Volume 1: Reincarnation Cycle First...

  Lu Qi, with the forked spear in hand, didn't hesitate for a moment. As he listened to the wind and judged the position, his feet made a swift turn, and he counterattacked, the forked spear shooting out like a dragon, stabbing towards the giant bear that was only two meters away.

  "With a crash", the giant bear dodged its head, but couldn't dodge its massive body. Under the huge dynamic force, the forked spear deeply penetrated the left shoulder blade of the giant bear. However, the tip of the spear was firmly blocked by Lu Qi and broke off under the immense power.

  Although Lu was agile and quick with his hands, at this moment he couldn't dodge in time. The wooden stake pierced a large piece of flesh on his left arm and injured his left rib!

  But Lu Qi didn't panic, and with a slight frown, he fiercely threw away the broken wooden stick in his hand and continued to flee. He didn't think that one shot could knock down a two-thousand-jin giant!

  Yes, being injured again only made the giant bear more ferocious. With half a spear stuck in its shoulder, it chased after Lu Qi's buttocks like a madman, determined to tear him into pieces before it could calm down.

  The giant bear seemed clumsy, but in fact it was very fast when sprinting in a straight line, at least faster than Lu Qi. Lu Qi understood this too, so he dodged the trees and drilled through the gaps. Anyway, after being stabbed by a knife and a spear, even if the bear didn't die from blood loss, it would likely faint halfway due to the large amount of meat with anesthetic properties that it had swallowed. After all, intense exercise and bleeding would also accelerate the onset of the anesthetic.

  Facing such a huge pressure, Lu Qi naturally couldn't afford to play tricks with the giant bear, and he had a somewhat frantic feeling. In his mad dash, he unknowingly escaped from the location of the trap they had set up.

  "Damn it, this time I'll definitely beat that guy who made the fake medicine to a pulp! What kind of lousy product is this? It's been so long and there's still no effect?" Lu Qi, carrying his beheading knife, was running wildly. At this moment, he was covered in bruises and scratches all over his body, with not a single intact piece of clothing left on him. He had been running for who knows how long, feeling somewhat dizzy and weak, but the giant bear behind him didn't seem to know what fatigue was as it chased after him relentlessly.

  "It seems that I have to think of a way to pull out the forked spear, otherwise the bleeding will be too slow!" This thought had occurred to Lu Qi many times, but he still couldn't come up with a good solution, because he knew that once he stopped, relying solely on his decapitating knife would not be enough to block the giant bear's paw.

  At this moment, Lu Qi's eyes lit up and he saw a place far away where there was a cluster of willows, which were extremely rare in the dense forest.

  The willow-like tree is a peculiar plant in the dense forest of Guanzilin, similar to the banyan trees on Earth. The branches and trunks are intricate and intertwined, with a single tree forming a forest, and everywhere there are holes in the shape of arched doors, like a maze.

  Lu Qi hastily ran towards that direction. If he could drill into the Liu Rong group, his chances would be much greater. Moreover, Lu Qi had already spotted a place that could bring him opportunities.

  Just as Lu Qi rushed into the willow forest, he dropped his beheading knife and suddenly leaped up to grab a branch of the weeping willow tree that was over three meters high, hanging from it like an ape.

  This sudden non-fleeing action undoubtedly instantly shortened the distance between Lu Qi and the giant bear, giving the giant bear an opportunity to strike. However, the giant bear's lightning-fast pounce ended up being a swing and a miss.

  Because Lu Qi's entire body was already hanging on the horizontal willow branch, and in that instant when the giant bear's momentum passed by, he landed on the giant bear's back! If someone saw this scene from a distance, they would probably mistake Lu Qi for a mountain ape fighting with the giant bear.

  Lu Qi's goal was naturally to pull out the half-length spear, and in fact he did it. Before the giant bear could borrow strength to jump and turn, in this narrow tree hole, Lu Qi cleverly pressed down on the giant bear's thick neck, avoiding the giant bear's sideways tearing bite, and pulled out the bloody spear.

  Fresh blood spurted out instantly, and the giant bear that was in pain let out a loud roar. Its body suddenly sank down, striking the ground with great force, trying to shake Lu Qi out!

  But something that made Lu Qi'er think back and feel deeply moved every time happened, which was that the soil under the giant bear's body suddenly suffered a heavy blow and collapsed.

  The giant bear didn't get the strength it needed, and its entire body sank into the soil along with Lu Qi on its back, who also failed to jump up again, and ended up falling down together with the giant bear.

  However, Lu Qi was extremely capable and in this emergency situation where he lost his grip, he still managed to react. With both hands flapping like a crane's wings, he actually grabbed onto a vertical lychee root that was falling down. However, due to his left arm being injured, he could only rely on his right hand, which wasn't enough to grab firmly, causing him to fall for over ten meters before barely grabbing hold.

  The figure stabilized, and Lu Qi also heard a dull thud of something heavy falling to the ground, followed by several short, coarse growls. Then, the world seemed to have a brief moment of silence, leaving only a few rays of light shining through the gaps in the willow branches.

  But the stillness was an illusion, the soil was still falling down, falling to the bottom, and a sound of water could be heard. Lu Qi tightly grasped the banyan tree root in his hand, beginning to observe his surroundings. This was the underground of the banyan tree cluster, there was no doubt about this, otherwise the dense and straight roots that fell from Lu Qi's hand and around him would not have existed.

  It's just that why is the ground under such a large patch of willow trees so hollow, and with that faint light, Lu Qi can see that the bottom is actually a stone floor. At this moment, the giant bear was lying at a distance of seven or eight zhang from Lu Qi, and it was lying there, bleeding profusely.

  A moment later, Lu Qi stood beside the giant bear's corpse, his ankles soaked in water as he gazed at the dead giant bear, with a hint of sadness in his eyes.

  At a height of over 70 feet, Lu Qi would not have jumped down. Even if his Wu Xing Quan was well-practiced, he would still break his legs. He slid down along the roots of the willow tree, but when he reached the back two or three zhangs, the roots were no longer so thick and sturdy, so Lu Qi tied the rope on his body to the root and slid down.

  Perhaps someone would wonder, what kind of tree can grow roots tens of meters long? Lu Qi could answer that it was the willow tree's root, and it was obvious that they were straight down to absorb water. This phenomenon is not rare in nature, but Lu Qi had never heard of such a strange place.

  "This is an underground river, and there's also a man-made stone platform. Although it's not particularly large, I'm afraid it'll take some thought to figure out... In this era... It might even give the most formidable archaeologists on earth a headache!" Lu Qi looked around, his eyes finally falling on an even more astonishing place - at the very center of the stone platform, where someone was sitting calmly!

  Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a skeleton. When Lu Qi saw it, his first thought was that the water flow in this underground river must be very stable, or else it would have washed away the body. His second thought was, how could there be someone in a place like this?

  But Lu Qi didn't dwell on this obviously unsolvable matter, his mind was focused on more useful things. The blue clothes on the skeleton surprisingly hadn't rotted, and looked quite clean, probably made of high-quality materials. However, even as a slave, Lu Qi had no interest in the clothes on a dead person's body, not even if it were the legendary golden silk and jade clothes from Earth.

  Then Lu Qi only found two things, which should be the relics of the dead person. One was a copper furnace made of unknown material, either bronze or black iron, which looked like a round incense burner in a temple, with a diameter of about 2 feet and 5 inches. The furnace wall was carved with some blurry totems and texts. The other one was a small piece of jade, cylindrical in shape, the size of a thumb, very round and smooth, but when viewed from both sides, it looked like human pupils, dark and profound.

  "This jade looks good, if we're short of money in the future, we can consider selling it!" Lu Qi first put away the jade and then reached out to weigh the copper stove: "It's not light, weighing at least 300 catties. Although there are signs of damage on both sides of the furnace handle, if placed on Earth, it would probably be a national treasure-level antique. However, in this world, who knows, maybe temples and Taoist temples have them everywhere. It's just right to bring it back for mother to use as a charcoal basin, and we'll have a good winter!"

  He put down the copper stove, but Lu Qi didn't notice that the blood seeping from his left arm wound dripped onto the wall of the stove and was instantly absorbed without leaving any trace.

  While measuring the bronze furnace, they also discovered the peculiarities of this stone platform. It is a circular pattern similar to a totem class, with some diamond-shaped carvings that resemble the eyes of a monster, as well as some irregularly connected lines and grooves.

  "This might be the place where some ancient tribe in this world held a ritual?" Lu Qi thought for a moment, and found that putting this unobtrusive bronze furnace on the table in the middle was quite similar to a scene he had occasionally swept into on TV in his previous life.

  He searched again and didn't find anything unusual or any signs of danger, only then did Lu Qi let out a sigh of relief and start treating the wound on his left arm.

  Pierced by a wooden stake, the wound was over an inch deep. Such an injury was absolutely not light, but Lu Qi didn't think much of it at all. After cleaning it up, he directly tore off a few strips of cloth and bandaged it very professionally. Of course, he also didn't completely avoid using medicine. The Zelan people, who could research out anesthetic drugs, were able to create some mixed medicinal ointments from hemostatic grass and other simple herbs that wasn't difficult at all.