C5 The Long Underground River

Old Lei gulped as he tried to calm himself down. The old elder sighed and walked over to push him back into the stretcher. "Don't worry, we didn't see anything today."

"Yes, we didn't see anything."

In addition, Lei Ao would always do odd jobs for them whenever he had free time, and he never asked for money. Now that Lei Ao had been forced to flee, the only thing they could do was to give him more time to escape.

After leaving the village, he had no choice but to run towards the depths of the mountains. However, having lost most of his blood, he could not run too far, and barely managed to maintain his consciousness as he jumped into a river while holding onto a tree stump, letting the river flow by itself.

While he was unconscious, Wang Ba's sister clamored for everyone in Sang Mo village to die with her brother. However, when Mo Yang City sent out officials to understand what had happened, they simply sent all of Wang Ba's family and sister to be rebanded.

There was only one reason. Although none of the villagers had seen anything, there were still elderly, women, and children living in the hegemony. The officials had easily gotten news of the war.

A single slash had turned a person into ashes and turned him into a pile of bones. To the knowledge of the Sky Sun Empire, this strange and inexplicable phenomenon could only be done by the legendary Qi warriors.

It was a group of cultivators that pursued the Heavenly Dao and sought eternal life. With a wave of their hands, mountains collapsed and the earth cracked.

After learning about the war at Wang Ba's manor, the Heavenly Sun Dynasty treated Lei Ao as a practitioner. They could give up the entire Mo Yang City or even half of a mountain, but they did not want to provoke such a legendary existence. As such, Wang Ba's family was in for a ride of misfortune.

The Heavenly Sun Empire did not want to offend Lei Ao, so they did their best to develop the village. Their intention was only to express their goodwill to Lei Ao, and Old Lei had even risen from the status of a fisherman to become a prince overnight.

Lei Ao didn't know any of this, but when he woke up, all he could see was darkness.

"F * ck, why is the sky still not lit up yet?" Lei Ao said a few thick words and began to inspect his body's condition.

Just like before, the wounds from his battle with Wang Ba were completely healed, all of this because of the mysterious purple phoenix tattoo in his body.

Powerful strength and abnormal self-recovery ability. If used well, even if they left the Sky Sun Empire, the world would still be able to do it.

However, these two abilities weren't something that Lei Ao could control. His self-healing ability could only heal himself when he was injured.

In terms of degree of terror, the true power of the Phoenix Tattoo was even more terrifying than the blood blade. Up until now, although this tattoo had helped him increase his strength by quite a lot, Lei Ao had yet to use the true power within it.

It wasn't that he didn't want to, it was that he didn't dare!

Although he had to lose 80% of his blood every time he used the blood blade, it would only take him three days to recover from that insane regenerative ability. But the terrifying power within the Phoenix Tattoo …

In his memory, Lei Ao had only used it once, and that time was also when he went hunting in the mountains. Because he had chased a deer into the mountains, he ran into the den of the giant python, activating the power of the phoenix tattoo at the critical moment.

As a result … Not just the hundred plus giant pythons, even the entire mountain had been razed to the ground by him. Furthermore, all of this was done unconsciously by Lei Ao, which also meant that he would not be able to control this power at all.

So, he would rather lose eighty percent of his blood than use the Phoenix Tattoo. What he was afraid of was destroying the village when he lost his consciousness; that wouldn't be much at all.

"I really don't know if this is a blessing or a curse." Lei Ao sighed in his heart. Whether it was the purple phoenix or the blood saber, both of these factors gave him immense strength. However, these two things were not easy to use.

The only thing he could use was the true qi he had comprehended from fighting with Wang Ba. According to Wang Ba, it seemed to be called refining one's Qi to breakthrough one's meridians.

Lei Ao recalled the scene back then. When the zhenqi attacked his body, it was as if ten thousand ants were devouring his heart, and it was extremely painful. This pain appeared a total of three times, and every time it passed, he would feel very comfortable, and his strength would also increase exponentially.

Unfortunately, the cultivation realm that he had unintentionally stepped into was interrupted by Wang Ba. Otherwise, Lei Ao's current strength might have increased more than tenfold.

Right now, the true energy was settling in his dantian. Lei Ao could clearly feel it, but he didn't try to control it. After all, the itch on his wound didn't feel good.

"But then again, what is this place? It should still be within the borders of the Sky Sun Empire. " After resting for a while, Lei Ao stood up and took a look at his surroundings. The blood that was lost on his body had been fully recovered, which meant that he had been in a coma for more than three days.

Initially, because it was too dark, even though he could see, he did not pay much attention. Now, after a brief observation, he broke out in a cold sweat, "Fuck, where is this? A cave? No, the cave is not that long, an underground river? "

Above his head, what he saw was not the sky but the earth. Lei Ao was in a wide underground tunnel, and in front of him was a big river. The river was flowing very quickly, like ten thousand horses galloping, but strangely, there was no sound of flowing water.

When I was young, I heard Mr. Book say that the underground tunnels that stretched for thousands of miles were all washed out by underground rivers. As for the so-called underground rivers, the so-called dragon veins, they were said to be formed from dragon veins.

Lei Ao's eyes were fixed on the river, he couldn't see any signs of dragon veins on it.

He had mistakenly thought that it was dark, but now he could not tell the time. While he was unconscious, the river had probably carried him far away, so it was a little unrealistic to walk down the same path. The only way now was to continue downriver and see where the river would take him.

After eating for a long time, Lei Ao only felt his stomach growling, but he couldn't find any food in this dark underground passage. He could only drink a few mouthfuls of water, grab that branch and continue drifting.

One day... Two days … Five days...

Without seeing the sun, moon, and stars, Lei Ao couldn't tell the time. He could only deduce that five days had passed, and the speed of the water flow was even faster than the speed of the thousand li horses on land. Within these five days, not to mention ten thousand miles, it had circled around the borders of the Heavenly Sun Empire.

Having floated for such a long distance, he believed that they had already left the borders of the Heavenly Sun Empire. Luckily, some plants began to appear in the underground passage.

Apart from the common grasses, there were a few fruit trees that appeared at intervals. Lei Ao didn't recognize these trees, but the fruits on the trees made him incredibly excited. It didn't matter if there was poison in them or not, killing them was better than starving to death.

Ten days … Half Moon... One year...

For a whole year, Lei Ao's initial boredom gradually became numb. This river seemed to have no end, nor did it flow into the sea. He even began to doubt if he would die of old age in this underground river.

It was not as if he had not thought of turning back in a year, but he could not. Every time he stopped to walk back along the river, there would always be an invisible pressure stopping him. He had once tried to control the Phoenix's power within his body, hoping to borrow it to break through this invisible barrier.

Unfortunately, he failed. Although he was able to bring out that energy, he was also controlled by it. Not only did it not bring him back, it even went down the stream at an even faster speed.

There was no resistance in the river, but he had to give up after the river had reached a point where he could not move against the current. The occasional fruit tree by the river kept him from starving to death, and he spent the rest of his time sitting on the tree trunk, picking fruit.

For a whole year, in this terrifyingly silent underground river, no one could speak a word to relieve his boredom. If it was an ordinary person, they would have already driven him crazy.

On this day, he picked some unknown fruits from the shore and numbly pushed the tree trunk into the river to sit down. As usual, he continued to drift about.

Just as he finished munching on a fruit, he heard a subtle rumbling sound. This caused Lei Ao's entire body to tremble, and his lifeless eyes to gradually regain their liveliness.

"It's the sound of flowing water." After listening carefully, Lei Ao was puzzled again, "The flowing water doesn't have this kind of sound, instead it's like water rushing down from a high place. Could it be that there's a burst of cloth in front of us?"

There was a waterfall at the mouth of the underground river, so there was nothing strange about that.

Lei Ao's voice was very weak, and there was some distance between them. He patiently waited until a glimmer of light gradually appeared in front of his eyes. Only then, he was convinced that this damned underground river had finally come to an end.