Ninth In the World

Panda Novel

“Our things were all in the bag, so we lost them,” Fang Xue revealed, explaining with a red face that it was her fault that she and Yu Mu were in this predicament.

Di Jiu frowned, but stopped himself before he could ask how Yu Mu and Fang Xue had ended up there.

When she saw Di Jiu frown, Fang Xue quickly explained, “Yu Mu and I, along with two other friends of ours, were heading to the Wang Chuan Temple to play, when I suddenly saw a bridge I had never seen before. I’d come to the Wang Chuan Temple quite a few times in the past, but I had never seen this type of bridge. I thought it was a new attraction, so I stepped on it. Little did I know that the moment I stepped on it, a number of gray wolves would appear, frighten me out of my wits and make me run for my life…”

When Fang Xue was done, Yu Mu broke in and said, “When I saw her run, I ran too. She said that there were some gray wolves, and although I couldn’t see them, I felt that she was telling the truth. On the way, we lost our bag, which contained our cell phones, so we got completely lost. We only survived the past few days by eating wild grass and a few bars of chocolate.”

“Are you sure that the creatures you saw were wolves?” Di Jiu was unconvinced. Technically, the Wang Chuan Temple was an attraction, so wolves could not have showed up there.

Fang Xue seemed hesitant as she replied, “At the time, I was very sure, but later I started to suspect I might have seen something else. The temple is located at the border of the Wang Chuan mountain range, and all the dangerous parts of the border have already been closed off, so how could there have been wolves there?”

“How many days have you two been here?”

“About two or three days. We have been on the run, so we are not sure exactly how many days it’s been…” Fang Xue hesitated before she asked Di Jiu, “Are you lost too, Big Brother?”

Di Jiu nodded his head. “That’s right, I have lost my way too. My name is Di Jiu. You can call me by my name from now on. There is a lake not too far from here. Let’s stay there for a while and make some food. We will find our way tomorrow morning.”

“Ah!” As soon as Di Jiu was done speaking, Fang Xue shouted again and started talking in a scared voice. “I can see the bridge again. It’s right over there!”

Di Jiu and Mu Yu looked in the direction she was pointing at, but they did not see a bridge. There was just a field of thorny undergrowth there.

Yu Mu’s face turned pale. She could feel that something was amiss. She could not see the bridge, but she had sensed a shadow disappear where that thorny undergrowth was.

Di Jiu grabbed Fang Xue’s wrist. It was ice-cold. Di Jiu took out a pill and handed it over to her before telling her gently, “You must chew this pill and swallow it. Come over here and help me with this map, Yu Mu.”

Di Jiu had originally planned on spending the night there, but he gave up on that idea. There was something wrong with this place. He did not think that Fang Xue could have mistaken a thorny undergrowth for a bridge.

If Yu Mu could understand the directions on the map, Di Jiu would rather they got going right away and made some progress during the night.

The map he took out was a planar map, so although there were directions marked on it, Di Jiu could not recognize the forests, cliffs and valleys on the map.

“After crossing this forest, you will see Wang Chuan Temple…” Yu Mu screamed excitedly when she saw Di Jiu holding the map. Her excitement was temporary, though, “Too bad we don’t have a compass. I guess we will have to wait until tomorrow…” she said forlornly.

“I guess we could rest first. Yu Mu is not strong enough to walk yet,” Fang Xue, who had calmed down after swallowing the pill, said.

“I have a compass. If you can’t walk, I could carry you. We have to move right away. If you guys don’t want to move, I will leave by myself,” Di Jiu responded without hesitation. He took out his compass as he spoke.

Then, he took out two pieces of dry noodles and gave them to Fang Xue and Yu Mu.

He had seen the shadow of that bridge too, so he was sure that Fang Xue had not been hallucinating. Standing there made him feel uneasy.

“A compass!” Yu Mu and Fang Xue looked at the compass in his hands excitedly. They knew that, as long as they had a map and a compass, they would definitely make it out of there alive.

“Thank you, Brother Di Jiu.” Even though this was Yu Mu’s first time meeting Di Jiu, there was no choice but to let him carry her. The two pieces of dry noodles he gave them were a blessing for them.

Di Jiu carried Yu Mu as they walked in the direction of Wang Chuan Temple.

As he carried her piggy back, he felt a softness on his back. It was not the softness that surprised him, though— it was his strength.

He had not been able to practise martial arts so far, so he had kept studying other subjects, such as technology and medicine. Thus, it was no surprise to him that his stamina was far below average. However, as he was carrying Yu Mu, he suddenly felt no strain at all. It appeared as though his stamina had improved greatly. Di Jiu looked at his chest. He was sure that it must have been that gray stone that had caused these changes to his body.

It was a wonder to no longer find climbing up a cliff strenuous.

“Brother Di? You must have been traveling as well, right?” Yu Mu asked him when she thought it had gotten too quiet.

“Yes,” Di Jiu answered. He did not elaborate any more.

Yu Mu and Fang Xue, who sensed that Di Jiu was not interested in talking, did not say anything else either. As the moonlight seeped into the forest, the whistling sound of the trees moving in the wind was the only sound they could hear.

Even though his stamina was much better than it used to be, Di Jiu was slowly starting to find it difficult to continue.

The three of them walked and stopped repeatedly, but thankfully nothing happened during the night or until the next morning. They basked in the rays of the morning sunshine as they walked out of the forest and found themselves on a mountain peak.

“We still can’t see anything from here,” Fang Xue said worriedly as she peered through the fog in the distance.

Yu Mu could not see anything either, so they waited for Di Jiu to say something. Even though they knew the way to the temple, they had never travelled that route before.

Suddenly, Di Jiu realized in shock that he had the ability to see further than normal people. He could see some buildings faintly in the distance that Yu Mu and Fang Xue could not. He was sure that his eyesight had never been this good. It must have been the lightning strike that was responsible for these changes.

The news Qu Xiaoshu had shared with him had left him in shock and made him run away from the Ji Nation just as he had found out about these changes.

…

Once the three of them left the forest, their feeling of discomfort disappeared without a trace.

“We can rest here for half a day before we continue on our journey.” After a night of continuous trekking, Di Jiu was tired beyond words.

“Thank you, Brother Di Jiu. If it weren’t for you, I would have died at the Wang Chuan mountain range.” Yu Mu had rested on Di Jiu’s back for one night, so she could manage to walk a little now.

Di Jiu smiled. “I just happened to study a little medicine, so I knew how to remove the toxins from your body.”

“Have you graduated from medical school, Brother?” Fang Xue asked him expectantly as she looked at him. Both she and Yu Mu were medical school students, but they had been helpless against this type of snake venom. Still, Di Jiu seemed to have removed it really easily.