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The two boys were crouching on the snowy ground in shock. Under the afterglow of the setting sun, a falcon was circling gracefully overhead, and then it flew down at only about forty zhang elevation above the ground, before flapping its wing and rose high into the sky, flying in the direction of the Great River.

Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling you-look-at-me-I-gaze-at-you, they were both speechless; so much so that they even lost the will to crawl up.

Using the ‘treading on the snow without leaving any trace’, which was extremely taxing to their true energy, they had been rushing for nearly seven li, followed by running at full speed nonstop for more than three sichen. The Great River was only about fifty li ahead on foot, yet tragically they were discovered by Kang Qiaoli’s flat-feathered beast. This blow was so heavy that they were frustrated!

In addition, they both felt moody and hot-tempered; a feeling that they had never experienced before, only neither of them told the other about it.

Quite half a day later, Kou Zhong smiled bitterly and said, “Kang Qiaoli and the others must be on the boat.”

The feeling of discomfort was getting more intense, they had to rely on the icy-cold snow to suppress the feeling.

Xu Ziling understood what he meant; the pursuing troops must be using the boat to leisurely sail from the Wei River to enter the Yellow River. They released the falcon along the southern bank to search for the two boys’ track. On the currently snow-white world, one falcon was more competent in the searching operation than a thousand troops with ten thousand horses.

The enemy was waiting at their ease for the exhausted enemy, while the two boys’ body was weary, their strength exhausted. Plus against these acute-eyes high in the sky, there was no hiding tactic that they could carry out. The potential for the good and the bad was clearly understood.

Xu Ziling put his face on the snow. The ice-cold feeling calmed him somewhat. Looking up to the distance, he said, “Kang Qiaoli ought to be helping Zhao Deyan dealing with Shi Zhixuan, how could he have the time to mind other people’s business? In my opinion, the falcon ought to belong to Ke Dazhi. The pursuing troops must be the Chang Lin Army.”

Kou Zhong nodded and said, “True! The color of the feather was a bit different.”

Xu Ziling said, “Aren’t you proficient in mountain and river geography? Tell me, where is the nearest city?”

Horrified, Kou Zhong said, “We just escaped from a city, are you telling me you want to walk right into the trap by entering another city? Ay! If you continue forward, across the river will be Wannian and Gaoling, two cities. If you turn back, it will be Weinan. But in those places I am sure there will be pursuing troops waiting respectfully for us.”

The snowy plain where they were this moment was sandwiched between the Yellow River and the Wei River. If the enemy divided themselves into two groups and took the boat to pursue the two boys, they would seal the escape route both in front and behind the two boys. Without the falcon, they might still be able to play some tricks against the enemy. But now they were definitely unable to find any solution, and were at an absolute disadvantage.

Kou Zhong said, “If we bury ourselves in the snow, how long do you think we can hold up?”

Xu Ziling replied in heavy voice, “If the enemy’s good self is about to come, based on our current condition, being able to hold up for a quarter hour will already be extremely extraordinary, but afterwards we will completely lose the ability to fight.”

Distressed, Kou Zhong said, “Currently we won’t have much fighting strength left anyway. Thinking that Ke Dazhi, that kid, has his belly full of skill having been tempered in the desert, it is clear that he is a big expert in following a trail and seeking a trace, just like Old Ba. Even if we want to go, it will be in vain; we might as well take his mother’s moment of rest. We will use this time to restore our energy as much as possible, and when the falcon reappears on the horizon, we immediately bury ourselves in the snow. If we shrink our pores, then even if the opponent dispatch hunting dogs, they won’t be able to smell us.”

Xu Ziling looked back. The footprints on the snow were following them right to this spot. Following his example, Kou Zhong also turned his head around to look at the footprints. While struggling hard to suppress the heat rising up in his body, he laughed and said, “This is called empty is solid and solid is empty; it is especially useful for smart people.”

Xu Ziling sprang up and laughed and cursed, “

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your solid and empty; no-track-no-trace is the most brilliant move.”

Startled, Kou Zhong said, “If we fully use treading on the snow without leaving any trace, in less than half a li we would be done for.”

Xu Ziling crossly said, “There are experts [orig. gaoshou (high hand)] in treading on the snow without leaving any trace in the world, but there are also inept people [orig. dishou (low hand)] in treading on the snow without leaving any trace. Come on!”

And so he took big strides heading to the east. Every ten paces, he created palm wind to blow across the snow to erase his footprints. However, as he rushed his true qi, the irritability in his heart was growing more intense.

Greatly delighted, Kou Zhong walked beside him, taking turn in erasing the footprints.

Shortly afterwards, the two entered a snowy forest. Xu Ziling looked for a clearing with particularly thick snow. Sitting down, he said, “Let us, two brothers unleash our unique-and-unmatched-in-the-world, the absolute-pinnacle great method of circulating qi from the Jade Annulus of He Clan plus the Demonic Emperor Relics plus the Secret to Long Life. We will succeed or die trying.”

Kou Zhong sat cross-legged down in front of him, he reached out to grab Xu Ziling’s outstretched palm-up hands, and spoke happily, “After snatching the Relics, we have not had time to study meticulously what’s inside it; let’s take advantage of this opportunity to explore it! Ay!”

Powerless to defend himself, Xu Ziling did not want to waste his time to perform an in-depth investigation on why he was sighing. He said, “You send your true qi in from your left hand, I will send my true qi from my right hand to you. After circulating through all the channels in our bodies for a hundred cycles, we reverse the flow, let’s see what will happen.”

Four palms made contact with each other, the two were severely shaken at the same time. The two major innate acupoints on top of Kou Zhong’s head and the center of Xu Ziling’s feet were hit and was opened wide simultaneously. Abundant and universal innate qi pierced through their palms and entered inside their bodies, bit by bit it transformed into primordial qi, which circulated around along with the true qi, surging faster and faster, but also bringing them into critical circumstances.

A never-happened-before event in Wulin history was taking place.

It could be said that the course of events in the two boys’ training for the past many years was circuitous and bizarre. Because they started training quite late, it should be difficult for them to reach the pinnacle of martial art study. However, from the Secret to Long Life’s point of view, they were precisely two pieces of raw fine jade that had not undergone carving process.

There has never been anybody in the previous generations that could successfully reap any benefit from the Secret to Long Life; one of the reasons was naturally the profound, hard-to-understand secret, which led people mistakenly taking the wrong path. But the more important reason was because of their own training; it was difficult for the practitioners to turn back from their deep-rooted practice. Take ‘Mountain-Pushing Hand’ Shi Long for example [Book 1 Chapter 1]. By the time he obtained the Secret to Long Life, he had already trained external martial art for several decades. Just like a sheet of paper densely covered with characters, there was no more empty space to write.