Chapter Forty-Seven: True Qi Breakthrough, Part Two

After the joke, everyone’s tense nerves eased a little. But the danger had not passed; it was still looming behind them in relentless pursuit.

One thing was certain: the huge waves driven by the tsunami would gradually weaken with distance. So long as they got far enough away, they ought to be safe. The prison had simply been too close to the tsunami’s point of origin, or it would not have been swept up in it.

Only then did they have the chance to see how Kang Hongyuan was doing.

Truthfully, he was in miserable shape. Kang Hongyuan had never practiced any advanced martial arts. The reason he had lived to such an old age was only because of a basic body-conditioning method and a few low-level folk techniques. He had been in the seawater even longer than Zhao Li, and had long since fallen into shock.

His heartbeat was extremely faint, his breathing almost impossible to detect. The first step in rescue was to drain the water from his stomach. These prisoners were all skilled first-aid hands, and while Zhao Li had been resting, they had already finished that work.

Zhao Li also used the basic body-conditioning technique to give Kang Hongyuan a few simple massages. It had to be said that, with inner force involved, especially the stimulation from the basic body-conditioning technique, the effect was excellent. Soon, Kang Hongyuan let out a groan.

Several burly men had already checked him over carefully. It was certain there were no fractures or obvious external injuries. His breathing and heartbeat were recovering now, so he should be out of serious danger. Even if a more thorough examination was needed, this was neither the time nor the place for it. They would have to wait until they were completely out of danger.

With Kang Hongyuan as the example, no one dared look down on the speeding rubber raft anymore. Everyone clung tightly to the fixed handholds beside them and no longer dared loosen their grip. Those who could even wrapped the rope around their waists several more times, so that even if they exhausted themselves for a moment or two, they could still hold on.

Zhao Li had already said that if anyone tried to take advantage of the chaos to escape, they would be executed on the spot.

Everyone knew he had been joking, of course, but no one could ignore the fact that Zhao Li now looked utterly drained. The fact that he had managed to save Kang Hongyuan had already left everyone deeply grateful. As for whether he would still be willing to act if something happened again, that was another matter entirely.

Everyone was being exceptionally careful. Zhao Li, on the other hand, looked back at the waves receding farther and farther behind them, and some of the tension in his heart finally eased.

Then he suddenly remembered something.

“Does James even know where that stretch of land is? Don’t tell me he’s going to lead us around in circles!”

“Don’t worry,” someone beside him answered at once. “James is currently flying in the direction away from the giant wave. Once he puts enough distance between us and it, he’ll turn course. As for that piece of land, we all stayed there during transport. Once James has been there even once, he can find it.”

“That accurate?” Zhao Li was a little surprised.

Only then did he remember that James had even dismantled the navigator in order to reduce weight and increase output power. On this vast ocean, was he really navigating only by memory?

He could not help but show a trace of concern for everyone’s prospects. “When you were being transported, you didn’t have a chance to look outside, did you?”

“James can confirm the destination by the changes in speed and direction of the craft he’s flying. That won’t stump him. Even if he were blindfolded, he could still take us safely to that stretch of land.”

The person beside him trusted James completely. He was probably very familiar with his special skill.

Only then did Zhao Li feel somewhat reassured.

Otherwise, after all his hard work, everything would have come down to entrusting their lives to a pilot who did not even know the destination. Thinking about it now, it really had been reckless. He had simply placed everyone’s lives in James’s hands without even knowing what the man was capable of. He truly had been too naive.

Still, in that situation, they had not really had any choice. It was already fortunate enough simply to have escaped death. Where would they have found the luxury of choice?

Now that he had settled down, Zhao Li watched James’s performance more closely, and soon realized that he was indeed a genuine expert pilot. Flying at extremely low altitude, only a few meters above the sea surface, he somehow managed to keep a perfectly steady course while towing the rubber raft behind him so smoothly. If it had been Zhao Li in his place, those people would likely have died countless times over by now.

Speaking of death, the instant he had been caught in the waves just moments ago had been impossible to describe. It had really felt as though he had brushed against the hands of the grim reaper himself. In the end, though, it had simply been his fear of dying that saved him. Under that life-or-death pressure, strength had somehow surged through him, and only then had he managed to escape.

Only now did he remember that, in that instant, his nameless inner energy seemed to have changed. Its speed had become astonishingly fast. He tried it again while seated on the rubber raft, and to his surprise, he could still do it.

A full circuit of circulation had once taken him more than two minutes at his fastest. Now, however, it had sped up dramatically. It seemed that a long, deep breath was all it took, and at most it would take only a little over ten seconds.

What was more, the nameless inner energy now seemed to maintain a very high circulation speed on its own, even without his deliberate control. Ever since his one conversation with Ban Yuchan, Zhao Li had not paid much attention to the inner energy within him, and had focused mainly on the basic body-conditioning technique during cultivation.

Now that he checked it again, he discovered that even when it circulated by itself, its speed was already comparable to his previous actively controlled circulation.

Such terrifying speed even shocked Zhao Li. Could it be that, in a moment of crisis, his inner energy had undergone some unpredictable change?

Yet the ease and strength he felt as the energy flowed through his meridians and body made him certain that there was nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, this seemed to be the true normal state of the energy.

What made Zhao Li even happier was that he could now feel his inner energy increasing, and he no longer sensed any discomfort in his meridians. Zhao Li could scarcely believe it. Had the nameless inner energy actually achieved a major breakthrough in such a desperate moment?

If so, then this nameless inner energy was far too difficult to cultivate. The very first bottleneck required a brush with life and death to break through. If that were the case, wouldn’t every future breakthrough demand survival against impossible odds? He could not even tell whether cultivating this energy was truly the right path.

After about half an hour, they should have already gone more than a hundred kilometers. The waves behind them had been left far, far in the distance. And from the look of it, their force truly seemed to be weakening.

He measured by eye in the simplest way, and those waves had already calmed greatly compared with the first moment he had seen them. They were no longer those monstrous waves over a hundred meters high.

Third update complete, pushing for the rankings and asking for votes. Thank you, everyone!