“Alright!” the waiter chirped, leading them toward Zhao Honglan’s room.
The difference between a five-star inn and the one they had been staying in was vast. Lian Li only took a cursory glance before sitting at the table, waiting to hear Zhao Honglan’s story.
Since the Martial Arts Assembly ended last year, Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan had been traveling together, visiting many places.
Two months ago, they arrived at a small village where they found all the villagers had sallow complexions and purple lips. Every night at the Hour of the Rat, their entire bodies felt as if thousands of ants were gnawing on them, a sensation that lasted for one hour.
Qu Tingquan and Zhao Honglan knew immediately that the villagers had been poisoned.
They didn’t know who would poison a village of ordinary people.
Although the poison didn’t seem to kill the villagers instantly, they weren’t sure if it would eventually take their lives.
However, they knew that for farmers who lived off the land, being tortured day after day would eventually break their bodies and significantly shorten their lifespans. It was no different from a slow death.
So, they explained the situation to the villagers and asked why they hadn’t seen a doctor.
The villagers didn’t believe them at all. They claimed they had accidentally trespassed into a place where a Celestial Maiden was cultivating on the mountain, offending her and incurring divine punishment. They believed the Celestial Maiden would lift the punishment after three years, as long as they provided proper offerings.
Hearing this, they knew the villagers had encountered a fraud playing god.
Moreover, the village was small and the people were poor. Even if they told them to see a doctor, the villagers couldn’t afford it.
Therefore, the two of them discussed it and decided to simply hire a doctor from a nearby city.
Seeing that they had brought a doctor and even covered the consultation fees, the villagers lined up for check-ups.
They originally thought the matter would end there, but to their surprise, the doctor couldn’t find anything after examining them for a long time. He only said that aside from their unusual complexions, everything else was normal.
They had hired one of the best doctors in the nearby city, yet he couldn’t identify any ailment.
Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan didn’t believe it. They insisted the doctor stay in the village for a month and even hired several other doctors, but none could find anything wrong.
The villagers became even more convinced they had offended the Celestial Maiden and incurred divine punishment, so they refused to see any more doctors.
Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan were helpless. They realized ordinary doctors likely couldn’t see the problem; they probably needed someone from the martial arts world who specialized in exotic poisons.
They knew a few such people, but they couldn’t summon them on short notice.
Meanwhile, the villagers grew more devoted to the Celestial Maiden and planned to increase their offerings next time.
But how could the already impoverished villagers afford more? Consequently, the families with daughters held a lottery. Two families were chosen to sell their daughters to raise money for the increased offerings.
Qu Tingquan couldn’t stand to see this. If the girls were lucky, they would be sold to wealthy families as maids; if they were unlucky, they would end up in brothels.
In such a village, most of the human traffickers they could contact were those who sold people to brothels.
If they couldn’t solve the problem, they would solve the person creating it.
The villagers refused to reveal the Celestial Maiden’s exact location, fearing others would disturb her cultivation and bring more punishment upon them.
Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan had no choice. Since the next offering was still a few days away, they decided to head into the mountains to find this so-called Celestial Maiden themselves.
After two days, they finally found her in the mountains.
She was a woman in her twenties wearing strange clothes, her face hidden behind a veil.
Behind her dwelling was a large pit filled with the carcasses of dead animals. Many were livestock, clearly the offerings from the villagers.
Many of the carcasses appeared to be rotting, yet no foul odor emanated from them.
Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan immediately realized this “Celestial Maiden” was deceiving the villagers for offerings and using the animal corpses to refine poison.
Seeing two martial artists arrive with righteous indignation, the Celestial Maiden knew meddlers had come.
The three of them immediately began to fight. Her martial arts weren’t bad, but she was no match for Qu Tingquan and Zhao Honglan.
After a few exchanges, she realized she was outmatched. Using various tricks and poisons, she managed to escape while wounded.
Seeing her flee, the two pursued her for a day and a night until they lost her trail.
However, during the battle, the woman’s internal energy had been poisonous. Although they had tried their best to guard against it, they both inevitably got hit.
Fortunately, their internal energy was profound, and they were prepared for her poisons. The poisonous energy hadn’t penetrated too deeply; they just needed to find a place to expel it.
Logically, since their martial arts were similar, they should have been affected equally during the fight. There shouldn’t have been a difference in the depth of the poison.
But when they found a place to expel the poison, Qu Tingquan discovered that the poison in her body had vanished.
She immediately checked Zhao Honglan’s condition and found that he was still poisoned and needed to circulate his energy to expel it.
So, Qu Tingquan stood guard while Zhao Honglan expelled the poison.
It was then that Qu Tingquan realized the poison hadn’t vanished; rather, it had been absorbed by something in her Dantian, which then provided feedback to her body.
If she hadn’t been so intimately aware of her own physical state, she might not have noticed. That feedback had caused her internal energy to increase by a tiny sliver.
Naturally, she wouldn’t hide such an anomaly from Zhao Honglan.
Once Zhao Honglan finished expelling the poison, she told him about the situation.
They decided to return to the village to explain things and then immediately head back to the Qinghong Sword Sect to have the Medicine Hall investigate.
When they reached the village, they found the lottery had ended, and the human traffickers had arrived to take the girls away.
They rushed to stop them and explained what they had found on the mountain.
However, the village elders refused to listen. They insisted on selling the two girls to buy offerings for the Celestial Maiden.
The human traffickers also chimed in, egging them on to take the girls.
In the end, having no other choice, the two of them bought the girls themselves at a higher price than the traffickers offered.
The traffickers originally wanted to hike the price further, but they shut up once Qu Tingquan unsheathed her sword.
Naturally, they couldn’t leave the two girls in the village. Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan realized that regardless of the Celestial Maiden, some people in the village simply wanted to sell the girls for money.
After all, the money from selling the girls would be shared by the village.
If the girls stayed, someone would surely find another excuse to sell them once the two of them left.
