Medicine Master Disciple’s Cultivation Notes

Chapter 119: Rescue the Hostage, or Finish Her Off

Deep in the underground chamber, Young Master Liu walked with an ashen face through a row of female ghosts wearing grinning burlap sacks, came to a stand laid with red candles and incense offerings, and held a talisman over the flame until it caught.

The candlelight wavered. A hollow, drifting voice rose from the nameless spirit tablet on the stand.

"What is it?"

Young Master Liu said urgently, "I've done everything you asked of me. What do I do now? How do I get out?"

"A sacrifice."

"Always a sacrifice..."

Young Master Liu gritted his teeth. If this picky old thing hadn't been demanding blood sacrifices day after day, none of this would have gotten him noticed in the first place.

"How many did you bring?"

The female ghost behind him threw Hu Caiyi, bound hand and foot with her mouth stuffed, at Young Master Liu's feet.

"Only one?"Young Master Liu was somewhat disappointed, but he had no other options at this point.

He seized a bone-carving knife and pressed the struggling Hu Caiyi down in front of the offering stand, saying in a low voice, "Miss Hu, I'm truly sorry. I originally had other uses for you, but I'm at the end of my rope now and there's simply nothing else to be done. I can only hope that your half-demon blood will satisfy that old thing."

Hu Caiyi: ???

"Stop struggling. It will be over quickly."

A tremendous crash erupted from above. The ceiling caved in.

There was no way the pursuers could have arrived this fast.

Young Master Liu's hand jerked with fright and he nearly dropped the knife, but when he made out who had come, he immediately relaxed.

The Tang girl, that little Rakshasa ghost, and her useless hanger-on.

Good, this would actually... wait, no. Weren't they first-year students? How had they tracked him here? Was it because they spent so much time with Hu Caiyi that they'd worked out some secret technique for sensing each other's location?

The first thought in Young Master Liu's mind was not that Li Qiuchen had been hiding his cultivation.

Which was understandable. Li Qiuchen had been so thoroughly low-key and so convincingly helpless in his day-to-day performance that anyone would have been caught off guard by a sudden change of character.

If you were playing the pig to eat the tiger, why were you dropping the act now?

If Li Qiuchen had been asked to answer that question, he would have been equally at a loss.

It was a matter of professional necessity.

Boss Tang had treated him well. The man had never paid him a single coin in wages, but he could draw against the account as much as he needed.

Tang Xiaoxue was still a child. It was the New Year and she'd come all this way... actually no, that wasn't it. She was generally well-behaved enough. When she wanted something, what could you do? You coaxed her along.

He was simply soft-hearted.

The moment they landed, the earth-element beads in Li Qiuchen's hand scattered in all directions, careening through the narrow underground space and smashing into anything they came across without the slightest discrimination.

What kind of spirit tool was this?

Under this completely unreasonable indiscriminate barrage, even Young Master Liu with his Qi Refining cultivation had no choice but to shield his face and dodge out of the way.

He had burned through nearly all his reserves fleeing just now and was in no position to mount an effective counterattack.

But Young Master Liu's mind was racing, and within moments he had identified the best option available to him in his current situation.

Sacrifice Hu Caiyi first.

What was the point of continuing to brawl with Li Qiuchen otherwise? If he got bogged down and gave them time to stall until the real fighters came after him, there would be no chance of escape left at all.

But when he looked down at Hu Caiyi, his mind went completely blank.

The girl had been struck in the head by one of the earth-element beads careening around the room. The top of her skull was deeply caved in. Her eyes had been knocked clean from their sockets. Blood pooled across the floor.

Hang on. You two are supposed to be here to rescue her, right?

You kill the hostage first?

So who am I supposed to sacrifice now?

And this... does she still count if she's warm?

Young Master Liu was at a loss.

Wait. I'm the villain here, aren't I?

How did things end up like this?

While he was still hesitating, Li Qiuchen had already cleared the room in the manner of a wild flurry of punches taking down a seasoned master.

Then he turned and hurled Tang Xiaoxue through the air.

In Young Master Liu's field of vision, a small pale foot expanded rapidly toward his face.

It was bare because Tang Xiaoxue, when she had activated her Super Wulala power and stamped through the ground to break in, had gone through her little deerskin boots in the process.

Her second foot came down squarely on Young Master Liu's face. The force that erupted from her slight body was terrifying, and the kick sent him flying backward, toppling the offering stand and scattering the incense and candles.

Li Qiuchen was right behind her, but he didn't press the attack on Young Master Liu. Instead he seized the moment of chaos to wrench Hu Caiyi's body free and pulled her into his arms, then called out to Tang Xiaoxue, "Retreat!"

Tang Xiaoxue wheeled around in one step and jumped onto his back, wrapping both arms around his neck.

Li Qiuchen planted his feet and launched upward, going back out through the same hole they had come in through.

Getting drawn into a sustained fight with a Qi Refining cultivator was not a good idea. Young Master Liu had no desire to get entangled with them, and Li Qiuchen felt the same way. He had never forgotten that his primary objective was to retrieve the person.

Whether that person came back alive or dead was a secondary concern. She was still warm, after all.

He vaulted to the surface, pressed one hand to the top of Hu Caiyi's head and one to her heart, and poured life energy into her body at full force.

"Waaah!"

Hu Caiyi sucked in a sharp breath and erupted into violent coughing, spitting out the blood that had been choking her airway.

"My, my eyes..."

"Your eyes are fine. Don't be frightened."

"Huh?"

Hu Caiyi blinked, came back to herself, and froze on the spot. Hadn't she just been dead?

Then she looked up and found herself cradled in Li Qiuchen's arms, and her face flooded scarlet immediately.

"You, you, me, I..."

"Catch her!"

"Huh?"

Before Hu Caiyi could process what was happening, Li Qiuchen sent her sailing high into the air.

Before she could even scream, Tang Xiaoxue flipped through the air like a sparrowhawk and caught her, landing together on the rooftop nearby.

"Xuexue~"

Hu Caiyi stared wide-eyed at the Rakshasa girl with her hair flowing long and her ghost horns raised, and said with genuine feeling, "What have you been eating? You've grown!"

"Shut up!"

Tang Xiaoxue pinned her underneath and spun into a roundhouse kick that sent the female ghost's grinning burlap-sacked head flying through the air like a ball.

Li Qiuchen raised his hand. The earth-element beads spinning through the air shrank in an instant, resuming the form of a bracelet of beads that dropped back onto his wrist.

The female ghosts were climbing up from the ground.

The earth-element beads packed a formidable punch, but against creatures of this sort they couldn't inflict effective damage. Even being smashed into a state of full-body compound fracture seemed to mean very little to them.

Which was exactly why Li Qiuchen hadn't lingered. He had grabbed Hu Caiyi and run.

The other side, however, appeared to have no intention of simply letting their prey go.

Before he had taken more than a few steps, he felt something tighten around his feet, as though an invisible chain had caught him. The female ghosts used their earth-burrowing technique to cut off his path from every direction.

Something was off here.

Why were they rallying now instead of running?

Li Qiuchen couldn't quite follow Young Master Liu's reasoning. Did he genuinely think that turning and running had meant Li Qiuchen was afraid of him?

He turned around and met Young Master Liu's cold, flat gaze.

He was, after all, a Qi Refining cultivator with the skill to slip away from under Murong Feng's surveillance. He had some capability to him. Li Qiuchen had never expected their ambush to finish him off outright.

"I despise people like you. Talented ones."

Li Qiuchen: ???

Who? Us?

"Always performing this humble, unassuming act in ordinary times, and then the moment an opportunity comes along, snapping it up faster than anyone else, like starving dogs!"

Young Master Liu's voice was icy, and a grotesque smile he couldn't quite suppress pulled at the corners of his mouth.

"And then you come back from snatching the opportunity and put on this show of consoling everyone, saying things like, oh it was just luck this time, you did well too... go to hell! I've had more than enough of that hypocritical face you people wear!"

Li Qiuchen looked left and right, thoroughly baffled.

Who exactly are you talking to?

What happened to you?

"Just die, hahahahaha!"

Before Li Qiuchen could react, Young Master Liu suddenly threw his head back and laughed. One of the female ghosts tore the burlap sack from her head and came crashing straight at Li Qiuchen.

With the sack removed, Li Qiuchen recognized the face.

It was Senior Sister Peng Lan, who had vanished by the riverbank.

She had been dead for a long time, refined into a terrible ghost creature. There was almost no hope of saving her.

The Medicine Master's Blessing could restore life, but even that had its limits.

Dead this long, with the flesh already decomposed and dissolved, not even the Medicine Master himself could bring her back.

And besides... what was he going for here, using Senior Sister Peng Lan's body as a shield? Did he think Li Qiuchen would hold back out of sentiment?

That was quite the miscalculation.

Li Qiuchen raised his hand without hesitation and fired the Palm Spike. The wooden spike, charged with life energy, drove into Senior Sister Peng Lan's chest.

A crack.

The senior sister exploded.

Not from the Palm Spike. Young Master Liu had used the corpse to trigger a corpse detonation.

Crack, crack, crack, crack.

Not just that one body. Every female ghost that had closed in detonated simultaneously in the same instant. The blast radius enveloped the surrounding area in all directions, swallowing Li Qiuchen's figure in the explosion.

"Heh heh heh heh."

A flicker of red passed through Young Master Liu's pupils as an inhuman laugh escaped his lips.

But before the smoke had even cleared, a dark shape came hurtling straight at him.

"You still didn't die? What else are you hiding?"

Young Master Liu flung a talisman, and a burst of searing flame ignited the shape instantly.

It was just a piece of clothing.

"Did you really think a trick like that could..."

Li Qiuchen came at him from a different direction, the green bamboo staff in his hand leveled at Young Master Liu's throat.

"Escape my eyes?"

Young Master Liu snapped his mouth open abruptly. His tongue shot out three chi long, coiled around the green bamboo staff, and snapped it with a sharp crack.

???

It was actually bamboo? Just a plain stick of bamboo?

Shouldn't it be a spirit tool or a weapon of some kind?

This second misjudgment sent a moment of genuine confusion through Young Master Liu's mind.

And in that moment, Li Qiuchen had already closed the distance and pressed his palm to Young Master Liu's chest.

"Young Master Liu, I have a question for you."

"What?"

"Do you remember my name?"

"Hm?"

In the instant that Young Master Liu's expression shifted to uncertainty, Li Qiuchen released the force from his palm.

Burning Blood Heart-Crushing Palm.

True qi compressed to its limit poured into Young Master Liu's heart, and then detonated.

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