Chapter 13

Li Wenjun once again thought about the scene a few days ago when he had a narrow encounter with a wolf. At that time, he remembered that his leg had been bitten off by the wolf. Afterward, he also fell into a deep sleep, and the wound on his leg had healed completely.

What was going on?

Li Wenjun's intuition told him that his wounds healing without treatment might be related to the green light he had seen once. But when did he gain such an ability? Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

After thinking for a long time, Li Wenjun had no clue. He could only comfort himself that, from the current situation, he had gained a significant advantage. At least he saved the money he would have spent on a doctor.

When Li Wenjun was getting dressed again, he saw the old cloth bag he had taken from the old Taoist. His eyes lit up with excitement; he hadn't had the chance to check what was inside yet.

When Li Wenjun was fleeing, his so-called luggage, which included a bag and some clothes, a silver coin, several copper coins, and a machete, had been taken by the village head when he was captured to be a child sacrifice. Now, apart from the clothes on his body and the dagger tied to his calf, he was penniless.

Li Wenjun sat on the ground, took the cloth bag, and placed it on his lap. He tried to open it, but to his surprise, he found that the bag wouldn't open. After many attempts, Li Wenjun had to admit that he couldn't open the bag at all.

How strange!

Li Wenjun shook his head repeatedly. He really couldn't understand why this blue and white coarse cloth bag wouldn't open.

However, it wasn't entirely without discoveries. If he just put his hand inside and took things out or put things in, he could still manage.

Li Wenjun took everything out of the bag. There wasn't much, just a small pile in front of him.

He quickly counted the items. What caught his eye the most was the money. There were over 350 taels of silver, more than a dozen gold ingots of five taels each, and several copper coins. There were also a few gold and jade-encrusted ornaments, which were clearly valuable.

Li Wenjun roughly estimated that the value of the gold, silver, and ornaments alone was at least a thousand taels of silver. If he spent it wisely, he could live a comfortable life for the rest of his days.

After fantasizing about a better future, Li Wenjun turned his attention to the other items. There weren't many, and they were small: two books and three palm-sized porcelain bottles.

The porcelain bottles were wrapped in red cloth and sealed with a cork. Li Wenjun held one of the bottles, shook it, and heard something inside. He grabbed the red cloth, about to pull out the cork, but a sudden thought stopped him.

He remembered the scene on the threshing ground when the old Taoist set up the Seven Stars and Nine Palaces Array. The old Taoist had taken out many bottles and jars from his bag, containing all sorts of strange things. No one but the old Taoist could tell him if these things were poisonous or if they had any hidden mechanisms.

Li Wenjun didn't want to risk opening a bottle of poison and dying from the fumes after barely escaping with his life.

Thinking of this possibility, Li Wenjun immediately suppressed his curiosity and turned his attention to the two books.

Li Wenjun could recognize a few characters, but he was far from being a scholar. Many characters were familiar to him, but he didn't recognize them. The titles of the two books were written in a script he didn't know. When he opened them, the text inside was in a more common script, but he could barely recognize a few characters and couldn't read a complete sentence.

Since he was young, Li Wenjun had always held scholars in high regard. His parents told him that people who could read and write were worthy of respect. They also told him that books were tools for passing down the wisdom of sages and recording important matters.

Could the old Taoist's magical abilities have been learned from these books? This thought naturally came to Li Wenjun's mind.

Although Li Wenjun had once refused the old Taoist's temptation, it didn't mean he didn't yearn to learn the old Taoist's magical abilities. Without going into details, learning these abilities would give him more means to protect himself and deal with various crises he might encounter in the future.

When he first saw the old Taoist cast a fireball on the threshing ground, Li Wenjun's desire to learn these abilities wasn't particularly strong. However, after nearly being drained of his essence to create the Longevity Silk and sharing the threshing ground with the Black-striped Giant Python, a first-level monster, his desire to learn these abilities had become incredibly strong, burning like a fire.

In the past, Li Wenjun might not have thought he would ever have any interaction with a "god" like the old Taoist or a "monster" like the Black-striped Giant Python. Whether he learned these abilities or not wasn't particularly important. But now, he wouldn't have such naive thoughts. The world he lived in was unsafe and unstable. He needed to learn more skills to survive for a long time.

Li Wenjun caressed the two books, as if doing so would help him understand the text on them sooner.

After much consideration, he made a decision. He decided to postpone his search for his family and first find a place to learn to read and write. Once he could read and understand the text in the two books, he would then search for his family. As the old saying goes, "Sharpening the axe doesn't delay the chopping of wood."

Li Wenjun dared to do this because he wasn't an only child. He had older siblings and younger siblings. Even if he wasn't with his parents, they wouldn't be overly sad or distressed. More importantly, Li Wenjun didn't know where to look for his parents even if he went to find them now.

Li Wenjun put everything back into the bag, slung it over his shoulder, stood up, and looked at the sky to determine the direction. He then headed toward the village he had seen from the donkey's back.

The weather was still hot. After walking for a while, Li Wenjun was tired, thirsty, and hungry. He saw a sweet potato field by the roadside and went over to dig up a few sweet potatoes to satisfy his hunger.

Before he could dig up the sweet potatoes, Li Wenjun heard a crack. He was startled and quickly pulled the dagger out of the ground.

Seeing the dagger, Li Wenjun's face turned sour, and he muttered, "What a pain."

The half-dagger already had many cracks. During the digging, two of the cracks had joined, splitting the dagger diagonally. The blade was now only half its original size, and a larger piece had fallen off.

The half-dagger was originally a fragment of a magical artifact found by a blacksmith in Junbao Town. It was a discarded piece. Li Wenjun had used it to cut the old Taoist's silver-embedded rope, as a weapon to kill the old Taoist, and to dig up sweet potatoes. The last two uses were fine, but cutting the silver-embedded rope had done the most damage.

The silver-embedded rope was a complete magical artifact. The dagger could cut it only because it was a fragment of a magical artifact. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been able to damage the rope at all. Cutting the rope had brought the dagger to the brink of breaking, and digging up the sweet potatoes was the final straw.

Li Wenjun didn't know this. He painfully put away the remaining piece of the dagger, which was now more like a bone scraper, and also picked up the larger piece that had fallen off. He then found a stick, dug up a few sweet potatoes, and used the leaves of the sweet potato vines to wipe off the dirt before eating them.

After eating one sweet potato, Li Wenjun was basically full. He dug up a few more and put them in his bag as provisions. He then took a few copper coins from his bag and buried them in the hole he had dug, as payment for the sweet potatoes.

About half an hour later, Li Wenjun entered the village. The village was small, and from one end of the street, he could see the other end.

Li Wenjun pretended to be lost—though it wasn't really pretending, as he didn't know where he was or where to go. He found a house and asked for a bowl of water and directions to the county town.

The family was very kind. Seeing that Li Wenjun was just a 14- or 15-year-old boy, they not only gave him detailed directions but also told him that there was a cart driver at the end of the village with a horse-drawn carriage. If he had some money, he could hire the cart driver to take him to the county town.

Li Wenjun thanked the family repeatedly and then found the cart driver's house. The cart driver was a man in his forties. When he learned that Li Wenjun wanted to go to the county town, he said he would take him there for 50 copper coins.

Li Wenjun agreed without hesitation.

The next day, Li Wenjun arrived in the county town. This was not the county where Junbao Town was located, but a neighboring county, San Shan County. Junbao Town was in Binhe County, and both counties were part of Mingchuan Prefecture.

San Shan County was named for the three mountains that surrounded it. The area was blessed with favorable weather, and even in a year of severe drought, the wind and rain came on time. People said that this place was protected by deities, making it a blessed land.

After entering the county town of San Shan County, the first thing Li Wenjun did was to ask the cart driver to accompany him to a tailor's shop to buy some decent clothes. Then he found a bathhouse and asked the cart driver to accompany him for a bath.