"Perhaps there aren't many shameless people in this world, so in my opinion, you are number one in shamelessness, unmatched and unparalleled."
After nightfall, Jin Feng was persuaded by Fang Jie to return home. Mu Xiaoyao and Da Quan then emerged from their hiding place. Mu Xiaoyao, who had witnessed the erotic scene, was clearly displeased, especially seeing the almost paralyzed man struggling to reach out and grab the girl's breasts while she was playing the flute, which infuriated her even more.
She walked to Fang Jie's bedside and pulled up a stool to sit down.
Fang Jie chuckled awkwardly, "This is just a normal medical checkup... I have to be responsible for my own body, don't I?"
"The checkup is fine."
Da Quan Shang Guo was uncomfortable sitting; he preferred to squat on the ground. "It's just that the checkup took a bit too long. Did you have to wait until it sprayed out to consider it finished? Even if it was going to spray out, couldn't you have cooperated and sprayed out faster?"
Fang Jie said seriously, "I just wanted to check if it could still spray out normally."
"Are you satisfied with the result?"
Da Quan asked with a smile.
"Not satisfied... It didn't spray any further than before."
Mu Xiaoyao glared at him, then silently yanked the blanket off him and threw it aside. Fang Jie suddenly felt a chill and tried to grab the blanket back, but his limbs ached terribly. Poor thing, he could only look at Mu Xiaoyao with helpless eyes, but his eyes couldn't convey any meaning.
His eyelids were swollen high, and his eyes were squinted into narrow slits, looking terribly unsightly.
After carefully examining him from head to toe, Mu Xiaoyao sighed, "Big Dog... this is the first time I've realized you don't look so ugly. He looks worse than you now... swollen all over, and he still has the nerve to let that girl blow on you!"
"Blow on you—that's a brilliant word! Absolutely brilliant!"
Fang Jie said seriously. He couldn't stop Mu Xiaoyao, so he resigned himself to his fate. Let her look all she wanted; he'd seen plenty of things since he was little.
Shang Guohen chuckled, leaned closer to look, and gasped, "You're really swollen, little Fang Jie. Do you know how imposing you look now?"
Fang Jie smiled smugly, "Even more imposing in the future."
The words "even more imposing in the future" were particularly powerful.
"Pah!"
Mu Xiaoyao spat and pressed her hand on Fang Jie's lower abdomen. The moment she touched him, Fang Jie cried out. But he couldn't utter a sound, only a dry howl. Despite the excruciating pain, he knew that if he cried out, the shopkeepers from Jin Yuan Fang would rush in to see him. No one in Fan Gu City knew that Mu Xiaoyao and Da Quan were by his side, not even Li Xiaozong.
Mu Xiaoyao gestured to the five finger marks on Fang Jie's lower abdomen, frowning and muttering, "It was a man, with broad, thick hands. Long fingers, using force from all five fingers, yet simultaneously sealing his dantian. Such a bizarre technique, such domineering cultivation! Da Quan… how many people in the martial world today can do that?"
Shang Guohen shook his head: "I don't know, but probably no more than twenty."
"Do you know what happened to me?"
Fang Jie couldn't help but ask.
"No."
Mu Xiaoyao shook her head: "If the person who did this was trying to kill you, you would have been reduced to a pile of minced meat long ago. But what exactly did he do? I still don't understand… Huh?"
Before she finished speaking, she couldn't help but let out a soft exclamation. Although her voice wasn't loud, the surprise in her tone was unmistakable.
"What's wrong?"
Fang Jie asked immediately, his voice tense. He knew Mu Xiaoyao and Shang Guohen were both experts, though he didn't know their exact level, but they were definitely the kind of experts who had transcended worldly concerns. This soft exclamation made him instantly nervous and frightened.
"It's actually..."
Mu Xiaoyao turned to look at Shang Guohen, her face filled with disbelief: "It's actually... open!"
Shang Guohen's expression changed. He reached out and pressed down on Fang Jie's wrist, then couldn't help but laugh after a moment: "This is truly unbelievable, little Fang Jie. What kind of person did you encounter? To use such a domineering method to open your Qi Sea, this is simply unbelievable."
"Open?"
Fang Jie felt his heart was about to jump out of his throat, and his manhood pounded with excitement. Mu Xiaoyao frowned, then pulled the blanket over Fang Jie. She turned away, pretending to go get some water, concealing the slight blush that appeared on her face. "It's definitely open."
Shang Guohen said confidently, "The pulse has changed; you can't hide it."
"How much is open?"
Fang Jie couldn't help but ask eagerly.
He thought to himself, "I knew that man in blue didn't seem like a bad person. I didn't expect him to be so capable. What Mu Xiaoyao and Shang Guohen couldn't achieve in fifteen years, that man in blue solved overnight. This shows that the man in blue is truly a reclusive master."
"The Qi Sea is open, and all 128 acupoints..."
Shang Guohen glanced at Fang Jie and couldn't help but sigh, "One is open."
...
"Don't be so discouraged... Opening one acupoint is better than not opening one, right? When one acupoint is blocked, even if you're incredibly strong, you can only draw a bow with a two-stone strength. While that's considered excellent among ordinary people, you're still just an excellent person among ordinary people. After this acupoint is opened..."
Shang Guohen smiled mysteriously, piquing Fang Jie's curiosity. "How was it?"
"You can draw a bow with a strength of two and a half stones! At the very least, you're a rare talent among ordinary people."
Pfft...
Fang Jie was like a deflated balloon, all his strength drained away. He lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, and said, "You don't need to lie to me. An ordinary person needs to open three to five of the 128 acupoints in their Qi Sea, and after all this suffering, I've only opened one. It's indeed rare for an ordinary person to draw a bow with a strength of two and a half stones, but there are so many people in the army who can cultivate, like Li Gandang... Although he's only a lower-rank martial artist, drawing a bow with a strength of two and a half stones is easy for him. In a real fight, no matter how strong my physique is, I'm no match for him."
"Not necessarily, physical training isn't without its potential."
Mu Xiaoyao, perhaps feeling sorry for Fang Jie, looked at him softly and said, "I know a general named Yin Poshan in the Right Valiant Guard of the Sui Dynasty. He only trains his body and doesn't cultivate internal energy, yet his 'Horizontal Body Guard' skills are also extremely impressive." "Invulnerable to swords and spears, impervious to arrows and axes, rarely encountering a worthy opponent on the battlefield."
"What's the point of training until you're as hard as a stone?"
Fang Jie sighed, "Forget it, while I can't move around much, I'll study more books on mathematics and music. Once I'm feeling better, we'll set off for Chang'an. The martial arts academy opens for classes in the height of summer; if we don't leave now, it'll be too late for this long journey to Chang'an."
"Alright."
Mu Xiaoyao looked at the heavy night outside the window and said, "We've lived in this place for so long, and neither of us has ever stepped outside. Once we get to Chang'an, we don't need to hide like this anymore; I can pretend to be your attendant."
"Tired of it?"
Fang Jie asked. Mu Xiaoyao shook her head: "At first, staying in this house was incredibly peaceful and captivating. But after a while, it inevitably became monotonous. For the first twelve years, I wandered the world aimlessly; now I miss those days."
"You said…where are they now?"
Fang Jie suddenly asked, quite abruptly. But both Mu Xiaoyao and Shang Guohen understood who he meant by "them." Fang Jie had asked this question frequently over the past three years.
"Perhaps they are alive, perhaps they are already dead."
Shang Guohen sighed.
"No."
Mu Xiaoyao thought for a moment and said, "If they were dead, we wouldn't have had these three peaceful years. We just don't know where they escaped to; perhaps tens of thousands of miles away. We agreed that they would go southeast, and we would go northwest."
"That girl…she must hate me very much."
Fang Jie said softly.
"It's just bad luck…"
Shang Guohen said, "For the first twelve years, we dressed you as a girl. Those pursuers never saw you and were convinced you were a girl. Twelve years ago, we had you dressed as a boy and kidnapped a girl who looked a little like you. It wasn't too difficult to fool the pursuers; we came against their path, so we shouldn't have been discovered yet. Xiaoyao is right, if that girl died… those people would immediately investigate."
"I hope she doesn't die and lives a good life."
Fang Jie murmured, "In the end, I owe her."
"Do you remember her name?"
He asked Shang Guohen.
"She was a woman stolen from the Mo family in Jiangnan. I think I asked her name… but I forgot. You know my memory has always been bad."
Shang Guohen said apologetically.
"Mo Ningzhi."
Mu Xiaoyao leaped onto the roof beam, lay down, and softly uttered the name.
"She's got the makings of a beauty."
...
"Can you tell whose method this is?"
Shang Guohen saw that Fang Jie was fast asleep, so he pressed an acupoint on his neck. Fang Jie slumped over and fainted. He hadn't known how many times Fang Jie had been pressed like this in his sleep while he was talking to Mu Xiaoyao. He walked to the rafters and looked at Mu Xiaoyao, asking, "I feel something's strange."
"I can't tell. There are very few people in the martial arts world who can use such methods. But the closest person to Fan Gu who could use this method is that wild man on Woxian Mountain. I heard he was imprisoned in an iron cage by Li Yuanshan a few years ago and kept like a wild beast. It definitely can't be him. Even though we don't leave the house, we can sense if such a master comes to Fan Gu City. Unless... this person is so strong that we can't even sense them."
"Impossible!"
Shang Guohen said, "Even if I can't sense them, my nose can smell them." "..."
"I don't want to think about it anymore. Anyway, it's something that benefits Fang Jie without harming him. Since this person has already made a move, he won't harm him... It saves us a lot of trouble, otherwise... to prevent Fang Jie from being s*ck*d dry by the poisonous Gu, we can only nourish him with our own blood until we find the three extremely rare herbs: Sunflower, Fragrant Grass, and Seven-Cornered Snake. But the world is vast, and gathering these three herbs is not so easy. Even if we exhaust ourselves, we might not find them."
"He's very lucky."
Shang Guohen subconsciously glanced at the stove: "You have pills in your brocade pouch to awaken the poisonous Gu..." "In my sword case lies the method to control poisonous insects. With just ten days of training, he'll become a corpse, devoid of pain and feeling, only knowing how to obey orders. I can't understand… why my master did this. For fifteen years, I've thought about it every day, but I still can't figure it out. After all, Fang Jie is his…"
"If you can't understand it, then don't think about it."
Mu Xiaoyao, lying on the roof beam, said, "Anyway, we can't go back."
"Yes… we can't go back. So it's better to hurry to Chang'an. It's not safe here. The Chang'an Martial Arts Academy, the Qingyue Mountain Yiqi Temple, the Wudang Mountain Sanqing Temple—these are the only places in the Great Sui Dynasty that those people fear." "These three places... Qing Le Mountain and Wudang Mountain are too small for us, so we have to go to the Martial Arts Academy."
"Dong Chu Penglai Pavilion, Nan Yan Moxi Garden, and the First-Class Manor in the Ten Thousand Mountains—these are all renowned places, but they can't hide us either."
"Only the Great Sui Dynasty, only Chang'an."
"I've heard Chang'an is very, very big."
Shang Guohen said, "It's as big as a hundred Fan Gu cities."
"Very big is good."
Mu Xiaoyao said earnestly, "Very big, we might not feel bored even if we lived there until we died."
"Then we'll live there until we die!"
Shang Guohen nodded vigorously, his eyes filled with hope.