“Who are you?”Evelyn was the first to speak, and among all the women surrounding Elijah, the hostility on her face was easily the strongest.Her eyes moved over him carefully this time, no longer with simple disgust but with genuine suspicion. Even after concentrating harder, she still could not sense the faintest trace of spiritual energy from his body.There was nothing about him that suggested he was a practitioner.“Who am I?” Elijah repeated sarcastically.Had they not spent all this time consistently referring to him as a pirate? What exactly had changed now?“Tell me where you heard those words,” Evelyn demanded, tightening her grip around the sword in her hand. “Do it right now, or I’ll cut you down where you stand.”Brielle scoffed from the side. “Senior Sister, why even bother asking him? He’s obviously nothing more than a crippled pirate. He probably overheard it from some drunk practitioner somewhere or stole a book belonging to a sect. Pirates are despicable people who u

Elijah waited until he had closed enough distance before his right hand swept forward.The effectiveness of using acupuncture needles as weapons had been greatly reduced now that he could no longer infuse them with spiritual energy. In his former state, a single needle carrying his energy could penetrate deeper, strike harder, and disrupt the flow inside a target’s body far more than ordinary metal should have been capable of doing.Now, they were only needles. But his accuracy had not disappeared.Swish! Swish! Swish!Three silver lines tore through the air in the direction of his hand movement, flying with precision toward the giant python.He had not thrown them recklessly out of desperation. Every needle had a destination, each aimed at a specific pressure point along the creature’s back where the hard scales thinned slightly near the movement channels of its spine.The python’s jaws were already opening over the motionl

Elijah Langston stopped abruptly and turned slowly toward the old monk, who still stood with his back to him, facing the thick wall of bushes ahead.“What?” Elijah asked as though he had not heard correctly the first time.The old monk lowered the wine gourd from his mouth and secured it carefully at his waist. “Many powerful elders of the art have attempted what you have done and failed throughout history. Yet a child succeeds, now he wonders what should follow.”He still did not turn around.“Perhaps he drops dead while standing behind me, before the next question even leaves his mouth.”Elijah’s brows drew together.He searched for some other meaning behind those words, something unrelated to the technique sustaining his body, but nothing else made sense. The old man had not merely noticed that he was injured or close to death. He had spoken as though he understood exactly what Elijah had done.“What are you talking about?”Elijah began moving back toward him, but the wooden staff

Only a few minutes had passed since Elijah Langston’s encounter with the old monk.After returning through the bushes, he found the path he had originally followed. He reached the end of the forest and found a place to rest. The flat surface gave him somewhere to sit, but his attention was not on resting.With a sharp-ended stick in one hand, Elijah drew several rough lines across the exposed soil before him. Every few moments, he lifted his head to think, then lowered it again to add another curve or short line.The plain land only continued only a short distance before narrowing between two towering mountains. Their steep walls rose on both sides and left a passage so tight that one would be forced to move through it in a single line. The narrow valley stretched far enough that its other end could not be seen from where Elijah sat.He had just dropped his head again to scrutinise what he had drawn when several female voices came through the