chsdbacks Chapter 46 Survival from the Brink of Death
Chapter 46 Survival from the Brink of Death
On the eighth day, a new force of about five hundred riders arrived at the barbarian camp.
Lin Yan could see dust rising from the mountain road to the north, and he could vaguely make out the barbarian flags in the dust, which were more than twice the size of the flags of the previous vanguard battalions.
The cavalry halted in the center of the barbarian camp.
The burly man at the head of the group dismounted, wearing a black bearskin cloak and a curved knife that required two hands to wield, hanging at his waist.
Upon seeing this man, the surrounding barbarian soldiers' expressions changed, and they all knelt down on one knee.
"Who is that person?"
Lin Yan asked Old Zhou, who was standing next to him.
Old Zhou had served in the border army and recognized the barbarians' flags and uniforms.
"He's probably a general from the Blood Wolf tribe," Old Zhou squinted for a long time. "The Blood Wolf tribe is the personal guard tribe of the Northern Barbarian King's court. This person is at least a commander of ten thousand."
The man who came was named Guli, the commander of the Blood Wolf tribe, a well-known figure in the Northern Barbarian army.
They launched four attacks within three days.
Gu Li doesn't climb in a scattered manner; he always concentrates all his forces to rush up the slope, pushing hard against rolling stones and kerosene.
The bodies on the slope were piled up to half a person's height.
The blood flowed down, turning the soil at the bottom of the cliff into mud, but the barbarians just wouldn't stop.
Sun Dayong, having taken a knife to the arm, stepped back, still cursing, "I've fought in five years of war, and I've never seen anyone this fierce."
After Lin Yan bandaged his wound tightly, he asked, "Carpenter Chen, how many barricades are left?"
"They're all broken, not a single one is left," Carpenter Chen said bitterly.
"Where's Rolling Stones?"
"There are still rocks, but the larger ones at the cliff's edge have already been smashed down. The smaller ones aren't very useful."
Lin Yan stood up, walked to the edge of the cliff, and looked down.
Gu Li stood on his horse at the bottom of the slope, his nine-ringed sword slung over his shoulder, looking up at the sky.
Lin Yan stretched out his head, and their eyes met.
"Lin Yan!"
Guli's spoken Yan language was much more fluent than the previous centurion's. Standing below, he roared, "I know you're up there. It's already quite an achievement that you've held out this long. But you can also see that your men are about to give out."
Lin Yan watched Gu Li's words calmly, without saying a word.
"Surrender."
Gu Li slammed his nine-ringed sword into the ground and roared.
The blade pierced the stone, chipping several notches on its edge, and the pebbles pressed against it silently crumbled into pieces.
No one spoke; only Gu Li's voice could be heard on the entire battlefield.
"Hand over the food and weapons, and I will spare your life and that of your men."
"You'll release it?"
Lin Yan looked at Gu Li below and retorted loudly, "When did your Blood Wolf Tribe learn to release animals?"
Gu Li laughed upon hearing this.
He drew his nine-ringed sword, pointed it at the top of the cliff, and roared, "When I get up there, I'll be the first to chop off your head!"
On the night of the fourteenth day, Lin Yan sat in meditation on a stone platform at the top of the cliff.
The fighting over the past few days has left him with more than a dozen new wounds.
The worst blow was to his left rib, delivered during the day by a barbarian centurion who ambushed him. The wound penetrated two inches into his flesh, splitting the bone.
If it weren't for the incomplete breathing technique that Lin Yan practiced, he probably wouldn't even be able to stand up now.
Recently, the more Lin Yan cultivated, the more he realized the extraordinary nature of the incomplete manual, and he secretly resolved to protect its secrets.
After all, Lin Yan understood the principle that "a common man is innocent, but possessing a treasure is a crime."
Old Meng stitched him up with more than a dozen stitches. After finishing, he warned Lin Yan not to continue to push himself.
Lin Yan really didn't have time to rest.
He went through the contents of the second level of the "Wandering Body Palm" True Qi Realm in his mind again and again.
The sign of mastering Body Tempering is the bone being thoroughly tempered, while the sign of True Qi Realm is the condensation of Qi and blood from a liquid state into a gaseous state, forming a flow of true Qi within the meridians. He had tried countless times these past few days, but he was always just one step short.
The problem lies in the fact that the incomplete breathing exercise manual only has three steps.
Reaching the Great Perfection of Body Tempering is the end of the road; there's no way to condense Qi after that.
He opened his eyes and looked at the firelight of the barbarian camp in the distance.
"Isn't the chieftain asleep yet?"
Old Lu was squatting down nearby, holding a pipe in his hand, the embers in the pipe flickering in the night wind.
"I can't sleep," Lin Yan said.
"Thinking about how to defend it?"
"I'm thinking about how to break through."
Lin Yan paused for a moment, then asked, "Uncle Lü, are there any True Qi Realm cultivators in the Mountain Camp?"
"Yes. Commander Gu is at the True Qi Realm, peak of the second rank." Old Man Lü took a puff of his pipe, the smoke dissipating in the wind. "He once told us that the key to entering True Qi from Body Tempering lies in one breath."
"What's wrong?"
He said it was "a fight to survive".
Lu Laonian tapped the stone platform with his pipe. "When a person is in dire straits, their body will force out a strength that they can't normally muster. This strength opens up the meridians and generates true qi. That's why there's a saying in the army: the fastest way to temper the body and cultivate true qi is on the battlefield."
Old Lu stood up, dusted himself off, and left.
Lin Yan closed his eyes.
"A struggle for survival? There's really no way out now."
He recalled the hand Zhou Kaiquan had grabbed his shoulder, the flow of true energy from his dantian to his palm with each strike Zhao Yuanlang made, and the explosive power of the barbarian scout's blood and qi reversal when he went berserk at Qipanling.
Finally, I remembered the stab Gu Li delivered during the day.
When the nine-ringed blade came down, the entire blade was enveloped by an invisible force. He parried with his own blade, and three nicks appeared on the blade. The heavy, crushing force was something that even a Body Tempering Realm cultivator couldn't produce.
True Qi Realm.
Gu Li is also at the True Qi Realm.
Lin Yan took a deep breath and went through the entire Qi cultivation method of the second level of the "Wandering Body Palm".
The blood and qi surged in the dantian and flowed along the meridians to the limbs.
But he could never condense true qi.
Places that cannot be reached will remain unreachable.
"To survive in the face of death..." he murmured, repeating the phrase.
He recalled the time when Zhao Yuanlang used his soft palm technique to beat him until he was covered in blood in the narrow passage, his true energy pressing down on his head, leaving him on the brink of life and death.
What was he thinking at that moment?
I was thinking about my mother's serious illness and coughing up blood, about my sister kneeling on the ground picking up vegetable leaves, and about Gu Changshan who died in the cave.
What is he thinking at this moment?
Think of those five or six hundred people on the cliff.
Imagine them sitting on the ground drinking thin porridge.
Survival from the brink of death...
correct!
Lin Yan suddenly combined the Qi circulation method of the "Wandering Body Palm" with the reversal of the berserk Qi and blood.
The Qi circulation in the True Qi Realm involves raising the Qi and blood upwards, causing it to boil and turn into a gaseous state.
Berserk is the process of exploding one's vital energy outwards and forcibly forcing it into the muscles, bones, and skin.
These two paths were originally diametrically opposed.
One goes upwards, the other outwards.
Furthermore, the skill panel also shows that excessive use of Berserk will produce strong side effects.
But Lin Yan didn't care about any of that.
He pursued both paths simultaneously.
The qi and blood in his dantian began to circulate wildly, half of it surging upwards and half of it exploding outwards, the two forces colliding at his chest.
excruciating pain.
It hurts ten times more than a broken rib.
It felt like my internal organs were being squeezed and twisted.
Lin Yan could no longer hold on; his knees buckled, and he crashed heavily to the ground, convulsing.
His blood and qi were constantly clashing in his chest, and his consciousness was on the verge of collapse.
But Lin Yan gradually sensed something different hidden beneath that pain.
Something was squeezed out of my chest and rushed along the meridians to my limbs. It wasn't qi and blood; it was much lighter and faster than qi and blood. It rushed over my shoulders to my arms and then out through my palms.
He looked down at his hands.
A very thin layer of mist covered his palm, which dissipated with a night breeze.
True Qi. Just that one wisp, and it dissipated.
Even if it's just a trace, he's already at the True Qi Realm.
[Skill Advancement: Basic Body Forging (Rough) (800/800) → Basic Body Forging (Slightly Advanced) (1/1000)]
[Effect: Significantly improves Qi and blood, initial formation of True Qi, and can be used to enhance sword and palm techniques]
Lin Yan stood up and clenched his fist. The air membrane rose up again, making him more stable than before.
He punched the stone wall in front of him, and the true energy wrapped around his fist struck the stone surface, causing more than a dozen fine cracks to appear.
……
The next morning, the barbarians indeed attacked again.
The offensive was even fiercer than in the previous days; people started piling up on the slope as soon as it was light.
Lin Yan stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down, then said to Xiong Kuo, "Call the brothers over."
Xiong Kuo was taken aback. "Call him over?"
"Call him over."
Lin Yan said, "I have something to say to them."
More than 30 veterans gathered at the cliff entrance one after another.
Lin Yan glanced at them.
These people, some old and some disabled, have fought for more than ten days and now most of them are wrapped in blood-stained strips of cloth, but they can still stand fairly straight.
"The barbarians will be even crazier today than they were a few days ago."
Lin Yan said, "Do you believe I can keep you alive until reinforcements arrive?"
"letter."