Chapter 5: 5 - Nightmares
Xu Xin continued to inattentively trudge forward with the same monotonous pace, looking like a robot.
His leg, meanwhile, was now healing, and the healing this time was different from before, because it was focused only on his bone, with all the aquamarine blood in his body gathering in the bone, healing it.
There was about a two inch hole in his leg that was missing, but it was still a smaller wound overall compared to the gash that had been on his side previously.
At the same time, the single drop of aquamarine blood was entirely gathered in his bone, and it was healing it specifically, with all the other healing in his body brought to almost a complete standstill.
Because all of the healing was focused on the bone in his leg, it was much faster than before.
As he continued to walk, it quickly healed and by the next day, it was already partially healed.
By the day after that, it was about a third of the way healed, and four days later, it was completely healed.
By now, he had come back from the inattentive state, and he realized what change had occurred, and he was completely shocked by it.
He continued to walk during this entire time, and he didn't feel the slightest bit tired despite walking for so long.
The reason he didn't feel tired, he figured, was because of not only the change in his body, but also due to the fact that he was no longer working out while he healed and also that he was just walking instead of running all day like he was previously.
Although he was healing during this time, he ate the proper amount of food to heal and wasn't tired due to the lack of arduous activity.
He had already taken off the bandaging, and you could see the bone inside of his leg as he walked, as none of his flesh had healed.
He had taken off the splint, as he no longer needed it, and he was simply walking around with a hole in the flesh in his leg.
After it was completely healed, he took the arrow out of his shoulder, and although it initially bled, it quickly stopped. In order to take it out, he had to push it in from the front in order to avoid cutting his skin open again with the arrow head, and he had to pull it out from the back, which was incredibly hard without help.
The only reason that he actually could pull it out of his back was because it was in his shoulder, which was one of the easiest places to reach on his back.
He would have to get help with the other two arrows due to their locations. One of them was in the middle of his belly, while the other had actually scraped his heart.
He might be able to get the one in his abdomen without help, but he definitely didn't want to cause any more damage to his heart, so he would have to have someone else pull that one out.
He then put the arrow into his bag.
The arrow in his shoulder had scraped his bone and caused a crack, which needed to be healed, and it quickly started to heal, with it being completely healed by the next day.
After that, he didn't pull out any more arrows, because he didn't want to cause too much damage to his organs while not having access to proper medical supplies.
After his bones healed, his flesh started to heal, and it did so just as fast as the bones, with his entire body being perfectly fine aside from the last two arrows within only another couple days.
Due to this, he resumed his schedule of running and working out, but he made sure not to do any exercise that would work the areas around the arrows, just in case.
As expected, he resumed his schedule of sleeping after that, but he realized that something had fundamentally changed, because he now only slept for four hours a day and his healing was permanently faster while also requiring less energy in the process.
He realized that his body was also prioritizing what to heal, and it healed his bones before it worked on his flesh, and after his bones were healed, it healed his muscles, then his nerves, and finally, his skin.
And on top of that, the healing didn't leave any scars on any tissue within his body. It was as if the injury simply didn't exist in the first place.
If the archers from before were to see this, they would be completely astonished. If it was simply completely healing this fast, it wouldn't be that big of a deal since that could happen in rare cases, but it was also the fact that he had gotten rid of the inner breath from the older archer that had entered his body.
Inner breath was the energy that went into the dantian of the cultivator, and it was their source of power. An example of this was the silver glow of energy around the female archer's arrow. That was her inner breath, and it made the arrow faster and stronger.
Once someone's inner breath entered another person's body, it would cause chaos and destruction wherever it went, making the injury much worse than just the physical wound, but Xu Xin had somehow recovered without even showing any signs that it had entered his body in the first place.
The archer's inner breath wasn't focused on damage, but it still should at least have some negative effect on him. However, that was simply not the case.
Xu Xin realized after this that the change brought by the tree to his body wasn't as simple as he initially thought, and it might be a dramatic change that got better over time. Otherwise, why else would his healing suddenly improve dramatically?
But this was just a side thought of his, and he continued on his journey.
Another ten days later, he finally managed to reach a large town in the kingdom, and he was only a while away from the center of the kingdom now.
In this town, every single person there looked at him strangely, some even asking about the arrows in his body, but he just said that he was fine and would get them out later. It gave them the impression that he was one of those people addicted to battle that didn't feel much pain.
He hadn't snapped the tips off of the arrows yet in order to avoid getting hurt any further, which meant he had issues sitting down and sleeping, but he managed well enough until now.
After getting into town, he had someone cut off the tips of the arrows so he could take them out, after which he pulled them out the front.
He did this right in front of everyone, and those who doubted him realized that the arrows were real, and they could see the hole through his chest that started bleeding once he pulled them out, and then he wrapped them with bandaging and went on with his day as if nothing had happened.
This left the people around him shocked and curious towards who he was. By now, he had broken through to the sixth stage of the body rank, and he looked normal in every other way, making people curious towards him.
As he expected, his progress speed, at least in the body rank, was only below that of his original speed.
After one night in the town and getting news about him spread as well as removing the arrows, he then left the town and continued towards the kingdom center, which he reached about three days later.
The news spread about his appearance as well, and now there was some clearly visible aquamarine color in the roots of his hair, meaning that he was described as having aquamarine eyes and hair, and people thought that he had originally had this color of hair but dyed it black.
But he ignored this news spreading, since it only did what he wanted it to do anyways.
He didn't really understand why he hadn't met any bandits, but he didn't care since it only made his journey ten times easier.
As he reached the center of the kingdom, he came upon a massive wall that surrounded the inner city, and there was a massive gate that let carriages and people through an inspection.
Because his healing had increased, the speed at which his muscles grew increased, allowing him to reach the seventh stage of the body rank by now.
As he came up to the gate, a guard approached him, signaling that he was going to perform an inspection to make sure that he didn't have any bad intentions.
Seeing that this person was only at the seventh stage of the body rank, the guard wasn't respectful in the slightest as he took his bag, searching in it and patting down Xu Xin without the slightest bit of care or respect.
Xu Xin simply allowed this since he had nothing to hide, but he noted this guard's face. He was disrespectful, and Xu Xin would punish him later since he couldn't do it now.
Xu Xin had actually grown during his journey, so he was about the same size as a sixteen year old now, and he didn't look exactly his age, but people could tell that he was still quite young although he was younger than his build suggested. After all, his face was still childish.
He then was about to enter the city when he suddenly saw the archer and her apprentice near the entrance, waiting for something or someone. They were constantly scanning through the people entering the city, especially those in carriages, meaning that they weren't waiting for Xu Xin in particular.
But as the disciple's eyes scanned over Xu Xin, her eyes instantly shone with recognition and hate. She still hated Xu Xin for insulting her and her master, but once she thought about what happened, her expression of hate turned into one of solemnness and wariness.
It only took another moment for her master to find Xu Xin, and the same change happened to her, although it was much less hate than her disciple, and more wariness than the latter.
As their eyes locked onto Xu Xin, he looked at them with a completely neutral expression, not showing the slightest hint of emotion whatsoever.
They then stood there and looked at each other for a few moments before they ignored each other's existences. The master and disciple duo didn't want anything to do with Xu Xin right now, and although they regretted pissing him off, they couldn't take it back.
He then started to go into the inner city, but just as he passed them, they started to walk somewhere, and he looked where they were going. It turned out that they were here to greet someone entering the city, just as he expected.
But just as he was about to ignore them again, he saw who got out of the carriage they were going to, and his heart nearly exploded from anger as his face went red and he choked from rage.
He only barely managed to suppress his killing intent as he saw his brother step out of the carriage.
People saw him choke and start to struggle, but they quickly just ignored him since he was so weak.
The killing intent he was suppressing right now was so strong that if it was released, everybody within a two hundred foot radius would feel like they were being strangled to death.
But he was forced to suppress his anger and hate as he went into the city with a vicious expression on his face.
His brother was the reason that his life fell apart, and he was the person he wanted to kill most in this world, but he had extraordinary self-restraint, which was why he was able to suppress his urge to kill him right here and now.
His mind was thrown into turmoil from resisting the urge to kill him, but he still managed to overcome it.
He then forced himself to go into the city while pushing the thought of his brother from his mind, trying to forcefully stop his killing intent from leaking out.
As he got into the city, he instantly went into the nearby woods. The wall of the city was built around the city itself, but there was also a large area of undeveloped land within the city walls in order to hunt food and to allow for competitive hunting.
He went in there and simply found a random place to sit down and calm down. Words couldn't describe how much he hated his brother, not only because he ruined his life, but because he killed the one he loved.
It only took a few minutes for him to fall into a deep sleep on the ground, but his sleep was filled with nightmares of that night.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
yeetitetatious
yeetitetatious I have officially rereleased my most successful novel, Heart of Ruby, and you can now read the first chapter here on WebNovel.
It initially failed due to bad writing and pacing, but I have fixed the issues and am going to start releasing chapters for it along with this novel.
Have a good day!
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