23 Chapter 22: Survival (1/2)

”Cough…! Cough!”

I woke up in a coughing fit as more water flowed into my mouth, causing me to choke and splutter. Sitting up, I grimaced as my broken arm brushed against the damp ground, and then glanced around groggily.

”Eh? Where am I?”

Then everything came back to me. The Lunar Rabbit. The Ghost Bear. The gigantic tree and rabbit's burrow…

That's right. I managed to escape from the Ghost Bear by running into a rabbit's burrow under a giant tree…

I was able to piece and put everything back together in my mind now, reassembling the blurry fragments of my memories.

What should I do now?

I realized that water was still dripping onto my face and trickling into my mouth. So that was how I ended up choking. Apparently, while I was unconscious, the water had been dripping onto my cheeks and flowing straight into my mouth.

At least I wouldn't die from dehydration…

I grimaced when I touched my arm, but then blinked in surprise when I saw its current condition.

”Eh?!”

It was no longer bent at an unnatural angle. My arm had straightened out and the pain wasn't as bad as before. Before, I could clearly see broken white bone sticking out of my flesh. However, there was no sign of any bone this time, as if it had returned to the interior of my arm and mended itself even without me setting it. In fact, I could even move it. Gingerly flexing my left arm to test it out, I expected the same debilitating sharp pain from before, but now all that remained was a dull ache.

My right arm was similarly back to normal. The gigantic, ugly bruise had vanished, replaced by healthy-looking skin tone, and it no longer hurt like a bitch. Actually, it didn't hurt at all.

”Huh…”

At some point of time, both my arms had healed. How long had I been down here? Weeks? Months? How did my left arm heal even though I didn't set it properly?

No…

As I looked around, I caught sight of traces of my blood. While fleeing here, I had been bleeding from my abdomen, a result of the Ghost Bear almost eviscerating me. Leaning closely, I checked and saw that the stains were still fresh, having yet to dry.

”Wait…so not much time has passed since then?!”

I couldn't believe it. Not to mention, the pain in my gut had faded away. Pulling up my torn shirt to make sure, I saw that the wounds in my gut were really gone.

How?!

At that moment, a drop of water splashed onto my face and splattered onto my mouth. As I unconsciously swallowed it, I suddenly felt revitalized. Huge amounts of qi swirled around my body, filling me with energy.

”I see…so this water must have healed me…”

But I had never heard of healing water…no, maybe I had. Closing my eyes briefly, I tried to remember the contents of the numerous encyclopedias that I had devoured in the Wu Ling library over the six months.

Let's see…something about water holding mystical properties…what did the encyclopedia on mystical springs say again?

That was right. There was a book on mystical springs. Now I could recall about the various springs – surface or underground – that populated the Middle Continent in this timeline. Just like the onsen or hot springs in Japan, most of these mystical springs contained excellent healing properties, and were used by martial artists to recover or heal grievous injuries.

There was also many mystical springs that helped accelerate cultivation. In one city, for example, there were eight tempering springs, which were held by four different powerful clans. They would have one of their sons or daughters who were cultivating martial arts to bathe in these tempering springs so as to aid and speed up their cultivation, increasing their cultivation levels or stages. Typical fantasy wuxia stuff.

Still, if I can pinpoint the origin of this mystical spring and bathe in it, I should be able to both heal and improve my cultivation.

Clichés might be clichés, but they were useful in predicting how a fantasy isekai or reincarnation story worked. If I followed the logic of wuxia novels and applied it here, I could somewhat identify what worked and what didn't. That was the advantage of being genre savvy. It was kind of funny that I was relying on wuxia novels back in my world to work my way around an alternate timeline.

Well, whatever works will work.

I had no complaints. Rubbing my still aching left arm, I began tracing the flow of the water. It seemed to be flowing from somewhere deeper inside the burrow. For a second, I wondered if I was like Alice, going down the rabbit's burrow and emerging in some wonderland or a world completely different from the timeline I now occupied.

Occasionally, I would drink some more of the mysterious water to speed up the healing and recover my strength. As I did so, the ache in my left arm slowly ebbed away, and it was fully healed before I knew it.

At the same time, I finally located the source of the water. Stumbling through the burrow, I finally emerged in a vast subterranean cavern. A cavern within a cavern…I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry at this discovery.

Nonetheless, as I thought, there was a massive spring stretched out far beneath the surface, hidden by trees above and rocks below. It occurred to me that perhaps the trees were able to survive, grow and prosper within the subterranean cave because they were nourished by this water. Certainly, I could see several tree roots stretching down this far, drinking in the trickles of water that spread far and wide from this mystical spring.

And then, I saw the source of the mystical spring's power.

From what I read, the water in the mystical springs don't naturally have these healing powers or cultivation properties. They get embedded with these properties from arcane ores or crystals located in the middle of the spring…

Just as I suspected, there was a relatively big ore glowing at the bottom of the spring. It was the size of a soccer ball, but buried at the bottom of the spring and emitting a soft, gentle verdant glow. I was suddenly reminded of the images of Green Dragon…no, the qi emanated from the ore felt almost identical to the qi that Qing Xin Xia produced whenever she performed one of her healing techniques. I was certain it was related to the Green Dragon Sect somehow.

I'm not greedy enough to steal the ore and try to bring it to the surface.

For one thing, the Green Dragon Crystal seemed firmly embedded and buried into the bottom of the spring. While the edges were shallow, the further inward you venture into the spring, the deeper it got. The core of the spring seemed to stretch out to five meters in depth. I couldn't breathe underwater, and even if I could, I didn't have the strength to yank the crystal out. I bet it would be too heavy and I couldn't lug it around.

Especially with that Ghost Bear still prowling the surface…

Let's see…what did the book say about ores and crystals that embed these springs with their mystical properties?

I cracked my head as I tried to recall if the book said anything about a green crystal that was somehow related to the Green Dragon Sect. uh, right. Green Dragon Crystal. Seemed like my memory was right when it identified the crystal in reflex. It was a Heaven-tier crystal that was thought to exist only in legends. The formation of such a crystal was usually considered a miracle because it took millennia for natural essence to condense into a crystal of dense qi, but when it formed, it endowed the water with sacred properties that could heal any injuries or diseases. It was considered Water of the Gods, and could indefinitely extend one's youth as long as they consistently drink it. If I recalled, there were legends in the book about people with lethal injuries, brought to the brink of death, being healed once they bathed in these holy waters.

Like hell I'm going to let such a golden opportunity slip out of my hands!

Not only was the Green Dragon Crystal benevolent in bestowing healing, it was also excellent for cultivation. Immersing the waters with dense, natural qi, any martial arts practitioner who bathed in the holy spring would be able to improve their cultivation by leaps and bounds.

And someone like me with only a pathetic One Star Constitution, would definitely benefit from this miraculous encounter a lot.

”Heh.”

I wondered if I would get another miraculous encounter. Perhaps there was a beautiful girl bathing in the mystic spring's depths to improve her cultivation. Both the readers and I would then get an amazing fanservice and ecchi event where I stumble upon her, catch sight of her beautiful naked body, she screams, ”kyaaaa!” and then tries to kill me. You know, the usual cliché ecchi scene.

No such luck. The spring was completely empty. The waters were clear enough that I could see the glowing Green Dragon Crystal, and I didn't see any sign of any other humans having come down in here with me.

”Oh, well…”

Knowing that the readers weren't interested in seeing a male naked body (even the girls, since I was unattractive, ugly and unappealing), I decided to undress off screen and dive into the spring to make full use of its recuperative powers.

*

”Ugh…I'm starving.”

Even though the waters of the Green Dragon Spring possessed miraculous recuperative powers, they did not quench hunger.

I didn't know how long I remained immersed in the waters, but after shedding my clothes and bathing in the spring, I had managed to meditate and strengthen myself. My injuries had healed long ago, and I focused completely on enhancing my constitution. I didn't know if it was possible to increase my Constitution from One Star to multiple Stars, but that was not my concern. I was going to work with what I had.

And right now, I had the Green Dragon Spring to draw upon.

Once I increased the innate amount of qi within my body, I climbed back onto dry land, dressed myself and practiced martial arts. As I mentioned pointed out before, martial arts weren't just about cultivation and meditation. It was pointless sitting around (even inside a mystical spring) and meditating everyday if you didn't actually practice actual martial arts.

Unfortunately, the only martial arts I had learned in addition to the level 1 Shadow Steps were the footwork techniques that Teacher Jiao taught me. Perhaps I should work on mastering the other three footwork techniques…

No, there's another thing I can learn…

The Lunar Rabbit. Even when I was under threat, I saw how it beautifully executed those deadly kicks and defeated the Silverback Wolves. Moreover, I also witnessed up close how the Silverback Wolf unleashed a storm of icicles. And then there was the Ghost Bear and its ghostly claws. If I could master that, then I wouldn't need a weapon…

My body was my weapon.

How did the Lunar Rabbit do it again?

Closing my eyes, I pictured the movements of the Lunar Rabbit. Then I infused my foot with qi and tried it out.

Failure.

Never mind. Try again. And again. And again. I didn't stop, didn't rest until I was satisfied with my kicks. A hundred kicks. Two hundred. Five hundred. A thousand.

Before I knew it, I had exhausted myself.

Damn…still no good, huh?

I couldn't put the kicks into actual use. It was only natural. I wasn't some genius who could pick up those techniques at one glance. I wasn't a prodigy like Bai Ning Xue, nor was I some protagonist with God blessed luck or cheat powers like Zhu Jiao.

I was just a normal guy thrown into extraordinary circumstances.

”Huff…huff…huff…”

Panting, I wiped the perspiration from my face. I was feeling exhausted after practicing the kicks a thousand times. I still was far from satisfied, because I wasn't able to capture the form of the Lunar Rabbit's kicks. The power was one thing – the Lunar Rabbit was clearly much stronger than me and it would be impossible for me to catch up to its strength in such a short time…but at the very least I sought to replicate its form.

There has to be a way…

But how do I find that way?

Winded and exhausted, I stumbled over to the Green Dragon Spring. Scooping up a handful of water, I downed it to quench my thirst.

”!”

This…!

Upon drinking the water, I immediately felt vitalized. My exhaustion was melting away and my qi was being replenished immediately.

”Heh…”