Chapter 29

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As the wolf pack galloped past, Chen Xun emerged from the snow, following the tracks left by the wolves, heading south.

By dusk, the setting sun cast its last rays over the snowy landscape. Chen Xun crossed a dense forest that had been ravaged by the wolf pack and saw a solitary mountain rising from the ice plain. The dense blood aura gathering at the mountain's peak pierced the sky, lingering for a long time.

The solitary mountain was only three to four hundred meters high and spanned about seven to eight kilometers in circumference.

When Chen Xun had ventured north into the lake and marsh snowfield, he had bypassed this area and knew that a tribe of over a thousand people lived on this solitary mountain.

Seeing the tracks left by the wolves, Chen Xun was deeply concerned for the tribe on the mountain.

He climbed up under the cover of darkness and, from a distance, saw that the village halfway up the mountain was already in ruins. The giant trees in the valley were broken and flattened, and the snow was stained dark brown, indicating the fierce battle between the tribe and the wolf pack.

The wolf pack had long vanished, leaving behind a village wall riddled with gaps, littered with severed limbs and bones, and decapitated heads scattered throughout the valley. The flesh and brains had been completely devoured.

A few emaciated old wolves, abandoned by the pack, were still gnawing on the nearly fleshless bones outside the village wall.

The sound of wolf teeth gnawing on human bones was like a whetstone scraping against bone.

Seeing all this, Chen Xun's blood nearly froze.

He felt a mix of anger, sorrow, and shock, his soul feeling desolate. The golden soul sea turned into a vast desert, barren and lifeless, and his hands and feet trembled uncontrollably.

The few old wolves noticed a living person approaching from the valley. Their eyes gleamed, their fangs bared, and they growled lowly, then split into three groups, flanking Chen Xun along the mountain ridge.

These few green wolves, though old and weak, leaped and ran swiftly among the rocks.

The lead old wolf was large, with a sunken, bald back that looked like a taut bow. When it leaped from a boulder, its back suddenly expanded, accelerating in mid-air, creating several afterimages as it lunged at Chen Xun's throat.

Just as the wolf's teeth, still dripping with human blood, were about to bite into his throat, Chen Xun's desolate soul, filled with anger, sorrow, and shock, erupted with a fierce divine flame, surging into his bones and making his blood boil.

His barbarian soul instantly materialized and then transformed into countless black divine auras, enveloping his body. Chen Xun became a nine-underworld barbarian god, standing amidst the heavens, his body burning with black divine fire.

The green wolf seemed to be grabbed by an invisible hand, its emaciated body unable to advance, hanging in mid-air for a moment.

Chen Xun's long sword unsheathed, transforming into a black blade of energy, slicing the green wolf from head to tail, splitting it in two.

The hot wolf blood splattered all over Chen Xun.

The extremely fierce aura Chen Xun emitted caused the other green wolves to halt in terror, whining as they fled down the mountain.

Chen Xun wiped the wolf blood from his face, stood under the rock, sheathed his sword, and took out a bronze bottle from his chest, swallowing a mouthful of Essence-Gathering Ointment to restore his nearly depleted vital energy.

Entering the village, Chen Xun found that almost all of the over a thousand people had fallen near the northern village wall.

The bodies of the elderly, weak, and sick were scattered throughout the village, gnawed beyond recognition.

In the stone hall at the center of the village, the floor tiles were shattered, revealing a deep, dark cellar. The scene inside was even more horrific.

The cellar was filled with incomplete limbs and bones, blood splattered everywhere, leaving almost no place to stand.

The skulls, gnawed down to nothing, were so small that it was clear the children of the village had hidden in the cellar when the wolf pack attacked, but none had survived.

Chen Xun didn't know what to do at this moment.

Even if he were a mighty barbarian, he would be hard-pressed to survive in a pack of thousands of green wolves.

Not to mention, he couldn't catch up to the wolf pack now. Even if he could return to Black Python in time, what could he do against the surging wolf pack?

Perhaps this was the most brutal and true face of the wilderness.

Chen Xun gathered the scattered limbs and bones from the village wall and the village, piling them in the valley below. He then carried out the winter firewood stored in the village, piled it on the bones, and set it alight.

The wailing mountain wind sounded like countless souls crying in the dark night. The blood aura in the valley grew denser, mingling with the extreme cold of the night, piercing the skin and bones.

Even standing by the fire, Chen Xun felt his blood turning to ice.

As the fire grew larger, Chen Xun suddenly noticed a slender figure standing on a cliff to the east.

Though it was over a thousand meters away, the fire in the valley illuminated the cliff.

The person was wrapped in a thick white robe, with long hair tied in a bun, carrying a black-gold unsheathed long sword. The part of the sword blade above the shoulder emitted a cold, piercing light.

Though the person's face was unclear, the smooth jawline revealed a young, beautiful girl.

Even from a thousand meters away, her eyes shone like stars in the dark night, giving Chen Xun a sense of clarity, suppressing the cold light of the divine sword.

Chen Xun didn't know how long the girl had been standing on the cliff, watching him.

When she noticed Chen Xun had seen her, she turned and leaped down the cliff, her figure transforming into a green rainbow, moving at an astonishing speed, quickly disappearing into the night.

In the past, Chen Xun had been in awe of those who had reached the Heavenly Barbarian realm. But now, he just looked in the direction the girl had disappeared, lost in thought.

The materialization of the barbarian soul was the foundation of barbarian martial cultivation, not only drawing divine essence from vital energy to temper the body but also manifesting outside the body with great power.

However, the divine essence of the barbarian soul within the body could only be released and form powerful barbarian soul combat techniques if it resonated with the Dao, or if the practitioner had reached the Subtle realm in barbarian soul combat techniques.

This was the true strength and killing move of the Black Python barbarian martial tradition.

Chen Xun had not practiced any long sword barbarian soul techniques, but he recalled that when the old green wolf had lunged at him in the valley, he had swung his sword, releasing a black aura infused with a large amount of barbarian soul divine essence, splitting the wolf in two and scaring the other old wolves away.

Upon reflection, Chen Xun realized that he had unconsciously integrated the fourth stance of the Great Peng Secret Fist into his sword swing.

If not for this, Chen Xun would have had a tough battle with the old wolves.

Could it be that the five stances of the Great Peng Secret Fist could be integrated with sword techniques to form powerful combat techniques?

Could it be that the seemingly simple and easy-to-learn five stances of the Great Peng Secret Fist were actually the foundation of all martial cultivation?

Chen Xun stood in the valley, facing the burning remains of the village, lost in thought all night.

At dawn, snow fell like fluff, burying half of Chen Xun's body. His blood was almost frozen.

Watching the cold sun rise in the east, he stood up, adjusted his sword and bow, and then leaped down the mountain, heading north into the snowy plain.

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Under the cold wave, large herds of beasts migrated south.

A pack of thousands or tens of thousands of green wolves moving together was something no tribe in the northern mountains of Python Tooth Ridge could resist alone.

Even if the village had one or two Heavenly Barbarians, they would still face the destruction of the village and the death of its people.

Whether Black Python could survive this cold wave and escape this disaster was, in the end, a matter of fate, a matter of leaving it to the heavens.

Staying in the lake and marsh snowfield was not necessarily more dangerous than returning to Black Python. Chen Xun decided to continue north, enduring the fierce cold, to the icy and snowy wilderness, to undergo the tempering of the stronger and more profound cold energy.

Only by becoming stronger and stronger could he protect what he wanted to protect.

Thus, Chen Xun decided to head north.

During the day, he traveled cautiously, avoiding the southward migrating herds and the fierce beasts that might emerge from the primeval forest to hunt, while also exploring the terrain, digging through the snow to find medicinal herbs growing in the depths of the lake and marsh.

At night, he dug snow caves to hide, refining medicines and cultivating his barbarian soul, further tempering his body, and continuously honing his sword and fist combat techniques.

Chen Xun's northward journey was not fast, covering only thirty to fifty miles a day, but after two months, he had traveled over two thousand miles into the lake and marsh plain, reaching a massive mountain range stretching across the snowfield, seemingly endless.

He had arrived at Xi Ridge!

Unlike the scattered solitary mountains in the lake and marsh area, Xi Ridge stretched for a thousand miles, as perilous as Python Tooth Ridge. The peaks, like spear tips, pierced the sky, their height unknown. But now, covered in snow, it looked like a world of ice and snow, with no sign of vegetation or rock.

At the height of the cold wave, Chen Xun could see a sky-blue cold current passing through the peaks of Xi Ridge.

Several black dots circled and darted through the sky-blue cold current at the peak of Xi Ridge.

It was hard to imagine the intensity of the cold energy at a height of a thousand or two thousand zhang on Xi Ridge, within the cold wave.

It was also hard to imagine how powerful the strange birds that soared through the sky, braving the fierce cold, must be to dare to temper their bodies in such strong cold energy.

The cold at the foot of the mountain was already intense. Chen Xun was dressed in thick fur, wrapped tightly, or else he would have to constantly visualize his barbarian soul to use its divine essence to resist the cold energy's erosion of his internal organs.

The "Canglan Miscellaneous Records" states that Xi Ridge is the birthplace of the Xi Barbarian tribes.

The powerful Ghost Xi tribe, with tens of thousands of people, is also a branch of the Xi tribes. A hundred years ago, they gradually migrated south and joined the Canglan Su clan. Thirty years ago, they seized the habitat of Black Python in the southern slopes of Python Tooth Ridge, finally establishing themselves in Canglan.

Black Python, which once had nearly twenty thousand people, was shattered thirty years ago when the last generation of Heavenly Barbarians was killed by Ghost Xi warriors.

Some were killed, captured, or surrendered, while others migrated west or fled north. In the end, only a few thousand people, led by Witch Gong Zongtu, found temporary refuge in a stone village in the northern mountains of Python Tooth Ridge.

Though the living conditions on Xi Ridge were harsher, and though the Xi tribes were of the same origin, even sharing a legend that their martial arts originated from an ancient Xi martial scripture, the Xi tribes around Xi Ridge fought and harmed each other more fiercely than the Python Tooth tribes.

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