The vine sphere dissolved like green smoke drifting away on the wind. Xu Ying dropped from the air and landed on both feet, steady as a rooted tree. Ding Quan stared in disbelief. A man whose every bone should have been ground to paste simply could not land on his feet, let alone stand so firmly. Yet Xu Ying did precisely that. The Nuo shaman felt the foundations of his confidence crack.
His attack had not been mere physical force. It was Nuo sorcery—power drawn from a Hidden Gate of the Body, refined through communion with the natural world. A single vine of Ding Quan's creation could crush an ancient tree to splinters. Xu Ying should not have survived. Even a god forged of iron would have been pierced through and crushed into pulp. None of this made sense.
"It seems," Xu Ying said, drawing a long breath that sent a cascade of cracks through his joints, "that even though you serve as the Zhou family's dog, they have not taught you true Nuo arts." He straightened, wiped blood from his mouth, and smiled. "Had they given you the real techniques, I would be dead. Instead, you opened a Hidden Gate and still could not finish me."
Ding Quan's pupils shrank. Xu Ying had spoken the truth that burned in his soul. The Zhou family had helped him open his Hidden Gate and welcomed him into the ranks of Nuo shamans, but his blood was not Zhou blood. The cultivation methods he received were low-grade. The Nuo sorcery he learned was the simplest form. Despite his natural talent, he could never reach the heights he deserved. He was a pet kept at the master's gate—useful, but never family.
Xu Ying's blood and qi erupted with near-berserk intensity. Thunder rolled through his body, the separate peals merging into a single elephant cry. Behind him, blood-mist coalesced into the Elephant God manifestation—the translucent figure with an elephant's head upon a human body, a foot and a half taller than the boy himself. Locking his gaze onto Ding Quan where he stood upon the pool's surface, Xu Ying drove his foot into the earth and launched forward.
His fist tore through the air, the Elephant God striking in perfect synchronization. The pool's surface detonated. Wind and spray surged toward Ding Quan like a wave of fury. Vines erupted from the water, weaving into a shield, but Xu Ying's punch shredded it. Ding Quan met fist with fist, yet now countless vines wrapped his arm and body, forming artificial muscles and tendons anchored deep in the earth. His strength rivaled Xu Ying's elephant power. They exchanged blow after blow, Ding Quan retreating step by step as Xu Ying's assault drove him from the pool into the forest.
The trees themselves seemed to turn against Xu Ying. Branches lashed like whips, roots surged from the soil, vines stabbed from every direction. Yet Xu Ying's attacks only grew fiercer. His qi blazed within him like a sun rising from his dantian, and each punch carried more force than the last. He knew that at his current level of strength, he could easily kill another deity like the green-robed spirit of Jiangji Village. But Ding Quan was different. The Nuo shaman's sorcery always found a way, at the very last moment, to deflect the killing force.
Ding Quan was equally alarmed. Every punch he blocked felt like being struck by an elephant weighing ten thousand pounds. His arms and legs throbbed with accumulated pain. Xu Ying was only fourteen, yet the inhuman power packed inside his body continued to swell. Still, the forest was Ding Quan's domain. Every plant was his weapon. He could outlast the boy through sheer attrition.
He braced himself for another punch. New vines shot toward his right arm—but one of them was too fast, too sinuous. Instead of wrapping around his fist, it coiled around his throat. Before Ding Quan could react, the "vine" opened its jaws.
"Xu Ying, I finally got him!"
The serpent Yuan Qi slithered free with obvious delight, having perfectly played the part of a camouflaged vine. His fangs sank deep.
"Snake demon?" Ding Quan's mind reeled. He swept the serpent aside with a wave of vines, but the damage was already done. His consciousness darkened at the edges. "Such potent venom..."
He fought desperately, marshaling every scrap of his Mud Pill Gate's power to combat the poison. The flesh around his neck blackened and sloughed away in putrid strips. His head seemed ready to fall from his shoulders. But the Hidden Gate's regenerative power surged in response, dead flesh sloughing off as new tissue grew. Yet the venom returned with equal ferocity. The battle between poison and regeneration raged back and forth across his throat.
Xu Ying smashed through the remaining vines and drove his fist into Ding Quan's chest. Bone splintered. Blood burst from the Nuo shaman's mouth. Before Ding Quan could fall, Xu Ying's fingers danced across his body in a blur of precise strikes—the snake catcher's signature technique, honed through years of subduing venomous serpents. Joint after joint separated. Ding Quan collapsed, completely immobilized.
Vines erupted around him, tunneling underground, dragging the paralyzed shaman away from death. Xu Ying hammered the earth with punch after punch, leaving a hundred craters in the forest floor, but the vines had already carried his enemy beyond reach.
Yuan Qi urged him to flee. Distant voices were approaching—other Nuo shamans, drawn by the sounds of combat. Xu Ying vaulted onto the serpent's scaled body, and they vanished into the wilderness.
"My venom is the fifth deadliest in the world," Yuan Qi declared as they fled. "He's finished."
Xu Ying was less certain. He remembered Ding Quan's horrifying regeneration—the way his rotting neck had regrown itself. He had always heard that Nuo shamans were terrifying, but this was his first direct confrontation. The reality exceeded every rumor. "Thank you, Yuan Qi," he said quietly.
The serpent seemed surprised. "You thought I'd abandoned you? I'm not that kind of demon. You risked everything to avenge those villagers, committing deicide and making yourself a hunted man. The demon way values loyalty above all else. You acted with righteousness—how could I abandon you?"
Xu Ying was moved. "I am human," he reminded the serpent. "Not a demon."
"Don't be so certain," Yuan Qi replied. "I've never heard of a human mastering demon arts so quickly."
A tiny seed of doubt took root in Xu Ying's heart. Was he really human? No—he pushed the thought away. He was from Xujiaping. His parents were from Xujiaping. He had to be human.
Meanwhile, Ding Quan's fellow officers found him. The sight was horrific: limbs shattered, ribs broken beyond counting, internal organs catastrophically damaged. His neck was a ruin of black, rotting flesh, and the poison still surged through his veins. Yet he lived. The Mud Pill Gate poured regenerative power into his broken body, sustaining him even at death's threshold. But that vitality was nearly exhausted.
The three Nuo shamans worked quickly. They cut away the rotted flesh, channeled vitality from their own Mud Pill Gates to suppress the venom, and set his bones as best they could. His joints they reset with professional efficiency. Ding Quan's breathing slowly stabilized, though he could not yet speak or move.
"What happened?" the senior officer asked.
Ding Quan recounted his ambush by the snake demon and his defeat at Xu Ying's hands, his voice thick with shame. His colleagues exchanged knowing glances. With Ding Quan incapacitated, the glory of capturing Xu Ying would be theirs. They left him to recover alone.
Ding Quan settled into meditation to heal—and froze. His hand flew to his robes. Ice-cold terror flooded through him. The handwritten copy of the *Mud Pill Hidden Landscape Qi Refining Method*—the Zhou family's secret cultivation scripture—was gone. He had committed it to paper in secret, knowing full well the penalty: extermination of his entire clan, the destruction of his three ethereal souls and seven corporeal spirits. Anyone who so much as glimpsed the scripture would have their eyes gouged out and their mind erased.
He remembered Xu Ying's fingers dancing across his body, dislocating every joint. *He took it. While I was helpless, he stole it from my robes.* Ding Quan's vision swam with darkness. He struggled to his feet and retraced his path, searching desperately through the forest, but found nothing. The realization settled over him like a death shroud. If the Zhou family learned that their scripture had been leaked, his fate would be worse than any death Xu Ying could deliver. *I must find the boy. I must retrieve that scripture. Before the Zhou family finds out. Before it is too late.*