Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1118: A Dead Horse Treated as a Living One

Seeing the soldiers standing there with their mouths hanging open, Song Qingshu let out a rueful laugh beside her. “Little martial sister, your power over men really is something extraordinary.”

Xiao Longnu’s fine brows drew together slightly at his teasing, but she said nothing. The soldiers, meanwhile, had shaken themselves back to their senses.

“She’s with the Song fellow!”

“Kill Song!”

“Take the woman alive!”

They erupted in a clamour of overlapping shouts. Song Qingshu hadn’t anticipated that a careless remark would bring trouble down on Xiao Longnu — though on reflection he let it go. For men like these, stumbling upon a woman of celestial beauty alone in the wilderness would have been enough, with or without him. Their baser instincts would have taken over regardless.

Feeling the blaze of lust in their eyes, even Xiao Longnu — whose composure was ordinarily as undisturbed as a deep well — felt a flicker of cold anger. When the soldiers surged forward, she moved to meet them.

A gasp. A yelp. A chorus of pained cries.

All they perceived was a flash of white. Before any of them could register what had happened, a violent pain erupted in their wrists. Their weapons slipped from their fingers one by one, clattering to the ground in a cascade of metal. They stared at the woman a short distance away, eyes wide with shock.

Xiao Longnu had already returned to where she stood before. Her twin swords were sheathed. She stood perfectly still, her robes drifting softly — like some spirit of the mountains, unhurried and remote.

“Go — get out, go now!”

The lust drained from the soldiers’ eyes and was replaced by pure, wide-eyed terror. They could not determine whether the woman in white before them was a fairy or a demon — how else could anyone wield such a swordplay? Seeing that she had not moved to kill them, they seized on their reprieve and fled in a stumbling, scrambling mob. In the span of a breath, the cave held only Song Qingshu and Xiao Longnu once more.

“Why didn’t you kill them?” Song Qingshu’s brow furrowed. Those men would go straight back and report everything they had seen. It would not be long before more capable fighters came.

“I don’t like killing people,” Xiao Longnu answered simply.

Song Qingshu paused. When he thought about it, it was true — for all the heights her martial arts had reached, Xiao Longnu had rarely taken a life from beginning to end. He felt a quiet, genuine admiration stir within him. Beneath that frost-cold exterior lay a profoundly gentle soul.

“How did you come to be in such a state?” Xiao Longnu asked after a moment of silence. The question had been turning in her mind since the beginning. She knew Song Qingshu’s martial arts better than almost anyone — in the normal order of things, he was the one who hunted others. Who in this world could possibly hunt him?

“It’s a long story…” He gave a tired smile and told her the broad strokes: how he had been poisoned, how Li Kexiu had betrayed him, how he had been run to ground.

“There is truly a poison this formidable in the world?” Xiao Longnu looked genuinely shaken when she heard the nature of the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin. For a martial artist of sufficient inner energy, most poisons could be expelled through sheer internal force — otherwise the Five Poisons Cult and their ilk would have long since ruled the wulin unchallenged.

At Song Qingshu’s level of cultivation, he was all but impervious to poison. Yet this had laid him low — and his inner energy could not even begin to purge it.

“The Heavenly Devil Flower,” Song Qingshu murmured. “Named after the Heavenly Demon who once did battle with the Buddha himself. The reputation is well earned.” [G: Jinbōxún (金波旬) is derived from Pāpīyaṃs or Pāpīyas, the Buddhist demon also known as Māra, the tempter who sought to obstruct the Buddha’s enlightenment. The name carries connotations of absolute corruption and malevolence.]

“How can I save you?” Xiao Longnu asked suddenly. “Should I go to the Provincial Commander’s residence and try to find an antidote?”

Though she had wanted nothing more than to avoid him before, now that she understood his situation, something she couldn’t name had begun to move in her. She didn’t know why. When Granny Sun lay dying before her eyes all those years ago, she had been perfectly calm. Yet watching him approach death, she found herself… unwilling. Had the cultivation she had devoted her whole life to — the suppression of all feeling — deteriorated so badly?

Turn it over as she might, she could find no answer. She settled at last on the simplest explanation: he was her senior martial sister’s husband. Senior martial sister was such a good person. If she learned he had died, she would be heartbroken.

Song Qingshu did not know that a thousand thoughts had turned over in Xiao Longnu’s mind in that brief moment. He answered her offer quietly: “It would be no use. As far as I know, the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison has no cure. And even if one existed… I don’t think I would… last long enough to…”

His voice was fading. His eyes drifted half-shut.

Xiao Longnu went to him quickly and pressed two fingers to his wrist to feel his pulse. For a moment her refined features froze. “It has come back so fast,” she murmured softly.

“Don’t… touch me,” Song Qingshu managed, stirring at her touch. “There may still be traces of the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison on my body.”

“I’ve touched you a great deal already this evening,” Xiao Longnu said, puzzled. “Why haven’t I been affected?”

Song Qingshu blinked, and recalled that Linghu Chong had carried him out of the city without any ill effect either. The answer came to him: the perpetual circulation of true qi through his body must have formed an invisible barrier, keeping the poison powder from settling on his skin. He had been poisoned through inhaling the flower’s fragrance — it was not something that could be passed through contact.

He was about to explain when Xiao Longnu’s eyes lit with a sudden thought. “I know!”

She reached into her robe and drew something out, holding it before him in her open palm. Resting there was a round yellow bead about the size of a pigeon’s egg — dull in colour, unremarkable in appearance.

“This is the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill you gave me when we last parted. By your own account, it wards off all manner of poisons. Perhaps it has been protecting me.”

Song Qingshu couldn’t help a faint, wry smile. The Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill had been obtained by Ouyang Feng, the Western toxin, from a rare creature of the Western Regions, and refined with a variety of extraordinary medicinal ingredients. Worn on the person, it repelled all poisons, and kept venomous snakes and creatures at bay. But that wasn’t the reason Xiao Longnu had been unaffected — he was fairly certain of that.

He was about to say so when a sudden brightness transformed her expression. “If this object can repel poison — then if you were to swallow it, could it not counter the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin inside you?”

Song Qingshu answered faintly: “It works as a preventive measure, and mainly against snake venom and the like. I am already poisoned — it would have nothing to act upon. And besides… it was made to be worn, not consumed…”

When Ouyang Feng had entrusted the pill to him, he had given a particular warning: the refining process had introduced considerable toxicity into the pill itself. It must never, under any circumstances, be swallowed.

But the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin, which Xiao Longnu had managed to suppress with the Jade Bee Royal Jelly and her inner energy, had surged back with redoubled ferocity the moment that suppression lifted. Song Qingshu lost consciousness before he could finish his sentence.

Xiao Longnu bent close and checked his breathing. It was threadlike — barely there at all. Concern flickered across her face. “It has come to this. We treat the dead horse as though it still lives.” [G: 死马当活马医 — a Chinese idiom meaning to try a desperate remedy when all better options are exhausted; to attempt the impossible as a last resort.]

She was not unaware that the pill could not safely be swallowed. But what other choice remained? She could not simply stand there and watch the breath leave his body.

She pinched the yellow bead between two slender fingers and brought it to his lips.

But the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin had locked every muscle in his body rigid. His jaw was clenched shut — absolutely, immovably shut.

She could not get the pill in.