22 - Suspicious

As Xu Xin thought about how weak he currently was, he couldn't help but wonder just how long it would take for him to recover to his peak strength.

This had served as a reminder to him that he was still extremely weak.

It took away his previous arrogance that told him his experience could keep him safe, and he felt the pressure represented by the dangers he would face while this weak.

It also reminded him that he was still a kid, and no matter how much experience he may have, he was still a kid, and he was weaker than those older than him, and no amount of experience could cover that gap.

He had a natural talent for fighting, which could close the gap, but it could at most make him on par with those stronger than him.

He still had to be wary of those of higher strength, and this also applied to beasts, which were inherently weaker than people of the same strength, but stronger physically.

In fact, if the sapphire scaled snake had intelligence, he would've died ten times over just while he was trying to incapacitate it.

Also, he was extremely lucky that he cultivated the element of water, which could go into its body and then convert to ice to incapacitate it, otherwise it would've gotten free before he even got halfway back to Xia Yue.

In short, he was extremely lucky that he reacted the way that he did and that he cultivated the elements that he did.

This whole experience had simply wiped away his previous arrogance, and because of it, he gained a better view of the world.

After recovering all his inner energy and directing it to his hands to heal them, he opened his eyes again and looked around.

By now, he was certain that the royal guard was dead, because his skin had gone pale and his breathing had stopped. But he felt no pity since they were from the kingdom that had betrayed him.

By now, the carriage had been forced to slow down due to the exhaustion of the horses pulling it. They had almost stopped, but they were definitely outside the range of the snake nest.

Finally, a couple minutes later, the carriage fully stopped and the carriage driver informed them that the horses were completely exhausted and needed to rest for at least a couple hours.

Just as a precaution, they all took out dried food that was prepared as emergency rations on a journey and ate in the carriage, while the carriage driver fed the horses outside and tied them to a nearby tree to let them rest.

As Xu Xin looked around, he found that everybody was extremely tense, especially since there was a dead body in here with them.

"If you're not going to bury the body yet, at least cover it up with something." Xu Xin's emotionless voice rang out with a tinge of coldness.

He didn't care that somebody had died, but he did this out of consideration for the others since nobody wanted to ride for a long time with a dead body.

Hearing his voice, Xia Yue's voice rang out, "We don't have anything to cover it with, and we were planning to bury it once we stopped, which we can do now."

She then stepped outside, signaling to the living royal guards to grab the body and get out as well.

After they left, the only ones left in the carriage were Xu Xin, Xia Yue's disciple, and Xiao Wei.

It was uncomfortable with just the three of them sitting there, all of them quite young, but none of them talking.

Xu Xin was bored, so he simply closed his eyes and started to cultivate again, leaving behind the discomfort and awkwardness of them just sitting there and delving into how he could use his inner energy better to increase his strength.

Currently, he was learning how to better use his watery inner energy to heal his body, so he might as well learn more about how to use the ice and water elements better.

As such, his skin was quickly covered in a very light glow of aquamarine inner energy, and his inner energy seemed to be alive as it shifted around his body.

Xia Yue's disciple and Xiao Wei found this rude, but considering that he saved all their lives, they could forgive him for being rude to them like this.

After all, looking at his hands, they could tell that he was still in immense pain, and they wondered if he could even fully recover from such damage.

He had severe frostbite in his whole hands and even part of his wrist, while there was damage from the poison all the way up to his forearms.

He could probably barely even move his hands right now, and he probably couldn't move his fingers at all.

They didn't know that this wasn't the case and part of the inside of his hands and fingers had already been healed enough that he could manage to barely move his fingers, though he obviously wouldn't have good control over them.

Since he had a constant stream of inner energy going to his hands anyway, it wouldn't be efficient for him to cultivate right now since it would be like trying to freeze water in a container that had a small hole in it, meaning it would drain before it froze.

It was a better use of his time to learn how to better use his inner energy. As such, he just sat there, messing with his inner energy and using it in new ways, and very soon, he found a new way to use his icy inner energy.

He could use it to absorb the ice that had formed on his hands from the severe frostbite.

It could absorb the remaining aura and elemental power of ice from his hands, which could speed up the healing process immensely.

After all, the reason that he had gotten frostbite in the first place was because there was simply far too much ice elemental inner energy in the same place at the same time, and it was under far too much pressure, and his body couldn't handle it.

In this way, even if he removed the icy inner energy from the wound, there would still be a remaining elemental power of ice, but he found that he could actually use his own icy inner energy to absorb it and make it stronger, which was interesting.

In doing this, he not only sped up the healing process, he also lessened how damaged the wound was and also strengthened the inner energy that absorbed the icy elemental power a bit as well.

Of course, this was obviously not viable as a cultivation method, otherwise everyone would just imbue objects with their own elemental power and then reabsorb it.

The cost was that it was actually slower than cultivating normally, and unless you had that power imbued by someone else for you every time you did it, it would always be slower than normally cultivating.

After all, inner energy was just elemental Qi that was super compressed, meaning that he could absorb it just like in an ice elemental resource, though it was much harder with much less effect.

In this way, it was better to just absorb Qi normally since using your own power to put elemental Qi into something wasn't effective at all and it also caused issues for your own body due to the strain.

But since he had no choice but to overwhelm his body earlier, he could now absorb the remaining icy elemental Qi from his hands, which could improve his strength, which was an unexpected gain.

Finding this, he couldn't help but be happy.

He had managed to find a way to increase his strength without even cultivating. His hands had basically been turned into a low-leveled ice elemental resource.

As such, he was doing three things at the same time.

He was using his watery inner energy to help heal his hands, he was using his icy inner energy to absorb the ice elemental power out of his hands, and he was experimenting with other ways to use his inner energy.

Time passed slowly, and eventually, Xu Xin started to feel hungry, so he took some food out of his bag and ate it.

The three kids in the carriage right now were staying in there to avoid danger, and while Xiao Wei would have food cooked for him by the royal guards, Xu Xin was too lazy to wait for them and just ate his own.

His shaky hands barely managed to get the food out of his bag, and he had a weak grip on it, seeming to struggle just to hold it, and this was seen by Xia Yue's disciple as she looked at Xu Xin with pity.

She wanted to help him somehow, but she didn't know how to help someone that couldn't use their hands without making it seem like you were treating them like a child.

He saw her expression, but he didn't care. He was managing on his own, so he wouldn't ask for help unless he absolutely needed it.

By now, the cuts on his hands had completely stopped bleeding, so he didn't have any issues with bleeding, and his mobility was very limited, but not to the point where he couldn't use his hands.

While eating, he continued to do everything he was doing before, and he was now doing four things at once, which started to get exhausting.

However, he didn't want to stop, because he wanted to push himself and get better control over his body through doing many things at once.

Time passed by slowly, and he managed to finish eating soon, after which he simply continued to heal and experiment with his inner energy.

During this entire time, he had not spoken a word, and his expression had not changed in the slightest, which was extremely weird to Xia Yue's disciple and Xiao Wei.

Suddenly, Xia Yue's disciple spoke out, finally tiring of the silence.

"I know who both of you are, but I don't believe that I've been formally introduced to either of you. I'm Yue Ning." She had actually forgotten about her initial horrible impression of Xu Xin since he had saved their lives.

Hearing her voice, Xu Xin opened his eyes and looked at her, acknowledging that he heard her, but it was clear that he wasn't going to respond.

Xiao Wei, however, ignored her and simply continued to cultivate, which annoyed her. Even if he was a prince, he shouldn't just ignore her right to her face like this.

Even Xu Xin, who had an icy cold personality, at least acknowledged her.

She was about to say something else when she suddenly heard shouts from outside. She heard the horses neigh in distress as a horrible growling sound rang out, followed by a scream of pain.

A few moments later, the growling rang out again as scuffling could be heard outside, but then, a *TWANG* sound rang out, followed by a whine of pain, whimpering, and the sound of something running away.

A few seconds later, Xia Yue opened the door and spoke, "There was a wolf. One of the guards was injured." Then she went back out and closed the door.

Xu Xin didn't even care, but he was suspicious, because they had been attacked by two separate things in rapid succession.

It could be called a coincidence, but if anything happened again, he was suspicious that somebody could be sending these things to attack them.

After all, both of the things that attacked were strong enough to hurt spirit realm cultivators, and the fact that an arrow from Xia Yue couldn't kill the wolf showed just how strong it was.

Another question that was raised in Xu Xin's mind was, if there was a wolf, where was its pack? Wolves were known to hunt in packs and it was suspicious if there was only a single wolf that attacked them.

At the same time, Xu Xin was curious as to, if this was planned, who had sent the snake and wolf. After all, somebody that could control a sapphire scaled snake nest and a wolf that could hurt spirit realms wasn't simple in the slightest.

After all, the royal guards were all at the third stage of the spirit realm, and though they were weaker than Xia Yue in every aspect, if they teamed up, they could face someone that was at the fourth stage of the spirit realm.

Of course, there was one of them dead now and another wounded, but it was still a force to be reckoned with, and they could kill Xia Yue still.

He felt that something was off about this situation, but he didn't give it any further thought since he could do absolutely nothing about it.

Currently, without the proper use of his hands, he could only fight on par with those of the same strength, let alone help fend off a threat at the spirit realm level.

From this point on, it was up to Xia Yue and the guards to defend them if there really was a threat.