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Novel: [The Primordial Law]
Volume 2: [Jiuli Insect Valley]
Chapter 1 (28): [Ten Thousand Miles of Morning Glow]
(1st of Volume 2)
Translator: Shadow Knight AK
Editor: Shadow Knight AK
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"Are these human heads growing on the trees?"
"No, on the vines."
"Could it be that the heads of those headless skeletons on the ground have become part of the vines?"
"All I know is that if we don't run faster, we'll soon have two more heads hanging up there."
...
Li Weiyi carried Gao Huan on his shoulder, sprinting through the dense forest. Behind them, the rapid "swoosh" of the vines' passage and various guttural, human-like laughter echoed through the trees.
Reaching a canyon, they glanced back.
Against the dark blue sky, a thick vine, like a Dragon, surged out from the cliffside.
Human heads swayed from its branches, reaching a hundred meters into the misty sky.
"Run!"
They crossed streams, leaped over ravines, and never dared to stop, even when they couldn't hear the vines' rustling.
When exhaustion became unbearable and the vines hadn't yet caught up, they switched roles.
Gao Huan carried Li Weiyi, who practiced the Jade Void Breathing Technique on his back, rapidly recovering his breath and strength.
They took turns, sometimes running together, sometimes fleeing separately, enduring a night of relentless flight.
Finally, bursting from the gloomy, fog-shrouded forest, they collapsed, unable to go on.
They sat down, one behind the other, then slumped onto the grassy slope, utterly drained.
Their sweat had dried, their strength was spent, as if their very souls had been sucked away.
"I can't run anymore. I'm completely exhausted, Master Li. You go on ahead... leave me behind... let me hang on. If I take another step, I'll die." Gao Huan lay sprawled on the ground, utterly spent, wanting nothing more than to sleep on the ground.
"Then I'll hang on too!"
Li Weiyi was equally exhausted. He simply found the ground incredibly soft and the sky wonderfully warm.
He took a deep breath...
"Huh?"
The musty, decaying smell of the forest was gone.
Li Weiyi's eyelids snapped open, and he sat up with a jolt. He slapped Gao Huan's butt and burst into laughter.
"Gao Yutang, get up! Get up! That vine monster didn't follow us! We've reached the human world! Blue sky, white clouds, green grass, wildflowers... Hahaha..."
The morning sun was soft, the mountain breeze gentle.
These ordinary sights, so common on Earth, seemed like a dreamlike paradise to Li Weiyi at that moment.
The most ordinary human world was more precious to them than any paradise, having endured darkness, slaughter, ghosts, hunger, and anxiety.
Li Weiyi closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
The scent of earth, fragrant grass, wildflowers... even the blue sky and white clouds... all were sweet and intoxicating.
Every trace of fatigue vanished in an instant.
Gao Huan finally sat up and took in his surroundings, letting out a silly laugh just like Li Weiyi. Then, like a madman, he scrambled toward a pale yellow wildflower, plucked it, and buried his nose in it, inhaling deeply.
"This is it... this is the scent..." he muttered repeatedly.
The two had been fleeing all night, their faces, hands, legs, and clothes crisscrossed with scratches from thorns. Sweat had dried and re-soaked their bodies, leaving them utterly disheveled.
As they gradually calmed down, the pain, fatigue, and hunger struck back with a vengeance.
The food and water they had brought had long since been lost in some ravine or stream. Yet the inedible items - the Yellow Dragon Sword, the Evil Camel Bell, and their money pouches - remained untouched.
The two collapsed back onto the ground.
Gao Huan chewed on the wildflower, his voice weak: "We can't just lie here. We should eat some grass roots and find a stream to drink our fill."
"Yes," Li Weiyi agreed, "If we could just find a human settlement, take a hot bath, and have a bowl of noodle soup with coriander... I wouldn't trade it for immortality."
Li Weiyi's words rekindled a spark in Gao Huan's eyes. He swallowed hard, his throat parched, "I don't want coriander... I want meat..."
Suddenly, a deep, resonant voice boomed from above them: "What are you two whispering about?"
The two, already exhausted, drowsy, and famished to the point of collapse, jolted upright as if struck by lightning.
They slowly turned their heads, following the shadows cast on the ground upward.
There, standing on a nearby hillside, stood a man in his early thirties, powerfully built and imposing. He had thick eyebrows, large eyes, a broad face, long, slightly curled hair, and rough yet textured skin.
Gao Huan couldn't understand what he was saying, but he could sense the awe-inspiring aura emanating from the man.
Li Weiyi felt it even more intensely.
This man's cultivation was undoubtedly far superior to his own; otherwise, he could never have appeared there so silently. Even in his severely fatigued state, Li Weiyi had never completely lowered his guard.
While lying on the ground chatting and joking with Gao Huan, he had been constantly circulating cold and hot qi to soothe his weary body and hasten his recovery.
What was truly terrifying wasn't just the man's cultivation level.
It was the ruthless indifference to life in his eyes - a gaze forged only through countless killings.
Shi Jiuzhai cursed with a laugh, "Were you two sent out as scouts? How did you get into such a mess? Did you run into a Malevolent Demon or a Departed Spirit?"
Li Weiyi could roughly understand Shi Jiuzhai's words and instantly realized what had happened.
It was the clothes he and Gao Huan were wearing that had led to the misunderstanding.
Shi Jiuzhai's attire also resembled monk's robes, but instead of brown, they were holly green.
How could they explain this?
Could they even explain it?
Should they tell him they had stripped the clothes off corpses?
He would likely assume they had killed someone and stolen their money.
Li Weiyi didn't dare gamble on Shi Jiuzhai's temperament. He quickly nodded, feigning shock, and gestured wildly as he spoke.
"Malevolent Demon! Many heads... vines... this thick!"
Though he had studied the language of this world, years of disuse had left him rusty.
Yet his awkwardness perfectly suited the situation.
"You encountered the Thousand-Headed Dragon Vine?"
Shi Jiuzhai's eyes flashed with clear apprehension as he strode down the slope, sending a palm strike toward Li Weiyi from afar.
The force of the strike howled through the air.
Li Weiyi felt a storm of wind and waves crash over him. His body was like a lone boat in the deep sea, tossed about by the tempest. He feared some flaw had been exposed, that his deception had been discovered. Gritting his teeth, he channeled the hot and cold qi from the springs in his feet, both palms thrusting forward.
Then let's fight to the death!
Boom!
Li Weiyi was sent flying, his internal organs nearly shattered. He collapsed to the ground, unable to rise.
"Haha, no wonder you managed to escape with your lives. You little wolf cub, have you already opened three springs? Not bad for your age."
Shi Jiuzhai strode over to Gao Huan, his massive hand clamping down on the boy's cheek. He scrutinized Gao Huan's features, then exclaimed in surprise, "A Pure Immortal Body? Why is there no trace of cultivation in your body? Did you just undergo your transformation?"
Li Weiyi didn't understand what "little wolf cub" or "three springs" meant. He had only opened two springs in his feet - where did this talk of three come from?
However, he realized Shi Jiuzhai wasn't suspicious, but testing their strength.
Fearing Gao Huan might reveal their secret, Li Weiyi quickly interjected, "That's right... he just completed his transformation..."
"The Thousand-Headed Dragon Vine must have been sated, or you would never have escaped."
Shi Jiuzhai released his iron-grip fingers and asked, "Who do you two belong to?"
Li Weiyi guessed that their attire might represent a certain faction. The man before them was likely a powerful figure within that faction, someone with considerable influence.
A thousand thoughts flashed through Li Weiyi's mind in an instant. He smiled and said, "Of course, we'll follow you, Master."
"Haha, you've got some spirit! Good, from now on, you're with me!"
Shi Jiuzhai strode back up the hillside, his tiger eyes fixed on the long, narrow, sunless valley nestled between the two mountains below.
The mountains on either side of the valley rose majestically, their steep slopes soaring over a thousand meters.
A dirt road had been carved along the riverbank, and a massive procession of coffin bearers emerged endlessly from the mist-shrouded side.
Li Weiyi and Gao Huan, their bodies weary, climbed the low slope and stood beside Shi Jiuzhai.
From this high vantage point, the view was vast and sweeping.
As far as the eye could see, ancient mountain ranges were shrouded in a white morning mist and bathed in the warm hues of dawn.
They resembled the earth's dragon spine, stretching to the horizon before gradually fading into the distance.
The sky was vast, the earth wide, and the wind whipped their robes like banners, filling them with boundless ambition.
Down in the valley, the coffin bearers looked like ants, all clad in gray-and-white hemp cloth. Four men carried each coffin, and a thousand coffins marched in unison, forming a white serpent that snaked its way along the road.
The sounds of horns echoed between the mountains on either side of the valley, while the hoofbeats of mounted beasts echoed back and forth.
Paper money littered the dirt road, some caught by the wind and scattered across the riverbanks.
The foremost coffin, crafted from silver-like material and bound with hemp rope, was as large as a beam-and-pillar house, easily capable of holding over a hundred people. It rested on a cart pulled by a massive azure bull even larger than an elephant, its wheels echoing through the empty valley a thousand meters away.
Li Weiyi asked, "Were all these coffins salvaged from the Blood Sea?"
"Of course," Shi Jiuzhai replied with a chuckle, "The Jiuli Clan makes a killing by salvaging Otherworld Coffins from the Blood Sea Coffin Dock and selling them across the Twenty-Eight Provinces of Lingxiao. It's a perfect, risk-free business, yet they're the only ones who can do it. Who wouldn't be envious?"
From this day forward, the Earthwolf King's Army would also claim a share of this lucrative trade.
The world was in chaos; how could Li Province remain untouched?
"Let's go. We'll return to the main camp first and wait for them at Dragon-Slaying Pass."
Shi Jiuzhai exhaled a cloud of gray mist, the wind carrying it dozens of meters away, enveloping Li Weiyi and Gao Huan.
Then, with each stride spanning over ten meters, he effortlessly traversed cliffs and walls, racing down the mountain on the other side.
Within the gray mist, Li Weiyi and Gao Huan felt as if they were enveloped by dense clouds, weightless and perpetually trailing behind Shi Jiuzhai.
"Exhaling mist into clouds, leaping over cliffs in a single bound... Is he even human?"
The same thought flashed through both their minds.
Li Weiyi was deeply worried.
The man before them must hold a high position within the organization; it was natural he wouldn't remember subordinates.
But once they returned to camp, their deception would be exposed.
What kind of death awaited them then?
They had to find a way to escape quickly.
At that moment, Li Weiyi had no thought of pursuing the White Bone Demon or rescuing Cai Yutong.
He felt that he and Gao Huan were already facing imminent death.
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END OF CHAPTER
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