The more Ouyang Feng thought, the more confused he became. Holding his head, he muttered to himself:
"Ke'er..."
"Who is Ke'er?"
Yang Guo's heart tightened. Don't you dare forget now.
Ouyang Feng's eyes turned blood-red. His mind was in total chaos as he clutched his head in agony and said:
"I have no son... No, I have a son!"
Yang Guo knew full well that with a madman, one couldn't reason; one had to strike directly at the most painful spot in their soul.
Since he had already called him father, he could only keep calling him that to the very end.
What's more, he couldn't just pull things out of thin air.
He had to anchor his words to things that truly existed in Ouyang Feng's mind.
Tears welling in his eyes, Yang Guo shouted with utmost sincerity:
"Father! I am Ke'er! Have you forgotten?"
"The deserted island! On that deserted island, where the sea waves surged to the sky!"
"Back then, my legs were crushed by a giant boulder."
"It was you who held me, weeping bitterly, and whispered it right into my ear."
Yang Guo wiped away the snot and tears from his face, bellowing until his voice cracked:
"You said you weren't my uncle! You were my real father!!"
Ouyang Feng's pupils shrank violently.
Several keywords slammed into his mind all at once.
Deserted island, uncle, Ke'er, broken legs, biological son.
All of these were true. Yet, as fate would have it...
...that happened to be the deepest thorn in Ouyang Feng's heart.
Right up until his death, Ouyang Ke never knew that his uncle was actually his father.
That single call of "Father" was something Ouyang Feng had never gotten to hear in his entire life.
After he went mad, this regret had only been buried deeper.
Now, Yang Guo had forcefully patched over that missing piece for him.
Yang Guo understood that the fatal flaw of a lie was being entirely fake.
If there were too many fabrications, it became impossible to make the story hold together.
Only by mixing one part falsehood into nine parts truth could a lie become nearly impossible to see through.
What was more, the man before him was a lunatic whose memories were shattered into pieces.
Yang Guo was using Ouyang Feng's single greatest regret to forge a life-saving immunity medallion for himself.
At this moment, Ouyang Feng clutched his head, his expression shifting between pain and bewilderment.
His mouth kept muttering continuously.
He suddenly slapped himself hard on the forehead, giving Yang Guo a fright.
"I remember now!"
Yang Guo's heart sank:
No, please don't remember everything.
If he really remembers everything, I'll be the first one to croak.
Ouyang Feng suddenly threw his head back and laughed wildly:
"Hahaha!"
"Ouyang Feng!"
"I am Ouyang Feng!"
The laughter shook the building's roof beams so violently that dust kept raining down.
Yang Guo's eyelids twitched. Throwing caution to the wind, he raised his voice and shrieked again:
"Father, you remember me!"
The wild laughter snapped to a sudden halt.
Ouyang Feng shuddered, his eyes staring straight into Yang Guo's face.
The fierce, bloodthirsty aura engulfing him instantly dissolved into boundless ecstasy the moment his gaze met Yang Guo's tear-filled eyes:
"Ke'er!!"
"Hahaha! It really is my Ke'er!!"
Yang Guo's vision blurred, and he was already scooped up into Ouyang Feng's arms.
"Ke'er!"
"My Ke'er!"
Before Yang Guo could even react, he was hoisted up above Ouyang Feng's head.
Outside the temple, Aniu's mouth hung open so wide it could fit an egg.
Little Shitou's eyes shone even brighter as he watched.
He lowered his voice and said:
"Brother Aniu."
"Lies can actually be told like that?"
Aniu was equally stunned:
"How come I never realized Yang Guo was so good at making things up?"
Little Shitou summarized in all seriousness:
"If we run into powerful figures we can't beat in the future,"
"let's not rush to run away first."
"Let's see if we can claim to be their relative."
Aniu actually found that made a lot of sense.
...
Ouyang Feng held Yang Guo for a moment before suddenly stopping.
He placed Yang Guo on the ground.
Stepping back, he reached out to measure against the top of Yang Guo's head, his expression gradually turning into surprise.
"Something's wrong."
Yang Guo felt a chill in his heart.
Ouyang Feng's brows twisted into two tight knots, a trace of doubt emerging in his blood-red eyes:
"No, this isn't right..."
"I remember my Ke'er wore white robes, handsome and dashing, nearly as tall as me."
"You are so small."
"You tricked me!"
The atmosphere shifted in an instant.
Yang Guo's back snapped taut.
Outside, Aniu and Little Shitou's faces turned instantly pale.
Suppressing the panic in his heart, Yang Guo shoved his pitch-black right arm right under Ouyang Feng's nose!
Beating his chest and stamping his feet, he wailed even more pitifully than if his actual father had died:
"Father! Your son was originally an eight-foot-tall, dashing hero!!"
"But a few years ago in the jianghu, I was ambushed by villains and struck by a strange poison!"
Pointing at his blackened arm, Yang Guo's eyes were red:
"That poison is wickedly fierce! It doesn't rot your guts or puncture your intestines—it specifically shrinks a person's bones!"
"The first year I shrank half a foot, the second year a whole head, and now I'm down to the height of a little winter melon!"
"If you had arrived a few months later, your son might have shrunk into a suckling baby!"
"By then, I wouldn't even be able to call out 'Father'!"
Ouyang Feng pinched his messy beard, tilting his head as he fell into deep thought.
Having roamed the world in his youth, he had been a complete and utter martial arts maniac.
He had indeed heard of strange techniques in the jianghu that could reverse aging and grant youthfulness.
Coupled with his currently fragmented memory, there were many things he couldn't remember clearly.
Thus, the more Ouyang Feng pondered, the more he felt this was extremely plausible.
Stroking his chin, he analyzed with absolute seriousness:
"The world's martial arts are boundlessly wondrous."
"I seem to have heard of techniques that can reverse aging."
"Though I haven't heard of a strange poison that causes bone-shrinking and reverse growth, it is indeed ingenious!"
Seeing that he had actually begun to rationalize it himself, Yang Guo immediately kept his mouth shut.
When dealing with a lunatic, sometimes you didn't even need to lie to him; he would lie to himself.
The more Ouyang Feng mused over it, the more excited he became: "Fear not, Ke'er! Father will definitely cure it!"
He grabbed Yang Guo's blackened arm, checked his pulse, and let out a cold snort:
"A mere poison like this dares to harm Ouyang Feng's son?!"
"Ke'er, watch closely! Father will teach you a peerless method to expel poison!"
With that, Ouyang Feng suddenly pressed both hands on the ground, threw his feet up into the air, and flipped upside down into a handstand.
Using his hands in place of his feet, he zipped rapidly around the ruined temple, loudly reciting the mnemonic chant as he moved:
"This method requires reversing the flow of qi! The Way of Heaven diminishes excess to supply deficiency... Head down and feet up, reverse the qi and blood, force the poisonous qi back into the palm, and then expel it through the fingertips!"
Yang Guo's mind was still dazed, trying to figure things out.
Suddenly, he felt a chill at his waist.
With a backhand sweep, Ouyang Feng ripped off the belt from his waist.
With a casual flick of his wrist—
—the coarse cloth belt seemed to possess eyes of its own, wrapping tightly around Yang Guo's ankles with a swish.
Channeling power into a single arm, Ouyang Feng whipped him sharply upward!
Yang Guo only felt a fierce wind howling past his ears as he flipped through the air like he was flying through clouds and mist.
By the time he could see clearly, he was already hanging firmly upside down from the crossbeam of the ruined temple, head pointing to the ground.
He looked for all the world like a piece of cured pork hung under the eaves to dry during the Year-End Festival.
Yang Guo felt all the blood in his body rush into his head with a loud roar, making his eyeballs throb painfully.
"Father... real father! Slow down the swinging! My brains are going to be scrambled!"
Ouyang Feng strolled below with his hands behind his back, his face full of frustration at his son's perceived weakness:
"Ke'er, don't just stand there dazed!"
"This strange poison must borrow the reverse surge of earth qi to be eradicated!"
Hanging upside down in midair, Yang Guo kept swaying back and forth, so much that the roast goose and buns in his stomach surged straight toward his throat.
Ouyang Feng raised his hand, extended a finger, and lightly poked the Zhangmen point on the side of Yang Guo's waist.
Buzz!
A dominant inner force, heavy as a mountain, instantly penetrated his bones.
His body, which had been swinging wildly from side to side, instantly froze motionlessly in place.
"Inhale! Pull in your stomach!"
"Drop your shoulders! Lower your elbows!"
Ouyang Feng paced across the gravel below, words shooting from his mouth like rapid gunfire:
"Don't push back with your dantian! Follow the momentum of the reversed flow and sink all the qi and blood in your body toward your head and both palms!"
Gritting his teeth, Yang Guo endured the intense pain and did as instructed.
Leveraging gravity and the violent surge of reversed blood and qi,
the Ice Soul Cold Poison on his forearm unexpectedly moved like slush rushing through an opened sluice gate.
Visibly pitch-black poisonous blood rushed down the blood vessels of his forearm frantically, gathering straight into his palm and the tips of his five fingers.
The speed of expelling poison was more than several times faster than his usual cross-legged meditation!
Yang Guo's heart shuddered in shock.
Though this old lunatic's mind is broken, his lifelong immersion in the martial dao is truly unfathomable.
Ouyang Feng looked Yang Guo up and down, his eyes growing brighter and brighter:
"Good! As expected of Ouyang Feng's blood!"
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