Chapter 7: Dodging Death (2)

Ah Dai wiped away the sweat on his forehead, panting. After sustaining his flame spell for almost an hour, he had reached his limits. Finally, most of the water had evaporated and Ah Dai looked pleased with the silver colored paste in front of him. He took a metal mold from the cabinet, and carefully poured the silver paste into the mold.

The mold was boiling hot as Ah Dai carefully placed it into the water. Pssss—, gusts of steam were emitted when the mold came into contact with the water. Ah Dai sighed in relief, knowing that his job was done.

A short while later, the mold had cooled down and Ah Dai slowly took it out of the water. Placing it on the table, he opened the mold and ten small silver beads rolled out. The beads gave off a faint scent. Ah! That’s great, it was a success. Grabbing one of the beads, Ah Dai immediately rushed off. One hour had passed, and he was uncertain of the man’s condition.

When Ah Dai reached the place where the white-robed man had fainted, he was surprised that there was no trace of the man. Even the man’s broadsword that was sticking into the ground has disappeared. Ah Dai stood there, at a loss of what to do.

Suddenly, he felt a chill on his neck, a huge blade appeared at his neck, weighing heavily down his shoulder, preventing him from struggling.

“Who are you?” A deep hoarse voice sounded out. It was the white-robed man.

Ah Dai tried desperately to turn around, but the force on sword instantly increased, causing him to fall to the ground.

Pointing his sword at Ah Dai’s chest, the white-robed man repeated, “Who are you?” Actually, before Ah Dai left, the white-robed man had already awoken. However he had to spend all of his energy in suppressing the poison, so he had no strength left to resist. He only knew that there was another person beside him, and the person seemed to have no intention of harming him. After Ah Dai left, he finally managed to suppress the poison, but he knew that his current strength was still not enough, thus he hid by the side. When Ah Dai returned, he only saw a skinny kid whose face was filled with excitement. In addition, Ah Dai did not appear to have any martial arts, thus his wariness decreased.

“I, I am Ah Dai…” Ah Dai timidly replied.

“Ah Dai? Is there actually such a name?” The white-robed man was stunned, “Why are you here, and where did you go just now?”

“I, I live nearby! I went to make medicine* for you. You have been poisoned by the Matchless Holy Water, you need to be treated immediately.”

**[t/l: I used medicine instead of antidote, since it doesn’t exactly cure the poison…?]

Hearing Ah Dai’s words, the white-robed man got a big shock, and cried out, “What? You can remove the Matchless Holy Water’s poison?”

Ah Dai shook his head, and truthfully said, “I can’t remove the poison, but my teacher has a method to temporarily restrain the poison to prevent it from acting up.”

The man’s eyes flashed with delight and he coldly said, “Then I guess, you have heard the conversation between the black men and I? Why do you want to save me?” Strong killing intent emanated from his body. Despite being poisoned, he could still easily kill the puny boy in a blink of the eye.

Ah Dai scratched his head, although the killing intent made him uncomfortable, but he could sense that the person did not really have malicious intentions. “Does saving people need a reason?”

The white-robed man was stunned by Ah Dai’s question, mutely saying, “You, you really want to help me suppress the Matchless Holy Water’s poison?” He at present was already at death’s door ,all of his energy was spent to suppress the poison; the broadsword was extremely heavy and his arms were already shaking.

Ah Dai nodded and replied, “Yes!”

“Then, are you confident?”

Shaking his head, Ah Dai said, “No…I’ve watched teacher refine other medicine before, but this is my first time refining medicine. However, I have followed teacher’s instructions and formula exactly to refine this. You should know, my teacher is a great alchemist!”

The white-robed man was shocked, ‘An alchemist? Seems like this kid is really not sent by master.’ He loosened his grip and flung his broadsword to one corner. Staring coldly at Ah Dai, he warned, “I will believe you for now. Where’s the medicine? Bring it to me.” He thought, ‘I can’t endure for much longer, why not give this a try. Who knows, it might just be successful. At most, I’ll just die.”

“Mm.” Ah Dai passed him the silver bead.

The white-robed man received the silver bead, and was astonished. Could such a heavy thing be eaten? He asked, “This… is the medicine?”

Ah Dai nodded and said, “Yeah, this is the medicine. According to teacher’s journal, only people with profound strength can consume it. After swallowing, the silver bead will attract the poison of the Matchless Holy Water to it, preventing the poison from spreading. However, as the bead contains Mica, it will put pressure on your internal organs, and you need to use your qi to support it. Unfortunately, this bead is unable to completely absorb all of the poison, and the poison will slowly seep into your body. Therefore, this method can only help restrain the toxicity of the poison.”

Hearing Ah Dai’s explanation, the white-robed man had more faith. Gritting his teeth, he swallowed the silver bead in one gulp.

“Oh yeah, after you swallow it, you need to use your qi to gather the poison so that the silver bead can restrain the poison within a small area,” Ah Dai reminded.

The white-robed man sat on the floor, hesitantly following Ah Dai’s instruction and started circulating his Qi. Just as what Ah Dai had said, once the poison had come into contact with the silver bead, it was sucked in and completely restrained within a small area. He did not have to desperately suppress the poison with his Qi anymore. Using his Qi to create a barrier above the poison shroud, he could also prevent the poison from seeping out in the future. In sum, the poison of the Matchless Holy Water was no longer a threat to him. The only drawback was that he had to use 50% of his energy to control the silver bead and the protective barrier, thus he would not be able to use his full strength anymore.

Sighing in relief, the white-robed man opened his eyes. Ah Dai hurriedly asked, “How is it? How is it? Is my teacher’s method effective?”

The man relaxed, nodding slightly and replied, “Yes, it’s much better now. Thank you, little kid.”

Ah Dai bashfully smiled, “No need, no need, as long as it works. But you have to continuously control the silver bead from now on. If the poison disperses again, the outcome will be worse than before. I’ll be leaving now, goodbye!” Contently, Ah Dai stood up and stretched his sore shoulders, walking towards the mist.

“Wait,” the white-robed man called out. “You’re called Ah Dai right? Since you have saved me, do you have any requests?” As the haughty “King of Hell”, he did not want to owe anyone favors. At the same time, he also wanted to test whether the silly looking kid had other motives.

Ah Dai stopped in his tracks, shaking his head, “I have no requests, but can you don’t kill so many people next time? Although they are bad people, but if you kill them, they won’t be able to eat steamed buns anymore…”

A smile appeared on the white-robed man’s face and he said, “Then how do you know if  they are the bad guys, and how do you know if I’m the good guy?”

Ah Dai scratched his head, replying, “I don’t know how to say it, but I guess you don’t look like a bad person, and those black-robed men didn’t seem like good people too… But when you kill people, it’s so scary! Everywhere becomes cold.”

Shock flashed across the man’s eyes, “Then, when we were fighting just now, you were already nearby? Is your body feeling unwell?”

Ah Dai shook his head, “Everything feels alright! Okay, I need to go, I caused a mess in teacher’s research room and I need to hurry back and clean it. If not, when he returns in a few days, I’ll get scolded for sure.” As he spoke finish, he turned and walked towards the direction of the wooden hut.

The white-robed man hesitated for while, and called out again, “Can you bring me to your house and let me rest awhile? My energy has been spent and I need to eat something and get a good rest. If not I will not have enough energy to control the silver bead.”

“No, I can’t bring you along. If teacher finds out, he will be angry,” Ah Dai replied after thinking for a moment.

Smiling, the man said, “No he won’t. If your teacher knew that you have saved someone, he will be praising you instead. Furthermore, since you’ve already saved me, how can you bear to leave me here. What if the bad men came back, then I’ll still be dead!”

The man’s gentle smile moved Ah Dai and he hesitantly agreed, “Okay then… But, after you finished resting, you must leave as soon as possible. My teacher is going to return soon, and he doesn’t like strangers.”

“Okay, I’ll rest a while then leave.” The white-robed man wanted to see,exactly what kind of place did the kid named Ah Dai live in. He was also very interested to visit an alchemist’s home. Most importantly, he wanted to figure out why the kid was not afraid of the evil energy emitted by his Hell’s Sword.

The white-robed man indeed had profound strength; despite being inflicted by the poison for many days, he could already walk by himself after the silver bead had restrained the poison. Apart from the energy spent on controlling the silver bead, he still had around 20 to 30% of his energy left.

Bringing the white-robed “King of Hell” along, Ah Dai soon arrived at the wooden hut. As “The King of Hell” saw the sight before him, he could not help but exclaim, “Are these all made by your teacher? He must be at the level of a Grand Alchemist. Ah, what a skillful magic formation!”

Gliss had never taught Ah Dai about magic formations, but Ah Dai could hear that the white-robed man was praising his teacher. He instantly smiled,”Yes, my teacher is very s̶u̶g̶o̶i̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶u̶ ̶n̶e̶~̶  great! You must be tired, go rest first and I’ll bring you some food later. You may feel better after a good rest.”

“The King of Hell” nodded, and entered the room that Ah Dai brought him to. Straightforwardly, he sat on the bed and started cultivating in full concentration. He really needed adjust his mental state after being in constant torment due to the Matchless Holy Water. Ah Dai did not disturb him and carefully placed a basket of fruit next to “The King of Hell”, and quietly left. Until now, he was still excited that he had successfully refined the silver bead, helping to restrain the poison. Actually, he did not know that when Gliss had first started researching this method, Gliss himself had no confidence that it would succeed. This is because, his theory would only work if all of the conditions were met. If it were a normal person who was poisoned, he would have long melted into a puddle of blue water. Even sorcerers of a high cultivation level were unable to withstand the toxicity of the poison that was deemed as the world’s deadliest poison. Coincidentally, the man standing in front of Ah Dai, who was nicknamed “The King of Hell”, was one of the top experts throughout the continent. Only people of his power could fulfill the conditions that Gliss had proposed, and use their Qi to control the silver bead, preventing the poison from spreading. Even so, in order to control the silver bead, “The King of Hell” had to expend the large majority of his energy.

Leaving the room, the first thing that Ah Dai did was to restore the research room to its original appearance. After that, he started to diligently practise his fire meteor spell outside of the house. Ah Dai could already effectively control this spell, except the fire meteors that he released were too weak. Even if the enemy was hit by the spell head-on, there would not be much damage. Each individual ‘meteor’ in the fire meteor spell was only slightly bigger than a spark, its power was extremely weak, and most likely, it could not even burn through an ordinary leather.

Since the fire meteor spell was almost at the level of Intermediate magic, coupled with the fact that he had already been practising for quite some time, Ah Dai started to feel fatigued. He sat on the steps of the wooden hut, leaned against the wall and unknowingly fell asleep.

“Ah Dai, wake up, wake up.” After God knows how long, Ah Dai vaguely felt someone patting his face, waking him up. Opening his eyes, he saw that it was the white-robed man that he had rescued. The complexion of the man had greatly improved, and the blue Qi around him was gone, indicating that he had successfully restrained the poison.
“Ah, Uncle! Have you rested well?”

“The King of Hell” nodded, “Yeah! You seem so tired, go back and rest. The sun has already set.”

Ah Dai only realised now that the sky was dark. The night sky with the surrounding mist gave off a mysterious aura. Standing up, Ah Dai stretched his stiff body then returning to his room. Originally, he planned to ask the white-robed man to leave as soon as he was rested, but looking at how late it was, he decided against it. Afterall, it was easy to get lost in the illusionary forest at night. ‘Looks like I’ll let him stay for a night.’