Chapter 2817 — Sharing Adversity

The beautiful girl wanted to call out for Wei Zhao to stop, to let her take a Great Return Pill herself, because the sensation of being touched on the breast by Wei Zhao was simply too strange, filling her with a hot, flustered shame. But she was a girl, after all—even a cultivator at the peak of the late Heaven rank did not wish to carry scars on her body, and Wei Zhao's wondrous healing technique made her reluctant to let it end. This was something no Great Return Pill could replace.

Besides, a Great Return Pill was no small treasure. Even one of her standing carried only two upon her person—the entire stock of her sect—so she was loath to waste one so casually.

Gritting her teeth, the girl shut her eyes and told herself: he had touched it already anyway, so what did a little more time matter?

Time flew by. Since she had no strength to resist, she could only lie still and endure it—and, in a sense, savor it. At first she had found it awkward, but as the moments wore on, that tingling, heart-fluttering numbness made her breath grow faintly ragged. It was the first time a man had ever touched her body, and the strange sensation left her half refusing, half yielding.

Yet the girl was a rational creature. After a moment's wandering, her mind grew calm again. The pain in her chest was entirely gone. She opened her eyes and stole a glance at her bosom, and saw that apart from the place covered by Wei Zhao's palm, no wound remained—and where his palm rested, aside from that wondrous feeling, there was no pain at all.

"It... it doesn't hurt anymore. Are you... are you still going to keep treating it?" the girl could not help asking.

"Ah—ah. It's healed already?" Wei Zhao's own thoughts had wandered somewhat; he had been mechanically circulating the second layer of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. Roused by her words, he suddenly realized that the wound on the girl's chest was completely healed, and he said, a little embarrassed, "Sorry about that—I was too absorbed in the healing..."

"Absorbed?" The girl blinked, then flushed red as she understood his meaning. She shot him a glare. "Then can you... take them away now?"

"For now... I'd like to help you consolidate the recovery..." As though possessed, Wei Zhao let the words slip out.

"You... have a death wish!" The girl glared at him in reproach—yet for some reason, the urge to kill him she had felt before had faded a great deal.

"Heh heh..." Wei Zhao hastily withdrew his hands. A pair of perfect jade rabbits sprang free.

"You... turn around!" A chill struck the girl's chest, and looking up she saw Wei Zhao staring at her with lecherous eyes. She grew flustered at once.

"Oh, right." Wei Zhao too felt his earlier conduct had been improper—and that struck him as very strange! He was not a man so easily led astray by lust. What was wrong with him today? The girl before him seemed to hold some indescribable attraction for him. Just why, Wei Zhao could not say.

Once Wei Zhao had turned away, the girl hurried to bind the yellow silk back over her chest. But as she raised her hand, she found her acupoints still sealed. Had she any physical true qi in her body, it would have been no trouble—she could have forced the acupoints open herself. But she had none. After a moment's hesitation, she had no choice but to say, "Hey..."

"Hm?" Wei Zhao answered, without turning his head.

"You... unseal my acupoints for me!" the girl said anxiously.

"Oh, right." Only then did Wei Zhao remember that her acupoints were still sealed. He turned back hastily—and inevitably caught sight of the alluring jade rabbits at her breast once more.

"You... still looking?" The girl glared at him.

"How am I supposed to unseal them without looking? Or should I just reach out and poke blindly?" Wei Zhao asked.

"Then... go ahead and look..." The girl was somewhat at a loss for words.

"You're the one who told me to look." Wei Zhao looked a while longer before extending his hand and tapping lightly here and there across her body. That done, he turned away at once—great as the temptation was, he resolutely restrained himself.

This was an expert at the peak of the late Heaven rank, no ordinary little girl. Having grasped that clearly, Wei Zhao dared not provoke her again so freely.

The girl tried moving, and found she could indeed move her body again. She quickly picked up the yellow silk from the ground, fastened it over her chest, and straightened her clothes—yet she did not call out to Wei Zhao at once. Instead she gazed at his back, and a complicated look flickered in her eyes.

By her usual way of doing things, she ought to have killed Wei Zhao. But for some reason she could not fathom, she was unwilling to strike. Was it because Wei Zhao had saved her life?

The girl touched the little box at her waist, drew it out, and opened it. Inside, two pills of lustrous, round hue lay intact—and by now she could be entirely certain that Wei Zhao had not touched her elixirs.

Which meant that Wei Zhao had healed his own wounds first, and then healed hers? The girl knew well how grievously Wei Zhao had been injured. She could scarcely imagine that he could heal himself, and then heal her as well...

He really is formidable... No wonder Little One and Little Thirteen had returned empty-handed back then. And Han Jingyi—to think she could recover even after such grave injuries. And the injuries of the white leader—could those have been healed by him too?

At that thought, the girl was startled by her own conjecture. If that were so, then Wei Zhao was simply too powerful!

But no matter. She herself bore no grudge against Wei Zhao. The feud between Wei Zhaou and the Five Luminaries Sect was beyond her power to mend—not hers alone, but even her master's. So the girl shook her head and set such matters aside for the time being.

"Thank you..." the girl said to Wei Zhao. Though she had unavoidably suffered some liberties at his hands during the healing, she was still grateful to him. Without him, she might well have perished on the spot.

"No need for thanks. We're comrades now, bound by shared hardship... brothers-in-arms, so to speak. That dinosaur you were fighting earlier—what on earth was it? How was it so powerful?" Wei Zhao asked tentatively. In his view, since the girl might be connected to the Tagan family or the Five Luminaries Sect, her purpose in coming to the Five Fiends Mountain Range might well be to receive the inheritance of the source power. Could she too be a five-attribute cultivator of the void attribute—and had she been in the cave earlier for the inheritance, only for him to stumble in by sheer mischance, so that the inheritance had fallen to him instead?