Pursuit

Inner Vision revolutionized Huo Xuan's Hunyuan Stance practice. With cellular-level precision, he adjusted each muscle fiber to Hua Buyi's exacting standards. Over the next hour, experimentation crystallized into instinct.

A tingling surge erupted from his tailbone. Icy energy slithered up his spine to the brainstem. Goosebumps erupted across his skin—the full-body shiver of urinating in subzero winds.

Every sinew synchronized in harmonic resonance. "Whole-body force!" he whispered, astonished by his meteoric progress.

The breakthrough anchored his stance mastery. Now Qi-blood circulation's secrets lay within reach.

Huo Xuan's hometown, Nangang County, nestled in China's underdeveloped heartland. The journey required eighteen hours by train with two transfers, culminating in a rickety bus ride.

Having traveled between his hometown and Jiangzhou multiple times, Huo Xuan was well-prepared and felt minimal fatigue. Throughout the journey, he primarily maintained the Hunyuan Stance, only occasionally returning to his seat to rest and hydrate.

Two stalkers observed from three carriages away. The horse-faced one narrowed his eyes. "Er Gou, the kid's practicing Hunyuan Stance. That posture...he's unlocked whole-body force."

The swarthy companion scoffed. "So what if he's got whole-body force, Paozi? You brag about your Ming Jin breakthrough last month."

"Amateurs see stillness," Paozi retorted. "His stance flows like ancient pines—roots gripping bedrock while branches dance with typhoons."

Er Gou's jaw slackened. "You saying he's elite-level?"

"Either a master or master-taught," Paozi muttered. "Martial arts aren't DIY crafts."

"Ten grand says he dies regardless." Er Gou's pupils dilated with bloodlust.

"Strike when he boards the transfer bus." Paozi checked his switchblade. "Clean and quick."

Eight hours later at Heyuan Station, Huo Xuan disembarked with only a crossbody bag—the rest of his luggage pre-shipped from Jiangzhou.

Heyuan City had two railway stations. To transfer to his connecting train home, Huo Xuan exited the terminal and headed toward the taxi stand, intending to hail a cab.

The economically thriving city's pre-dawn streets still hummed with activity. As a taxi pulled up, the cold, sharp point of a blade pressed against his lower back. An arm like an iron clamp locked around his shoulders. "Don't fucking twitch," a gravelly voice hissed in his ear, "Walk nice and slow with us, little brother."

Muggers here? Now? Huo Xuan's mind reeled. The station plaza teemed with late-night travelers and patrolling police—what kind of suicidal thief would strike here?

His muscles coiled like compressed springs before forcibly relaxing. "Whatever you want, we can talk," he said, voice steady. "No need for blades."

"Shut your trap and move!" A second assailant materialized, jabbing another knife into his ribs. They frogmarched him across six lanes of traffic into a sprawling municipal garden—camellia bushes and crape myrtles forming a ten-foot-tall verdant prison.

Twenty steps into the foliage, his captors' breathing turned ragged with anticipation. Every hair on his body stood on end like the bristles of a terrified animal.

His elbows pistoned outward in a brutal arc, breaking the chokehold. As he lunged forward, Paozi—the lead assailant—drove his dagger upward in a vicious kidney stab.

Paozi felt the blade bite into flesh, encountering the resistance of muscle and sinew. But Huo Xuan's sudden lurch forward caused the knife to slip shallowly, penetrating only seven or eight centimeters before tearing free.

"Don't let the bastard get away!"

The assassins charged through the shrubbery, switchblades glinting like fangs in the sodium-vapor light.

Adrenaline numbed the searing pain below his ribs. Huo Xuan shrugged off his satchel, sprinting with the gangly desperation of a panicked macaque. Survival depended on speed now.

Questions of motive dissolved—only the primal drumbeat of footfalls and his own ragged breathing filled his world.

Warm blood saturated his jeans, pooling in his left shoe. After forty meters, his vision swam—streetlights morphing into halos. The killers' labored breathing echoed three strides behind.

"Can't outrun them bleeding like this." His teeth ground together. Then he saw it—a gaping maw of a storm drain, its rusted cover missing.

Every city harbors its scavengers—those who strip copper wires, steal manhole covers, dismantle guardrails, selling their plunder as scrap metal. The missing cover here was undoubtedly their handiwork.

At death's precipice, Huo Xuan's mind ignited with crystalline clarity. In a split second, he executed a desperate leap into the storm drain.

Squelch!

Fetid sludge erupted around his boots. The tunnel's floor was carpeted in rancid black mire, its stench clawing at his nostrils. Clenching his teeth against the pain, he trudged forward.

Aboveground, Paozi glared into the abyss. "Clever rat," he spat. "But with that wound, he'll bleed out soon."

Er Gou hawked phlegm onto the pavement. "When we catch that bastard, I'll carve out his eyeballs for making us crawl through shit."

"Suck it up," Paozi snapped, plunging into the drain. With a curse, Er Gou followed.

The reek of decay forced them to breathe through clenched teeth. Er Gou retched violently, spewing obscenities.

Paozi's phone flashlight revealed boot prints in the muck. "This way," he growled, illuminating the path deeper into darkness.

Thirty meters ahead, Huo Xuan's X-ray vision pierced the gloom—rusty wires, plastic debris, shattered bricks all visible as daylight.

At a T-junction, his clawing fingers found purchase in the slime-coated wall—a rusted rebar rod, 30 centimeters long with a jagged tip, came free with a wet slurp.

The weapon's cold weight steadied his trembling hands. His pace shifted from panicked flight to calculated retreat.

The killers reached the junction minutes later. Paozi's wavering flashlight beam confirmed the left turn. Their boots sank knee-deep in viscous sludge.

"How's that bleeding rat outpacing us?" Er Gou snarled, mud sucking at his thighs.

"Desperation fuels extraordinary feats," Paozi muttered, though doubt tinged his voice.

After trudging through the sludge, a sliver of daylight pierced the gloom ahead. The manhole cover above had been displaced. "He's surfaced," Paozi growled, squinting upward.

"Move your ass!" Er Gou shoved Paozi toward the rusted ladder. "Don't let the rat escape!"

As Paozi's head breached the manhole rim, a primal warning flashed through his mind—too late. The rusted rebar pierced his occipital bone with a sickening crunch.

Huo Xuan's blood-streaked face contorted with fury. With a wet schlick, he wrenched the weapon free. Paozi's corpse plummeted back into the abyss.

Halfway up the ladder, Er Gou's world exploded. A gust of putrid air preceded Paozi's corpse slamming into his skull. They crashed into the sludge below, rancid mire filling his nostrils and mouth. Retching violently, his trembling fingers found the thumb-thick hole in Paozi's occipital bone.

Aboveground daylight now seemed like death's beacon. Er Gou abandoned his partner's body, fleeing into the labyrinth of storm drains.

Staggering toward the greenbelt, Huo Xuan retrieved his abandoned satchel—lifeline containing ID cards and train tickets.

The satchel lay undisturbed. As Huo Xuan stooped to retrieve it, vertigo struck—black spots dancing across his vision. Critical blood loss... Need treatment now, his survival instincts screamed.

Cross-legged on damp grass, Inner Vision revealed the damage: a severed arteriole, his left kidney leaking crimson.

The renal laceration missed major vessels by millimeters—a cosmic roll of dice in his favor.

His Inner Vision—an extension of X-ray sight—locked onto the injury. Golden warmth seeped from his left eye, coursed down his nasal bridge, spiraled along his spine's curvature, then converged on the left kidney with laser precision.

The left kidney became a miniature sun within his Inner Vision, bathed in coruscating golden light. Warmth radiated through his lumbar region as ruptured glomeruli began reconnecting strand by microscopic strand.

"The golden sight can channel healing energy!" Elation flooded his veins. He settled deeper into meditation, the grass beneath him now a sanctuary.

After 2 hours, the stab wound had contracted to a faint pink line. Vital currents still pulsed through the area—his cellular repair clockwork indicated full recovery within two more hours.