Chapter 239 Passing on the Archery Art
At that remark, the smile on the faces of the pasture Army Advisor and the Junior Chief of the Moon-shooting Tribe both immediately faded. The two exchanged a look, obviously a little worried about leaving Guo Qinyan behind.
The pasture Army Advisor asked tentatively, “Senior, do you have some confidential matters to tell the Virgin Goddess?”
Li Mu replied, “Why ask if you already know it’s confidential?”
The pasture Army Advisor looked quite embarrassed.
He was speechless at Li Mu’s answer. He felt that he could not communicate with that mysterious hero in the usual way. Each remark Li Mu said could leave him at a loss for words… Could he just have a normal conversation with others?
The pasture Army Advisor and the Junior Chief of the Moon-shooting Tribe still felt a little concerned for the Virgin Goddess, because she was… too stunning after all.
From the two’s looks, Li Mu could tell what was worrying them. So, he said irritatedly, “You’re so fussy! Will I really rape her first and then murder her? Hey, what are you thinking? Why picture such a lewd deed? Look, she is my nephew. How could you…?”
“Shut up!” The Virgin Goddess had turned livid. ‘His tongue sure is too vicious.’
The faces of the pasture Army Advisor and the Junior Chief of the Moon-shooting Tribe instantly darkened.
‘This man does have the balls to speak anything out loud.’
‘If it were anyone else who said such remark, he would probably have been chopped to mincemeat by the Virgin Goddess and fed to dogs.”
‘Such words do ruffle Qing Yan’s feathers!’
“I’ll stay. You go now,” The Virgin Goddess uttered with a straight face.
Li Mu snickered and gestured the Junior Chief of the Moon-shooting Tribe and the pasture Army Advisor to leave.
Reluctantly, the two marched into the Transmitting Array and departed.
“What do you want me here for?” demanded the Virgin Goddess in a cold voice.
Li Mu answered, “Tut-tut-tut, look at your face. Your look is saying that I owe you a million… Tonight, if it wasn’t for me, you lot perhaps would have become corpses by now. Don’t you know you have a good deal to thank me for?”
Qing Yan just gazed at Li Mu frostily and remained silent.
Li Mu thought, ‘Holy crap! This woman really can’t take a joke.’
After a moment of deliberation, he said, “Stop glaring at me. Don’t take me wrong. I am certainly not aroused by such an icy woman like you… Em, I just want to ask you one thing. Do you belong to Brother Guo’s clan or not?”
“If I say yes, so what?” Qing Yan felt her insides were about to explode.
Her patience had almost drained out. If any other man talked to her like that, she would have long since regarded him as a sworn enemy.
“If you say yes, then, prick up your ears and listen carefully, because I won’t repeat this.” Then, Li Mu’s spiritual force swept across the place. After sensing no experts eavesdropping on their conversation, he recited a pithy formula.
The Virgin Goddess was stunned at first, but soon realized it was the pithy formula of the mental cultivation method for the miraculous Heart Heavenly Shot.
Since she had practiced fragments of the Heart Heavenly Shot, she swiftly ascertained that what Li Mu was reciting was precisely the complete version. Although Li Mu was still uttering the general principles at the start of the work, it already illustrated many defects, conflicts, and obscure parts she had met in the damaged book.
Li Mu continued reciting, covering the mental cultivation method in the preface, the Individual Shot, the Heart Shot, and the Heaven Shot Chapter. His recounting was comprehensive and complete, leaving nothing behind.
The Virgin Goddess was intoxicated as Li Mu proceeded with the lecture.
Precisely because she had studied the fragmented version did she grasp how wise and awe-inspiring the full Heart Heavenly Shot was. That legendary archery art on the pasture was truly on par with those secret manuals the top nine Holy Clans had. It was, indeed, an unparalleled Cultivation Method.
Given her previous study and her incredible intelligence—she was, aside from the Junior Chief of the Moon-shooting Tribe, a peerless young talent in the pasture and was highly gifted in martial arts—she bore ninety-nine percent of the lecture in mind after listening to it once. She only failed to comprehend the the last bit on the mental cultivation method of the Heaven Shot, due to its abstrusity.
“Do you remember all of it?” asked Li Mu.
Qing Yan’s look softened. But just as she wanted to reply, Li Mu continued, “It doesn’t matter if you didn’t grasp it completely. I won’t repeat it anyway.”
The Virgin Goddess suddenly choked with anger.
She did feel the man’s kindness, but why was his tongue so abhorrent? Could he talk like a normal guy?
“Why pass such great art to me?” The Virgin Goddess forcibly kept her fury on check and inquired in a tone as calm as she could manage.
Without herself noticing, she was getting more and more curious about Li Mu.
But that was not like what the usual Virgin Goddess would do.
“Because I now know that your martial arts and archery skills are too poor. You’re just a dabbler who is bringing shame on Brother Guo. If you managed to grasp what I passed on to you, go back and work hard to practice. Do make some progress, in case you are caught by others and sent to the Musical House to be auctioned again,” said Li Mu without blushing.
The Virgin Goddess: “@#￥%…”
“It was Uncle Guo who asked you to pass this skill to me, right?” She took a guess.
Li Mu’s lips curled up as he said, “Humph, never has Brother Guo said this. He didn’t even mention you. Only when I saw the tattoo on your shoulder did I connect you with him.”
At once, the Virgin Goddess blushed. But her burning cheeks quickly cooled down. The instant of abashment with anger, however, her unmatchable beauty was raised even further.
She soon came to realize that the man wearing the silver smiley-ghost mask was also there when she was being auctioned on the main stage of the Musical House. Also, he caught sight of her barely clothed body—of course, she did not know the thing that happened prior on the main stage, as she had been confined inside the steel cage on the flowery carriage at the rear.
But her sudden abashment and exasperation blew Li Mu away.
‘Fu*k, this woman is so stunning!’
If merely judging by appearance, the Hua Xiangrong who had practiced the simplified version of the Xiantian Skill was all the same a little eclipsed by her. Perhaps only the sight of that mysterious woman in white—looking over her shoulder, in the middle of washing her face by the lake at the base of mountains—was comparable with the picture of that abashed and annoyed Goddess of Martial Arts.
In truth, the reason that Li Mu taught her the mental cultivation method of the Heart Heavenly Shot was not sympathy or any ridiculous idea of making the beauty happy. Instead, it was because of a remark Guo Yuqing unintentionally made when they were chattering, after he imparted the art to Li Mu behind the Nine-dragons Fal. He said, “This mental cultivation method is supposed to belong to the vast pasture. But it’s a pity that I failed to teach this mental cultivation method to those in my clan due to some matters. Now, given that I have been banned from the vast pasture, it’s very difficult to pass this miraculous archery art back to them.”
Thus, Li Mu taught Guo Qinyan that art just for making up for Brother Guo’s regret.
“Who on earth are you?” The Virgin Goddess could not help but ask, “The Heart Heavenly Shot is a rare splendid work. But you simply passed it to me even without Uncle Guo’s request?”
“Rubbish. The rare splendid work in your eyes is perhaps worth nothing to me. This Heart Heavenly Shot, well, in my view, is so average… Get going. The formation is about to die away,” said Li Mu impatiently.
But the more evasive Li Mu was on that question, the more intrigued the pasture Goddess of Martial Arts was.
She even noticed, without knowing when, that she was not that mad at him.
“Can… Can you take off that mask and let me have a look of your face? So I can know what kind of man rescued me, Brother Tie Muzhen and the others.” The pasture Goddess of Martial Arts tried to keep her voice as bland as she could.
“What?” Li Mu looked quite alarmed. He took a step backward in fright and yelled, “What do you want?” “I warn you, don’t chase after my beauty. I’m a man you can never have… Well, those famous prostitutes at the Musical House who are all charming and alluring tried to visit me at all costs. Although they begged me to adore them and offered to accompany me at night, I declined all of them… So, you’d better not scheme on something you should not.”
The pasture Goddess of Martial Arts was petrified by his words.
“@#￥%…”
She wanted to kill him right then!
‘Why is it so hard to talk in a civilized manner with this man’
The pasture Goddess of Martial Arts ended being driven mad by Devil Li’s jokes.
At the moment overwhelmed by a rush of fury, she totally forgot that her strength was far lower than Li Mu’s and leaped up trying to grab at Li Mu’s mask.
But the second she struck, she quickly came to her senses and doubted whether he would let her grab his mask considering his profound cultivation.
However, what astonished her was that Li Mu simply stayed rooted on the spot, not ducking or anything.
The silver smiley-ghost mask was easily pulled away.
A young, manly and vigorous face was revealed.
Although he was not super handsome, he had very attractive large eyes and thick brows. The pair of sleek, dark brows, and the eyes that seemed to have stars move, disappear, and reappear in them, and the pitch-dark pupils that looked like endless blackholes were all features that almost could enchant anyone’s soul.
And what was more important was that he turned out to be very young.
Much younger than Guo Qinyan had imagined.
‘This the face of a man in his youth!’
Even though she had heard the voice of the man wearing the silver smiley-ghost mask and already surmised that he was pretty young, when she saw his face uncovered, she still jumped with shock.
What she saw was not a face that was unnaturally conserved by profound cultivation.
The radiance of youth on his features was just untamed.
Holding the silver mask, the pasture Goddess of Martial Arts suddenly came up with an array of disordered ideas. She froze on the spot, clueless about what to do next. Truthfully, she never thought she could unmask Li Mu so easily.
“You…” Li Mu, however, looked utterly astounded and infuriated. He then snapped, “For you to get physical with me! Do you know that ten years ago when my master put this mask on me, he forced me to vow that if any woman took this mask off in the future I must marry her, and if I don’t, I’ll be gone from this world in twenty years… You… Why did you do this? You must take responsibility for me!”
Upon hearing that, the pasture Goddess of Martial Arts froze again.
‘Is that even a thing?’
But the next second, she felt a tingle of guilt for her reckless action and asked, “Really?”
Yet, as she caught Li Mu’s expression when he was trying to restrain from laughing, it immediately dawned on her that she had been tricked. At once, her anger erupted. She thrust the silver mask back to Li Mu’s arms, spun around without a comment and then stormed into the formation.
“Are you going to take responsibility or not?”
Li Mu shouted after her deliberately.
Next, the pasture Goddess of Martial Arts disappeared into the formation.
Li Mu did a gesture with his fingers, then, the six jade pieces flew back to him and the formation stopped operating.
He immediately stamped on the ground, producing energy ripples that spread across the square. In a moment, the formation pattern etched in the earth had completely vanished.
After that, Li Mu turned around and flew towards the heart of the Musical House like a flash.
“Everything I ought to do has been done. It’s time to pick up Shangguan Yuting.”
Nevertheless, there was one thing that still puzzled him. That was, the identity of the extremely formidable expert in the Moon-hugging House, with an aura as strong as the blazing sun that he perceived through the Third Eye, and why he had not seen the expert strike yet.