“Brother, slower, please, I’m going to fall apart.” Li Huaiming leaned against Aya Tone’s back, a tearless sob catching in his throat.
His arms hung limply, his entire body currently only capable of moving his mouth.
As a martial artist, Li Huaiming had long prepared himself for such a state.
He knew profoundly that immense power could not come without side effects, especially when it involved forcibly boosting one’s strength by an entire level.
Unlike other ability users.
Martial artists who awakened body-enhancement abilities dedicated themselves to developing the human body, striving to unearth the infinite potential hidden within.
Their primary focus was self-refinement, with external aids serving as secondary support.
Likewise.
Such individuals naturally possessed an intimate understanding of their own physical condition.
As Aya Tone’s magical support receded, Li Huaiming felt the cells within his body constantly wailing.
–It was the aftereffect of being forcibly overstretched.
Every jolt now was a torment.
“Just bear with it, little brother, I’m tired too, so let’s not be so picky, alright?” Aya Tone panted, his forehead already slick with sweat.
He wasn’t particularly athletic to begin with, and now he was carrying another person.
Walking this mountain path, he felt like he was about to perish!
“Brother, why did you call someone, and why did you call my sister? Couldn’t you have found someone more reliable?”
To alleviate the incessant, nerve-wracking pain in his body, Li Huaiming gritted his teeth, attempting to distract himself.
‘So exhausting…’
Aya Tone bit his upper lip tightly, silently grumbling to himself, ‘Can you please stop talking? I’m genuinely out of strength.’
Besides, Li Jia wasn’t someone he’d called; they had clearly been caught after sneaking out.
“Let me tell you, I just encountered that White-Haired Witch, and I, your brother, single-handedly thrashed a B-rank… pretty awesome, right?” Li Huaiming chattered incessantly from his back.
Recounting his battle achievements, he was as astonished as if he had seen a celestial being, and even the pain in his body seemed wonderfully distant at that moment.
That was his medal for defeating a B-rank lord!
“…”
Aya Tone, carrying him, was beyond words in his suffering.
The physical weight was one thing, but he also had to endure a barrage of mental attacks the entire way.
‘This little brother is truly immoral; I kindly carried you, and you repay my kindness with enmity!’
‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have buffed you; I would’ve just let that lord stomp you into a meat patty.’
Li Jia, walking beside them, covered her mouth, stifling a laugh.
Their interactions were quite amusing to watch.
“Li Jia, are we not yet within range for spatial teleportation?”
If they continued walking, Aya Tone felt he would utterly collapse from exhaustion.
“Almost.”
There were no spatial nodes set by Li Jia within Sparrow God Village, and her current power did not support long-distance teleportation.
They could only walk half the distance first, then teleport.
‘That means we still have to walk a ways…’
Unable to endure the incessant chatter any longer, Aya Tone suddenly gave a jolt behind him, and the talkative Li Huaiming immediately let out a piercing shriek like a pig being slaughtered.
“Holy—crap!”
With Aya Tone’s sudden movement, Li Huaiming’s nerves were completely overwhelmed by pain.
That curse had become his final, desperate utterance.
****
Once the light of teleportation dissipated, the three of them finally returned to the village.
Gazing at the ancestral hall, which remained bustling in the distance.
Li Huaiming, enduring the heart-wrenching agony, looked at Li Jia with hopeful eyes and pleaded, “Sister! Take me away!”
He hadn’t forgotten that he had snuck out.
Returning in his current injured state would only worry his parents.
‘Damn this sense of male responsibility.’
‘It’s definitely not because I’m afraid of a combined beating.’
Hearing his words, Li Jia’s expression paused. “Huaiming, a dungeon outbreak is no small matter; you’ll just have to bear with it.”
‘What a joke.’
‘The closest doctor is right here in the village; was she really supposed to ignore the convenient option and drive her little brother half an hour back to the city?’
“Sister…” Li Huaiming’s eyes welled up with tears.
Though Li Jia hadn’t explicitly mentioned his injuries, how could Li Huaiming not understand?
Having such a sister was truly a blessing for him, her younger brother.
Now, he could only pray that his mother wouldn’t beat him half to death.
The trio’s return instantly ignited the clan meeting.
“What?! A dungeon has appeared in Crane Peak Mountain to the south!?” an elder exclaimed in shock.
This was something that hadn’t occurred in decades.
They lived under the protection of the Vermilion Bird.
Expanding tens of miles outwards from Sparrow God Village, the space had always been stable.
There were no prerequisite conditions for a dungeon to open.
Yet, the injuries on the Li family child did not appear to be fake.
In an instant, an eerie silence descended upon the clan meeting.
“I’ll go take a look.”
Xuan Yuanhuai calmly rose, gently placed Aya Jiu, who had been in her arms, beside Huo Wushuang, gripped her dao hilt, and her figure transformed into a blur.
Before long, she reappeared emotionlessly before the ancestral hall.
“They weren’t lying; residual spatial fluctuations still linger in that mountain cave.”
Her single sentence instantly plunged everyone in the hall into an uproar.
Most of them were merchants on good terms with the Huo clan.
Merchants prioritized profit and avoided personal risk, so matters concerning dungeons were extremely distant to them.
But now, to hear that a rampaging dungeon had been discovered in the mountains—how could they not panic?
“Silence!” Fire Finch, seated at the head, roared angrily.
She rolled her eyes, annoyed.
‘It’s just a dungeon; what’s all the fuss about?’
“…”
Stunned by her furious rebuke, everyone in the hall finally calmed down a little.
At this moment, the white-haired elder seated beside Fire Finch spoke, “Didn’t the child say the rampaging dungeon has already been cleared? What is there to panic about?”
‘Oh, right.’
Everyone turned their gazes towards Li Huaiming, who was currently receiving treatment.
The more they looked, the more he resembled a young hero.
“Uh…”
For a moment, Li Huaiming, surrounded by admiration, managed a reluctant smile.
Everyone watching him was of his uncles’ generation.
‘The pressure is immense.’
“You rotten brat, what were you running around for, getting yourself covered in mountain grime? You’ll see what’s coming to you when we get home!”
With so many people present, Wang Simin couldn’t scold him too much.
But what would happen once they were home was another matter entirely…
****
Given the sudden turn of events, the clan meeting could hardly continue.
The elder who had just spoken turned to Fire Finch beside him and said in a solemn voice, “Little Finch, it seems you’ve been rather negligent in your cultivation lately.”
“Uh… Grandfather, what are you saying…” Fire Finch’s usually cool and elegant expression crumbled.
The elder before her was her biological grandfather, Huo Shenming, who was also the previous successor of the Vermilion Bird.
He was one of the rare male Vermilion Bird successors in history.
Both in terms of seniority and status, he was someone who could easily keep her in check.
Now, with her own grandfather speaking such words, Fire Finch’s heart tightened.
She admitted that ever since she had “unearthed” Aya Tone, she had been a tiny bit negligent in her approach to power enhancement.
After all, with a tall, capable person out there conquering the world for her, why would she need to show her face?
Huo Shenming sighed softly, thinking of his granddaughter.
“I’ve watched you grow up since childhood; do you think I don’t know your temperament?”
“The Vermilion Bird, one of the Four Symbols, represents not just a divine beast, but also a cornerstone of the nation.”
“As devout guardians of the Vermilion Bird, we in Sparrow God Village are naturally blessed by the divine beast, which is why no dungeons have appeared near Sparrow God Village for so many years.”
“However, the divine beast’s power cannot directly influence the mundane world; it can only integrate with the world’s laws, manifesting as abilities. How much strength they can exert depends entirely on us, their successors.”
“If you don’t strengthen yourself, the South will fall into great chaos, do you understand?”
Huo Shenming gazed at Fire Finch, his expression filled with the frustration of seeing potential unfulfilled.
Get back to trsining.