A thick, yellow-red, viscous, and fishy liquid splattered as that small crab leg was chopped off.

The young demon crab let out a shrill scream, hurriedly turned around, and frantically scuttled back toward the sea. The intense pain in its leg filled it with terror, and it no longer cared about hunting down James Carter, fleeing desperately into the water.

James Carter didn’t dare linger, nor did he dare to pursue.

Gritting his teeth against the searing pain in his back, he sprinted toward the island’s jungle.

At that critical moment, he had unexpectedly managed to execute the “Double Wave Slash!”—the third and most advanced move of the Wave-Splitting Sword Technique—which he had never succeeded in performing before. However, he had almost no strength left.

He couldn’t possibly use the ‘Wave Stacking Slash’ again, and even the ‘Wave Breaking Slash’ would be difficult to perform.

He had to escape the coastline as quickly as possible. Otherwise, if the young demon crab recovered from the pain and came after him again, it would surely cost him his life.

Chapter 4: Jungle Escape

James Carter dashed madly through the island’s jungle undergrowth, feeling as if his chest was about to split open from pain, ready to collapse at any moment. A chill was roaming through his meridians, making him extremely uncomfortable.

At last, when he truly couldn’t run any farther, he stopped beneath an ancient tree, gasping for breath.

James Carter touched his back. There was a hole the size of an arrowhead in his coarse shirt, but the ancient painting scroll he wore close to his body was completely unharmed.

“It was this ancient scroll that saved my life!”

James Carter was still shaken. If not for the scroll’s invulnerability to blades and arrows, his back would have been pierced by the young demon crab’s water arrow, leaving a gaping hole and killing him instantly on the beach.

However, while the scroll had blocked the arrow’s penetration, the fierce force behind it had still struck his back hard.

That impact alone left James Carter’s chest aching and forced him to cough up several mouthfuls of clotted blood.

Moreover, the chilling aura of the water arrow had also lingered in his body.

“These sea demon beasts of the Eastern Sea are truly ferocious! That was just a young demon crab, only a few feet long, its shell not even fully formed, yet it was already so powerful—its strength rivaling that of a high-level martial artist, and it even had a terrifying water arrow spell! If it had been a fully grown demon crab, I’d have been killed instantly.”

At the root of the ancient tree, James Carter sat cross-legged and began to circulate what little true qi he had to heal his injuries.

Internal martial arts techniques are generally considered advanced secret skills and are extremely expensive.

James Carter had never practiced true internal martial arts.

The Wave-Splitting Sword Technique he practiced was an external sword art. However, after long-term training in external arts, once a martial artist reaches the mid-to-late stages of body refinement, a faint trace of true qi will gradually develop within, which can barely be used for healing.

Still, in terms of strengthening the body, cultivating true qi, and healing injuries, external techniques are clearly inferior to internal ones.

The top martial artists of the Martial Kingdom usually focus on internal cultivation, or combine both internal and external arts, complementing each other. With the addition of herbal tempering, their bodies become as tough as steel, and their true qi heals injuries rapidly.

“It’s a pity the Wave-Splitting Sword Technique is just a sword art, without any internal cultivation method. Otherwise, with strong internal energy, I could quickly expel this chilling aura.”

James Carter was helpless.

He could only use his weak true qi to force out the residual chill from the water arrow. This couldn’t be delayed, or it would greatly hinder his future cultivation.

For a martial artist, the greatest taboo is the accumulation of injuries.

Although internal injuries may not pose an immediate threat to life, and some martial artists may not even notice subtle damage to their meridians, if not cleared in time, these injuries will accumulate throughout the body’s blood vessels, causing blockages that are extremely difficult to clear.

Martial cultivation is a process of constantly unblocking the body’s meridians, tempering and strengthening the physique, and enhancing one’s vital energy. If the blood vessels become blocked, a martial artist’s progress will come to a standstill. Worse yet, as the body weakens with age, old injuries may resurface, leading to disability or paralysis, and a life spent bedridden.

For a martial artist, that is truly a fate worse than death!

Naturally, James Carter did not want his injuries to worsen.

What worried James Carter was that the chilling aura seemed to be no ordinary internal injury. It was like a cold current, rampaging through his body, causing his blood to stagnate and making him extremely uncomfortable.

“The young demon crab’s water arrow is truly insidious! It carries such a chilling aura, causing the blood to stagnate! Luckily, it only spat one arrow.”

Enduring the pain, James Carter drove his true qi to envelop and forcibly expel the chilling aura.

He gathered all the true qi in his body, barely forming a mass the size of a fist.

The chilling aura left by the water arrow was now only the size of a thumb, not much left, and it had already been worn down considerably as it rampaged through his body on the way here.

James Carter endured the pain in his meridians, and the stream of true qi surged toward the white mass of chilling energy, surrounding it.

However, the chilling energy was not dispersed; instead, his own true qi was scattered by it in just a few moments. Still, this caused the chilling aura to shrink by half, now only half the size of a thumb. After that brief struggle, it seemed to quiet down, no longer rampaging through his body.