70: Chapter 70 Leaving the Valley

This was an unavoidable point on the travel route. On both sides were steep rock walls, and only this stretch of sand in the middle was passable.

As the Thorn Poison Wolf stepped into the sand, a male rhino that had been rubbing its back stopped its movements.

This male rhino was larger than any seen before.

Its body length exceeded two and a half zhang, its shoulder height was nearly a zhang, and its silver horn was nearly four feet long; the spiral patterns on the horn were so deep they looked as if they had been carved with a knife.

Around its left eye was a circle of old scars, as if it had been raked by some sharp claws across the eye socket. The scar stretched from the eye socket all the way to the root of its ear; that eye was blind, leaving only a grayish-white hollow.

It turned its head, its cloudy left eye facing the direction of the Thorn Poison Wolf.

Its right eye was open, the black-brown eyeball slowly turning to land on the barbs covering the Thorn Poison Wolf.

It stared at the Thorn Poison Wolf for several breaths.

During this, its ears twitched, and it snorted a heavy breath from its nostrils, blowing a fist-sized stone on the sand, causing it to roll four or five times.

Then it stood up and walked a few steps toward the Thorn Poison Wolf.

The distance shortened to thirty steps. Twenty steps.

The heavy footsteps of the Silver-Horned Rhino landed on the sand, creating deep pits one after another.

The low shrubs in the sand were trampled down, broken branches crushed into debris under its hooves.

The Thorn Poison Wolf did not turn back. It continued to walk forward, its pace unchanged.

It flicked its tail, driving away a green-headed fly circling its barbs.

It tilted its head and used its hind leg to scratch a tuft of barbs behind its ear.

As the barbs scraped against each other, they emitted a very subtle rustling sound, a bit like fingernails scratching sandpaper.

Then it shook its head, sticking out a greenish tongue. Its saliva dripped onto the sand with a hiss, burning a shallow pit and emitting a pungent, burnt smell.

The one-eyed male rhino paused its steps.

Its nostrils flared twice. What it inhaled was not the scent of a wolf—it was a bitter and astringent, pungent odor, like chewed-up bitter almonds mixed with the stench of rotting flesh.

This scent traveled up its nasal cavity into its lungs, and even a giant beast with such thick skin felt choked by it.

That thing covered in spikes was still scratching its ear, and the rustling sound of the barbs scraping against each other was unpleasant to hear.

The one-eyed male rhino snorted a heavy breath from its nose, turned around, walked back to the center of the sand, and lay down.

It began rubbing its back on the sand again, snorting while doing so, no longer paying any attention to that bitter, spike-covered thing.

The Thorn Poison Wolf walked out of the sand and stepped back onto the grass.

The sun had shifted from due south to the southwest.

The shadows in the valley began to lengthen, and the shade cast by the rock walls extended from the foot of the mountains toward the center of the valley.

The temperature in the air dropped a little, the dry heat subsided, and it was replaced by the cool chill peculiar to mountain forests.

The rock wall at the end of the valley finally appeared in view.

The reddish-brown sandstone wall was covered with dark green vines. The leaves of the vines were withered from the sun's exposure, their edges curled up like tiny, shriveled hands.

At the base of the rock wall was a breach carved out by mountain floods. The breach was full of loose stones, and the shrubs on both sides grew taller than a person. Behind the breach lay the dense forest.

When the Thorn Poison Wolf finished the last stretch of the journey, an old rhino lying at the edge of the valley slowly raised its head.

This rhino was quite old; its silver horn was covered in fine cracks, and the tip of the horn was broken off, the broken edge worn smooth and rounded.

The corners of its eyes were piled with a thick layer of eye discharge, and its black-brown eyes were cloudy and yellowish.

It watched that ugly thing covered in spikes walk into the breach without stopping, flicked its ears, and lay back down.

The loose stones in the breach clattered under its claws.

The moment it walked out of the breach, the Thorn Poison Wolf did not stop—it continued to walk several miles into the dense forest until it was certain that the Silver-Horned Rhinos in the valley could no longer see this side, then it dove into a hidden, recessed rock crevice.

Its form began to contort. The barbs retracted into its flesh one by one. As they retracted, the wounds did not close, leaving dense, pin-point-sized red dots on its skin.

Its bones crackled and popped, and its spine transformed from the hunched wolf shape back into an upright human form.

The dark green fur faded from its skin, receding like a tide from its forehead to its chest, then to its lower abdomen, and finally dissipating from the tops of its feet.

Jiang Yan knelt on one knee on the rubble, gasping for air.

Sweat had soaked through the back of his clothes, sticking to his body, cold and clammy.

The dark-gold and purple vortex in his Dantian was spinning sluggishly, each rotation accompanied by hesitation—the Great Art of Changing Heaven and Earth had been maintained for the better part of a day, consuming nearly half of his Spiritual Qi.

He leaned against the rock wall and stood up. His legs were a bit weak; this was a normal reaction after using the Great Art of Changing Heaven and Earth for a long time, and his blood circulation needed a moment to adjust.

He fished out two Spirit Stones from his Storage Pouch and held them in his palm. The faint cyan-white fluorescent glow on the surface of the Spirit Stones looked like two miniature moons in the dim rock crevice.

Then he looked up and scanned his surroundings.

The sky was still bright. The sun had not yet set, but it had already shifted to the top of the mountain.

It was not impossible to continue traveling at this time, but traveling through the Manghuang Mountains in a state where most of his Spiritual Qi was consumed was equivalent to hanging his head on his belt.

If he encountered an emergency, he wouldn't even be able to control his Flying Sword more than a few times.

He quickly found a natural rock cave in the nearby mountain.

The cave entrance was half a person's height, and inside it was about a zhang square, the ground dry, with a few tiny worm-eaten patterns crawling on the walls.

He did not walk in immediately; first, he placed a warning Restriction and a concealment Restriction at the cave entrance.

The moment the concealment Restriction was activated, the cave entrance looked like a solid rock wall from the outside. Only then did he crawl into the cave, sit cross-legged with his back against the rock wall.

With the Spirit Stones held in his palm, wisps of extremely faint Spiritual Qi were drawn out from the stones, flowing along the Meridians in his palm and into his Dantian.

The dark-gold and purple vortex slowly accelerated, and Spiritual Qi began to re-condense within the vortex.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth day, when the air was inhaled into his lungs, it carried a sense of pure Spiritual Qi.

It was not the cold freshness of early morning, but that kind of "transparency" that only appears after the concentration of Spiritual Qi reaches a certain level.

It was like smearing a very thin layer of peppermint oil in his lungs; every breath felt like he was inhaling something more than what was outside.

The concentration of Spiritual Qi in the valley was not low, but compared to here, it was at least thirty percent less.

The trees had changed too. Pine and birch trees were becoming fewer, replaced by tall, towering trees whose names he couldn't identify.

The trunks were thick enough for three or four people to wrap their arms around, and the bark was covered in dark green moss and fist-sized tree burls.

The canopy blocked the sky and the sun, and the midday sunlight could only leak through in scattered, fragmented spots of light that vanished after a flicker.

The layer of rotting leaves on the ground was thick enough to cover his ankles, and stepping on it felt soft and mushy, like stepping on fermented, rotten cotton batting.

From time to time, a warm gas would rise from beneath the rotting leaves, carrying the sweet, fishy smell of decaying mycelium.

But what made him most vigilant was not the Spiritual Qi, nor the trees.

It was that the birdsong was gone.

During the first few days of entering the mountains, the birdsong in the forest had been incessant.

Chirping from morning until night—thrushes, tits, woodpeckers—it was enough to make one's brain ache.

But in this forest, sometimes he could walk for several hours without hearing a single bird call.

Occasionally he could see a few birds perched on high, withered branches, their beaks closed, eyeballs rolling around, staring at the ground, not knowing what they were looking at.

That kind of silence was different from the silence of the wilderness; in the wilderness, there was nothing to call out, but here, there was something nearby that had scared everything capable of making a sound into silence.