Even if Yun Shen had ten times his current courage, he still would not dare kill anyone. So he ran away. Before escaping, he hesitated over whether to take the flowerpot with him. It was ugly, but at least it had been his little nest for several days.
In the end, he abandoned the pot. Mainly because he could not move it, much less carry it while fleeing.
It was Yun Shen’s first time escaping for his life, so his technique was not very practiced. Fortunately, there were hardly any people left in the inn late at night. Only one or two tables in the main hall were still drinking, and most of those people were already drunk and sprawled all over the place.
He pressed himself against the base of the wall and slowly shuffled toward the inn entrance, his heart pounding from nerves. When he passed one of the drinking tables, an elderly cultivator sleeping beneath it suddenly rolled over and muttered in his dreams, nearly frightening Yun Shen to death on the spot.
He pressed himself against the table leg without daring to move. Once he was certain the old cultivator showed no sign of waking, he immediately sprinted for the inn door.
The attendant was yawning sleepily when he suddenly felt a dark shadow flash past his eyes. He jolted, thinking he had seen a ghost in the middle of the night. He rubbed his eyes hard, but saw nothing.
The shadow had seemed to run outside. He stood, walked to the entrance, and leaned out to look. There was nothing but deep darkness.
“Strange. Was I seeing things?”
Outside, the night watchman struck his gong to mark the hour. It happened to be time to close for the night, so the attendant simply shut the doors and dropped the bar into place.
In a flowerbed at the corner of the shop opposite the inn, Yun Shen cautiously poked his head out. Watching the inn close, he let out a long breath of relief.
He did not dare linger. The great villain could wake at any moment. If Yun Shen did not run farther away quickly, he might be caught and dragged back.
The little ginseng spirit crawled out of the soil and took off running. But afraid someone might see him, he only dared move furtively through the shadows along the walls. When he passed one house, his movements apparently disturbed the watchdog behind the gate, provoking a series of fierce barks.
Yun Shen’s steps faltered in fright, then he ran for his life.
The night was thick with dew. On the third floor of the inn, half a window stood open, yet not a trace of light shone through it.
“Even a dog can scare him. That ugly thing really is timid.”
Inside the window, Sui Jian stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at the empty earthenware pot with only a hole remaining in the soil, then suddenly curved his lips into a smile.
“Then again, if he had any courage, he wouldn’t have thought only of running.”
.
Yun Shen fled the entire night without daring to stop. Unfortunately, his legs were too short and nothing like the long, powerful legs of a human. After running all night, he had only managed to cover about five kilometers.
Yes. He had run straight back to Gourd Mountain. He firmly believed that the most dangerous place was the safest. Sui Jian would never expect him to return.
He thought he had only been caught last time because his single splash of green amid a sea of flowers had stood out too much and attracted the great villain’s attention. This time he had learned his lesson. He ran into the forest and rooted himself among bushes beside a pond.
Dense branches and leaves surrounded and concealed him. His palm-shaped ginseng leaves did not stand out at all among them. Yun Shen finally felt a trace of security. The nerves that had been taut all night relaxed, and exhaustion immediately surged over him like a tide.
By now the sky was fully bright. Brilliant red clouds accompanied the rising sun, spilling warm light over the earth. He yawned, tucked in his leaves, and after repeatedly confirming that no one would find him, sank peacefully into sleep.
As time passed, the sunlight grew stronger. Rays pierced through the branches and leaves, casting mottled patches of light and shadow over the ground.
A boot heel crushed a dry branch with a crack, shattering the forest’s quiet. Wild beasts hidden throughout the woods raised their heads warily. Their instincts caught the scent of danger and they immediately fled in panic, while insects hid beneath rotten leaves and did not dare move.
The fleeing beasts created a great deal of noise. Yun Shen, who had not dared sleep too deeply, immediately woke.
His mind was still muddled. Instinctively, he almost poked his head out to see what was happening, but fortunately he regained his senses in time and suppressed the impulse.
He listened carefully. He could faintly distinguish many chaotic footsteps and the thunderous crash of heavy objects striking trees and knocking them down.
It sounded as though something were driving the beasts away.
Had the great villain already found him?
Yun Shen’s heart instantly leapt into his throat. Its pounding sounded like a drum beside his ears. Trembling, he pulled the branches in front of him together and carefully covered his body.
His view was blocked by the dense foliage, so Yun Shen could not see what was happening outside. He did not have the courage to stretch out a leaf and look, so he held his body rigidly still and imitated an ordinary plant.
He did not know how much time passed. When the noises outside gradually faded and the little forest slowly filled again with insect chirps and birdsong, he finally released the roots he had wrapped around the branches and cautiously extended two leaves to survey the surroundings.
In only a short time, the little pond had been completely transformed. Apart from the shrub where he hid, which had miraculously escaped damage, the rest of the area looked as though more than a dozen bulldozers had plowed over it several times. Almost everything had been overturned. Even the originally sparkling pond was half buried beneath mud and broken trees. Floating on the surface was a gigantic beast with mangled fur and its head severed.
Thick, sticky blood trickled into the water, turning the originally clear pond murky and crimson. The overpowering stench of blood was enough to make one gag.
On the beast’s back stood a man in a dark robe embroidered with python patterns, his back toward Yun Shen as he wiped blood from the edge of his sword. His entire body radiated an austere murderousness that warned strangers to stay away.
Yun Shen jolted and instantly pulled his leaves back, but it was already too late. The man had long since discovered him. In the blink of an eye, Yun Shen was ripped out together with the surrounding earth and hurled into a patch of mud.
Because he landed face-first, he inevitably swallowed a mouthful of foul-smelling sludge.
“Ptoo! Ptoo! Ptoo!”
Still dizzy from the fall, Yun Shen instinctively spat. Before he could even get all the mud out of his mouth, everything suddenly went black.
“???”
In a pitch-dark space where he could not see his hand in front of his face, the ugly little ginseng spirit was utterly bewildered.
Where the hell had that man thrown him?
Yun Shen stretched a root forward to feel around and touched something smooth and silky, very similar to the storage pouch Sui Jian wore at his belt.
Merciful heavens! Had he been captured again?!
The ginseng spirit clutched his face with two roots and screamed soundlessly.
At the foot of Gourd Mountain, Sui Jian, who had been strolling leisurely into the deeper mountains, suddenly stopped and lifted his eyes toward the peak with an unreadable expression.
“Zhao Suiyun?”
He was still here. It seemed Fuguang’s injuries were severe…
Sui Jian rubbed his fingertips together, a dark gleam flashing through his eyes.
.
Yun Shen had no idea how long he had been locked inside the storage pouch. Just as he was growing drowsy, a sliver of light appeared.
He instantly became alert and hurried toward it. The farther he went, the brighter the light became until it nearly blinded him.
He groped forward as though blind. Faint conversation reached his ears. Judging from the voices, there seemed to be two adult men outside.
Yun Shen stopped. The person who had captured him was almost certainly out there. If he rushed out carelessly, wouldn’t he be walking straight into danger?
Yun Shen was not clever, but he was not truly stupid either. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages, he turned and ran back. But just as he turned around, his vision blurred. When he looked again, everything in front of him had changed.
He was now inside a shabby but fairly clean wooden cabin. The furnishings were equally sparse: only a wooden table and two or three bamboo chairs.
A medicine stove beneath the window was simmering a decoction. Wisps of steam carrying a medicinal fragrance rose into the air. A cold, ethereally beautiful man lay on the bed, while the person sitting beside him was the very man who had captured Yun Shen.
Both men looked at him at the same time. Yun Shen grew so nervous that every leaf stiffened to a point.
The man lying down studied him for a moment, then smiled and teased, “Senior Brother, is this the gift you brought me? It certainly looks… distinctive.”
He seemed to be injured. After only two chuckles, he apparently tugged at the wound and began coughing violently into a loosely clenched fist, his face flushing red as his body doubled over.
The man in dark clothes immediately rubbed his back to help him breathe. His expression was grave, and the pain in his eyes was impossible to hide. He blamed himself. “It’s Senior Brother’s fault. I failed to protect you.”
The man was coughing too hard to speak and could only wave a hand to show that he did not blame him.
Watching their interaction, a flash of insight passed through Yun Shen’s mind. He felt as though he was close to understanding something, but could not quite grasp it.
Seeing the man cough so painfully, Yun Shen wondered whether he should pull off a root and give it to him to soak in water. But the moment the thought arose, he remembered Sui Jian clutching his chest, vomiting black blood, and collapsing.
Forget it. Better not casually harm people. If someone ate his root and was nourished straight into the afterlife, the sin would be enormous.
Yun Shen awkwardly abandoned the idea of helping and did his best to reduce his presence, pretending to be a perfectly ordinary plant.
Unfortunately, although he wanted to stay out of things, reality refused to let him. The man in dark clothes seemed to remember that Yun Shen existed. He glanced over, then gently helped the injured man lie down and tucked the blankets around him before standing and walking toward Yun Shen with cold eyes.
“A ginseng that has become a spirit should be useful for Fuguang’s injuries.”
He murmured and, in the next instant, an unsheathed sword appeared in his hand.
It looked very much as though he intended to slice Yun Shen up and use him as medicine on the spot.
Yun Shen trembled uncontrollably. He was about to repeat the argument he had used on Sui Jian, but the man in dark clothes did not even give him a chance to speak. With a twist of the sword, a streak of sword energy shot straight toward him.
Yun Shen watched death approach. In that instant of mortal danger, he somehow erupted with limitless potential. He hugged his head, curled into a ball, and rolled across the floor, barely avoiding the sword energy.
The strike carved a long crack straight through the wooden floor. The opening was narrow but extremely deep. If it had struck Yun Shen, it would have been enough to turn him into ginseng powder.
Yun Shen glanced at the crack from the corner of his eye and went rigid with terror.
He swallowed. If he had known everyone in the cultivation world would start slicing up ginseng spirits the moment they disagreed with them, he might as well have stayed obediently beside the great villain. At least until he lost all value, his life would be safe there.
Yun Shen was filled with regret.
“Hm?”
The man in dark clothes had not expected a ginseng spirit with such weak cultivation to dodge his sword energy. He frowned in confusion and put away his sword. Just as he was about to pick Yun Shen up and examine him carefully, a hoarse, deep voice sounded from outside the door.
“Fellow cultivators, would you return my little pet to me?”
