Chapter 105: Falling Out
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November came. Because of the trouble caused by those well-connected families the previous month, people had gone north of the city to stir up trouble... The medicinal fields outside the city that Zhuang Jin and Miao Lun had claimed were now ownerless. Their application was, as expected, taken into consideration, and they were not reassigned. Thus, they were able to remain at the medicinal fields outside the city.
This month, word had it that the Shen family had also transferred several Sixth Meridian warriors from the southern district to the north, striking back in kind. But that had nothing to do with the medicinal fields outside the city, leaving them free to sit back and watch the storm unfold.
Seven or eight days passed in a blur, and the eighth day of November arrived.
That morning, Zhuang Jin was practicing his martial techniques when a sudden commotion erupted from the medicinal fields. He stopped at once and looked over.
A strange beast—a black goat—came rushing through the fields, its body shrouded in a faint black radiance. It moved with astonishing speed, sending people tumbling wherever it passed. Every so often it lowered its head to munch on lotus grass, but whenever the warriors of the subordinate squads chased after it, the creature would leap away and begin eating elsewhere.
“Another strange beast at the perfected Skin Tempering level? What luck!” Zhuang Jin exclaimed, not alarmed but delighted.
The medicinal fields were required to turn in a certain amount of strange-beast meat each month, with a permitted allowance for losses. As long as this black goat left its carcass behind, what did a little lotus grass matter?
“Brother Zhuang, let’s block it off!” Miao Lun shouted excitedly.
Though no distress signal had been sent, Zhuang Jin had often asked him to keep an eye on this place lately. Hearing the commotion, Miao Lun had come over instinctively, and by now he was already charging forward.
Watching him, Zhuang Jin sighed inwardly. Today was different from last month, when they had encountered that ironhide boar. He had already broken through to the Seventh Meridian, and Miao Lun’s presence made it inconvenient for him to use his full strength.
People such as Lin Hong and Bi Kai might not notice if he displayed a little more power than usual in front of them. But if he dared to fight with all his strength before Miao Lun, a Sixth Meridian warrior, he would certainly be exposed.
“Baa!”
Seeing Miao Lun charging toward it, the black goat remained entirely unhurried. It swallowed the lotus grass in its mouth, then plucked two more blades and held them between its teeth. Only then did it turn around, leap lightly through the rope net, and vault over the fence.
Even Miao Lun, a Sixth Meridian warrior, was slower by a considerable margin. Compared with last month’s thick-skinned, heavyset ironhide boar, this black goat clearly excelled in speed.
“Brother Zhuang, I’ll drive it into the ravine nearby. Go around and cut it off!” Seeing how brazenly the black goat behaved, Miao Lun called out before hurrying after it.
Zhuang Jin knew exactly which place Miao Lun meant. The terrain was indeed suitable, and it was not far away; he could return quickly. After giving Lin Hong and the others a brief instruction, he pushed off with his toes and sped away.
...
About half a mile from the medicinal fields.
The black goat and Miao Lun raced past, one beast and one man moving so swiftly that the grass bent abruptly in their wake, while the air filled with the howl of wind.
“Beast, where do you think you’re going?!”
Miao Lun had been dragged along by the black goat, stumbling left and right as he struggled to keep up. At last, they neared the ravine he had mentioned, but the goat refused to enter. No matter how hard he drove it, the creature merely led him in circles around the entrance.
Just as Miao Lun was panting with exhaustion and nearly ready to give up, the black goat seemed to grow curious. It ambled slowly on its hooves and entered the ravine of its own accord.
“Good beast! Let’s see how you die this time!” Delight spread across Miao Lun’s face. The terrain inside the ravine severely restricted the black goat’s advantage in speed. The tide had turned, and now it was his turn!
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Yet when he pursued it inside, thinking precisely that, he was left utterly dumbfounded.
“Baa! Baa-baa!”
The black goat calmly swallowed the two blades of lotus grass it had carried in its mouth, then turned and bleated twice, as if mocking him. With a leap of all four hooves, it shot into the air. The entire goat moved across the nearly vertical cliff face as easily as though it were level ground.
Miao Lun gnashed his teeth, forced to watch helplessly as the creature was about to leave the ravine and escape to freedom.
“Take this!”
Zhuang Jin’s figure suddenly appeared above them, and he struck downward with one palm.
Boom!
The black goat was knocked from the cliff and tumbled down in a rolling heap, crashing back into the ravine.
“Excellent work, Brother Zhuang!”
Before the black goat could regain its footing, Miao Lun rushed forward with a flurry of attacks and finished it off.
When Zhuang Jin descended, he saw Miao Lun using a dagger to slit open the black goat’s belly. He immediately understood that Miao Lun was searching for a beast treasure.
Under normal circumstances, such treasures appeared only by chance, so Zhuang Jin had not expected one. But then—
“Hm?!”
Miao Lun’s hand was probing through the goat’s stomach when he suddenly froze. He pulled out a hard object.
“This is... a beast treasure from a perfected Skin Tempering beast?! It’s real!”
As they had heard before, refining the beast treasure of a perfected Skin Tempering beast into a Meridian-Soothing Pill could increase the medicine’s efficacy by thirty or forty percent. It was effective even against the bottleneck between the Sixth and Seventh Meridians. If they turned it in, they would certainly be allotted one pill.
What did this mean?
It was nothing less than hope for a breakthrough to the Seventh Meridian!
And the Seventh Meridian represented the rank of a guard. Once he reached it, he would step into the Shen family’s middle and upper ranks in a single stride. It would be a transformation of fate itself.
“Seventh Meridian! A breakthrough to the Seventh Meridian... A chance to catch up with and surpass my elder brother...”
Miao Lun’s eyes burned with fervor. He stared at the beast treasure, unable to look away, his wrist trembling.
“Brother Zhuang, look! It’s real... It really is a beast treasure!”
“Oh?”
Zhuang Jin showed mild curiosity and stepped closer. The beast treasure was brown all over and gave off a faint, fishy fragrance. Merely smelling it stirred an irresistible urge to swallow it.
Seeing Zhuang Jin so close, his attention drawn to the beast treasure, Miao Lun felt his intense longing for the Seventh Meridian surge beyond control. A thought suddenly burst into his mind.
He secretly gathered his inner breath. The hand behind his back clenched, then opened again. At last, a vicious look flashed across his face, and he struck swiftly at Zhuang Jin’s chest.
Whoosh!
The palm strike was both swift and ruthless. It came without warning and from such close range that another Sixth Meridian warrior would certainly have been unable to evade it.
Zhuang Jin’s attention had been fixed on the beast treasure, and he had never imagined that Miao Lun would suddenly attack him. But he was, after all, a Seventh Meridian warrior. His reactions and speed were far beyond those of ordinary men, and he instinctively raised his palm.
Miao Lun saw that the strike—one that a Sixth Meridian warrior would have had no hope of avoiding—was met by Zhuang Jin’s palm, which moved after his own yet left behind a phantom trail.
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Boom!
Miao Lun felt an overwhelming force travel from his palm through his entire body. In an instant, he was sent flying backward like a kite with its string cut.
Only then did Zhuang Jin truly understand what had happened. He looked at Miao Lun in astonishment and instinctively asked, “Why?”
The moment the words left his mouth, he already knew the answer. It was nothing more than the enormous benefit represented by this perfected Skin Tempering beast treasure—a chance to overturn one’s destiny—and Miao Lun’s desire to compete with his elder brother. Perhaps, buried deepest in his subconscious, there was also the unbearable weight of a debt of gratitude too great to repay...
All of it could be reduced to a single truth:
Human nature could not withstand temptation.
A trace of sorrow stirred in Zhuang Jin’s heart. He had never expected Miao Lun—the kindhearted, easygoing old man whose life he had once saved, the man with whom he had recently shared drinks and taken shifts, whose relationship with him had grown so close that they were nearly friends—to turn against him for the sake of profit.
“Impossible! You... you!”
Miao Lun felt as though every bone in his body had been shattered, yet the shock on his face only deepened. He seemed to have realized something, but quickly forced himself to calm down, pretending that nothing had happened.
“Brother Zhuang, I must have been bewitched. I don’t even know what came over me... I was wrong. Let’s pretend none of this happened. We can go on as we did before... We’re good friends, aren’t we? Have you forgotten? We drank together. You even saved my life...”
Miao Lun sat on the ground, retreating inch by inch with his hands and feet while he explained and pleaded, trying to appeal to their past friendship. When he saw that none of it worked, fear of death finally transformed his pleas into a threat.
“Zhuang Jin, if you kill me, you’ll bring yourself enormous trouble. My elder brother is a Seventh Meridian warrior...”
Looking at Miao Lun, Zhuang Jin drew a deep breath. One scene after another from the time they had known each other surfaced before his eyes.
At their first meeting in early August, the kindhearted old man, sporting a mustache on his upper lip and a little goatee on his chin, had smiled and nodded at him.
On the seventeenth of August, during that perilous night, Zhuang Jin had saved him. Later, Miao Lun had come bearing lavish gifts, his face full of tearful gratitude.
On the first day of October, Miao Lun had sought him out for a drink. Drunk, he had revealed his innermost troubles, and beneath the brilliant starlight, Zhuang Jin had escorted him home.
At the beginning of the previous month, when the Medicine King Gang mobilized its Sixth Meridian warriors, Miao Lun had come to warn him. The two of them had clinked their wine bowls and discussed the rise and fall of the world.
On the eighteenth of October, they had joined forces to kill the ironhide boar, then sat facing each other and laughed.
Those scenes flashed through Zhuang Jin’s mind one after another, until they finally froze on the image of Miao Lun launching his sneak attack.
His expression turned cold, devoid of sorrow or joy, and he pressed one palm downward.
“I’m a Seventh Meridian warrior too,” Zhuang Jin said softly, as though answering him—or perhaps sighing.
He knew that his plans would have to change. He could no longer delay his promotion until the middle of the month. After a moment of quiet reflection, he hoisted up the black goat and Miao Lun’s corpse, then sped back.
...
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