Daoist Friend, I’m Actually Here to Help You!

“System, you fucking wait for me!” Pei Ling had no time to deal with the evaluation panel hovering in front of him and hurriedly raised both arms across his chest to protect his vital parts.

The next instant, a flash of green light struck his left arm.

Pei Ling felt as if he had been hit head-on by an overloaded truck speeding out of control. A stabbing agony shot through his left arm, and his body was hurled backward without his control.

Boom!!!

He slammed helplessly into the stone wall inside the cave, leaving a deep indentation in the rock.

“Wah...” A metallic taste rose in his throat; he coughed up a mouthful of blood and for a moment the world spun. Every inch of his body hurt, and it felt as if his internal organs had been thrown out of place. If not for years of practicing the Bone-Tempering Art, which had greatly improved his tolerance and endurance for pain, he might have passed out on the spot.

“Cough, cough... not dead? Cough...” Seeing Pei Ling’s miserable state, Wu Tingxi’s expression changed.

Coughing violently, he examined Pei Ling with uncertainty.

Something’s wrong with this kid!

Although he was badly injured, he was after all a direct disciple of a Nether Abyss Sect elder. Now that he had already reached the late Qi Refinement stage, his cultivation and strength were not something an ordinary cultivator of the same level could compare to.

Even if he had only mustered a half-hearted strike with the Five Poisons Finger, against a cultivator from a small place like Luquan City, and one only at the third level of Qi Refinement, it should have pierced straight through both arms and into the heart, killing him with a single blow.

Yet although Pei Ling looked horribly wounded, on closer inspection the main injury was only that his left arm, which had taken the brunt of the attack, had been burned through by poison into a gaping hole, exposing a bit of bone. The rest looked terrifying, but none of it was actually life-threatening.

Wu Tingxi seemed to think of something. A faint purple flashed through his pupils as he pushed his vision to the limit, and in an instant he made out the details of that exposed bone. The sight made his already ashen face flush red, and then blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

But he had no time to care. Instead, he cried out in shock, “Supreme iron bones?!”

The Bone-Tempering Art came from the Nether Abyss Sect, so for someone like him, once a personal disciple of a Nether Abyss Sect elder, it was certainly no stranger.

However, there was something even the Pei family didn’t know: the iron bones, refined bones, and jade bones cultivated through the Bone-Tempering Art were each divided into grades!

Iron bones came in low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and supreme grade.

Most rogue cultivators could only cultivate low-grade iron bones. A few with exceptional talent among them could reach mid-grade iron bones; once such a person was discovered, as long as their background was clean and they were not too old, the Nether Abyss Sect would directly take them in as outer disciples. High-grade iron bones, on the other hand, could only be cultivated by Nether Abyss Sect disciples with abundant resources and careful guidance from their seniors.

As for supreme iron bones? Those were even rarer than a phoenix feather or a unicorn horn!

Only a few rare constitutions, or a stroke of luck that led someone to swallow the right heavenly treasure, could possibly achieve them.

Either way, it meant that even if they entered the Nether Abyss Sect, they would become a heavily watched target and stand a good chance of making it into the inner sect.

“Cough, cough, cough...” Wu Tingxi coughed again and again, his gaze on Pei Ling dark and complicated.

If his master were still alive, then upon meeting Pei Ling, he would probably choose to bring him back to the Nether Abyss Sect as his junior brother.

After all, a junior brother with extraordinary talent or overwhelming fortune would certainly draw some of the master’s attention and resources away, but he would also strengthen their faction. In the long run, the benefits would be greater.

But now...

He turned the thought over in his head and suddenly said, “Cough... supreme iron bones. How did you cultivate them?”

Pei Ling slid down from the stone wall, his first thought being to run!

But just as he tried to sit up, a wave of dizziness hit him and he had no choice but to slump back down. Only then did he realize that every movement took far more strength than it should have; he could barely even stand.

At the words, Pei Ling was first stunned. Supreme iron bones? What supreme iron bones?

But he quickly came to his senses. Forget supreme or not supreme, what mattered now was keeping the other man from killing him on the spot.

“Fellow Daoist, you and I are strangers. I did take your blood-qi pill just now, but you’ve already taught me a lesson. Now we’re even, so why don’t we shake hands and part ways? As for my cultivation method, if you’re interested, I can consider trading it to you.”

He silently called out to the system in his mind. “System! Can you disguise the Bone-Tempering Art so this bastard can’t tell, but if he cultivates it he’ll immediately go mad and suffer qi deviation?”

System: “Ding-dong! The Intelligent Cultivation System is at your service. Please choose a duration and click [One-Click AFK]. The system will immediately cultivate on your behalf! One-click AFK, worry-free cultivation, and your dream of ascension will come true!”

Pei Ling spat blood inwardly. “I fucking knew I couldn’t count on you...”

He was just considering whether to dig up some classical prose from his past life and use it to stall for time when he heard Wu Tingxi laugh coldly. “Stop pretending. You cultivate the Bone-Tempering Art, so if you’re not a member of the Nether Abyss Sect, then you must be the descendant of one of its exiled disciples. If I’m not mistaken, the Sect’s wanted notice has already reached nearby, and since you came chasing after me into the mountains, how could you possibly not recognize me, Wu?”

“Then, fellow Daoist, what do you intend to do?” Pei Ling frowned. This disciple of that damned sect was indeed not easy to fool. He was young and had just broken through; after resting for a while, he had gradually recovered a little strength and could probably manage to stand up.

But running was still difficult... he needed to buy a little more time!

Thinking this, Pei Ling’s mind turned and he said, “Actually, fellow Daoist, you’ve misunderstood. Although Zheng Jingshan of the Nether Abyss Sect did indeed order us Pei family members to search the mountains for you, I’m the only one who not only doesn’t want to expose your whereabouts, but would be overjoyed if you could escape with your life.”

Seeing Wu Tingxi sneer, clearly not believing him at all, he immediately went on, “Fellow Daoist, do you know that Zheng Jingshan has a screen? At first glance it looks like an ordinary object, but on closer inspection it contains more than a hundred beautiful women inside...”

“Painting of the Succubus Rakshasa?” Before he could finish, Wu Tingxi blurted it out, then asked suspiciously, “How do you know about that? No, wait, you’ve seen the painting and you’re still alive?!”

Pei Ling’s heart sank. So that screen was even more troublesome than he had expected?

But he had no time to think about it. He hurriedly said, “I’m a collateral branch member of the Pei family in Luquan City. My birth mother died early, and because I had some talent, I was suppressed by my stepmother for years and had nothing to my name... Not long ago, Zheng Jingshan was invited by the family heir to stay in the guest courtyard of the Pei residence. Rumor had it that he was rich beyond anything the Pei family could compare to. I heard the servants say that he was running around outside every couple of days and wasn’t in the residence, so I got bold and went to take a look in his room...”

Hearing this, Wu Tingxi’s gaze on him became extremely strange. “You, a little Qi Refinement third-level cultivator from the back of beyond, actually dared to steal Zheng Jingshan’s things?”

For a moment, Wu Tingxi was even dazed: had he stayed in the sect for too long, to the point that he no longer knew that cultivators outside had become this ferocious?!

Compared with Zheng Jingshan still being kept in the dark about the theft in his own residence, he weirdly felt that being robbed face-to-face of three blood-qi pills just now didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.

“Cough, in any case, Zheng Jingshan still hasn’t discovered this because he’s been busy hunting you,” Pei Ling said with a dry cough. “So I’m the person who most wants you to stay safe, even to the point of escaping with your life. After all, only if you’re doing well can you hold Zheng Jingshan here and buy me more chances and more time to flee a thousand li away.”

He put on his most sincere tone. “Fellow Daoist, I really am here to help you!”

Wu Tingxi threw his head back and laughed. “Help Wu? How are you going to help? By snatching Wu’s blood-qi pill the moment we met, making Wu crawl around like a maggot for half the day before he could finally pick up his own pill bottle?”

“Fellow Daoist, that was all a minor matter.” Pei Ling said solemnly, “At the time I had been harmed by the Painting of the Succubus Rakshasa. If I hadn’t had the blood-qi pill, I’m afraid I would already have met with disaster. If that had happened, then Fellow Daoist, all alone here, unfamiliar with the place and with no one to rely on, would have been found by us Pei family members sooner or later and reported to Zheng Jingshan! In that case, how could Fellow Daoist possibly have ended well? Right now, you and I are actually on the same boat. We ought to stand together and help each other, not nitpick over small matters!”

Mm, his breathing was much smoother now. He should be able to get up and walk a few steps, though he still didn’t know how long he could hold out.

Pei Ling hesitated for a moment, stealing a glance at Wu Tingxi. Seeing that the other man had lowered his head as if thinking, with no sign of attacking, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief and decided to keep dragging things out a little longer, lest something go wrong again while he was fleeing for his life.

“You brat... you really do have a sharp tongue! But you’re not entirely wrong. When life and death are on the line, everything else is trivial.” After a moment of thought, Wu Tingxi gave a cold smile and suddenly said, “Do you know why Zheng Jingshan is hunting me?”