Chapter 1290: Returning from Death’s Door
Still, the most important thing at the moment was Zu An’s injuries. After a bit of hesitation, Yan Xuehen decided to follow it through to the end. She wouldn’t even have dared to think of such a thing before. She could only keep trying to convince herself that she was only doing it to save a life.
However, she realized that if it had been anyone else, even if it were to save them, she definitely wouldn’t have agreed to such a method.
A while later, she finally raised her head again with difficulty. She saw the unconscious Zu An lick his lips, as if he still wasn’t fully satisfied yet. Yan Xuehen was both embarra.s.sed and inexplicably amused. Why does he seem like a child?
She looked at the Prime Souldew that was left in the bottle for a moment. She clenched her lips, and after a sigh, she poured it into her mouth again, lowering herself to feed it to him again. When their lips met again, her heart began beating crazily. She felt as if even her soul had begun shaking.
She remembered how, when her disciple Chu Chuyan had first talked to her about the matter of love, she couldn’t understand how that girl, who was incredibly talented and had boundless prospects, could possibly give up seeking the great heavenly dao to be completely taken in by love instead. And yet Chu Chuyan, who had always respected her greatly, had retorted that she didn’t understand love.
At the time, Yan Xuehen hadn’t gotten angry. She, who had already entered the unshakable daoist state, practically never had such negative emotions. She had instead begun to discuss what love was with her disciple.
Back then, Chu Chuyan had said that she would think of Zu An whenever she couldn"t see him, and when she did see him, she would always worry about her relationship with him. Whenever their bodies made contact, even if they just held hands, she could feel a kind of trembling within her very soul.
Yan Xuehen had scoffed at all of those things, and even said that the reason Chu Chuyan had such thoughts was that her mastery over the Unshakable Daoist Manual wasn’t high enough. Now that she was personally experiencing the feeling her disciple had spoken of, however, she wondered… Could it be that so-called love?
In reality, for grandmasters like her who dominated the world, love wasn’t anything that threatening or dangerous. In fact, when she was younger, she had even considered letting herself experience it once. She would experience it, then let it go. With that, perhaps she would even be able to reach a higher level of the Unshakable Daoist Manual.
However, she had never encountered any man who met her standards. Choosing a random man to experience such a thing was even more out of the question. In the end, she had relied on her apt.i.tude and temperament to reach the unshakable realm.
In recent years, her cultivation had stagnated, which had made her think of the matter once more. Unfortunately, she had long since achieved the unshakable state. There had been no way any man would catch her eye before, and afterward, there was even less of a chance of that happening. Zu An’s appearance had actually been a completely unexpected outlier.
In the past, she might have been happy to experience such a thing. She would have simply used the situation to experience a period of pure and honest love as a secular form of mental cultivation. That would have filled in the final missing experience of her life, which could allow her cultivation to experience another breakthrough after having stagnated for so many years.
Unfortunately, Zu An was her disciple’s man. No matter what angle she looked at it from, such thoughts weren’t permitted. Still, that was just how life worked. Sometimes, what one feared the most wou;d be what happened. The more she had tried to stop herself, the closer their relationship had become. Now that such feelings had emerged, they could only become even more powerful.
At the very least, there was no human society in the Great Snowy Mountain forbidden area; there were no taboos and rules. That made Yan Xuehen relax a lot. However, the top priority at the moment was to save Zu An’s life. Yan Xuehen fed him the same way a few more times, eventually giving Zu An every last drop of the Prime Souldew.
With that, Zu An’s pained expression eased a bit, and the wounds all over his body gradually stabilized. It seemed as if the Prime Souldew’s sealing effects had been activated. At the very least, his condition didn’t seem to be worsening. However, that was it. Yan Xuehen still had to find another way to save him.
“It’s so hot…” Zu An suddenly groaned. As a result, he began to tug at his clothes, as if he would only feel better once he removed his clothes.
Yan Xuehen frowned. She quickly reached out her hand to check his condition, but immediately drew back when she touched his skin. It was way too cold! She was an ice element cultivator herself; her Snowflake Sword and other such skills were able to cover the world in snow. And yet, she still couldn"t stand that cold. The snow woman’s frighteningly cold energy had seeped into his body.
Previously, the rebound of Keyboard Come was so severe that the effects of the cold energy hadn’t shown. Now that the rebound had been suppressed, that extreme cold appeared in its place. Indeed, as the saying went, when it rains, it pours!
Yan Xuehen felt a bit powerless. She had already felt helpless against the rebound’s dao wounds. Now, the lethal cold poison left behind by the snow lady had taken its place. She knew Zu An’s condition would only worsen if they stayed outside amid the wind and snow. Thus, she quickly wrapped one arm around his shoulder while supporting his body. Then, she began to search around for a place to take shelter in. Even though she was injured, cultivators were tough to begin with. She could still handle a single person’s weight.
She looked around and eventually noticed a valley in the distance. The wind and snow there seemed to be a bit weaker. She couldn"t be bothered to worry about whether there were any dangers there anymore, and thus began to walk over while carrying Zu An.
“It’s so hot…” Zu An moaned, and the sound of tearing clothes followed.
Yan Xuehen turned around and saw that Zu An had already instinctively torn apart some of his collar. She couldn"t help but exclaim in panic, “Don’t take it all off! It’s all an illusion!”
She had also entered a similar state earlier. Fortunately, the White Jade Sect was a powerful sect, so she had some life-saving treasures. Furthermore, they had already left the snow lady’s range of influence, which had allowed her mind to clear. Unfortunately, those treasures were single-use consumables, so she couldn"t use them for Zu An.
Furthermore, in order to protect her, Zu An had taken on most of the snow lady’s blizzard himself. At that moment, the cold inside him was much more intense than what had afflicted Yan Xuehen previously. If Zu An hadn’t been proficient in the fire element, and if he hadn’t had a phoenix-like flame in him, all of his blood might already have frozen solid.
Yan Xuehen wasn’t thinking of all that, though. She took him tightly into his embrace, trying to use her own body temperature to warm him up. Unfortunately, her slight warmth was like pouring a cup of water on a burning cart. She only began to feel so cold that she shivered all over. She thought to herself that, if just holding him already made her feel so cold, just how horrible did it have to be for him?
She turned around, but then jumped in fright. Zu An’s brows and hair were already covered in a layer of frost, while a thin layer of ice was beginning to form across his entire body. His complexion wasn’t as rosy as before, but instead an ashen gray. If not for the fact that she could still feel his faint heartbeat, she would have thought that he had already frozen to death.
“Don’t give up,” Yan Xuehen said. Tears fell from her eyes, freezing into icicles before hitting the ground. She did her best to send her ki into Zu An’s body to try and preserve his life.
In her normal state, delivering ki that way would be extremely easy for her. However, as she was injured, she found it extremely difficult. Only a tiny trickle of ki flowed, and when it entered Zu An’s body, it was quickly devoured by the cold energy within. However, she still struggled to continue the process, even if the cold also entered her body and made her shiver all over.
Meanwhile, their distance from the valley, which would normally have felt short, now seemed insurmountable. Still, after walking for a long time, Yan Xuehen finally reached it while carrying Zu An. As she entered, the wind and snow immediately weakened. She even felt a wave of heat in front of her.
Yan Xuehen raised her head and was overjoyed to discover that there was a cave not too far away. The heat came from within.
Is there someone inside? she thought worriedly. How could anything that existed in these Great Snowy Mountains be kind? Who knew, it might just be something similar to the snow lady. Still, she couldn’t waste time with those concerns. If she waited any longer, Zu An could end up really being frozen into a statue.
She carried Zu An to the cave with great difficulty. Luckily, there was no one inside. The reason why she had felt hot air was because there were hot springs of varying sizes present!
At that instant, she didn’t even dare to believe her eyes. She thought it was an illusion she was seeing before death. She pinched herself hard, and only then did she realize that it was all actually real.
“Ah Zu, we’re saved!” Yan Xuehen cried excitedly to Zu An, but he didn’t respond at all, leaving her incredibly worried. She didn’t dare to waste any more time and jumped into a hot spring with him.
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