Chapter 319: A Traveler of Mountains and Rivers

Chapter 319: The Scholar of Hills and Streams

At the far end of the post road, beside the charred iron skeleton of a dynamited Black Steed carriage.

A gaping, bloody slash rent his chest, and Xie Bi'an, deep in a coma, was laid upon the earth, his head pillowed on Chen Qisheng’s thigh.

With a face masked in blood and grime, the Painted Skin plunged both hands into the wound, rummaging back and forth in a manner bizarre and unsettling, as though manipulating or planting something within.

Despite the bitter, biting freeze, fine beads of sweat coursed continuously down her temples.

"Is this Agricultural-sequence wench a bit too fierce? Even if her medical gear got blown to hell, there's no need for methods this savage, is there?"

Acting as the bolster, Chen Qisheng felt his scalp go numb with horror at the sight, forcing his gaze away to look up at the back looming before them.

A figure not particularly towering, yet one that stood unyielding and resolute.

"Hoo... Hoo..."

Fan Wujiu, whose body had already been remodeled into a cybernetic frame, had no practical need to breathe through his nose.

Yet at this moment, exhausted to the absolute brink, his chaotic mind instinctively relied on human habit, gasping heavily to alleviate the sheer mental fatigue.

His right hand gripped a nicked and chipped embroidery spring blade, his left finger hooked around the trigger of the 'Beiwei', while his reddened cybernetic eye glared unblinkingly at the remaining three enemies before him.

"Painted Skin, how is Xiaobai?" Fan Wujiu bellowed without turning his head.

"Internal organs scorched, clinging to his last breath."

The Painted Skin's voice trembled with a rare frailty, panic showing on her face for the very first time.

"Not bad. Shot right in the gut with a Lieque weapon, and it still couldn't kill you. Xiaobai, you've been making progress on the sly."

Regrettably, Fan Wujiu’s banter was destined to go unanswered.

"Sleep easy for now, gather your strength. When we reach the Thousand-Household Office later, it'll be up to you to wrangle with those sons of bitches!"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a fierce drone erupted.

Fan Wujiu’s frame drowned in the restless, roaring surge of his mechanical heart, his entire body clanging incessantly as his frame thickened at a pace visible to the naked eye.

Entering an overclocked state, the mechanical heart 'E'lai' finally commanded enough power to activate the auxiliary machinery that lay dormant within his limbs; the compounding, stacking mechanical bones swelled until his biomimetic skin split apart, raining down milky-white synthetic blood.

Warning data flashed across his dark-red cybernetic eye, and the nicked embroidery spring blade instantly cut a cold, grim arc through the air, hurtling straight toward an enemy rushing his position.

Clang!

The moment the embroidery spring blade was parried away by a fist, the muzzle of the 'Beiwei' was already pressed directly against the foe's face!

Bang!

The bursting blast of buckshot severed the opponent’s cross-blocking arm entirely, but Fan Wujiu was simultaneously struck in the chest by the enemy’s backward kick, his form stumbling back continuously.

Snow flew, and the earth trembled.

Just as his retreating heel was about to stomp on Xie Bi'an, Fan Wujiu backhanded his blade into the ground, forcibly halting his backward momentum.

"Can't retreat. If I step on Xiaobai, wouldn't Brother Jun flay me alive?" A somber sigh drifted from Fan Wujiu’s lowered head.

He slowly raised his gaze, his blood-hued eye sweeping over the three Martial-sequence fighters who clearly intended to torture him to death, before his body surged forward once more!

Solitary and outnumbered, Fan Wujiu carried a tragic, desperate aura as he charged savagely at the man in the center.

Whoosh!

Ducking beneath a sweeping longsword, Fan Wujiu deflected another blade hacking down from his flank with his own weapon, his left hand raising the 'Beiwei' straight ahead, his index finger pressing down on the trigger, about to pull!

At that exact split second, a hand suddenly thrust out from the side, gripping the barrel of the 'Beiwei' directly and forcing the muzzle toward the sky.

Screech!!

Under that immense grip, the barrel underwent a slight but fatal mechanical deformation.

Yet the index finger hooked over the trigger still pulled down, completely without hesitation!

Boom!

Scorching metal fragments, wrapped in two severed fingers of flesh and bone, scattered and flew in all directions.

This Martial-sequence fighter, daring enough to catch a gun barehanded, had never expected Fan Wujiu to be so viciously feral—to pull the trigger even knowing it would backfire, choosing to trade injury for injury.

Heart hammering with lingering dread, the man slammed a fist into Fan Wujiu’s chest, and before the figure could fly backward, he reached out to seize Fan Wujiu’s left arm, yanking it straight, before his right hand brought a blade down, severing the mechanical arm entirely.

"Fuck!"

A furious, low roar erupted from Fan Wujiu’s throat, his sole remaining right arm wildly swinging the warped embroidery spring blade.

In the explosion just now, a finger-length fragment had pierced his right eye, the ruined and chaotic visual feed forcing him to retreat and defend.

Before the scorched, blackened frame of the Black Steed carriage, Fan Wujiu bit down on his blade, reaching his right hand up to his face.

Squelch!

The extracted barrel fragment pulled out a ruined cybernetic eye, the nerves trailing behind it snapped violently.

An agonizing pain sufficient to make an ordinary person faint seemed to affect Fan Wujiu not at all.

He gripped the embroidery spring blade once more, its shattered tip sweeping across the three cold-faced sect Martial-sequence fighters before him. His expression was haughty, his gaze not that of a cornered beast, but more like a fiercely untamed lone wolf.

"You three trash Martial-sequence, you're not enough."

Fan Wujiu’s eyes filled with scorn as he flicked the blade toward the trio. "Come!"

The instant the word fell, the three Martial-sequence fighters from the Desolate World Group, in perfect unison, took a sharp step backward, expressions of sheer horror dawning on their faces!

Fan Wujiu froze at the sight, his single eye instinctively glancing behind him.

Unbeknownst to him, three printing-block talismans gleaming with a green luster hovered at his shoulders and the crown of his head.

At the same time, a weak, weary voice suddenly echoed by his ear.

"Fan Wujiu, are you afraid of degrading into a mindless Yellow Turban Wight?"

Fan Wujiu raised an eyebrow. "Life or death?"

"A fate worse than death."

"Can it kill them?"

"Shouldn't be much of a problem," Chen Qisheng’s voice carried a faint trace of admiration.

"Then that's enough!"

Fan Wujiu grinned broadly. "Kill one and I break even, kill them all and it's a massive profit. I'm not even afraid of death, why would I fear a fate worse than it?"

"Then... let us begin."

The moment the final word fell, the three hovering printing-block talismans dropped abruptly, plastering themselves onto Fan Wujiu’s shoulders and the crown of his head.

These three positions were known within the Dao-sequence as the 'Three Flowers'.

The green printing-block talismans embedded themselves deeply into the mechanical frame, and countless Daoist scriptures spread across Fan Wujiu’s cybernetic body at extreme speed; even within the hollow socket where his right eye used to be, scriptures coiled and took root.

It looked like a mending, yet also like a reinforcement.

And the only place on the entire mechanical frame left untouched by the scriptures was his chest cavity.

However, the mechanical heart's drone echoing from within grew as heavy as a war drum at this very moment!

"I didn't invade your mechanical heart, mind you. You absolutely must hold on. Otherwise, if you really get refined into a Yellow Turban Wight, how am I supposed to answer to Li Jun?"

Chen Qisheng leaned against the wreckage of the vehicle, his eyes narrowing as they swept toward the distance.

There, the wind and snow roared ceaselessly; even straining his sight he could discern only two vague silhouettes.

“This time we’re truly on the brink of losing even our trousers, Li Jun— you must summon every ounce of resolve, lest I, the Daoist, be forced to dissolve this life and return to White Jade Capital for a reconstruction!”

He tugged at the cultural shirt.

Dipping his hand beneath its hem, he winced as he extracted a gleaming, gold‑tinged talisman.

“This is the White Jade Capital authority I only obtained after I became a wandering scholar of mountains and rivers.”

Chen Qisheng sighed, his breath a ragged cadence, and at last flung the talisman high into the sky.

The talisman hovered, spiraling of its own accord; its surface shimmered with a golden luster that pulsed like a breath, fading in and out as if transmitting some secret signal.

When the ritual concluded, Chen Qisheng’s frame tilted, and he collapsed into the snow, a picture of resigned surrender to fate.

“Life and death are decreed, wealth and honor lie in the heavens; if even this last‑ditch stratagem fails, then truly I have no recourse left.”

My spirits are low today; the promised extra chapter will have to wait until tomorrow. I ask for your patience, dear readers—once I rest well, I shall craft the forthcoming passages with care.