Stranger Danger

Chapter 1070: Chasing The Sun

“When day and night change places, chase the sun. If the light does not fade, then the Radiant Tree you shall see…”

Underneath a tree, Ye Qing suddenly opened his eyes and muttered with a puzzled look on his face.

Then, he seemingly recalled something and produced the branch of the Radiant Tree in his hand.

The branch of the Radiant Tree did not look as lush and full of life as before though. The branch had become dim, and both the flower and the leaf had withered. It was as if the branch had lost the large majority of its life force all of a sudden.

“I knew it… it was a hint after all!”

Ye Qing’s eyes glinted as he inspected the branch of the Radiant Tree.

He already guessed why the branch of the Radiant Tree had withered without warning.

Logic would say that it was because he had taken the branch away from the Kunlun Tomb, but that wasn’t true. It was because he had had a dream—or more accurately, he heard a message while he was catching a small nap earlier.

Yesterday, after he left West Kunlun, he had chosen a random direction and ran for an entire day and night. On the way, he even changed directions at random several times in total.

That said, he did run for a whole day and night. Even with his strength, he could not help but feel a bit of mental fatigue. So, he sought out a random resting place to take a nap.

However, he was just closing his eyes when suddenly, he heard a voice that seemed to hail from a different spacetime. It sounded old and distant.

At first, the words were too blurry to make out. Gradually, it became clearer and clearer until he could hear exactly what it was saying:

“When day and night change places, chase the sun. If the light does not fade, then the Radiant Tree you shall see…”

The message would repeat beside his ears again and again until he finally grew conscious and opened his eyes. At that moment, the voice disappeared like it never happened.

It was quite unusual to say the least.

There was no one, not even a Stranger around him. Clearly, the strange message had nothing to do with his surroundings. It could only have come from something on him.

And what was the one thing on his person that was suspect? The branch of the Radiant Tree, of course.

In fact, he was absolutely right. The branch of the Radiant Tree had undergone a drastic transformation and lost most of its vitality and spirituality. If he wasn’t mistaken, the branch was the reason for the voice.

The meaning and intent of the message were crystal clear. It was a hint of how to find the Radiant Tree and enter the Kunlun Ruins.

“Strange…”

Ye Qing looked at the branch of the Radiant Tree thoughtfully. It was said that the Radiant Tree was a divine tree with intelligence and sentience. There was nothing strange about this. What was strange was why the Radiant Tree branch chose to tell him the way to find the Radiant Tree and enter the Kunlun Ruins.

After all, he was just an outsider.

Was this a trap?

A ploy?

Or something else?

A few breaths later, Ye Qing decided to give up on this line of thought. Whether or not it was a trap or a ploy, he had a reason to enter the Kunlun Ruins no matter what.

Besides, all traps and ploys could be crushed with absolute strength.

This hint was a good thing. It saved him much time and effort in trying to figure out how to make use of it. Yes, it was definitely a good thing.

“The sun is just out. Perfect.”

It was at this moment a brilliant golden ray cut through the pitch black sky. At the same time, something red slowly rose from the horizon in celebration of a new day.

Ye Qing did not hesitate. He immediately ran toward the west.

The hint provided by the Radiant Tree branch wasn’t difficult to understand. “When day and night change places, chase the sun” meant running toward the sun during sunrise. More accurately, it meant running toward the west as that was the direction the sun was heading.

The second line stated, “If the light does not fade, then the Radiant Tree you shall see.” If he wasn’t mistaken, the hint was telling him to chase the sun and not allow it to fall past the horizon. If he succeeded, then he would find the Radiant Tree.

In short, it was the isekai version of Kua Fu Chasing the Sun[1].

And so Ye Qing transformed into isekai Kua Fu and chased the sun, climbing countless mountains, crossing countless rivers, passing through countless cities, and stunning countless people in the process.

Someone saw a youngster running across a plain with the wind, quick as lightning.

Someone saw a youngster running through a mountain forest, swift as a gale and competing against the beast.

Someone saw a youngster running across a river like it was solid ground. When he was about halfway through, he abruptly opened his mouth and inhaled half of the river water.

Someone saw a youngster dropping his shoulders and keeping his elbows to the sides. Then, swinging his fists like hammers, he shattered half a hill that was blocking his way before continuing onward.

Someone saw a youngster descending from the sky like a deity and crushing an evil-doing sect and killing hundreds of villains in one stomp. Then, he moved on like it was nothing special.

Someone saw a youngster throwing a punch that shook Kunlun and letting out a breath that cleared out an entire territory of fog, killing thousands of Strangers and saving even more people from disaster.

……

For a time, rumors regarding the youngster popped up everywhere. Some people said that he was a celestial who had descended to the world of mortals, some claimed that he was a hero who decided to cleanse the jianghu a bit with his sword, some believed that he was a madman who had entered martial deviation, so on and so forth.

Ye Qing knew nothing about this however, nor did he care to even if he did. It was because he felt like he was dying.

Seriously, he was about to die from exhaustion!

It sounded like a joke that a body-tempering Grandmaster was about to die from exhaustion, but it was just facts.

Chasing the sun didn’t sound that difficult in theory, but it was impossibly hard to actually do it.

A few inches of movement in the sky was equal to an untold amount of distance on the ground. To keep pace with the sun, he would have to run thousands of kilometers in just the span of a few breaths. To actually catch up with it, they would have to cover tens of thousands of kilometers in that short time. How could a mortal ever hope to achieve such a thing?

In fact, they couldn’t. Any mortal who claimed they could was either dreaming or overestimating themselves.

After all, not even a Sage would dare to claim that they could catch up to the sun.

But what could Ye Qing do except to give it his all?

Yi Pin would die if he gave up. He had no other option.

At first, the burden was still manageable thanks to his massive repertoire of secret arts, Magia, Strange Artifacts and treasures. He could easily overcome any terrain and cover dozens of kilometers in an instant.

However, he eventually ran out of true qi and spirit and could no longer employ anything. So, he had no choice but to rely on his physical body.

The good news was that he had reached the journeyman level in the Earthly Sovereign True Body. So long as his feet were stepping on the ground, his stamina was theoretically endless.@@novelbin@@

The bad news was that the stream of stamina he obtained from the earth wasn’t enough to keep up with the energy necessary to travel fifty kilometers in an instant.

And so Ye Qing slowly forgot about the time or the journey. He began to weaken, tire, and grow dizzy.

The hint he received did not mention how long he needed to chase after the sun. Therefore, Ye Qing did not dare to stop even though he was so tired he could die.

After all, he might lose his one and only chance to save Yi Pin if he did.

So, he squeezed out every ounce of strength inside his body and soldiered on through sheer willpower.

He did not know how much longer he could keep this up; how much further he could run. All he knew was that he could not fall or stop no matter what.

Yi Pin would die otherwise.

“Hah… hah… I think… I’m really at my… limit…”

A day passed, or maybe it was a lifetime. When Ye Qing tripped and fell on the ground one last time, he discovered that he had finally reached his limit. He could no longer even lift a finger.

Looking at the departing sun, pain flickered in Ye Qing’s murky eyes.

“I’m sorry, brother Yi Pin.”

“I… did my… best…”

Ye Qing muttered weakly before his head hit a patch of dead grass. His consciousness sank into darkness.

1. A Chinese folklore about a guy who tries to chase the sun and command it to stop scorching the earth and evaporating the water, making it impossible for the people to live. ☜