Eighty-Eight: The Bloodstained Palm Imprint

A gigantic palm, like a double image suspended in midair between emptiness and illusion, suddenly crashed down from above his head.

He no longer cared about any foundation or lack thereof, and turned at once to flee.

“Don’t go! It’s ready!”
“Take me away, and this foundation is yours!”

He roared again and again, but Qin Chuan did not look back. In the blink of an eye, he had already shot some sixty feet away.

When the Thousand Faces Man saw this, he could not help growing anxious.

The bloody handprint, vivid and blazing, covered half the hillside. Wherever the eye could reach, it seemed to engulf all heaven and earth. In his present state, there was no way for him to escape it.

The immense pressure of the wind kicked up flying sand and rolling stones, while his thoughts raced.

“You can escape for a moment, but not for a lifetime! If I die, you’ll be next!”
“In my storage pouch are still more than ten thousand human skins, all indispensable for making blood pills. Yu Ce cannot possibly ignore that! As long as you save me, you’ll have a talisman against death! Then, once we find Lady Li Mu, Yu Ce’s end will be at hand!”

Seeing Qin Chuan running so swiftly, he no longer dared hide anything, and blurted out all the words most likely to make him stay.

At this, Qin Chuan’s foot suddenly halted.

“Give me the foundation first!”
“No, you can have it only after I’m safe!”

But Qin Chuan seemed not to hear him at all, and still extended his hand toward the Thousand Faces Man.

“Enough nonsense! Your life is in my hands!”

“If not for Shi Xin knowing that his foundation would be stripped away and setting restrictions on himself in advance, how could I have ended up like this through that ambush?”

He was exhausted to the bone at this point. As he spoke, he raised his hand and passed the jade pearl glowing with a deep yellow light to Qin Chuan.

He did not notice the killing intent that flickered and vanished in the depths of Qin Chuan’s eyes.

From the beginning, Qin Chuan had already condemned the Thousand Faces Man to death, even if this had not been the sect’s mission.

Qin Chuan’s outstretched hand did not stop. Instead, with a sudden twist, it slipped past the Thousand Faces Man’s reaching hand and slid toward his face.

“Hm?”

By the time he realized it, there was nowhere left to evade. He had not even time to destroy the foundation; he could only let out a startled cry before seeing the finger strike flash toward him in an instant.

With a wet sound, it went straight through his skull.

Qin Chuan casually wiped the slick blood from his hand onto his robes, flicked his sword in a blossom-like arc, and sent the two storage pouches and the foundation into his palm before breaking into a run.

That blood pill was not something he could simply take by hand.

Even though the Dust Pill could make him immune to the baleful energy within, if he truly tried to seize it, the risk would be far too great. Under ordinary circumstances that would have been one thing, but now the situation was urgent.

Qin Chuan had dug a trap into his words, making the Thousand Faces Man believe he harbored no killing intent. The handling had been swift and clean, but it still wasted a great deal of time.

He stuffed the Bright Moon and the foundation carelessly into his storage pouch, then flung his arms wide and ran.

With spiritual energy flooding his body, the trees and brush on either side flashed past in a blur.

Qin Chuan had never imagined that one day he would run so fast. If a shrub suddenly appeared ahead, a mere sidestep was enough to avoid it.

“Faster, faster!”

The Mysterious Breath Dust Art was driven to its very limit; every tiny detail before his eyes seemed magnified without end, while the muscles and bones within his body alternated between tautness and release at the height of finesse.

His hair ribbon came loose in the gale, and his long hair flew wildly, black as ink beneath the moonlight.

Because of the angle of view, the blood handprint seemed slow but was in truth swift. In the blink of an eye it had closed in above the forest, crushing trees one after another with sharp cracking sounds.

The storm wind, carrying the bitter, woody scent of broken trees, surged from all directions as though seeking to grind him to dust.

“This is bad. At my current speed, I may not make it out!”

Qin Chuan’s expression tightened as he hastily compared the speed of both sides, and this thought arose in his heart.

Yet his speed had already been driven to the extreme, and external aids such as talismans and pills had likewise been used to their utmost!

At that moment, a faint warmth spread from his left wrist.

His mind stirred. It was Ghost Seven!

After draining the mist beast dry, Ghost Seven’s cultivation had even reached the seventh level of the Refining Qi realm, but it seemed unable to bear the sudden influx of power and appeared on the verge of falling into sleep.

Yet in Qin Chuan’s moment of crisis, it appeared in time.

It abruptly turned into a mass of smoke that covered Qin Chuan’s legs. In the span of a breath, it wove itself into substance, finally taking the shape of black exoskeleton.

Qin Chuan was startled, and a tremendous force suddenly erupted between his legs, like a spring compressed to the limit and then released at once.

Even the Mysterious Breath Dust Art wavered for an instant, though it adapted again in a moment.

His waist drove his legs, his feet struck the ground in a continuous blur, his face and chest nearly pressed to the earth. His long robe trembled wildly in the gale, though the speed was so great that even its sound could not be heard.

This speed was who knew how many times greater than before. Qin Chuan was astonished. Just what was Ghost Seven’s origin?

He had no time to think further, for the blood handprint was already within three feet of his head!

The rolling, icy cold aura upon it stung his face.

Three feet, two feet, one and a half!

Trees were crushed beneath that immense force and turned to powder. Qin Chuan darted left and right, his robe stained with patches of yellow-green, thick with the scent of grass and wood.

With one final lateral leap, he barely escaped the range of the blood handprint!

Before he could even catch his breath twice, the giant palm crashed to the ground, rolling up clouds of dust and debris!

When the phantom handprint dispersed, the scene before him revealed that the entire forest had vanished, leaving only a giant pit sunk a full foot into the earth, tree roots overturned and green stone shattered.

Ghost Seven seemed to be utterly exhausted. The hard exoskeleton slowly softened into a glutinous substance, then turned back into smoke that wrapped around Qin Chuan’s left wrist and became the unremarkable ribbon it had been before.

He took out a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth, then rolled spiritual energy through his body and began to stabilize and refine them.

But only three breaths later, once the dust in the area had settled, he looked toward the direction of the pool and his eyes were full of gloom.

There, Yu Ce was looking back at him from afar.

Yet his condition seemed even worse than Qin Chuan’s. His hair was streaked with white, glaringly visible in the moonlight against the night.

Some unknown method had him controlling a red-yellow talisman that circled all around him as he carefully inched step by step toward the blood pill.

By rough estimate, in just ten breaths he would be able to seize it.

Qin Chuan wanted to rush forward to interfere, but his strength did not match his will. He was in terrible condition, and his internal organs had been shaken as well.

After a brief adjustment of his breathing and a forced suppression of his injuries, Qin Chuan turned and headed toward the direction of Jade Mat Mountain.

He was unfamiliar with this place; only Jade Mat Mountain was somewhat known to him.

Both the terrain and the situation.

Qin Chuan knew that once Yu Ce had free hands, he would certainly pursue him endlessly.

His thoughts raced as he considered countermeasures, his hands not stopping as he searched the storage pouches of the Thousand Faces Man and Shi Xin. Once he found what he needed, he tossed the rest of the useless items into a corner.

Qin Chuan did not move very fast. With the Dust Pill concealing his aura, if he plunged into the deep mountains and old forests and erased his tracks, Yu Ce might not necessarily be able to follow.

Spiritual energy kept washing through his body, while the medicinal power of the pills dispersed. His spiritual energy rose with the tide, and before long it had climbed above the bottom line.

He dared not slack off, and refined a few more healing pills, turning them into a gentle force that wrapped around and nourished his internal organs.

The Heavenly Heart Sect, though not equal to the Green Mountain Sect, was still considered a medium-sized sect in the Green Mountain Realm.

Such an upright and renowned sect would never be permitted to refine blood pills. Thus people like the Thousand Faces Man came into being.

And once I escaped, I became a thorn in their side. Even if I invoked the banner of the Green Mountain Sect, it would mostly be useless, and would only harden their killing intent.

The pursuit could not be avoided. What remained to consider was whether he could evade Yu Ce’s tracking.

Yet after leaving the Pagoda Mountain, though it was still a mountainous region, there were not enough forests to conceal his figure; most of it was only scattered clusters of small shrubs.

There were several valleys in these surroundings, so the terrain was indeed complex.

However, if I can think of it, Yu Ce can think of it too, so I’ll have to spend some effort on this point.

The one thing worth celebrating is that I have the Dust Pill for concealing my aura. In that case, perhaps I really can slip past him.

In just a few breaths, Qin Chuan sorted out his thoughts, yet he still felt restless, as though he had overlooked something.

With a sigh, he knew he was not a man who could foresee everything. He had to think of what he would do if his whereabouts were discovered.

It sounded complicated, but the time left to him was only about a single cup of tea.

He had no time to make any elaborate arrangements.

At the fork in the road, he left some footprints to lead toward a valley. The marks were not clear; under the moonlight they could only be made out faintly, as though left in great haste.

But just after leaving the valley, he twisted his body, turned back around, and took the route toward Jade Mat Mountain instead, not using the main road or any side path, but moving through the brush and woodland.

His toes barely touched the ground, and on purpose he left no trace.

He found a somewhat sizable thicket, leaned against a large tree beside him, and while splitting his attention into several tasks at once, continued the work at hand while refining pills.

A warm current melted within his body, flowing along with spiritual energy into his organs, limbs, and mind.

His complexion gradually grew rosy, recovering its color. Just when the situation seemed to be improving...

“Hm?”

His expression suddenly changed as he fixed his gaze on a certain spot in the forest.

At once, the atmosphere grew tense. Even the autumn crickets fell silent, leaving only the heavy rhythm of breathing to echo through his bones and in his mind.

A sharp hiss.

Just as Qin Chuan thought it might be his imagination, a black arrow suddenly broke through the void and kissed the center of his brow in an instant.

The sound was exceedingly faint. Had he not been fully focused, it would have been impossible to notice.

Reacting with great speed, he snatched up the sword hilt beside him and gave the arrow’s path a light flick.

With a deft use of force, the arrow barely brushed his scalp and shot off at an angle.

Two dull thuds.

One arrow, two sounds. It had actually pierced through one tree trunk and then struck through a second, and one could even make out the hard, heavy triangular arrowhead.

“Come out!”

“Quite alert.”

“How did you discover my movements?”

“...”

After a moment of silence.

“Do you think I’m a fool? Tell you what—if I told you, what would stop you from running?”

Qin Chuan frowned repeatedly, and then a flash of insight suddenly crossed his mind. The source of that earlier unease surfaced at just the right moment.

“It must be that the human skin and the blood pill are linked to each other!”