One person: Starting with the Snow Drinking Blade

The last rays of the setting sun were finally swallowed up by the mountains of Guizhou, and the last touch of orange-red faded on the horizon. The deep blue night sky, like velvet soaked in ink, slowly spread across the heavens. A few early-awakening stars began to twinkle timidly, and the lights in each household of Biyou Village lit up one after another. The dim yellow light shone through the wooden window lattices, casting warm patches of light on the bluestone road.

The quiet conversation between Ma Xianhong and Zhang Chulan about "ideals versus reality" and "fairness versus cost" ultimately did not result in a decisive victory or a complete breakdown in relations. On the contrary, it fostered an extremely delicate and fragile balance.

Ma Xianhong agreed not to obstruct the temporary workers' "investigative operations" in Biyou Village, and even allowed them to stay temporarily. In exchange, the temporary workers must abide by the village rules: they must not intentionally harm villagers, must not trespass into the core area of ​​the ancestral hall, and must not approach the workshop on the back mountain where the "cultivation furnace" is located. At the same time, Ma Xianhong's "Twelve Superior Talents" and some of his elite villagers will "accompany" and "monitor" the temporary workers under the guise of "assisting in the investigation" and "ensuring their safety."

This is less a compromise and more a tacit ceasefire agreement, as well as an open game of surveillance and counter-surveillance.

Zhang Chulan and his group were accommodated in a relatively isolated stilted house at the east end of the village. The two-story wooden structure looked quite old, but it had clearly just been cleaned. The air still carried the smell of damp cloths and moisture, and the floor was so clean it gleamed. The first floor contained the main room and kitchen, while the second floor had seven or eight simple but tidy guest rooms, with windows facing the hazy outline of the mountains behind and a small bamboo grove.

"Wow, not bad treatment, they even arranged a 'guesthouse' for us?" Wang Zhenqiu was the first to rush up to the second floor, push open a wooden window, and lean out halfway, his blond hair fluttering in the evening breeze. He took a deep breath of the air, which was filled with the fragrance of grass and trees. "The scenery is also good, perfect for a vacation. It's just that the 'landlord' is a bit too enthusiastic."

As he spoke, his gaze swept down to a spot not far away—several villagers dressed in Miao clothing, seemingly strolling casually, were leaning against the fence smoking, their eyes occasionally glancing towards the stilted houses. Further away at the intersection, two or three more figures could be vaguely seen.

He tossed the heavy travel bag into the corner of the main room with a dull thud. He walked to the doorway, his tall frame almost blocking the entire frame, his cold gaze sweeping across the dimly lit village road outside. "Not enthusiasm, but guarding," he said in a low voice. "Outwardly there's no conflict, but secretly they've kept us confined here. Ma Xianhong doesn't want to completely break ties, but he doesn't intend to let us move around freely either."

"He's stalling." Xiao Zizai walked in slowly, an orange appearing in his hand again, which he was peeling leisurely. The peel split open between his slender fingers, revealing plump segments, and the fresh citrus aroma filled the air. "Either, there are still some crucial parts of the Body Cultivation Furnace that need to be perfected; or, what variable is he waiting for...?"

"Waiting for variables?" Zhang Chulan frowned, helping Feng Baobao put away her bulging backpack, which was stuffed full of snacks. "Waiting for whom? Reinforcements? Or... something else?"

"I don't know." Xiao Zizai put a segment of orange into his mouth and chewed it carefully. His eyes behind his glasses were calm and unwavering. "But the variables that make Ma Xianhong so confident, even willing to deal with the company's temporary workers to delay things, are probably not simple."

Old Meng sat down at the eight-immortal table in the center of the main room, opened his laptop, and connected it to a miniature signal booster. The blue light from the screen reflected on his wrinkled face, his eyes focused. "I've tried to access several possible surveillance nodes in the village, but they're all encrypted. The methods are very professional; ordinary villagers couldn't do that. Ma Xianhong has capable people under his command. And..." He switched between several screens, thermal images taken by drones from higher altitudes, "...the personnel deployment at several key entrances and high points in the village has been significantly strengthened. We've been 'politely' placed under house arrest."

Oblivious to the tense atmosphere around her, Feng Baobao was already sitting cross-legged on a straw mat in the corner of the main room, taking out a new bag of potato chips from her backpack and crunching them away, the sound particularly clear in the quiet room. Occasionally, she would look up, glancing at this person and that person, her eyes as clear as a mountain stream.

Zhang Chulan walked to the window, looking at the deepening night outside and the faint lights in the direction of the ancestral hall in the distance, his heart heavy. Ma Xianhong's ideals sounded inspiring, and his methods seemed gentle, but all of this was built on that dangerous "cultivation furnace" and the formidable power he had gathered. This calm was more like an illusion before the storm.

"Brother Feng..." he murmured to himself, his gaze drifting deeper into the ancestral hall, to the shadowy area. "Where are you? And what are you doing?"

The backyard of the ancestral hall is a secluded little courtyard.

This appeared to be a storage area for miscellaneous items. Several low, single-story houses stood in a row, their walls mottled and damp with moss growing in the corners. The courtyard was quiet, with only a low-wattage incandescent bulb hanging under the eaves, emitting a dim, yellowish light that barely illuminated a small patch of ground. Moths and unidentified insects fluttered around the lampshade, casting messy, swaying shadows.

The door to one of the bungalows was ajar. The lights were off inside, with only a faint glow from the streetlights outside filtering in, barely outlining the shabby interior: a few old wooden shelves piled with obscured clutter; and in the center of the room, a lone, low stool.

Chen Duo sat on that small stool.

She changed out of her daytime blue-purple Miao ethnic clothing and put back on the familiar, slightly oversized white protective suit. The suit's material was special, gleaming a cold white in the dim light. The one-piece hood was pulled low over her head, obscuring most of her face, revealing only her small chin and pale lips. Her hair was carefully braided into two simple braids, hanging down from the sides of the hood and draped over her shoulders.

Her hands, clad in specially made black gloves, rested quietly on her knees, her fingertips slightly curled inward. She sat there, her back ramrod straight, motionless, her gaze piercing through the shadows cast by her hat, fixed blankly on the mottled wall before her, as if something on that wall held all her attention, or as if there was nothing there at all.

Like a delicate but soulless porcelain doll forgotten in a corner.

Time seemed to lose its meaning here, with only the occasional chirping of insects from the corner and her own extremely faint, almost imperceptible breathing.

I don't know how much time passed.

The wooden door to the courtyard creaked open a crack with an extremely slight groan.

There were no footsteps.

But Chen Duo slowly, very slowly, turned her head to look at the doorway.

Her movements were stiff, like a rusty machine. Her eyes remained vacant and unfocused, only precisely "locating" the deeper darkness at the doorway.

In that darkness, a figure, like light ink seeping from a traditional Chinese ink painting, slowly revealed its outline, and then gradually became clear.

Nie Lingfeng deactivated his superior concealment, revealing his figure fully in the dim glow of the streetlights. He was still wearing that dark gray outfit, his long gray hair loosely tied back, with a few stray strands falling across his forehead. He didn't approach immediately, but stood at the doorway, about five meters away, quietly watching Chen Duo.

The two stared at each other through the dim light and silent air.

Chen Duo's eyes remained unmoved, as if she were seeing not a living person, but an unrelated object that had suddenly appeared in her field of vision. She looked at Nie Lingfeng for a few seconds, then slowly turned her head back to continue staring at the wall, as if her earlier turn was merely a conditioned reflex.

After a while, she spoke, her voice soft, flat, and without inflection, as if stating a fact unrelated to herself:

"Are you here to take me back too?"

She said this so naturally, as if she had asked it countless times and received countless affirmative answers.

Nie Lingfeng's heart felt as if it had been gently squeezed by an invisible hand. He took a deep breath, took two steps forward, and then stopped about three meters away from Chen Duo. Instead of standing, he slowly squatted down, keeping his line of sight parallel to Chen Duo's as she sat on the small stool, to reduce the feeling of oppression from her height difference.

"No," he said, looking into Chen Duo's eyes, which were hidden by the shadow of her hat brim. His voice was soft, but every word was clear and earnest. "I'm not here to arrest you. I'm here... to help you."

"Help me?" Chen Duo repeated the two words, her tone still flat, lacking even a hint of question. She seemed to lack basic trust and understanding of the word "help" itself. "Uncle Liao also said he would help me," she paused, then added, "but he's dead."

Then, after thinking for a moment, she continued in that calm tone, "Village Chief Ma also said he would help me, which offended the company."

The implication is that those who offer to help her seem to have met with bad ends or bring trouble.

"I'm different from them," Nie Lingfeng said, his tone calm and firm.

"What's different?" Chen Duo finally turned her head again to look directly at Nie Lingfeng. Her eyes, hidden under the brim of her hat, remained empty in the dim light, but seemed to hold a faint, almost instinctive curiosity.

"First of all," Nie Lingfeng extended his right hand, palm up, and spread it between the two of them, "I'm not afraid of your poison. With me here, your poison won't spread, nor will it harm anyone else."

Chen Duo's eyelashes trembled almost imperceptibly.

This was the first subtle "reaction" she had shown since Nie Lingfeng had met her. Something seemed to have been gently stirred deep within her empty eyes by those words.

"Aren't you afraid of my poison?" she asked, a faint, almost imperceptible hint of doubt finally creeping into her voice. To her, the very idea of ​​"not being afraid of her poison" seemed even more inconceivable than "coming to help her." From the time she could remember, her poison had been synonymous with isolation, fear, and control. Even Uncle Liao, who was "the best to her," needed specially made protective gear and magical artifacts to dare approach her.

"I'm not afraid." Nie Lingfeng's answer was firm and decisive, without any hesitation. He even took another half step forward, getting closer. "You can try."

As he spoke, he slowly stood up, his movements slow and gentle, as if afraid of startling a highly wary and vulnerable fawn in the forest. Then, he reached out again, this time targeting Chen Duo's left-hand glove.

Chen Duo did not move.

She didn't flinch, didn't resist, and didn't even show any tension or wariness. She just quietly looked at Nie Lingfeng's hand, at that hand with distinct knuckles and thin calluses on the palm, slowly approaching and gently pinching the edge of her left glove.

Her eyes remained vacant, but deep within her pupils, something seemed to be reflecting the trajectory of Nie Lingfeng's approaching fingers, flickering extremely slowly and almost imperceptibly, like an undercurrent that had been frozen for too long under the ice and finally began to flow quietly upon sensing a trace of warmth.

The gloves were slowly removed.

Her hands were revealed, pale and almost translucent. Her fingers were slender, her nails trimmed short, and her skin so thin that the bluish veins beneath were clearly visible. The skin on her palms was delicate, yet it had a sickly whiteness, as if it had never seen sunlight. In the center of her palms, and beneath the skin extending from her wrists to her arms, faint dark lines, like fine roots or cracks, could be seen moving and shifting extremely slowly—the external traces left by the primal poison that had flowed and lurked within her body.

Nie Lingfeng's gaze fell on Chen Duo's left hand. There was no fear or disgust in his eyes, only a deep calmness and a trace of barely perceptible pity.

He knelt down again, his movements gentle and steady, and with his warm, dry right hand, he gently grasped Chen Duo's cold, pale left hand, which bore endless pain and loneliness.

At the moment of skin-to-skin contact, Chen Duo's body trembled almost imperceptibly.

It was an extremely subtle tremor, like being swept by a weak electric current, or like the instinctive contraction of an object that has been in an absolute low temperature for a long time when it suddenly comes into contact with warmth.

Nie Lingfeng could clearly feel the icy touch from his palm, and the chilling energy flowing beneath that icy surface, an energy filled with aggression and destruction. He didn't loosen his grip; instead, he tightened his fingers slightly, holding the icy hand more securely in his palm.

Then, he slowly closed his eyes and focused his mind on his dantian.

The Xuanwu True Scripture was quietly activated.

Unlike his fierce and domineering nature in battle, the "Qi" he was channeling now was gentle, mellow, powerful, and full of vitality, like a river flowing ceaselessly after the ice thaws in early spring, nourishing all things. This gentle "Qi" flowed from the Laogong acupoint in his palm, gently and firmly entering Chen Duo's left hand through the point where their skin touched.

The Qi flowed slowly upwards along the meridians in Chen Duo's arm.

Miracles occurred wherever they went.