Chapter Seventeen: The Fiery Palm and the Icy Palm

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Before Meng Xiaoli could silence him, the sisters Hong Jinxiu and Lan Lingluo had already flown over. Seeing the little green snake lying on the ground, severed in two, Hong Jinxiu angrily said to Lan Lingluo, “Look at that! Your snake ran off on its own and got cut down by someone else, and you still blame me.”

Seeing Lan Lingluo storming toward her, Meng Xiaoli hurriedly apologized. “I’m truly sorry. I didn’t know it was your snake. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Before she could finish, Lan Lingluo had already raised her dagger and lunged straight at her. Meng Xiaoli retreated two steps and dodged aside. Unexpectedly, when her thrust missed, Lan Lingluo followed with a palm strike that slapped Meng Xiaoli across the face.

“You killed my Little Green and even chopped her in half!” she snarled.

Meng Xiaoli’s temper flared. Pointing at Lan Lingluo, she retorted, “I apologized, and you refused to listen. What right do you have to hit people?”

To her surprise, Hong Jinxiu rushed out from behind, pulled Lan Lingluo behind her, and pointed the tip of her dagger at Meng Xiaoli.

“You killed my sister’s snake. What good is an apology? Since you’re so cruel, I’ll cut you in half as well.”

With that, she swung her dagger and attacked.

Meng Xiaoli knocked the weapon aside with one palm, then raised a foot and kicked Hong Jinxiu in the stomach. She immediately leaped backward and drew her sword to defend herself.

Seeing this, Lan Lingluo brandished her dagger and cursed, “You dare hurt my sister? Are you tired of living?”

Normally, the two sisters shouted threats of murder at each other, each appearing eager to send the other to an early grave. Yet whenever danger arose, they stood shoulder to shoulder, united in their wickedness, as close as if they shared a single pair of trousers.

The sisters attacked Meng Xiaoli from front and rear. Sensing that matters were turning against her, Meng Xiaoli spun around, rushed into the room, slung her bundle over her back, and blocked two strikes before escaping through the window.

Unexpectedly, the sisters refused to let the matter rest and pursued her. Hong Jinxiu and Lan Lingluo attacked from either side, forcing the pedestrians in the street to scatter far away.

Hong Jinxiu and Lan Lingluo circled outside with their daggers, while Meng Xiaoli stood between them, keeping her eyes on the more aggressive Hong Jinxiu and listening for Lan Lingluo’s movements behind her. The sisters searched for an opening, while Meng Xiaoli held her sword ready, waiting to see from which direction they would strike so that she could block them at once.

Hong Jinxiu was hot-tempered. She leaped into the air and attacked first, her dagger aimed directly at Meng Xiaoli’s head. Meng Xiaoli swiftly raised her sword to parry, but Hong Jinxiu shifted her body, withdrew her blade, and lifted her foot. She kicked Meng Xiaoli’s wrist aside, deflecting her sword, then spun and stabbed downward toward Meng Xiaoli’s heart.

Meng Xiaoli ducked and arched backward, lying flat against the ground as the dagger grazed past her. She raised a foot and kicked toward Hong Jinxiu’s abdomen.

Hong Jinxiu reacted swiftly. Borrowing the force of Meng Xiaoli’s kick, she sprang away. At that very moment, Lan Lingluo leaped forward, intending to drive her dagger into Meng Xiaoli’s chest.

Meng Xiaoli rolled aside, but before she could rise, Lan Lingluo gripped the dagger in both hands and stabbed downward repeatedly. Meng Xiaoli continued rolling, evading the blade’s edge. Realizing that she could not keep up for long, she invoked the Fire Formula of the Five Elements Art. Her body seemed to drift upward like a leaf caught in the wind, spinning sharply as she rose diagonally from the ground.

The instant Meng Xiaoli regained her feet, Lan Lingluo reacted with astonishing speed and slashed horizontally. The blade cut into Meng Xiaoli’s lower leg. She staggered back several steps, but before she could even examine the wound, Hong Jinxiu had closed in.

With a move called “Flying Serpent Flicks Its Tongue,” Hong Jinxiu spat several nearly invisible white insects from her mouth. They flew straight toward Meng Xiaoli’s face. Though Meng Xiaoli raised her sword to block, she could not stop such tiny hidden weapons.

The insects were almost impossible to see with the naked eye, and Meng Xiaoli had no idea how Hong Jinxiu had released them from her mouth. She merely wondered what sort of technique involved spitting at someone, without realizing what had happened. Hong Jinxiu swept past her head.

Before Meng Xiaoli could think, Lan Lingluo attacked from the front. Spinning rapidly in midair, she sent her dagger thrusting forward in a move called “Coiling Serpent Drills the Heart.”

Meng Xiaoli twisted aside to evade, but Lan Lingluo’s blade moved with uncanny flexibility, changing direction at will. Where Meng Xiaoli dodged, it pursued, and it slashed her shoulder once more.

Meng Xiaoli retreated in pain, pressing one hand over the bleeding wound. She did not know that Hong Jinxiu’s earlier move had not been pointless. The tiny insects she had spat out were drawn to the scent of blood. They crawled downward at once, burrowing into Meng Xiaoli’s body through the wound.

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Meng Xiaoli remained completely unaware. Suddenly, she saw Hong Jinxiu standing to one side, holding a sinister gu bell. With a casual shake, the gu insects inside Meng Xiaoli’s body scattered in terror.

Only then did Meng Xiaoli sense that something was wrong. It felt as though a colony of ants were building nests inside her flesh—an indescribable agony of pain and itching.

Lan Lingluo seized the moment to attack. Meng Xiaoli endured the torment of the insects and turned to block her. She invoked the Fire Formula of the Five Elements Art, drove her inner strength through her sword, and met Lan Lingluo head-on.

The two exchanged several dozen blows. Though Meng Xiaoli’s martial skill was inferior, she managed to hold out for a while. Then she noticed that the gu insects were gradually becoming less active.

Hong Jinxiu sensed that something was amiss and glanced at Lan Lingluo.

The two Miao sisters had practiced gu arts since childhood, yet they had never encountered such a situation. Once someone was infected by gu insects, the poison could not be eliminated without their specially prepared antidote—unless the victim found the Divine Wood Sect to treat it.

While the sisters stood bewildered, Meng Xiaoli also felt her body return to normal. No matter how violently Hong Jinxiu shook the bell, there was no longer any response from within her.

As it turned out, nothing in the world could escape the principle of mutual generation and mutual overcoming. Gu insects feared fire. By sheer coincidence, Meng Xiaoli had used the Fire Formula, and its heat had refined the insects into vapor, making them vanish inside her body.

Though Meng Xiaoli had been at a disadvantage in martial skill, she had dispelled a gu poison that even the finest martial artists of the realm could not cure.

Hong Jinxiu and Lan Lingluo exchanged a glance.

“Poison her to death,” Hong Jinxiu said.

She took the lead, leaping before Meng Xiaoli and sweeping and thrusting her dagger from either side with effortless agility. Meng Xiaoli remained intensely alert, afraid to relax for even a moment.

Then she suddenly heard Lan Lingluo shout from behind, “Try this!”

To guard against a sneak attack from the rear, Meng Xiaoli had no choice but to turn and strike. At that instant, a cloud of red mist burst over her head, covering her face and body in fine powder.

Meng Xiaoli coughed several times. Before she could determine her direction, a heavy blow struck her from behind. She immediately spat blood and was sent flying.

She rolled a long distance across the ground before bracing herself with one hand. Another mouthful of blood escaped her lips, and then a fierce burning heat surged through her entire body.

Lan Lingluo was still reaching into the bamboo cage at her waist to pull out a small yellow snake when Hong Jinxiu stopped her.

“She has already been afflicted with the Five Viscera Poison. She won’t survive five days. After taking my Blazing Fire Palm, she won’t even last three. There’s no need to waste a snake gu on her.”

Lan Lingluo obeyed and put the yellow snake away. Still furious, she said, “Since she has suffered your Blazing Fire Palm, she must also experience my Ice Palm. Only when the two strikes are combined will the result be perfect.”

She walked toward Meng Xiaoli, who had just struggled to her feet, and without the slightest mercy summoned her inner strength and pushed one palm into Meng Xiaoli’s chest.

Meng Xiaoli had no strength to resist. Once again, she was sent flying. Her body crashed into a market stall, then rolled onto the ground. She spat out another mouthful of blood and lay there half dead, while an icy chill pierced through her entire body.

She could neither live nor die.

At last, the sisters Jinxiu and Lingluo stopped attacking. Lan Lingluo gave a cold laugh.

“Though Little Green was only a snake gu, anyone who hurt her could not expect mercy.”

Satisfied, the two of them returned to the inn.

Meng Xiaoli groaned faintly in agony, unable to rise for a long while. Only after the spectators had seen enough did the pedestrians dare return to their homes, carrying with them ample gossip for their conversations over tea.

Meng Xiaoli had collapsed inside a vendor’s stall. The stall owner hurried over, glanced down at her, then looked at his wrecked stand with concern.

“Miss, would you mind moving a little? Please don’t die here. That would be terrible for business.”

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Meng Xiaoli felt her heart turn cold as ice. Trembling, she struggled to push herself upright and laboriously climbed to her feet. Then, clutching her chest, she staggered toward the street.

She used her sword as a crutch and her sleeve as a handkerchief, wiping away the blood at the corner of her mouth. Ignoring the sidelong glances and whispered comments of the passersby, she continued walking toward the outskirts of town.

The sky had long since darkened, and rain began to fall in a steady patter. In addition to the alternating agony of heat and cold, Meng Xiaoli now felt a stabbing pain in her liver. This must be the Five Viscera Poison the sisters had mentioned. It would destroy her internal organs within five days, eventually killing her through severe internal injury.

The rain soon grew heavier. With great difficulty, Meng Xiaoli made her way to a ruined temple and collapsed onto a platform of dry straw.

She felt that death was near. This time, she would not be as fortunate as before. There would be no cold-faced scholar appearing to help her, no Sect Master of the Divine Wood Sect arriving with medicine to save her.

She had never imagined that she would be beaten to death over a little green snake—that, in the sisters’ eyes, the life of a snake gu was worth more than the life of a human being.

Meng Xiaoli was drenched from head to toe. The rain washed away much of the Five Viscera Poison, greatly reducing its effects, but a small portion had already seeped into her flesh and could not be expelled.

She sat up and tried to circulate her inner energy to heal herself. Looking back over the first half of her troubled life, she realized that all her suffering had ultimately been caused by the utterly helpless Jin Xiaodao.

Her daughter had died. Her husband had left her. She had survived by the narrowest of margins and endured every imaginable hardship. And now she was destined to die miserably in this ruined temple, her corpse to be pecked by birds and gnawed by beasts.

She could not accept it.

Elsewhere, Long Ye traveled with Jin Xiaodao, helping the weak and rescuing those in peril wherever they went, while never abandoning his search for Meng Xiaoli.

Long Ye was consumed by worry. Whenever he saw a woman in distress, he imagined that she might be Meng Xiaoli. He knew that, given her martial skill, the dangers of the martial world might easily place her in grave peril. Yet he had no idea where to look and could not find her.

His brooding made him even quieter than usual. Whenever his longing became unbearable, he would take out the flute he had fashioned along the road and play.

Jin Xiaodao would then remain silent, keeping his distance and accompanying him from afar.

The martial world was vast, and reunion depended entirely on fate. The world itself might be small, but without destiny, two people could never meet.

One believed the other did not love them; the other believed their beloved was heartless. After a single separation, both yearned for each other, yet drifted ever farther apart.

A lonely shadow might have someone walking beside it, but not the person in its heart. One who journeyed alone had no companion and no longer dared wait foolishly.

Long Ye sat alone atop a mountain, gazing into the empty heavens. The full moon hung high overhead, dimming the stars scattered across the sky. His flute sang a mournful tune, lamenting only for the woman he loved.

Suddenly, a terrible pain seized Long Ye’s chest. He pressed a hand against it and pushed himself up from the ground.

He did not know whether it was the pain of longing or some mysterious bond between their hearts that allowed him to sense Meng Xiaoli’s danger. In any case, he could no longer endure it for even another moment.

He rose, shouldered his pack, and set off once more, though he had no idea which direction to take.

Jin Xiaodao had been sleeping soundly. Seeing Long Ye act this way—something he had witnessed more than once—he suddenly understood.

Without regard for the hour, without asking whether he was tired, he followed immediately, leaving without even looking back. Jin Xiaodao had long since grown accustomed to it. He never slowed his steps, hurrying after Long Ye into the night.

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