Author: 哔哔 (Bi Bi) / Jin Gang Quan

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 39

After Gu Guangji finished gnawing on the rabbit, he wiped the grease from his mouth, stood up, and walked over to Huo Fenghua to take his pulse.

Huo Fenghua held out one hand.

Gu Guangji stared at his pale arm but didn’t know where to start, looking troubled.

Huo Fenghua lifted a hand and pressed it to his dantian. “I won’t suck inner energy anymore. It feels different from earlier.”

Feng Tianzong crouched beside him and asked, “How is it different?”

Huo Fenghua thought for a moment and said, “Just now, I could feel inner energy flowing from my palm along the meridians and finally returning to the dantian, forming a loop. But now I can’t feel that anymore.”

Gu Guangji asked, “Really?”

Huo Fenghua nodded. “Absolutely. Besides, even if I were going to suck someone’s inner energy, I wouldn’t absorb my Master’s. That’d be utterly unfilial.”

Feng Tianzong said, “He’s afraid you can’t control yourself.”

Huo Fenghua sensed quietly for a moment longer, then spread his wrist. “Really, it won’t happen.”

Only then did Gu Guangji squat down. Carefully, he reached out to feel Huo Fenghua’s pulse, and at the same time told Feng Tianzong, “If he sucks my inner energy, use the whip and pull me away—no, whip him away instead. Got it?”

Huo Fenghua couldn’t help laughing. “What, like I’m an electric shock?”

Gu Guangji asked, “What?”

Huo Fenghua shook his head. “Nothing. Master, hurry up.”

Gu Guangji finally set his fingers on the pulse point, nerves taut. Before he even felt the beat, Huo Fenghua grabbed his wrist and shook it violently.

For an instant, Gu Guangji jolted in fright and almost kicked Huo Fenghua away, but he quickly realized there was no inner energy flow at all. Huo Fenghua was just messing with him. He instantly roared, “I’ll beat you to death, you little bastard!”

Feng Tianzong hurried to hold Gu Guangji back and said to Huo Fenghua, “Quit it!”

His voice dropped, carrying authority.

Huo Fenghua immediately lowered his head and obediently said, “Yes, General.”

Gu Guangji was still fuming, but he did take Huo Fenghua’s pulse carefully. He found the pulse full and unusually strong. Clearly, a surge of inner energy was swelling through the meridians, speeding up the blood flow and making his whole body unbearably feverish. So he said, “That old demon Zixi poured his whole life’s cultivated, thick inner energy into a pill, and he swallowed it in one go. It’s already lucky he didn’t explode. His dantian can’t hold that much, so it’s running wild through his meridians, heating his blood everywhere. That’s normal.”

Feng Tianzong asked, “What should we do?”

Gu Guangji said, “What do we do? We can only slowly guide it back into the dantian. This isn’t a one- or two-day thing. Are you heading back to Yujing next?”

At the question, Huo Fenghua and Feng Tianzong exchanged a look. Feng Tianzong answered, “Yes.”

“Then you’ll be traveling together for another ten days. Along the way, you keep circulating your power to guide and clear his meridians, so the inner energy returns to his dantian. Teach him the method too. Maybe in a couple of days he won’t feel so hot,” Gu Guangji said. Then he had Huo Fenghua sit up, pressed both palms to his back, and fed his own inner energy into Huo Fenghua to help guide the swollen meridians.

A short while later, Huo Fenghua still felt scorching and miserable, but the limp weakness all over him eased a lot.

Feng Tianzong watched, still worried. “Is there any way to prevent him from absorbing other people’s inner energy?”

Gu Guangji glanced at him. “If I had a way, I wouldn’t have been scared out of my skin just now. To be honest, this kind of thing… is strange. I didn’t expect Zixi’s alchemy to produce something like this. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Huo Fenghua, draped in clothes, said, “If you don’t even know what it is, how dare you make me eat it?”

Gu Guangji scratched his cheek. “A pill that old demon refined to eat himself wouldn’t harm him, right?”

Huo Fenghua gave a soft snort. “That old demon was so perverted. What if it’s some kind of obscene aphrodisiac that makes you last forever?”

Gu Guangji considered it solemnly for a moment, then said, “Wouldn’t that be doing you a favor?”

Feng Tianzong coughed lightly. “Senior, you’re not coming back to Yujing with us?”

Gu Guangji answered without hesitation, “Of course not. I’m still wandering the martial world. There are lots of things I haven’t done. What would I go to Yujing for?”

Huo Fenghua asked, “Where do you want to go?”

Gu Guangji squatted down, propped his cheek with one hand, and thought hard. After a long time without deciding, he said, “We’ll see. I’ll just go wherever my feet take me.” Then he stood and brushed off his hands. “I’m leaving.”

“Right now?” Huo Fenghua asked in surprise.

Gu Guangji waved. “I’m off.” Then he told Feng Tianzong, “Treat my disciple well. Both of them.”

Feng Tianzong lowered his gaze slightly. “I know.”

Gu Guangji chuckled. His body seemed to float as he leapt out of the cave.

That left only Feng Tianzong and Huo Fenghua.

Feng Tianzong helped him straighten his clothes, then suddenly asked, “Did you look at the birth data on that slip of paper?”

Huo Fenghua paused and looked at him. “I know what you want to ask. I saw that slip. I don’t recognize that birth data.”

For a moment, Feng Tianzong seemed to let out a deep breath. Huo Fenghua didn’t know if he was imagining it. Then he added, “But I can’t guarantee it isn’t me.”

“What do you mean?” Feng Tianzong’s voice sank.

Huo Fenghua raised a finger and tapped his head. “When you were away, I jumped into the water to kill myself, but I didn’t die. I knocked my head up. A lot of things are blurry.”

Feng Tianzong looked at him expressionlessly.

Huo Fenghua spread his hands. “You don’t believe me, right?”

Feng Tianzong said, “I believe you.”

Huo Fenghua didn’t buy it. “Liar. I know you don’t.”

Feng Tianzong finished dressing him and tied his sash. “I’ve been in contact with you before. Back then, you were nothing like you are now.”

Huo Fenghua asked, “What was I like back then?”

Feng Tianzong didn’t continue. He only said, “If we don’t hurry, we’ll probably have to sleep out in the open again tonight.”

Huo Fenghua stood up and tugged at his collar to fan himself. “Let’s go. Tonight we’ll find somewhere cool to stay.”

As Feng Tianzong walked out of the cave, Huo Fenghua said, “Do you think I conspired with someone to mess with the Feng family?”

“No,” Feng Tianzong answered quickly. “The you from before didn’t have that kind of nerve or bearing. And we don’t have a grudge.”

Huo Fenghua said, “The hatred of a fallen kingdom doesn’t count as a grudge?”

Feng Tianzong gave a light laugh. “I’m just a sword in someone else’s hand. The one you should truly hate for your fallen kingdom lives in the palace. If you want revenge, you shouldn’t come to me.”

Huo Fenghua sighed. “I don’t think I have that kind of nerve or bearing either.”

He would never see the Huo Fenghua from the past again, but even just imagining it, he could picture what kind of person that had been. Using the same body, he couldn’t help feeling a little wistful and melancholy.

That night, they stayed in a broken-down inn whose guest rooms were drafty on all sides.

When Huo Fenghua entered their room, he smelled mold and rot. He asked Feng Tianzong, “Do we really not need to change to a better inn?”

Feng Tianzong set their bundle on a chair. “Weren’t you the one who said you wanted an inn that was cool?”

Huo Fenghua sat on the edge of the bed, feeling cold air pouring in through cracks in the window. He nodded. “It is cool.”

As soon as he said that, he started taking off his clothes. By the time Feng Tianzong turned around, he’d stripped clean.

“What are you doing?” Feng Tianzong asked.

Huo Fenghua lay down on the bed. “I feel awful.”

Feng Tianzong went over and helped him sit cross-legged, then sat behind him. He pressed both palms to Huo Fenghua’s back and, just as Gu Guangji had instructed, began guiding his inner energy to channel and ease the excess.

Huo Fenghua closed his eyes and followed the flow inside his body. He also tried to gather the excess inner power running wild in his meridians back into his dantian. It was slow, but the bloated pressure gradually eased.

When they finished circulating, Feng Tianzong got up from the bedside. Huo Fenghua had already collapsed back onto the bed, stretching out.

Huo Fenghua watched Feng Tianzong blow out the candle. The room dropped into darkness. He heard the sounds of Feng Tianzong returning to the bed and removing his clothes.

After a while, when his eyes adjusted and he could make out the long outline of the person beside the bed in the moonlight filtering through the window, he saw Feng Tianzong climb onto the bed in white underclothes and lie down on the outer side.

Huo Fenghua rolled over with his back to Feng Tianzong, facing the wall, and suddenly murmured, “Huh.”

Feng Tianzong waited a moment, then asked, “What?”

Huo Fenghua said, “There’s a hole in the wall.”

Hearing that, Feng Tianzong turned and moved closer behind him to look at the hole, then asked, “Want to plug it?”

Huo Fenghua’s body pressed against his, and he instantly felt a wave of coolness. His whole body was burning like a little furnace, so he burrowed into Feng Tianzong’s arms.

Feng Tianzong hesitated briefly, then still reached out to hold him.

Huo Fenghua turned his head and kissed Feng Tianzong on the lips.

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