Chapter 175.2

He really did pull hard. First his face turned red, and only when it was about to turn purple did he finally let go.

He stood up and walked out of the room.

Seeing how wretched his young master's face looked, Grandpa Tian could not help but wonder whether the two of them had gotten into a fight inside.

That young man was already so weak, yet he could still beat his young master into such a state. Sure enough, those injuries had been fake all along!

Zhao Yi stood by the railing. Down below, Xue Liangliang was sitting knee to knee with the two men from the Corpse-Gu Sect, deep in conversation.

Xue Liangliang was sharing his experience.

In order for the Bai family to produce heirs and preserve their deformed bloodline, they had in fact put in tremendous effort behind the scenes. It amounted to a kind of secret technique.

Naturally, Xue Liangliang knew nothing about any of that.

Fortunately, he did not know, which was exactly why he could comfort the two men from such an abstruse, mystical angle.

If he had started talking about anything concrete, he would have exposed himself easily.

But once the two men from the Corpse-Gu Sect had formed a preconceived notion, and since they already knew how difficult this matter was, they found Xue Liangliang's vague and mystical talk all the more convincing.

The way they looked at Xue Liangliang was as though he were a totem come alive, a benefactor specially sent to bestow blessings upon them.

Even so, standing on the second floor, Zhao Yi still believed Xue Liangliang was faking it.

The emperor's new clothes were not actually that hard to expose.

All he had to do was say a few words, or pretend to do a few things by accident, and once those two Corpse-Gu Sect men, now thoroughly "won over," realized they had been deceived, they would only become even more enraged and lash out madly at Xue Liangliang and the wounded people in the room.

And yet, just as Li Zhuiyuan had said, he did not dare gamble.

Even with ninety-nine point nine percent certainty, he still did not dare risk that tiny remaining sliver.

Back at the Zhao family of Shizhuo Village, he had stood on the rooftop while the boy stood below.

The boy had looked up at him and said, "I'm standing right here on the river. Do you dare come down?"

That scene had left Zhao Yi with psychological trauma.

He was truly afraid that the moment he made a move, the boy would immediately get up and say: Thank you for giving me a legitimate reason to kill you. Now I don't have to spare your ancestor any face.

Zhao Yi's "accident" and his "explanation" could be offered only to the Heavenly Dao. But from the boy's perspective, Zhao Yi's actions would already constitute sufficient cause and effect for retaliation.

Everyone here was severely injured, and yet they had left behind an ordinary person to put on an act and pretend to be an expert.

This was practically fishing with a straight hook!

It would be better if both sides were healthy, joining forces to deal with evil beings while scheming against each other. At least then he would feel much more at ease.

Zhao Yi hardened his resolve. He turned back once more, shoved the door open with a bang, and strode back into the room.

The boy lay on the bedding and let out a helpless sigh.

Zhao Yi said, "There's something I need you to say with me. You should know what it is."

"I know. But I won't say it."

"Consider it me begging you!"

"Won't help."

"On the river road, though a hundred boats vie against one another, we still uphold the righteous path. We may be rivals, but we are also those who safeguard the Heavenly Dao. I, Zhao Yi, will never take advantage of you while you are vulnerable!"

"Still cowardly."

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Zhao Yi was about to lose his mind.

This guy would not even cooperate and put on a little show so he could steady his Dao heart!

With obvious effort, Li Zhuiyuan raised his head and looked at Zhao Yi standing in the doorway.

"Take it one wave at a time. Gather whatever merit you can. When you reach the end and the road narrows, when you truly run into me, have the sense to step aside yourself."

Zhao Yi immediately calmed down. He said,

"My ancestor's notes once recorded a very similar scene. There was once a man of astonishing talent and character who stood before my ancestor and made him not dare raise his head.

"My ancestor described him in writing as a mountain blocking his path.

"Later, he died, and that mountain collapsed with him.

"Do you know what my ancestor thought at that time?"

Li Zhuiyuan might treat Zhao Yi however he pleased, but he could not show disrespect to Zhao Wuyang.

Nor could he, as before, toss out a line like, "Your ancestor was cowardly too."

Li Zhuiyuan said, "Your ancestor must have been very sad."

Hearing that, Zhao Yi swayed so badly he nearly lost his footing.

The notes of every generation of Dragon King were taboo objects. Even within the family, very few people were qualified to read them, and even fewer dared to.

So there was no way this boy had secretly read those notes.

Zhao Yi braced a hand against the doorframe.

"You understand my ancestor better than I do."

Li Zhuiyuan said nothing more.

Zhao Yi continued, "Sometimes, having a mountain before you that you cannot help but admire is not necessarily a bad thing.

"But the one who laughs last is the one who laughs best.

"Li Zhuiyuan, if one day I hear that you're dead, I'll be sad too."

"So sentimental."

Zhao Yi shrugged, turned, and walked out the door. Pointing at the two Corpse-Gu Sect disciples below, he said,

"Either follow our agreement and keep leading the way to the next dangerous place recorded by your sect.

"Or we start fighting right here, right now, and I'll kill you both on the spot!"

The expressions of the two Corpse-Gu Sect disciples turned cold. They looked back at Zhao Yi standing on the second floor.

Then they got up and respectfully bowed to Xue Liangliang, who was still seated there.

Xue Liangliang encouraged them, "Keep it up. Where there's a will, there's a way."

The two men looked at him gratefully. One of them left behind a bundle and placed it in front of Xue Liangliang, then the two turned and walked out of the earthen building.

Xue Liangliang had no idea what was in the two bundles, and he felt unworthy of accepting them.

Because he knew full well that he had not actually given them any practical help. All he had offered was emotional support.

Zhao Yi said, "We're following them."

After a pause, Zhao Yi raised his voice and shouted again,

"I won't let them come back. If they do come back, it'll be because I let them!

"If anything happens to you, Li Zhuiyuan, in the next ten days, it'll all be because of me.

"Hey, listen, kid. Don't go killing yourself on purpose just to frame me!"

Inside the room, Li Zhuiyuan rolled his eyes at that.

After saying all that, Zhao Yi and his people also left the earthen building.

Li Zhuiyuan knew that at heart Zhao Yi still simply did not dare gamble.

But Zhao Yi had managed to settle for the next best thing and imitate something of his ancestor's state of mind, so although he had lost something here, he had gained something there.

The Zhao family of Jiujiang had established itself because of Zhao Wuyang. Back then, Zhao Wuyang was probably much like Xiong Shan, coming from rough common stock, yet he had made it all the way to become Dragon King. A man like that was truly extraordinary.

Xiong Shan did not have that kind of character, so he was destined to fail and never go far.

Xue Liangliang came upstairs, pushed the door open, and asked softly, "Little Yuan, do I need to keep acting?"

"No need anymore. Thanks for your hard work, Liangliang-ge."

"It wasn't hard. It's what I should do. So now we..."

"Let me sleep first."

"All right. Um, in the next room they also left behind some pills, sorted by type. There's a bottle by each person's pillow, different colors."

"Feed them to Runsheng and the others."

Since Zhao Yi had decided not to gamble, he would naturally do a favor while he was at it. Smart people avoiding risk was instinct, and maximizing benefit was instinct too.

Besides, while walking the river, this guy definitely carried plenty of good stuff on him. The Zhao family of Jiujiang's miracle medicines were too good to waste.

"All right. Get some proper rest."

Li Zhuiyuan closed his eyes and slept through the entire night. When he woke up, he had Xue Liangliang warm up the remaining dissolved medicine and bring it to him. After drinking it, he fell asleep again.

That one pill dissolved into three bowls, and Li Zhuiyuan slept three times from it.

When he woke again, he was still physically weak, but no longer so feeble that he could not move at all.

He went next door to check on his companions.

Runsheng and Lin Shuyou were both awake, though neither could get out of bed. That was normal.

It was always like this after they used their trump-card moves, and because they had taken the pills Zhao Yi left behind, they had regained consciousness much earlier than usual.

Yin Meng and Tan Wenbin were still unconscious.

Apparently, the pills Zhao Yi left had little effect on Yin Meng's poison.

That... was not especially surprising.

Li Zhuiyuan took out a few medicine bottles labeled as antidotes from Yin Meng's bag and opened them one by one, smelling them carefully. He chose the mildest one and had Xue Liangliang mix it with hot water and pour it down her throat.

Even for this, the boy did not dare improvise recklessly.

But not long after she drank it, Yin Meng began vomiting up large amounts of black fluid.

Seeing that it worked, Li Zhuiyuan told Xue Liangliang to keep feeding it to her three times a day, one bottle cap mixed with water each time.

That Gu insect was still clutched in Yin Meng's hand.

It seemed to have become an obsession for her.

Those two long black feelers made Li Zhuiyuan think of southern cockroaches.

The boy reached out and touched the feelers a few times. This time, they did not react.

Hopefully its vitality would be as tenacious as a cockroach's.

As for Tan Wenbin, though, his eye sockets were sunken and his face gaunt, and the fact that he was still not waking up was rather strange.

Li Zhuiyuan thought back to the childish graffiti spread all across the murals and suspected that the reason Tan Wenbin had not woken yet was this: those two Resentful Infants had devoured too much of the resentment from the murals.

Originally, carrying two Resentful Infants on his shoulders had already affected Tan Wenbin's daily life. Now the Resentful Infants had overeaten and fallen into a deep sleep, which in turn made Tan Wenbin's burden too heavy for him to wake.

Li Zhuiyuan picked up the medicine bottle Zhao Yi had left for Tan Wenbin, poured a few pills into his palm, and held them under his nose to smell.

Rehmannia pills?

"Liangliang-ge, keep feeding Binbin this one."

"All right."

"It doesn't have to be one pill at a time. You can give him several at once. Forget it, just give him a handful each time."

"Ah, then I wasn't giving him enough before."

Cui Hao and Li Ren were still hiding in the Zhao Jun Temple.

Li Zhuiyuan could not be bothered with those two.

Still, after Li Zhuiyuan regained the ability to move around, Xue Liangliang would find time every other day to go to the Zhao Jun Temple and toss them some supplies.

A few more days passed, and Lin Shuyou was able to get out of bed and move around. That was still much faster than before.

Besides Zhao Yi's medicine, it was probably also because Ah You's body had already adapted to the impact of the Dissolution of Evil Talisman Needles. Or perhaps the one that had adapted first was the child medium.

The next one able to get out of bed was Runsheng.

Though the two of them still could not do any heavy work, at least they could help share the burden of taking care of people.

Last time in the Miao village, Ran Dacheng had drunk too much and spent the whole night in a hangover. The next day, when he could not find his tractor, he thought it had been stolen and walked all the way back to the village with tears in his eyes. When he later found the tractor again, he cried with joy.

Xue Liangliang expressed his apology to him and promised to help make arrangements so that once the construction team returned, Ran Dacheng would still be in charge of logistics and purchasing.

The construction team really was about to come back. Work had resumed very late after the New Year because they had to recruit workers again from nearby counties.

The main reason was that too many accidents had happened at the worksite last year, so after many workers received their pay and went home for the holidays, they no longer dared come back to take this job.

Yin Meng woke up.

The first thing she did after waking was check on the Gu insect she had been clutching for so long.

When she saw it lying there motionless, she let out a scream, thinking that she had accidentally squeezed to death the one called Poison-That-Would-Not-Die, the one she had chosen out of a swarm of countless insects.

But when Yin Meng poured out a little poison to stimulate it, the thing immediately sprang to life in fright.

Yin Meng was furious.

"You were playing dead!"

The two small bundles given to Xue Liangliang by the two Corpse-Gu Sect men contained a black substance resembling herbal jelly.

After examining it, Yin Meng determined that it was top-grade feed for Gu insects.

For a Gu master, this really was the most suitable gift to give. It was not as though they could gift Xue Liangliang two Gu insects.

So Xue Liangliang naturally gave both bundles to Yin Meng.

He would occasionally sigh and wonder whether that pair had succeeded or not.

The truth was that Zhao Yi had been using those two as tools to hunt for clues. Whether they would even survive under Zhao Yi's hand was hard to say.

But that was fate.

On the night before the construction team arrived, Tan Wenbin finally woke up.

After waking, Tan Wenbin raised his head, stared blankly at the ceiling with lifeless eyes, and said,

"I had a really, really long dream. In the dream I kept eating the whole time. I'm worried this will make me develop anorexia."

Lin Shuyou said, "Thank heavens, Bin-ge, you're finally awake. If we'd had to bring your unconscious self back, I honestly wouldn't have known how to explain it to sister-in-law."

Runsheng said, "Sudden collapse during sex."

That night after Tan Wenbin woke up, Li Zhuiyuan sat with him and told him everything that had happened earlier, including the matter of Zhao Yi.

That was the proper privilege due to the team's second brain.

After listening, Tan Wenbin asked in puzzlement,

"Little Yuan-ge, you said that boy forgot his Gu-child brother because of your concealment. That I can understand.

"But his mother, that old hag, died right beside him, didn't she? So why didn't he use that mirror secret art to temporarily 'revive' his mother?

"Even though he killed his mother with his own hands, if he had really 'revived' her, I think there was a very good chance she still would have helped him deal with you, Little Yuan-ge."

Li Zhuiyuan poured out all the remaining Rehmannia pills from the bottle and held them out to Tan Wenbin's mouth.

Tan Wenbin opened his mouth and chewed them all down like candy beans.

After setting the bottle aside, Li Zhuiyuan answered,

"Because, just like Zhao Yi, he didn't dare gamble."