Qing Qishu looked at him with an utterly sincere face: "Chive Leaf, can't we just stop cutting?"
"Qing Qishu, do you know what you're saying?" A thread of cold air wove through Qing Jiuye's voice, and the jade-green leaves above his brows sank with it.
Qing Qishu blinked, tugging at the tree patterns on his forehead. "It doesn't have to be the skull, you know. Just take my kneecap instead—you've already shot it to pieces anyway, so you can hardly tell. Make do with that?"
The two men were opposites in temperament. Though they came from the same clan and dressed much alike, anyone could tell them apart at a glance. But what drew Jiang Chen's attention most were the jade-green leaves pasted above Qing Jiuye's brows and the tree patterns on Qing Qishu's forehead.
Within them he sensed a mysterious power, and vaguely felt that these were, respectively, the sources of their transcendent strength.
The cultivation method of this Qing-surnamed clan seemed different from the systems prevailing in the present world. Of course, whether there truly was a difference, and where it lay, would take further observation to determine.
To Qing Qishu's proposed alternative, Qing Jiuye's answer was just as decisive—he simply released the string and loosed the arrow.
The arrow flew like a streak of light.
Jiang Chen's eyelids twitched, his pupils dilating involuntarily.
Just as before, the arrow's trajectory clearly aimed for Qing Qishu's throat, and Qing Qishu had indeed rolled aside in pain the instant it left the bow—yet in the end, it still buried itself unerringly in Qing Qishu's heart!
Qing Jiuye's arrows were indeed nearly unanswerable, but it had already been proven that they could not break through a sword drawn into a perfect circle. What truly made Jiang Chen tense, what truly seemed impossible, was—
Qing Qishu, whose entire heart had been pierced through, was still alive!
There was a hole in his chest, see-through from one side to the other, blood gushing out... yet Qing Qishu was still alive!
He even lowered his head slowly to look at his own chest, as if only now realizing that his heart had been pierced through.
"Ah-leh..." He looked up at Qing Jiuye. "It really hurts!"
In this world of the tree sea, shining under the Jade Balance star, so many things lay beyond Jiang Chen's understanding.
The ambush serpents that blended into their surroundings and fought with tactics, the trees unafraid of fire, this strange Qing-surnamed clan, their cultivation system so unlike anything Jiang Chen knew—and now, Qing Qishu, lively as ever with a heart pierced through...
None of this appeared in any records either—or perhaps the intelligence of the Four Seas Trade Alliance and the Li family of Shimen was simply incomplete. In any case, it matched none of the known precedents.
"The pain will pass soon."
There was a trace of sorrow in Qing Jiuye's eyes, but his hand did not tremble in the slightest—steady, resolute.
Qing Qishu looked about to cry, his whole face scrunched into a knot. "It really hurts, Chive Leaf!"
For all his tenacious vitality, the wounds to his knee and heart still left him in agony.
Qing Jiuye was unmoved. He nocked an arrow and drew the bow to full.
"Wait."
Jiang Chen could not help but speak up to stop him again.
For one, he knew nothing of the old grudge between the two; for another, he was unfamiliar with the local customs and rules; and besides, whether Qing Qishu or Qing Jiuye, both seemed fiercely protective of some rule of their clan.
Jiang Chen had not meant to involve himself. He had many questions in mind and planned to wait until they were done before asking them.
But the problem was...
One arrow or two clearly would not kill Qing Qishu, and to keep shooting into him arrow after arrow like this was nothing short of torture.
Letting them decide life and death by their clan's rules was one thing, but standing by while one person tortured another to death before his eyes—Jiang Chen truly could not bear to watch. Especially since Qing Qishu showed no sign of any great wickedness.
Qing Jiuye looked at him coldly, most impolite: "Outsider, if you obstruct my completion of the Xiangshou again, you will be the eternal enemy of our Holy Clan!"
"I have no intention of meddling in your rules, and I respect your history. But you two don't seem to bear any real grudge. My sincere advice is..." Jiang Chen said, "could you give him a quick death?"
Qing Qishu's face, which had relaxed a little, immediately scrunched up tight again.
"Ah-leh! Outsider, what's wrong with saving me? Don't you have even a shred of compassion?" he hollered.
Before Jiang Chen could reply, Qing Jiuye cut in coldly: "Qing Qishu, the thousand-year iron law of our Holy Clan—would you truly join hands with an outsider to betray it? Are you not afraid of the punishment of 'Soul-Nurturing'?"
"Outsider?" Qing Qishu covered his pierced chest with one hand, and suddenly put on a different, serious expression. "Chive Leaf, have you ever thought about how long it's been since we last saw an 'outsider'?"
Jiang Chen noticed that the knee which had been shot to pieces had now stopped bleeding, and was even slowly growing back.
Truly terrifying powers of recovery—if only the recovery were not so sluggish... A long time had passed since Qing Qishu's knee was shattered, and only now did it begin to heal. Presumably some ability was limiting it.
At these words, Qing Jiuye glanced at Jiang Chen and frowned.
Qing Qishu went on: "Ever since that... thing appeared, the Holy Clan has never again ventured outward. In the beginning there were still people of other clans coming to trade with us. Then they grew fewer and fewer, until now—ten whole years with no contact with any foreign clan. The clan elders say they may all have gone extinct, that the human race of the Senhai Source Realm may well be down to us alone."
"How could they go extinct?" Qing Jiuye clearly did not believe it, glancing at Jiang Chen. "Isn't this a man of a foreign clan right here?"
"He is indeed not one of our Holy Clan," Qing Qishu gritted through the pain, his mouth twisting. "But he's unlike any clan in the Senhai Source Realm either. Look at his clothes, his cultivation, his strange accent when he speaks... I've gone through a great many records. There is no branch of the human race in the Senhai Source Realm like him."
"You mean..."
"He may well be the legendary Dragon God Envoy!" Qing Qishu declared.
Qing Jiuye could not help but look at Jiang Chen again, his gaze appraising.
"I understand less and less." Seeing that they showed no sign of striking again, Jiang Chen could not help pouring out his questions all at once. "What Dragon God? What is a Dragon God Envoy? What is the Holy Clan, and what are foreign clans?"
"Answer my question first." Qing Qishu looked at him. "You're not from the Senhai Source Realm, are you?"
There was no need to hide it, and it could not be hidden anyway.
Jiang Chen nodded.
Qing Qishu asked again: "Were you brought here by some power, summoned to descend upon this place?"
He had indeed been brought here by the guiding starlight of the Seven Towers.
Jiang Chen nodded. "You could put it that way, yes. But..."
Qing Qishu cut him off: "Then it's certain! That is the power of our great Dragon God—you are the envoy chosen by the Dragon God!"
In the present world, the earliest records concerning dragons reached all the way back to the Middle Ancient era.
From the entire Late Ancient age down to the present, dragons had been nothing more than a legend. To many people, they were merely a concept.
And now, out of nowhere, there was some Dragon God—and Jiang Chen himself had inexplicably become a Dragon God Envoy?
Jiang Chen recognized every single word Qing Qishu said, but strung together, they made no sense at all. The two sides did not share the same foundation of knowledge.
"This Dragon God you speak of... you mean?" Jiang Chen asked tentatively.
Qing Qishu found it terribly baffling in turn: "The Dragon God is the Dragon God. The Dragon God is the one true god of the world—who else could it be?"
"As for this outsider's identity, I will take him back to the Holy Clan later and let the elders judge." Qing Jiuye struggled briefly, but held firm. "Whether or not he is the Dragon God Envoy, the rules of the Xiangshou cannot be broken."
"Are you stupid, rotten Chive Leaf!" If his knee had not still been healing, Qing Qishu would have leapt to his feet. "After a thousand years, now that the Dragon God has awakened and chosen an envoy to descend upon the Senhai Source Realm, do we still need to go on with this 'Xiangshou'? To hell with Yan Xiao!"
At those last two words, he shut his mouth at once.
Qing Jiuye's expression likewise turned stiff, as if some taboo had been touched.