Chapter 86: The Secret Realm Within the Body

With the car window open, the gale at high altitude struck her full in the face.

Under these conditions, could he really make use of that absurdly miraculous ability of his, tracking by scent?

Long Night was doubtful.

She drew a deep breath and nearly choked.

She had to admit that every craft had its master.

At the very least, she herself would never be able to detect any strange odor in the air.

Yet Lin Xiaosu seemed to have already caught hold of some thread, and the flying car sped onward through the sky.

Long Night stared at his face. His expression was tranquil.

His gaze was calm as still water.

That look did not seem like someone undertaking an extremely dangerous mission at all. Rather, it was more like he was taking a girl out for a leisurely drive.

A strange feeling rose in Long Night's heart.

It was not as though she had never teamed up with people from Hidden Dragon before, but any mission she personally went on was always exceedingly dangerous. Everyone's nerves were stretched taut; everyone was braced for battle.

Only he seemed to have everything under control.

Working with him, it felt as though she did not need to worry about a thing, and could simply entrust everything to him.

Why would I have such an illusion?

He is not even a member of Hidden Dragon. Even if he were, he ought to be a rookie.

And yet why does a rookie give a veteran such a sense of complete command?

Suddenly, a trace of a smile appeared on his face.

With that smile, his whole face came alive, full of sunshine, carrying a touch of handsomeness.

Long Night's heart gave a slight leap. "You found something?"

"Found it!"

"Found it? Where?"

"First we land. I'll point it out to you in a moment."

Lin Xiaosu shifted the flying car sideways. Just as it seemed about to crash into a large tree, it abruptly steadied itself and descended soundlessly.

It came to rest on a huge rock.

Before them lay a stretch of green tea gardens.

Behind the tea gardens was a small village.

What a secluded retreat amid mountains and woods, what a place of small bridges, flowing water, and humble homes.

The two of them got out of the flying car and walked downhill along the slope.

Ahead was a little stream, where a village girl was washing clothes. She was even humming some nameless tune under her breath. Everything was so peaceful.

Long Night's heart tightened at once. "Where is it?"

"Don't deliberately try to look for it. It's very alert. On that pine tree, about four meters below the top."

Lin Xiaosu spoke softly.

With a light lift of Long Night's hand, a pair of glasses appeared on the bridge of her nose.

From the rim of the glasses extended a fine tendril, and that tendril was a telescope.

If one did not look closely, it was clearly just a strand of her floating hair.

Through that tendril, Long Night saw it.

A tiny spot of red to the naked eye became crystal clear in the telescope. There it was.

Her heart jolted violently.

She had really tracked it down.

Crossing eight hundred miles of open space, passing over more than a dozen rivers, traveling from Northern Sichuan Province to Southern Sichuan, he had actually found such a tiny bird.

What kind of miracle was this?

Compared with the strange tales that had made his name known far and wide, this was wondrous by countless degrees more.

But this was no time for admiration. Finding the bird was only the first step; truly taking it down was the hardest part.

Because it could fly.

The moment it was startled, it would be gone.

"Its target is that village girl," Long Night said, one hand slipping into her pocket, where she carried a gun.

A different sort of gun.

"It should be..." Lin Xiaosu's voice abruptly cut off.

"It looked our way!" Long Night said. Through the telescope hidden in her hair, she clearly saw the bird turn its head, those eyes like those of a hellish demon fixed in their direction.

Could it actually understand human speech?

Or perhaps it could sense the unusual aura around them?

Had it become aware of danger?

Lin Xiaosu brought his lips close to Long Night's ear. "I want to ask you a question."

"Ask..." Long Night's nerves were taut as bowstrings, and her mouth had gone a little dry.

"Are you a virgin?"

"Huh?" Long Night was startled. What kind of timing was this? Teasing her, or seducing her?

"I think its interest in you is greater than its interest in that village girl," Lin Xiaosu said.

Long Night's heart stirred. "If that's the case, that's even better."

"Let's turn back and test it."

The two of them stopped on the hillside, then climbed back up.

As they turned around, Long Night's strand of hair silently angled backward, still locking onto the bird.

The bird suddenly blurred and vanished.

Just as Long Night's heart lurched, the bird appeared again. In a single instant it had crossed the gap between two trees and reached the mountaintop.

Even when Long Night focused every ounce of attention on it, she could barely capture its movements. Its speed was terrifying.

"Verified. It really is more interested in you," Lin Xiaosu said again by her ear.

"It's time for hunting and counterhunting. Be careful."

"Be careful," Long Night replied.

As they spoke, they had already reached the slope. At the crest stood a great tree with luxuriant branches and leaves.

Suddenly, a faint flash of red flickered in the tree.

A streak shot toward them at a speed nearly invisible to the naked eye. Its target was Long Night's head.

That speed was almost comparable to a bullet.

Long Night suddenly looked up and raised her hand, firing.

What came out of the gun was not a bullet, but a net.

With a soft sound, the net and the streak collided perfectly. A small red bird was caught within it.

A smile had just begun to appear on Long Night's face.

The bird suddenly folded its wings and spun into a top. With a sharp hiss, it tore straight through the specially made alloy net.

Long Night's eyes widened.

In the blink of an eye, the bird-like spinning top was above her head.

Her hair erupted upward.

Her hair was her hidden trump card, and in close combat it was virtually invincible.

Countless genetic close-combat masters had died by this very hand.

But in the next instant, when her flying hair met the bird-like spinning top, it was all shredded apart. The poison on her hair had no effect whatsoever on it.

In the span of a moment, Long Night had gone from a fisher casting a net to catch a fish, to the fish being hunted herself.

Even though she was a genetic expert.

Even though her name carried the terrifying reputation that when Long Night descended, the world fell silent.

In front of this strange bird, that was nowhere near enough. It seemed not even to be of the same order of battle.

In a moment, the bird broke through two layers of defense. Its talons were like drills, and it seemed on the verge of piercing Long Night's crown.

Then, a hand appeared out of nowhere and snapped shut.

With a sharp hiss, blood splashed everywhere.

Long Night sprang backward three meters, staring at the scene before her, her mind in utter turmoil.

It was Lin Xiaosu.

He had seized the bird directly with his bare hand.

When that bird spun in, it was more terrifying than the sharpest drill, tearing apart the alloy net as easily as cloth. Yet he had caught it with flesh and blood. That single grab left his palm torn open and mangled beyond recognition in an instant.

Lin Xiaosu gave a muffled groan.

With a wet crack, the bird's head was crushed to pieces.

The bird's feathers, each one arched like a dragon scale, slowly settled back down.

"Xiaosu..." Long Night stepped to his side in a single stride.

Lin Xiaosu remained in the pose of having crushed the bird, but his face twitched uncontrollably.

He had chosen to sacrifice one hand if necessary in order to crush this extremely dangerous bird to death.

He succeeded.

However, something had happened that he had not expected.

The moment he crushed the bird's head, a bead inside it entered his body, forcing its way through his wound and drilling in...

As slippery as a snake, as unstoppable as that bird-shaped spinning top.

In an instant it had reached his forearm, and wherever it passed, the meridians in his hand were twisted into a muddy mass, just like tearing through the special net.

Lin Xiaosu's arm itself was no ordinary arm.

It had been transformed by the Spring-Returning Art.

Nearly all the tiny meridians within it had already been opened.

Back then, when he had traded punches with the martial artist Liu Yuanchang, the terrifying internal force that could smash a house's load-bearing pillar had entered those minute meridians and been like a headlong plunge into a maze. Not only had it failed to injure him, it had instead seemed to forcibly infuse him with true energy.

But now, a bead from that bird's head tore through this maze like a tank crashing into a porcelain shop, utterly destroying the intricate network of minute meridians.

It looked as if it was about to run straight up his shoulder and into his brain.

Lin Xiaosu grew frantic. In an instant, true energy from his entire body surged into his right arm, forming layer upon layer of dense protection.

He did not know whether it would hold, but he had to do everything he could.

Once the true energy concentrated, the bead's speed slowed, as though it had sunk into a swamp. Even so, it remained fiercely powerful.

On one side was true energy as a wall; on the other, the wild assault of external force.

Cold sweat covered Lin Xiaosu's forehead as he gritted his teeth and held on.

Impact.

Block.

Another impact.

Another block.

The force grew fiercer and fiercer, the nerves more and more painful.

Suddenly, a thunderous shock rang out from his right arm.

Lin Xiaosu's mind went blank. It was over. His right arm had exploded.

Yet the next instant, he went dumb with shock.

His arm had not exploded. The countless tiny meridians infused with true energy had formed a strange force field. At the center of that field, a portal shaped like a structure of veins and blood vessels opened, and the bead smashed headlong into it. The terrifying impact vanished without a trace.

Lin Xiaosu's heart pounded wildly.

The Inner Canon of the Mysterious Emperor recorded that the human body was like the cosmos, with too many unknowns waiting to be explored.

The Spring-Returning Art recorded that its true energy was profoundly miraculous, and that at the highest level it could open the hidden mysteries of the human body.

This was one of those hidden mysteries.

Under extreme pressure, within a region where the minute meridians had all been opened, by a stroke of fortune, he had unlocked a hidden mystery of the human body.

What kind of mystery was it?

The silver fish in Lin Xiaosu's sea of consciousness trembled faintly. It split off a thread of silver light that crossed mountains and seas and entered this hidden realm.

Inside, it was like a cavern, spacious and empty. The bead inside seemed momentarily at a loss. Then, all at once, it shot toward the inner side of the secret realm, where darkness lay so deep that no one could tell what lurked there.

But the instant it arrived, the space inside suddenly became disordered.

With a soft pop, the bead was drawn into the chaotic flow and shattered into mist.

That mist seemed like the purest source of energy, emerging from the secret realm to replenish the true energy he had exhausted. In the span of a moment, his true energy was fully restored, and it continued to rise. Within a few breaths, Lin Xiaosu felt that his true energy had increased by more than double out of thin air.

Something touched his lips. A pill.

Lin Xiaosu opened his eyes and saw Long Night's face, filled with anxiety. His hand had been bandaged, and three pills had been placed in his mouth. Those pills were meant to neutralize the poison on Long Night's hair. The poison on her hair was terrifying; often a single rotation could wipe out an entire enemy base.

And today, his hair had been shredded by the bird. The bird was covered in his hair, which had then mingled directly with his flesh and blood. The depth of the poison in Lin Xiaosu's body was beyond belief. Whether these pills could cure it, honestly, she had no confidence at all.

"How are you?" Long Night asked.

"I'm fine." Lin Xiaosu smiled faintly.

He could still speak and still smile. Good. Very good. It seemed he had passed the most dangerous stage of the poisoning.

Long Night let out a long breath. "You say you're fine, and yet this injury... this injury is far too severe. We need to get back to the flying car at once. It has emergency equipment aboard."

Just now, when Long Night had glanced at his hand, her heart had nearly stopped. The flesh and skin on it had almost been stripped away entirely. She had seen countless deaths and wounds in her time, yet this still made her shudder with horror.