Ultimate Villain's Return as a Doctor in the Cultivation World-Chapter 170 - Enjoying the Territory a Bit More

Chapter 170: Chapter 170 - Enjoying the Territory a Bit More

The sound she made during the breakthrough was not a moan and not a scream and had no appropriate category.

She collapsed forward.

He caught her.

His arms came around her thick waist as her strength went out and her weight came down — all of it, the full warrior-woman density of someone who had been a Void Return bloodline descendant at Core Formation Peak for three years and was now something different — and he held her against his chest with the specific, unhurried grip of someone who had been here before and knew how long this part took.

Her face was against his shoulder.

Her eyes were closed.

She was breathing.

The glow faded slowly, the meridian-luminescence reducing as the breakthrough event settled into its new equilibrium, the specific cooling quality of something that had been brilliant and was now simply ’true’. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

The clearing was very quiet.

The assembled warriors were looking at the two of them.

The husband was looking at the chieftain.

The chieftain was looking at the man lying on the forest floor with a Nascent Soul Early breakthrough woman draped across his chest, her thick warrior’s body rising and falling with the slow breath of someone who had been fundamentally remade in the last twenty minutes and was conducting the inventory.

He looked at her.

"Interesting territory you have here," he said, with the dry neutrality of a man making an accurate observation.

The chieftain’s amber eyes processed him.

She sat down.

Not on the ground — on a root, the large horizontal root of the nearest old cedar, the specific pragmatic choice of a woman who had decided to be here for a while and saw no reason to be uncomfortable about it.

Her warriors ranged themselves behind her with the unconscious, practiced arrangement of a group that had been doing this for years.

The husband stood at her left.

Cang’s eyes found him briefly.

The husband’s expression had several things in it that were doing their best not to be visible and were not entirely succeeding. Shock was the foundation layer. Beneath shock, the specific layered architecture of a man who had just watched something that had reorganized several of his existing reference points and was still organizing.

His eyes moved to the chieftain. Stayed there. The way eyes stay on things they are trying to hold.

’Ah,’ Cang thought.

He filed it.

"Tell me about yourself, senior," the chieftain said, with the even, direct quality of a woman who had decided that the situation she had walked into had resolved itself without her intervention and the practical next step was intelligence gathering.

"I’m a dual cultivator," he said. "Traveling. This forest is on my path."

The warrior woman on his chest made a sound. Not speech. The specific, soft, continuous sound of a woman in the immediate aftermath of a breakthrough who was conducting her new meridian map and making incremental discoveries.

"You travel alone?" the chieftain said.

"Not usually."

"You came from the north?"

"From above the north." A pause. "The boundary between Mid Stage and Late pushed me back. I landed here."

The chieftain absorbed this with the flat, professional attention of someone for whom the statement ’the Nascent Soul Late boundary threw me out’ was a data point she was cataloguing rather than a claim she was assessing for credibility.

"She attacked you," she said.

"From a branch. Threw a spear at my head."

"That’s Rua." A pause. The chieftain’s gaze went to the woman on his chest with an expression that combined ’of course’ with something more complicated. "She’s thorough."

"Yes," he agreed. "That was apparent."

A quiet settled.

The warrior woman — Rua — stirred. Her thick arms found a position. Her head turned, and her face came half-out of his shoulder, and her dark eyes, which were back in their correct location and functioning again, found the clearing full of her tribe looking at her.

Her expression assembled itself with the specific, incremental effort of a woman who had a warrior’s pride and was attempting to reassemble it after a twenty-minute comprehensive disassembly.

She looked at the chieftain.

"Chief," she said.

Her voice was raw.

"Rua," the chieftain said, with the flat affect of a woman who was conducting many simultaneous responses and was giving voice to the one that required the least effort.

"I—" Rua started.

"You’re Nascent Soul Early."

A pause.

Rua looked down at herself. She could feel it — the physician in him watched her feel it, the specific, dawning quality of a cultivator running an internal check and receiving a number they didn’t expect. Her hand came flat against her own sternum. Her amber eyes went wide.

"How," she said.

"Dual cultivation transfer," he said. "At sufficient stage differential, the energy exchange during extended contact accelerates the recipient’s progression past accumulated bottlenecks."

She was very still against him.

Then she looked at him with the dark eyes that were no longer rolling and no longer entirely warrior-composure-managed and that contained, in the space between those two states, the specific expression of a woman who was reassessing an encounter from the beginning with new information.

"You—" she said.

"Helped," he said. "In my way."

She held that for a moment.

Then she looked at the assembled tribe. At the chieftain. At the husband. Her expression arrived at a settled, complex thing that was not gratitude and was not embarrassment and contained elements of both and several other things that did not have clean names.

She sat up.

She did this with a warrior’s resolution and without reaching for anything to cover herself, because she was a warrior of this tribe and the tribe’s women did not cover themselves with shame, and the fact that her leather was in several locations that were not covering anything was not going to change that philosophy.

He sat up beside her.

The chieftain looked at them both.

"You are welcome in our village, senior," she said. "If it pleases you."

He looked at her.

Then he looked at the husband.

The husband was looking at the chieftain with the expression of a man trying to communicate several things with his eyes and succeeding at approximately one of them, which was the specific universal expression of ’please, let’s go now’.

He smirked.

The smirk was contained — contained the way a large fire is contained when someone puts a hand over it. Present. Controlled.

"It pleases me," he said. "I’d also appreciate something to eat. I haven’t slept since before the void-walk."

The chieftain nodded once, with the crisp efficiency of someone who was very comfortable being in charge of things.

"Bring the morning stores," she said, to no one in particular.

Three women moved.

"Senior," the chieftain said. "May I ask—" A pause. The amber eyes were doing something precise. "—if you have any further plans to stay within our territory? Our tribe has a competition in one week. Against the Scarlet Grove and the Iron Ash tribes at the seasonal Gathering."

He stood.

The inner robe settled around him, dark and intact and doing an adequate job of presenting as clothing despite the morning’s events, which the Heavenly Demon’s lineage and several centuries of the Heavenly Demon’s lifestyle had given him a certain equanimity about.

"Tell me more about it," he said, "over food."