The Hunting Goshawk Becomes a Dead Chick!

Time passed in a rush. Night. The Yizhuang. The west wing. "So handsome!" A handsomeness only the mighty readers themselves could match! Liu Xiu took out a mirror and looked at himself. His skin was a little whiter than before, a faint, barely noticeable cyan had risen in his pupils, and the shadow at his feet was a tiny bit darker than before. A tiny bit, by percentage! In one go, he had refined inside his body all the immortal-aspect pills the three immortal aspects required. All three immortal aspects could be counted as having reached the beginner level. His fighting strength had risen somewhat, and he had also gained a few conditions. For instance, fierce fire spiraled in his dantian, and pure-yang cauldron flames steamed in his belly. For instance, the turbid fluid of his flower pool welled upward and began tempering the three corpses of his organs, while elixir qi seeped through the flesh of his whole body, and his skin, with snow congealing and frost lying over it, showed a sight of radiance spilling outward. And the spiritual qi coursing between his skin and vessels tingled without end; the collateral channels of his ten fingers were the first to shed mortal turbidity, and the withered skin at the surface flaked away of itself—the first sign of Ice-Skin Jade-Bones... Sign, my ass! Liu Xiu simply summed up the symptoms that had appeared after he cultivated the three immortal aspects. Right now he had a burning, stabbing pain in his belly, acid reflux and nausea, itchy, numb skin, and fingertips turning white and peeling. On top of that came a stuffy swelling in his head, sore and dry eyes, blurred vision, a body drawn tight all over, an ache all over, a racing heart and heavy sweat, aching weakness in his waist and knees, yellow turbid urine, a bitter taste in his mouth, and fatigue, among other symptoms. In one sentence, he had popped too many heavy metals and was poisoned. Only a cultivation method was holding him up. Otherwise Liu Xiu felt that he... would have to lie in bed for ten days or half a month at the very least. "No wonder the immortal-aspect methods never spread through the cultivation world!" Liu Xiu muttered inwardly that they were far too poorly suited to general use, and all too easy to dose himself to death. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, put away the medicinal herbs and the rest, got up, patted his backside, left the meditation cushion, and stood where he was for a moment. It was not that he had noticed anything. He felt a little dizzy, so he sat back down and went on circulating the revised Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula to refine the elixir toxin in his body. Once he was sure the dizziness was gone and he felt much better, only then did Liu Xiu rise and leave the meditation cushion, sighing in his heart that the immortal path was badass. It could even undo heavy metal poisoning. In his view, that was pretty badass. And cultivating oneself by way of heavy metal poisoning was badass too! [Looking at the moon outside the window, you suddenly think of your White Jade Cicada shell. You suddenly want to try repairing it, because your intuition tells you that fixing it may bring you an opportunity! Perhaps you can use this opportunity to dominate the cultivation world!] "???" There's a moon? Am I blind, or are you blind? Wait. I haven't actually gone blind, have I? Liu Xiu looked up in a daze. Sure he was not blind, he looked out the window at the pitch-black night sky covered by dark clouds. "Why does this cheat feel just like a certain pack!" Liu Xiu muttered, took out the White Jade Cicada shell, and wondered inwardly, "What opportunity could this thing bring? And you still haven't told me what the Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art is missing..." Grumbling to himself, he sat back down on the meditation cushion. From his storage ring he took out some materials he had scammed off Shi Shaojian... That is, some materials Shi Shaojian had taken the initiative to gift him. Then he began using the Three Dantian True-Fire Spirit-Nurturing Treasure-Refining Formula, the one that had produced the narration cheat, to repair the hidden cracks inside the White Jade Cicada shell. He did not understand why the narration cheat wanted him to repair this. Surely a leftover shell of a thing could not still be used... A while later! Liu Xiu blankly listened to the insect chirps and frog calls coming from inside the White Jade Cicada, and inwardly called it ridiculous. "No way. A bare shell really can be used!" Wait? This thing was fixed just like that? The hidden cracks are gone, and that's enough? Is this right?! Feeling that his luck was truly excellent, Liu Xiu called out to the White Jade Cicada a few times. After finding that the other White Jade Cicada ought to be out in the wilds, he asked the narration cheat in his heart. "This is the opportunity? You're sure this kind of white noise is an opportunity?" Liu Xiu asked inwardly. But the narration cheat did not answer the question at all. With a curl of his lip, he put the White Jade Cicada shell away. "The opportunity's probably been postponed, right?!" Liu Xiu thought so by intuition, then looked out the window at the night sky, where the moon had appeared now that the dark clouds had scattered. "Tomorrow... I'll set out the day after tomorrow. Those things won't be finished until tomorrow... Right, and tomorrow I still have to go find Huo Laosi and buy a few things..." ...... The day after tomorrow, the twenty-eighth of the fifth month. Near evening, on Xiaowang Mountain outside Yulin Mountain. On the rugged mountain path, a figure raced at full speed along the road, and only when the sun had set did the figure stop. "The Jia Ma talisman is a bit slow. If I hadn't gotten lost at the start... Ahem, it's all right, I guess. Anyway, if I ran into Hun Tiandi, I could still get away!" The figure—that is, Liu Xiu—muttered in his heart. A Jia Ma talisman covered eight hundred li in a day, which came to a little over thirty kilometers an hour. That was much faster than Hun Tiandi's horse! Liu Xiu tore off the spent Jia Ma talismans stuck to his legs, put them away, and prepared to copy them later and try drawing the talisman. He took out the map, looked it over, confirmed that he had not gotten lost this time, and set off along the downhill road toward Yulin. At that moment, he was still more than a hundred li from his destination! Liu Xiu did not use a Jia Ma talisman this time. It was not that he did not want to. The main thing was that the ritual room had only two Jia Ma talismans. He took out the White Jade Cicada shell, its thousand-li voice transmission restored, and listened. He could still hear nothing but insects. Liu Xiu curled his lip and put it away. Just as he saw two forks ahead, one to the east and one to the west, the narration cheat's voice suddenly rang out! [Heh-heh-heh. You suddenly catch the scent of a gift from fate. Reaching the fork in the mountain road, you see faint, mottled bloodstains still lingering on the western path. A little thought, and you can be certain these were surely left by someone wounded and fleeing after a fight over treasure. How could you miss so fine an opportunity? You decide to follow the blood, sit back and wait for the two of them to kill each other, then play the oriole behind the mantis and the cicada, seize the treasure, and thereby begin to dominate the cultivation world!] "......" Who do you think I can beat? Feeling those strands of spiritual power in his body that were not Daoist dharma power, Liu Xiu rolled his eyes, pretended not to see the bloodstains on the ground, and chose to go east. He hurried along the small eastern mountain path toward the foot of the mountain. He had not gone far when the narration cheat's voice suddenly rang out again. [Heh-heh-heh. Clever as you are, the moment you see the marks on the kitchen floor, you realize everything is just as you expected. The bloodstains left at the western fork earlier were indeed a trick to fool the eye. You decide to follow the traces and search all the way, find that wounded person who carries a great treasure, and you need only strike from the dark to snatch the opportunity, swallow the treasure, and strengthen your own cultivation. Once day after day and month after month have stored up enough power, you will be able to sweep aside the cultivation experts of every great sect under heaven, and at last ascend the summit and dominate the cultivation world!!] "......" Right. Everything is just as I expected! The corner of Liu Xiu's mouth twitched. He turned to— He stopped, and silently looked at a middle-aged man in a magua before him. The man carried a peach-wood sword in his hand and a satchel on his back. He was plainly a fellow cultivator. He was scrawny, and none too good-looking. Seeing Liu Xiu, the middle-aged man frowned, then suddenly smiled and said, "Junior Sister, is this the helper you found? If you had brought an expert at Refining Spirit and Returning to the Void, I, your senior brother, would have turned and fled. But what do you mean by bringing a Hundred-Day Foundation Building junior? Don't tell me this is your lover?" At the word "lover," the middle-aged man's eyes showed envy, jealousy, and hate toward Liu Xiu. Liu Xiu had seen it often enough, and chose to ignore it. There was no helping it. He was so handsome that he saw this look every day, and he had long since grown used to other people's jealous eyes. "Ahem. I don't know him..." A weak woman's voice came from the woods not far off. As part of the woods vanished, a pale woman in a qipao appeared, an azure-wood banner in her hand. The qipao woman's looks were ordinary, at most seven-tenths the beauty of Madam Liu. But she had youth on her side, so another two-tenths could be added. Liu Xiu paid no mind to the looks of the woman in the purple qipao, nor did he care that her figure fell short of Madam Liu's. He glanced at the wooden box behind her, half as tall as a person, and decided this must be the so-called treasure! "Hmph. As if I'd believe—" "Liu Xiu, second disciple under Maoshan Sect sixty-ninth-generation disciple Shi Jian, greets you both!" Liu Xiu suddenly bowed. The scene went quiet for a moment! Leaving aside the qipao woman's stunned face, the middle-aged man's expression flashed from vicious to blank and back to vicious, and his foot moved. "You can't be left alive. Die!" His opening move was the Eagle Claw Art, claws glinting cold. Like a goshawk seizing prey, the middle-aged man swooped in on a rush of wind. The strike was lethal from the first move! "???" Are you sick in the head! You're afraid of my master, so what are you killing me for! You think if you kill me, you can get away?! Liu Xiu only felt the man had lost himself in the killing. A storage thumb ring was on the thumb of his left hand, and his right hand, already reaching for the thumb ring, moved. Bang— The gunshot was ear-piercing. The hunting goshawk turned into a chick dropping dead! "Gun technique is a dharma too, and a bullet's path is the Dao..." Sir, the times have changed! Liu Xiu did not put away at once the Colt he had bought from Huo Laosi. He turned, gun in hand, and aimed it at the vacant-faced woman in the qipao. "Your turn. Hand over the treas— ahem. Tell me what this is about. Don't even think of making a move on me. My master is right nearby, you know!" "All right..." With a complicated expression, the woman in the qipao looked at her senior brother, sprawled face-down on the ground without so much as a twitch, and began to tell why fellow disciples had turned on each other. "It started when my master refined a magic treasure..." "......" What a stale old plot! Liu Xiu curled his lip. But soon, as the woman who called herself Mu Xue'er went on, he suddenly found that this plot was not so stale after all, and was rather fresh. It was just that he suddenly wanted to toss a contract out. And that was very strange!