My Cultivation Techniques Upgrade Automatically

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: A New Martial Art Has Appeared

Wu Chen and Liu Wei emerged from the withered grasslands, one following the other.

Along the road, the gazes of many refugees fell upon Liu Wei’s slender figure.

Their eyes held unconcealed desire.

Sensing the undisguised malice, Wu Chen stopped and stepped in front of Liu Wei, his gaze sweeping indifferently over the onlookers.

The hem of his ragged clothes was caked with dried blood, and his hands were still stained with it from when he had killed Zhang Sheng with a single punch.

Just by standing there, motionless, he exuded a murderous aura.

A single glance from him made their skin prickle. They didn’t dare to linger.

Fearing they might attract trouble, they quickly ducked their heads and hurried on their way, banishing all other thoughts.

’These guys are about to starve to death, and they’re still thinking about...’

Watching their retreating figures, Wu Chen finally started walking again, complaining silently to himself.

’Are they just throwing caution to the wind, hoping to get some kicks in before they die?’

Wu Chen shook his head and continued onward without a word.

With him leading the way, no one dared to get any ideas about Liu Wei.

When he had safely escorted Liu Wei back to her father, Liu Linshan was already lying face down on the ground, unconscious and hovering between life and death.

”Father, Father... Wake up...”

Liu Wei staggered over and helped her father up.

Seeing his ashen face and lack of response, her voice turned mournful, as if she were about to weep tears of blood.

With his level in the Martial Arts, Wu Chen’s perception far exceeded that of an ordinary person. He could tell that Liu Linshan was still breathing faintly, clinging to his last thread of life.

But he could only shake his head helplessly.

An abdominal wound like Liu Linshan’s might have been treatable at a clinic in normal times, but they were on the run from a famine, and food was scarce.

They couldn’t even get enough to eat, let alone treat a wound.

Wu Chen stepped forward and placed the steel blades that had belonged to Zhang Sheng and Zhao Shi in front of them, leaving them for self-defense.

He then divided the bran cakes and the waterskin he had scavenged, leaving half for the father and daughter.

The small porcelain vials of medicinal powder and ointment were useless to him, so he left them all behind.

With that, Wu Chen had done all he needed to do.

He turned to leave.

He had taken the man’s Martial Arts and saved his daughter in return.

They were even now.

As for escorting the father and daughter any further...

Looking at the road ahead, shimmering and distorted under the scorching sun, Wu Chen could only give a bitter laugh.

The path forward was uncertain. Whether he himself would survive was still a question mark.

’How could I possibly protect someone else?’

Behind him, Liu Wei’s sobbing voice called out:

”Father, Father, wake up...”

Liu Wei didn’t just sit there. As she called out to him, she deftly undid the blood-soaked bandage on her father’s abdomen, grabbed a porcelain vial from the ground, and prepared to apply the powder.

Perhaps Liu Wei’s repeated calls had worked, for the barely breathing Liu Linshan opened his eyes.

When he saw it was truly his daughter calling to him and not a hallucination, a light returned to his clouded eyes.

”Weiwei!”

His expression grew animated. In an instant, he realized that the young man who had asked for his Martial Arts had successfully rescued his daughter.

Liu Linshan’s gaze immediately left his daughter and swept around, as if searching for something.

Finally, his eyes locked onto the figure several dozen feet away, steadily walking farther.

Watching the receding figure, a hint of panic crossed his face.

”Weiwei, take these rations, take everything here, quickly!”

Liu Linshan used all his strength to push away his daughter as she was applying the medicine, pointing at Wu Chen’s back.

”Go! Hurry and follow that young man!”

He knew there was little hope of survival for him. Leaving the food and medicine for himself would be a complete waste.

The road ahead was fraught with countless dangers. Even with a weapon, it would be difficult for her to stay safe.

Only by following Wu Chen would his daughter have any hope of survival.

”I’m not going.”

Liu Wei shook her head, not moving an inch.

She didn’t even spare the receding figure a glance.

She picked up the small porcelain vial and silently continued to apply the medicine to her father.

”You! You!”

Liu Linshan was furious, but there was nothing he could do.

But when his gaze fell upon the two sabers his treacherous apprentices had carried—the ones Wu Chen had left behind—he seemed to remember something.

’Judging from before, this young man seems quite interested in Martial Arts... even something as common as a Body Technique!’

’Then...’

Liu Linshan thought of the ancestral blade manual tucked inside his robes, a manual he never easily showed to others.

Watching the back grow ever more distant, he knew he couldn’t hesitate any longer. Enduring the sharp pain in his abdomen, he shouted at the receding figure:

”Young man, I have another Martial Arts manual! If you can escort my daughter on her journey...”

WHOOSH!

The moment the words left his mouth, the wind suddenly howled, kicking up a cloud of dust!

Liu Linshan instinctively turned his head to shield his eyes from the dust.

When he turned back, the young man’s familiar face was standing right before him.

GASP!

Whether it was from the pain of his wound tearing as he shouted or for some other reason, Liu Linshan sucked in a sharp breath as he looked at Wu Chen.

He remembered that when he first met the young man, his stance hadn’t been nearly this steady!

The speed at which he had just returned from several dozen feet away was probably a good deal faster than his own Spiritual Snake Step, which he had practiced for five or six years—to the point of Great Success and still supplemented with stance training!

It was truly...

Terrifying to behold!

”Thank you, young man...”

Liu Linshan was no fool. Seeing him return, he knew Wu Chen had agreed. He let out a long sigh of relief, his heart settling.

But before he could finish, Liu Wei cut him off loudly.

”Father, if you’re not going, then I’m not going anywhere either.”

Liu Wei was incredibly stubborn, and she shrank back.

She was afraid that the man who had just saved her would agree to her father’s terms and drag her away by force.

At some point, she had clutched one of the blades to her chest, her hand gripping the hilt. She had no intention of being taken without a fight.

”You!” Liu Linshan pointed at his daughter, his fingertip trembling with rage. A surge of anger almost made him faint again.

Knowing he couldn’t win an argument with his daughter in his current state, he could only look at Wu Chen with a pleading expression, hoping he would take Liu Wei away.

Liu Wei said nothing, clutching the blade and glaring at Wu Chen.

Wu Chen was speechless as he looked at the girl.

’When your two senior martial brothers carried you off, I didn’t see you resisting with a blade.’

’Now I offer to escort you, and you dare to point a blade at me?’

’Is it just because I’m a good person?’

’Do good people deserve to have blades pointed at them?’

Seeing that neither father nor daughter would back down, Wu Chen couldn’t think of a better solution.

As for just killing them and taking the Martial Arts by force?

The thought had never even crossed his mind. He couldn’t bring himself to do something like that.

Therefore, he had to be the one to concede.

”Just hurry up and treat your father’s wound.”

Wu Chen gestured to Liu Linshan’s abdominal wound and said flatly,

”Otherwise, he really won’t be able to travel.”

Upon hearing this, Liu Wei’s heart leaped with joy. She knew Wu Chen had agreed to take her father along, and she quickly said,

”Thank you!”

Wu Chen gave a noncommittal grunt and said nothing more.

’As long as I can get the Martial Arts, my strength will see a visible increase,’ he thought. ’And if I’m strong enough, what’s the difference between escorting one person and escorting two?’

He stood to the side, quietly watching as Liu Wei meticulously treated her father’s wound.

With Wu Chen standing guard, Liu Wei finally felt safe enough to gather the small bundles that had been scattered about and properly tend to her father’s wound.

Inside a palm-sized bundle were a small, finger-width knife, a needle and thread, and a few other trinkets.

Liu Wei first used the small knife to carefully cut away the blackened, foul-smelling flesh from around the wound on her father’s abdomen.

It was an excruciatingly painful process.

Liu Linshan, however, didn’t make a sound.

Not because he was tough or resolute, but because the pain from the very first cut had caused him to pass out.

Liu Wei carefully removed the debrided flesh, then stitched the wound shut and applied the medicinal powder.

Her movements weren’t clumsy; it seemed she had some basic medical knowledge.

During this time, as Wu Chen watched, he noticed something strange about the gruesome wound on Liu Linshan’s abdomen.

Even though he didn’t wield a blade himself, his keen senses told him that this wound hadn’t been caused by a sword or saber.

The ragged edges and the blackened, rotting flesh looked more as if some kind of tool had been thrust in and then violently ripped out.

”What happened to this wound of yours?”

”It doesn’t look like something your two apprentices would have done.”

Wu Chen waited until Liu Wei had finished tending to the wound and had fed her father a medicinal pill.

The moment Liu Linshan regained consciousness, Wu Chen asked about the origin of his injury.