Xiyu thought to herself.
Nevertheless, Qin Mu still carefully placed the poisonous red beans back into the black silk sachet and tucked it away solemnly, which gave Xiong Xiyu some hope that he was not entirely hopeless.
Qin Mu held up the Azure Dragon Pearl and examined it. The dragon's body within the gem was the color of jadeite, with a translucent, crystal-clear quality. Its whiskers and brows were all green, like a jade dragon.
The Azure Dragon soul swam within the pearl, quite happily.
This was the soul of a true dragon—not a Hen Dragon, Dragon Qilin, or Green Ox, but a pure-blooded Azure Dragon. Even through the pearl, Qin Mu could feel its extraordinarily powerful divine energy.
Although the Root Demon had absorbed some of the Azure Dragon Pearl's power, the pearl seemed capable of continuously drawing qi from the natural world and replenishing itself. Truly remarkable.
"What a fine treasure. Could the dragon soul inside be that of a dragon god?"
Qin Mu activated the Tyrant Body Three Pill Technique. His qi automatically transformed into Azure Dragon qi as he attempted to channel the power within the Azure Dragon Pearl. He found, however, that he could not move it at all. A look of surprise crossed his face. "I suppose only the unique techniques of the Temple of True Heaven can command the Azure Dragon Pearl's power. My Azure Dragon qi alone would probably just be feeding the Azure Dragon soul."
To wield the Azure Dragon Pearl's might, one needed to establish a connection with the Azure Dragon soul inside. Perhaps only the Temple of True Heaven's principle that all things possess spirit, all things possess divinity could establish such a connection.
"The Western Lands' sacred ground truly has great skill!" he thought with secret admiration.
The poison in Dragon Qilin's body had decreased considerably, and it could now stand. It quickly wagged its tail, the long dragon tail behind it sending clouds of dust flying in all directions. "Sect Master, give me the pearl!"
Qin Mu ignored him. He casually tossed the Azure Dragon Pearl to little Xiong Qi'er, smiling. "Here, you can play with this."
Xiong Qi'er caught the Azure Dragon Pearl and smiled sweetly. "Thank you, big brother!"
Dragon Qilin's drool cascaded down in streams. It wagged its tail at Xiong Qi'er. "Big sister, let me play with the pearl! Don't worry, I absolutely won't eat it. I promise!"
Qin Mu quickly produced several jade vials and held them beneath the creature's mouth to catch the dragon saliva. He thought, "I'll collect a few more bottles. When we get back to the capital, I can sell them and have money again... Hmm, but first I'll go back to the village and bring Ling'er here. She's much better at managing money than I am."
After collecting more than a dozen vials, Xiong Qi'er put the Azure Dragon Pearl back in her pouch, and Dragon Qilin's drool finally stopped.
Qin Mu winked at Xiong Qi'er. Though young, she was quick and clever. She took out the Azure Dragon Pearl once more, and Dragon Qilin's tail began wagging so fast it whistled through the air, drool flowing freely again.
Qin Mu collected more than twenty vials of dragon saliva and was quite satisfied. Worried that too much drooling might affect the quality, he signaled Xiong Qi'er to put the pearl away.
The two white bats had also recovered, and Xiong Xiyu had regained her strength. Qin Mu led them eastward.
Xiong Xiyu's poisoning was severe. If caught early, when the toxin was still shallow, treatment would have been simple. But the Thread-Entangling Venom she had been afflicted with had penetrated deep into her spiritual caches, making it extremely difficult to completely purge.
For anyone else, this would have been considered a terminal illness. But Qin Mu felt there was still a cure.
Along the way, he searched everywhere for spirit herbs and refined spirit pills. He used no fewer than ten different spirit pills in succession, changing prescriptions ten times, and finally succeeded in purging the Thread-Entangling Venom from her four major spiritual caches—the Spirit Womb, Five Elements, Six Harmonies, and Seven Stars.
After walking for more than ten days without encountering any pursuit from Yu Bochuan and his group, they surmised that with the Azure Dragon Pearl taken, they felt they could no longer stand against Qin Mu and his companions, and had likely returned to the Western Lands to seek reinforcements.
Suddenly, the sound of gurgling water reached their ears. Qin Mu's eyes lit up. "We've reached the source of the Yong River," he said with a smile.
They had not traveled much farther when they saw a stream appear on a cliff face. Below the cliff lay a drop of several thousand zhang. Xiong Xiyu and the others quickly looked north and south. They saw that the Great Ruins, coming from west to east, suddenly terminated in a massive cross-section here—a chasm that stretched north and south for unknown hundreds of miles!
The chasm split the Great Ruins in two. The western portion stood several thousand zhang higher than the eastern portion!
"What force created this cross-section?" Xiong Xiyu murmured.
"The Great Earthquake," Qin Mu said, his face betraying no emotion. "An unimaginable earthquake."
Xiong Xiyu shuddered.
Qin Mu leaped from the cliff, treading on the air, and descended step by step. Xiong Xiyu, carrying her daughter, quickly followed. Halfway down the cliff, they saw the stream merge with other cascading streams, forming a great waterfall. Below that, the waterfall had carved out a large pool.
The river poured forth from the mouth of the pool. It was not wide, only two or three zhang across at this point, but as they continued downstream, other small rivers converged into it. The water grew more rapid, and the river grew ever wider.
Xiong Xiyu looked back and saw that the cliff face behind them was covered with countless waterfalls, all their waters converging here to form one great river.
The Yong River!