"Tsk... My head hurts...and I'm freezing..."
With the bleak wind blowing over him, Xu Yuan woke from the haze once more. His head throbbed inside and out, so badly that he did not even want to open his eyes. His clothes were soaked through. The icy wind scraped across the wet fabric, steadily stealing what little body heat he had left.
Almost instantly, Xu Yuan realized this body was already slipping into hypothermia. He slowly forced his eyes open, and the memories from before he passed out came rushing back like a flood. Transmigration, the giant Buddha, and that woman's utterly unreasonable club to the head.
Once he had more or less sorted out his situation, Xu Yuan endured the pounding in his skull and slowly moved his eyes, taking in his surroundings.
This seemed to be a cave. Not a large one either, only about five meters deep. It was already daytime outside. Rain was still falling in a light, steady drizzle, but this time there was no campfire like in the temple. The cave felt damp and bitterly cold.
The woman in black sat at the cave entrance with her eyes closed, resting. Her sword lay flat at her side, and next to it was a wooden staff that looked painfully familiar.
Xu Yuan pressed his dry, pale lips together and slowly shifted his body until he could lean against the cold stone wall behind him. That tiny movement alone was enough to leave his frail body gasping for breath.
In his previous life, his family's decent finances had given him plenty of time and money to try all kinds of things. Outdoor travel and wilderness trips had been one of them. And because of that, Xu Yuan knew exactly how bad his condition was.
Hypothermia, a high fever, and probably dehydration too…
He looked toward the veiled woman at the mouth of the cave. Her smooth black hair was plastered damply to her cheeks, and her clothes were soaked through as well, the wet black fabric clinging to the lines of her body.
At the sight, Xu Yuan felt not the slightest trace of romance. Instead, he nearly had a stroke. At that moment, he suddenly understood why the Third Young Master, Xu Changtian, managed to die in bizarre, almost embarrassing ways in so many different story branches.
Back when he first learned that part of the plot through the game's backstory, Xu Yuan had wondered how Xu Changtian could possibly die so absurdly with a top-tier expert like Ran Qingmo right there beside him. Now that he had lived it himself, he had the answer.
This idiot woman actually knocked out a sick and injured man, hauled him through freezing winter rain, dumped him here, and then just left him to fend for himself. For someone like her, a winter night like this probably meant nothing. For an ordinary person, it was enough to kill.
The cave remained silent. Only the soft patter of rain drifted in from outside.
Xu Yuan drew a deep breath and spoke weakly. "Ran Qingmo..."
The voice that had once sounded warm and polished as jade was now hoarse beyond recognition.
The woman at the cave entrance slowly opened her eyes and looked over at him calmly.
Xu Yuan panted and forced out each word weakly. "Do…do you want me to just die here?"
Ran Qingmo's face was still hidden behind black gauze. The only part visible was her pair of beautiful eyes, which blinked once before she shook her head. On the matter of whether Xu Yuan should stay alive, the two of them were in rare and total agreement.
Fighting through the discomfort wracking his body, Xu Yuan said, "If you don't want me freezing to death, then...then help me start a fire."
Ran Qingmo stared at him for two seconds. Her eyes blinked for an oddly long time before she answered with complete seriousness, "But...I'm out of fire starters."
Xu Yuan parted his lips, then changed tack. "What about your qi?"
In this world, qi was practically an all-purpose energy source.
Azure Point had never really shown that side of it, but in a supernatural world where top-tier fighters could reduce the entire capital to rubble, something as basic as starting a fire really should not be beyond an expert like her.
Ran Qingmo blinked twice, rose from the ground, and slowly walked over to him. Then she stretched out one slender hand in front of him.
A flicker of confusion crossed Xu Yuan's eyes. Very soon, he saw a swirl of energy gather silently in her palm. In the blink of an eye, a lump of ice more than ten centimeters across formed in her hand.
Holding the chunk of ice as if she felt no cold whatsoever, Ran Qingmo blinked and pushed it a little closer to Xu Yuan. "Ice. Will this do?"
Looking at the big chunk of ice she was offering him, Xu Yuan's first instinct was that this woman had to be messing with him.
Right. Ice… That’s great. Is she planning to keep my corpse fresh?
But when he saw how serious her expression was, he suppressed the urge to have an aneurysm and took a deep breath.
"I'm sick. I need a campfire, hot water, and food."
At that, Ran Qingmo studied his face for two seconds, seemingly checking his condition.
Two seconds later, she silently walked to a bundle sitting in the corner of the cave, rummaged through it for a moment, then came back with a waterskin and a dry flatbread, which she handed to him.
Xu Yuan looked at the food and water in his hands, then at the woman in front of him. His lips, pale from the cold, trembled slightly.
"What about the fire? Fire...what I need most right now is heat and hot water..."
"...But I'm out of fire starters."
Xu Yuan stared at her blankly.. He let out two short, breathless laughs, so angry he almost passed out on the spot. The drowsiness and dizziness from the illness kept dragging at him, urging him to sink back into unconsciousness. But he knew perfectly well that if he fell asleep now, it would probably be forever.
He quickly forced his mind back into focus and steadied himself. Licking his pale lips, he said, "Can you… can you transfer some qi to heal me?"
The medical system in this world was primitive by old standards, but because qi existed, in some ways it was no worse than modern medicine from his previous life. Unfortunately, in the middle of these deep mountains, there was obviously no chance of relying on doctors.
Still, Xu Yuan remembered that in Azure Point, there had been one of those old-school scenes where someone healed another person by transferring qi.
The moment Ran Qingmo heard that, she tossed aside the chunk of ice, sat down neatly in front of Xu Yuan, and without the slightest concern for propriety, lifted his clothes and pressed a slender jade-like finger against his lower abdomen.
As a chill seeped into him from there, Xu Yuan felt a burst of joy. Then in the very next instant, the cold sensation vanished.
Ran Qingmo suddenly pulled her hand back.
The two of them stared at each other in the cave.
Xu Yuan asked in a hoarse voice, "What happened?"
Ran Qingmo blinked twice and said softly, "You don't have qi. You'll die."
Xu Yuan lowered his head and glanced at himself. “What?”
"You don't have qi,” she repeated.
When a bit of worldbuilding that the game had brushed past in one line became reality, all the skipped-over details naturally filled themselves in.
That miraculous substance called qi really could heal people. But the essence of healing by transferring qi was this. You borrowed another person's qi to guide the qi within your own body, then circulated it through your opened meridians. Wherever it passed, the qi would gradually repair the damage. Harmful substances would also be consumed by it.
However, that only applied to cultivators. Ordinary people who had never begun cultivation had blocked meridians.
In other words, the Third Young Master’s entrance was only that big. Ran Qingmo's qi naturally could not get in. And if she forced it in anyway, the result would be her splitting him, quite literally.
Now that Xu Yuan understood the principle, the cave fell silent.
Leaning weakly against the freezing stone wall, he realized his condition was even worse than he had thought. He did not even have the strength left to take off his wet clothes. The fever and the hypothermia were already clouding his mind. The only reason he had not passed out yet was sheer survival instinct dragging him along by the collar.
In his previous life, he had suffered hypothermia once during an expedition in Iceland. Fortunately, someone in the group had been the sort of wilderness survival monster people jokingly compared to Bear Grylls, and that was the only reason he had made it back alive.
But now…? Xu Yuan glanced sideways at the woman beside him.
Ran Qingmo sat quietly there, her brows slightly knit, apparently troubled by the problem of how to keep her hostage from dying of illness.
Being looked after by a human iceberg who knew absolutely nothing, Xu Yuan did not believe that if he fell asleep now, he would ever wake up again.
He searched through his mind for ways to start a fire in the wild, only to reject them one by one. Either they lacked tools, or the materials were insufficient. Even the most basic fire drill method was impossible in weather like this. There was no chance of finding suitable dry wood or tinder in the middle of a cold downpour.
And so, in silence, time slipped by second after second.
The world before Xu Yuan's eyes gradually dimmed. His body tilted uncontrollably and began falling toward the ground beside him.
The last thing frozen in his fading vision was the sight of the woman rising to her feet and walking out of the cave.
Where… is she going?
That was his final thought before darkness swallowed everything.