The Elixir is for You, The Poison is for Me

Lu Jing hadn't expected the baby-faced girl to be so talkative, without any of the arrogance of a so-called great sect disciple.

Especially after the misunderstanding was cleared up, and with Lu Jing having saved her life, she quickly dropped her guard. Plus, with her acupoints sealed, she couldn't do anything anyway. Being bored in Lu Jing's arms, she could only use her mouth.

So, after a cup of tea, Lu Jing not only knew that her name was Xia Huai, but also that her master was Xiao Mengrou, the Wuxiang Sword, one of the thirteen famous swords of the Sword Washing Pavilion, a veritable top-tier expert. He also learned that Xia Huai had been valued by Xiao Mengrou at the age of nine and taken as a disciple, and had been practicing martial arts for six years now.

With her aptitude, she should have opened her Ren Meridian and entered the second-rate ranks long ago. However, just like she said herself, she was also a weirdo. She only liked practicing swordsmanship and didn't like meditating. No matter how difficult the swordsmanship was, even without much guidance, she could always practice it to seventy or eighty percent, and even build on that foundation to infer other things.

But when it came to the stage of cultivating internal energy, she was as miserable as if she had lost her parents. She simply couldn't sit still. After a little bit of breathing exercises, she would be like her butt was on fire. So, in the first few years, her internal energy progress was the slowest among all the eighth-generation disciples of the Sword Washing Pavilion. As a result, Xiao Mengrou had no choice but to specially assign someone to do nothing but stare at her meditating there every day, and only allow her to touch a sword after she had sat for three hours.

Since then, Xia Huai's internal energy cultivation had finally gotten on the right track, although she was in pain every day. According to her own words, in order to relieve the mental stress brought about by cultivating internal energy, she had to raise a little tabby cat, and she had to frantically pet the cat before and after each breathing exercise.

Lu Jing expressed his understanding of this. He didn't like studying chemistry back in high school either. Although he had good scores from memorizing, thanks to the full-level skill of solving problems from the small town, it was indeed a torment to learn things you weren't interested in. However, Xia Huai's resentment towards breathing exercises was indeed difficult for someone like him, who could open the Ren Meridian in ten days, to empathize with.

Xia Huai then went on to talk about her fellow disciples, saying that a certain senior brother surnamed Xue had taken a fancy to a junior sister who had just entered the sect, but unfortunately, the man had affection but the woman didn't. The junior sister admired another senior brother surnamed Ma, but the senior brother surnamed Ma, in order to concentrate on cultivating the sword, didn't hesitate to cut off the root of his troubles, resulting in two more lovelorn people in this world.

After a round of gossip, she returned to talking about herself. Not counting the time she spent letting off steam in the nearby town, this was actually Xia Huai's first time down the mountain.

Her master sent her to deliver a letter to a somewhat strange place. This matter was not difficult, it was purely a errand, so Xia Huai quickly completed it. Afterwards, she didn't want to go back to being soft-imprisoned and forced to practice, so she took it upon herself to run to Wujiang City to watch the excitement.

She never thought that she would run into the Seven Heroes of the Dust Wind doing evil on the way. The chivalrous woman Xia drew her sword and angrily killed the thugs, but was chased and killed by the remaining six people. What happened next was what Lu Jing saw. Speaking of this, Xia Huai was also still afraid. If Lu Jing hadn't been there at the time, she would probably have been buried behind that Bodhisattva temple by now.

Lu Jing also felt lingering fear. His situation at the time was also extremely dangerous, especially when the juggler took advantage of the flying knife in his hand and was ready to throw it. If it hadn't been for Xia Huai's wit and a word to scare the other party away, the two of them would probably have been planted like radishes.

From this point of view, Xia Huai may not have much experience in the martial world, but her brain is definitely not stupid. Moreover, the disciples of the great sects have sharp eyes. The sugar-figure vendor actually saw the butcher vomiting blood from Lu Jing's counterattack and ran away without looking back, but Xia Huai remained silent until she saw that Lu Jing was at a disadvantage before calling out to put pressure on the juggler. Lu Jing was also ashamed of himself for this grasp of timing.

Of course, this was also because he had been practicing martial arts for too short a time. Even though his internal energy cultivation was progressing rapidly due to a bug, there were still many lessons he had to make up for.

The two had already left the barren mountain at this time, which was considered a preliminary escape from danger. Lu Jing was not in a hurry to enter the city or go home. He planned to go to Doctor Jia's thatched cottage to treat Xia Huai's injuries first.

Xia Huai had injuries on her calf, waist, and right shoulder, and some places were even bleeding.

Generally speaking, when disciples of various sects travel the martial world, the sect will issue healing medicines before going down the mountain, specifically to deal with this kind of emergency situation. And for top sects like the Sword Washing Pavilion, the healing medicines are even specially made, and the effect can be said to be immediate.

Unfortunately, the medicine on Xia Huai's body was taken away as soon as she entered the Bodhisattva temple. The little girl had just experienced a fierce battle, was chased and killed and then rescued, and was very excited to have escaped death. She said a lot of things in one breath, but after the excitement of adrenaline passed, she quickly became listless again, yawned a long yawn, and her upper eyelids began to fight with her lower eyelids.

Lu Jing didn't want her to fall asleep, so he quickened his pace and took over her previous words.

"Wujiang City is quite lively, with many ships docking every day, and many traveling merchants and wealthy people coming and going. There are snacks near the Wenwang Temple that you can eat for a month without repeating. There are the most storytellers, puppet shows, and sumo performances near the Longjin Bridge. There's only what you can't think of, nothing you can't see. If you want to buy clothes, rouge, and other fun little things, you can go to the West Corner Tower Street…"

However, he didn't expect that the drowsy Xia Huai muttered, "I went to Wujiang City… not to see this kind of excitement."

"Then what kind of excitement?" Lu Jing's face became a little strange.

Generally, people come to Wujiang City to play, basically for these things. Besides that, the most famous thing in Wujiang City is the various brothels on both sides of the river. It is said that there are nearly two hundred of them, large and small. That is really riding a horse leaning on a slanting bridge, with red sleeves beckoning from the whole building.

Could it be that this girl is a lesbian? That's really that you can't judge a book by its cover.

"Naturally… it's the excitement in the martial world," Xia Huai's eyes were almost too sleepy to open, but when she heard Lu Jing's question, she still tried her best to answer.

"Hey, aren't you a local? Even if you haven't heard of it, haven't you noticed that there are many more martial artists in the city recently?"

Lu Jing thought to himself, no wonder he had been running into trouble recently. For the previous nine months, he had been safe and sound, clocking in and out of work on time every day, like he was back using DingTalk again. How could he run into a group of martial artists killing people to silence them when he went to a dilapidated temple where there were usually no people to practice boxing?

He wondered if it was because he had internal energy that the subsequent plot would unfold with a whoosh, and it would really become like playing a game.

Now it seems that this matter is not his fault. It is because martial artists are flocking to Wujiang City, so his probability of triggering martial arts events is naturally also increasing.

Lu Jing wanted to ask Xia Huai again what kind of excitement she was talking about, but he didn't expect that Xia Huai at this time could no longer resist the drowsiness and had already closed her eyes and fallen asleep in his arms.