Chapter 4006 — What Was His Intent
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
That deathly chill, as though rising from the deepest abyss of hell, was enough to jolt even Xu Lingchong out of his daze, shattered as he was by the catastrophe that had just befallen him.
"Where is this place? How did I get here?" Xu Lingchong could not help muttering. No one answered his question; he could only talk to himself.
Then, almost instinctively, he reached down and touched between his legs. Bloody and sticky—even his own hand made him recoil in horror. But there was no help for it: he had to endure the agony and make certain whether his manhood was still there at all.
Even now, Xu Lingchong clung to one ten-thousandth of a hope—what if that snip from the little curly bear had actually gone astray?
Yet the result of his groping confirmation sent a sudden chill through his heart: his manhood had been snipped clean in two by that accursed little curly bear.
Forcing down the panic and terror in his heart, Xu Lingchong fished out, with trembling hands, the severed half still lingering in his trousers. His face was a mask of boundless venom and savagery.
Suddenly Xu Lingchong gave a start, and a look of wild joy spread across his face—for it had just struck him that reattaching a severed limb was no difficult matter at all for a cultivator, especially a high-ranking cultivator well versed in the healing arts.
And the Threefold Pavilion just happened to harbor such an expert. Even if his medical skill could not match that of the legendary Alchemist Sage Zhang Lifeng, it was surely not far off. If he could be persuaded to lend a hand, the severed half in his grasp might yet be grafted back on.
At that thought, Xu Lingchong gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. After all, no matter how superb the physician's skill, reattaching a severed limb had one indispensable precondition: the limb must not have been severed for too long. Otherwise, once it had lost its vitality and necrotized completely, even the gods themselves would be powerless. So it was with limbs—and all the more so with something even more precious and fragile.
Nursing that shred of hope, Xu Lingchong at once set about trying to get out. Until this moment he had been utterly distraught, with no idea how he had come to this place; the only way out was to feel his way along.
Yet just as Xu Lingchong was about to grope his way through the darkness, something flickered faintly before his eyes—a fluorite stone had appeared from who knew where, illuminating the surrounding space.
He looked around: four pitch-black walls, and nothing else. Only then did Xu Lingchong discover, to his horror, that barely a zhang in front of him stood a person.
The sight gave Xu Lingchong a violent fright. With the perception of a cultivator at the great perfection of the Foundation Establishment stage, even in pitch darkness, any trace of breath or stir from another could not possibly have escaped his notice entirely—simply impossible.
Yet the fact stood before him: judging by the other's stance, he must have been standing there all along.
"Man or ghost?" Xu Lingchong asked, forcing down his fear, his voice quaking. In his understanding, at such close range only a dead man could have slipped past his senses; a living one could not possibly have done so.
Under Xu Lingchong's terrified gaze, the figure slowly turned around. His body was shrouded in a black cloak, and his face concealed behind a hideous, spine-chilling ghost mask, leaving his true features hidden from view.
"And what if I am a man? What if I am a ghost? Could you resist me either way?" The voice came now near, now far, impossible to pin down—and impossible to use to judge his identity.
Xu Lingchong's expression froze. Even though the other had revealed no aura whatsoever, the mere fact that he could stand here undetected made it plain that his strength far surpassed Xu Lingchong's own—far beyond anything Xu Lingchong could contend with.