CH 38

Chapter 38: A Peculiar Slow-Acting Poison



An Long let go and began to question him closely about the Heavenly Tribulation. 



Song Qingshi was also very depressed. “I don’t know, the lightning just came suddenly.”



“Did you do any research that violates the laws of Heaven? Or did you refine any pill that went against the natural order? Did you wrongfully frame an enemy?” An Long has made countless speculations about this matter but no matter what, he never ever thought of the unheard of possibility that a Foundation Building cultivator, like Yue Wuhuan, could have encountered this Heavenly Tribulation. Moreover, based on his investigation, the Lightning Tribulation then had been equal in power to one meant for a Nascent Soul breakthrough. And so this pot could only fall on Song Qingshi. “Could it be you were trying to break through to Fen Shen?”



Song Qingshi firmly denied it. “Nothing of the sort! It’s Heaven who made some sort of mistake!”



As a rigorous scientific researcher, he did not think at all that this matter was related to Yue Wuhuan. Jin Feiren and Xie Que, these absolute garbage, had not met with the wrath of Heaven. Yue Wuhuan was just a mortal; kind and gentle. How was it possible that he was being punished by Heaven? This Lightning Tribulation was purely coincidental! 



He made a guess, “Maybe a demon cultivator failed the tribulation and used a Life Borrowing Technique of to transfer the Lightning Tribulation to me.”



The Life Borrowing Technique was a lost forbidden technique of the Demonic Sects. It was said that it could transfer fatal damage from oneself to someone else. However, the activation conditions were very harsh. Aside from needing a person who shared one’s fate, it also needed the right time, place, so on and so forth.



Yue Wuhuan had been sold to Golden Phoenix Mountain Manor for many years and had absolutely no status. It was not difficult to obtain his birth chart.



Both of them made numerous conjectures but could not reach a conclusions. They could only put the matter aside for the time being.



Song Qingshi tried again to reason things out with the unreasonable Alaskan Malamute. “When the incident happened, it happened too suddenly. I had no time to leave any sort of explanation. Yue Wuhuan is unfamiliar with you and even has some grudges against you. How could he dare ask you for help? If he didn’t seal the Medicine King’s Valley and this matter got out, I really wouldn’t have made it out live.”



An Long sneered. “You really have no idea of that kid’s tricks. I thought you had fallen into his hands after being seriously injured and was being controlled.”



Song Qingshi was baffled. “If he wanted to seize the Medicine King’s Valley, he could have just killed me outright. Why bother to treat me and then control me?”



An Long wanted to dunk his head in water to get him to wake up. “You don’t understand how a man’s mind works!” 



Song Qingshi felt that he was humiliating him. “How can I not understand how a man thinks when I’m a man myself?”



An Long said angrily, “Have you never thought that he’s lusting after your beauty?!”



Song Qingshi was silent. He stared at An Long’s eyes for a long time, suspecting something might be wrong in it. Otherwise it would have been impossible for him not to see that Yue Wuhuan’s beauty was ten times greater than his. Not to mention that Yue Wuhuan was the protagonist shou, beautiful enough to cause the fall of a city, gentle and kind. It’s others who covet him, okay?!



An Long also realized that he had made a slip of the tongue. He turned his head, bitterly refusing to speak any more. 



Song Qingshi pondered what he had just said and found new questionable points. “Why would you think that Yue Wuhuan would want to harm me?”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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The immortal realm no longer called him by the name Wuhuan Gongzi but referred to him instead as ‘that lunatic’.



“Listen to me,” An Long organized his words. He was preparing to accuse Yue Wuhuan behind his back to Song Qingshi, asking him to be on guard against this dangerous person. “That guy, in the secret realm…” 



Suddenly, someone broke into the protection range or his mental probe and interrupted his narration.



Yue Wuhuan brought in new refreshment, gracefully appearing in front of the two of them with a smile. He personally poured a cup of tea for An Long, “What interesting thing is An Xianzun talking about?”



An Long didn’t expect those Gu’s, used merely to scare people, to keep him trapped for long. Seeing him appear so brazenly, he was about to speak with contempt.



Yue Wuhuan asked with a smile, “It can’t be that you were worried about my condition?” 



An Long’s stomach-full of words were blocked all at once. He looked at Song Qingshi beside him whose face was showed a completely perplexed expression and then at the lunatic evildoer in front of him. He suddenly realized that he could never say all the insane things that Yue Wuhuan had done. Otherwise, wouldn’t he just be saying that he was still unwell?



Song Qingshi attached exceedingly great importance to his mental illness. If he knew that his illness had not been cured, he would never shun him. He would only love and take care of him in every possible way…



An Long gritted his teeth and once again decided to reorganize his words to say that Yue Wuhuan wasn’t crazy. He was purely sinister, black-hearted and rotten to the core.



Yue Wuhuan turned around and poured tea for Song Qingshi. He glanced at the tooth marks on his arm and asked with a smile, “Master has just recovered from his serious injury. How about I prepare some medicated food for you? I got some Purple Cloud Ginseng from the secret realm a few days ago. It is most suitable for nourishing the body.” 



An Long’s stomach-full of words were blocked once again. Looking back at it now, he remembered that most of what Yue Wuhuan had done seemed to really have been to find medicine for Song Qingshi to heal his injury. If he decided to lie, this matter couldn’t be hidden. It would have been fine to say it if Song Qingshi really had been harmed. But seeing how Song Qingshi was sitting here in perfectly good condition and it was all thanks to this evildoer, was he lodging a complaint against him or was he asking for him to be rewarded?



The rest were small matters like murder, which, in the immortal realm, were things not worth mentioning.



He himself had killed far more people…



As for being injured by traps as he charged into the Medicine King’s Valley; he could bicker even less about this matter. It would simply be too disgraceful for this dignified Nascent Soul cultivator… 



An Long tasted the same unspeakably bitter suffering whenever he frustrated Song Qingshi into turning into a pufferfish. Gnashing his teeth, he said, “This guy hasn’t done anything special in the secret realm. In any case, it’s just the usual treasure grabbing. He was very good.”



Yue Wuhuan sat down with a kind and honest expression on his face and nodded, “Thank you to An Xianzun for the praise.”



“You’re welcome,” An Long held up the cup and couldn’t help taunting him, “There isn’t any poison in this tea, right?”



Yue Wuhuan said unflinchingly, “An Xianzun really loves to jest. I haven’t used this kind of vulgar technique for many, many years.” 



…



Song Qingshi hugged the well-behaved Luminous Dragon. He looked at An Long to his left and Yue Wuhuan to his right. Even he, who was slow on the uptake, knew that the two were completely incompatible with each other. The atmosphere was terrible. However, he didn’t know how to reconcile the two. After all, Yue Wuhuan’s traps had hurt An Long and An Long couldn’t let Yue Wuhuan off easy.



The best way to deal with fighting was to isolate the parties first.



Song Qingshi was about to ask a valley servant to take An Long back to Jingxin Courtyard and he himself would accompany Yue Wuhuan back to Fuling Palace. 



Suddenly, he looked at An Long’s leather armor and felt something was amiss. Song Qing studied medicine for many years and was a little obsessed with cleanliness. He usually wore white clothes and didn’t like getting dirty. An Long knew this and so every time he comes to the Medicine King’s Valley, he will clean himself up. Even when he played pranks or got handsy, he would never torment him in this regard.



Now An Long’s body was covered in stinky mud. An Long had carried him all the way here and he made several dirty stains on his vestments.



The cleansing spell was a basic spell that every cultivator in the immortal realm knew. It could instantly remove the dirt on one’s body.



Why doesn’t An Long use it? 



Song Qingshi thought for a while and then sent out his mental probe to investigate. His face changed slightly. He immediately forced himself to get up with the help of the Luminous Dragon. He limped towards An Long, pulled at him and said solemnly, “Xiao Bai has some injuries, I’ll take you two to rest and get some medicine as well.”



An Long saw the way he looked and his heart softened instantly. He stretched out his hand. “Hey, do you need me to carry you on my back?”



Song Qingshi shook his head and stepped on the red lotus. “I’m not crippled. If I let you give me a piggyback ride now then what next?”



He was more accustomed to doing what he can do himself… 



Yue Wuhuan lowered his eyes and quietly picked up the tea set on the table.



Song Qingshi pulled An Long along and took him to his permanent residence in the Medicine King’s Valley, the Jingxin Courtyard. He ordered him to lie down and then used his fairly flexible right hand to check his injury. An Long saw that he had already found out his actual situation and no longer tried to put up a front. He finally took off his black leather armor.



How could someone who forcibly broke the Poisonous Fog Formation of the Medicine King’s Valley get through unscathed?



He had been trapped in the Poisonous Fog Formation for several days. Under the leather armor, dried blood mixed with the dark swamp mud, sticking to his flesh. There were black spots on his chest and abdomen, signs of the poison’s corrosion. It had spread through much of his body over time and had gradually seeped into his bones. The name of this poison was “Bone Intoxication” and it was the most terrifying slow-acting poison in the “Nie Clan’s Poison Scriptures”. At first, it was just numbness and then as the toxin enters the bones, it becomes more and more painful, until the bones in the entire body would crack and the whole body would transform into mud. 



Song Qingshi disliked this poison as being too cruel. He had never used it before nor had he set it in the Poisonous Fog Formation so he didn’t notice it right away.



Although An Long used Gu’s and special detoxification pills to delay the onset of the poison, after so long, the poison had already reached the surface of his bones and the pain was severe. At first, he was anxious to ask about all these matters he’d been worrying about and then Yue Wuhuan suddenly appeared. For the sake of face, he forcibly endured and said nothing.



“You always do this,” Song Qingshi used his spiritual power to seal the spreading poison for him. He then used the ghost fire to draw the poison out. He couldn’t help cursing, “If you cut your finger, you come find me and make such a fuss but when you’re seriously injured you won’t breathe a word about it. You just have to insist on pretending to be fine. Don’t you know pain? If you let it drag it on and all your bones get broken even I can’t save you!”



An Long remained silent, allowing him to detoxify and heal his injuries. 



With Song Qingshi’s special physique, there was no need for him to be afraid of all sorts of poisons. He can also absorb other people’s poisons into himself and then dissolve them.



The black ghost fire kept turning, sucking all the poison bit by bit.



“He changed this poison in the poison array because he wanted my life.” The pain in An Long’s body gradually disappeared and he said solemnly, “I don’t blame him. Battles in the immortal realm have never been reasonable. Battle are a matter of life and death. Since I broke into the Medicine King’s Valley alive and saw you two, he was the one who lost. Qingshi, I just thought of twenty-eight ways to kill him, eight of which you absolutely wouldn’t have been able to stop.”



Song Qingshi stopped the ghost fire in his hand. He raised his head and looked at him warily. 



“I know. You want to say that I’m a Nascent Soul cultivator.” An Long knew what he wanted to say, and interrupted him. “But Yue Wuhuan is no ordinary Foundation Building cultivator! No Foundation Building cultivator has a physique closer to a Core Formation cultivator’s. There’s the Blood King Vine. His whole body is highly poisonous. He has so many of these strange formations and these unthinkable hidden weapons. He has sword skills that he never could have even if he started practicing in the womb! He has all sorts of schemes! If he’s allowed to develop, he will definitely become my hidden danger!”



What he originally thought to be an ant, turned into a serious situation. He had misjudged him.



Although it wasn’t a big deal now, all cultivators knew that danger should be killed in its infancy.



Song Qingshi murmured, “But, you didn’t kill him.” 



An Long closed his eyes and took a deep breath: “If I killed him, would you forgive me? Would you not fight me to the death?”



“No,” Song Qingshi shook his head firmly, “He saved my life.”



An Long slowly raised his left hand. He lowered his head and looked at the skin on it that was more delicate than elsewhere. His voice was a little sad, “If…I had been the person next to you, you wouldn’t have been hurt at all. I would have given everything to protect you. But… you never gave me the chance.”



He was very powerful. He was fierce and tough. He was rough-skinned and heavily muscled. He was brazen and unreasonable. He wasn’t meek and compliant. He wasn’t the type to do what he’s told. 



He was a wolf who stubbornly wanted to pretend to be a dog. But no matter what he couldn’t keep up the pretense.



Song Qingshi knew what he should say some words of comfort but no matter what he says, he felt that they would all be pale and feeble.



“I don’t blame you. It’s my fault. I can’t let it go. This is the punishment I deserve.” An Long pulled him into his arms and buried against his neck, lightly sniffing the scent he was reluctant to let go of. He finally let out an injured whimper, “Qingshi, it hurts…”



The author has something to say: 



An Long: I thought you were locked up in a small black room!



Song Qingshi: I was in a small black room. How did you know?