The silence in the "Forest of Lost Souls" was what was most terrifying. It wasn't a peaceful silence, but one of anticipation, the silence of predators waiting for their prey to breathe its last. Wei Shen lay inside the hollow log, his breath ragged, his body trembling not from cold, but from absolute exhaustion and the pain that was gnawing at every cell in his being. He wasn't fully aware of what had happened; he didn't understand why the "Shadow Hounds" that had been on the verge of tearing him apart had fled. All he knew was that his will, that part of him that refused to die, had somehow triumphed.
"I've survived… again," he rasped, and coughed up blood. "But for how long?"
He assessed his condition. His left arm was broken, his ribs ached with every breath, and his wounds were still bleeding slowly. He was completely unarmed after one of his ivory daggers had broken and the other was lost in the lava caves. The low-grade "Healing Pills" he had were already consumed and had had little effect.
He knew that attempting to return to "Blackrock City" in this state was certain suicide. He might die from exhaustion, from blood loss, or he could become an easy meal for the first spiritual beast he encountered.
"I can't rely on this unstable 'killing aura' to ward off every danger," he thought coldly, analyzing the situation. "That was just a fluke, a desperate reaction of a soul that refuses to perish. I need real power, I need to recover… and quickly."
His trembling hand reached into his "storage bag." There was only one option left, a dangerous option, but it was the only one available.
He took out the "beast core" of the "Crimson Magma Serpent."
Even in the dim light inside the hollow log, the core glowed. It was about the size of his fist, its color a deep crimson-red, as if the heart of a miniature volcano had been frozen. It pulsed with a powerful heat and immense spiritual energy, the energy of a spiritual beast that had stood at the pinnacle of the Qi Condensation realm.
Wei Shen sensed the danger latent in this energy. "Pure, violent, and dominant fire Qi," Wei Shen thought, his eyes gleaming with a decisive glint. "My 'Blood Qi' is cold and corrosive by nature. Attempting to absorb this energy directly would be like pouring oil on a fire; it could cause an internal explosion that would tear apart my Qi pathways and destroy my Dantian."
But he was no ordinary cultivator. He had the "Blood-Devouring Stone."
"The stone… it processed the pure energy of the 'Spirit Dragon Fruit' for me," he recalled. "It converted its pure energy into 'Blood Qi' I could use. Can it do the same with this savage, fiery energy?"
It was a gamble. A gamble with everything. If it failed, his story would end here, in this rotting log. But if it succeeded, he would not only recover, but his foundation at the ninth level might become stronger and more solid than ever before.
"Staying in this situation is a slow death," he decided coldly. "A calculated risk is my only chance."
With great difficulty, he assumed a meditative posture inside the cramped log, ignoring the screams of his broken body. He placed the hot "beast core" directly on his Dantian, over his ragged clothes, and felt the heat seeping through the fabric and his skin, as if it were a glowing ember.
He closed his eyes and focused all his consciousness, all his unyielding steel will, on this dangerous and desperate process.
He began to apply his "Qi Guiding Art," not to draw energy from the air, but to try and pull a very thin thread, just a single thread, of the fiery energy from the serpent's core.
The moment his "Blood Qi" touched the core, he felt as if he had touched the sun directly. An immense fiery energy exploded from the core and flooded into his body like a deluge of liquid lava, far more violent and powerful than anything he had expected.
Wei Shen let out a suppressed scream of pain, feeling his Qi pathways on the verge of melting and burning. The fiery energy clashed with his cold "Blood Qi" with terrifying violence, creating utter chaos in his Dantian, as if an elemental war were raging in his depths. His body trembled violently, his skin turned red, and steam began to rise from him.
"The Stone!" he screamed in his mind, directing all this chaotic mixture of warring energies towards the "Blood-Devouring Stone" that rested silently deep within him. "Do your thing!"
As if responding to its master's desperate, dying call, the stone began to pulse with a power Wei Shen had never felt before. It glowed a dark crimson and began to pull that chaotic fiery energy into itself, like a black vortex devouring everything that approached it.
Wei Shen felt the stone working as a demonic cauldron, a true cosmic smelter. It was taking the pure, violent fire energy of the serpent, deconstructing it, cooling it ,merging it with the essence of blood, and then reforging it, converting it into new threads of pure Blood Qi.
But this time, these threads carried with them a faint trace of magma's hardness and its extreme resistance to heat.
The process was unspeakably painful. Wei Shen felt as if his body were being remelted and reshaped in the furnace of this demonic smelter. But he clung to his consciousness and guided the process with his unyielding will, using every ounce of his understanding of energy control.
The new, refined "Blood Qi," now carrying hidden fiery properties, began to flow through his Qi pathways, not to tear them this time, but to heal and rebuild them. He felt it reach his broken arm, enveloping the cracked bones, stimulating them to heal at an unnatural rate, as if being re-welded by a magical fire.
He felt it flow towards his injured ribs, alleviating the pain, rebuilding the torn tissues, and expelling any remnants of the scorpion's venom that were still lingering in his system. Even the minor burns on his skin began to heal and peel away, revealing new, tougher skin beneath.
This process continued for long hours, which turned into a day, then two. Wei Shen was completely immersed in this "fiery tempering," in this painful rebirth, oblivious to the passage of time and the outside world. All his focus was on this dark miracle that was taking place in the heart of the rock, in the womb of pain.
At the dawn of the third day, Wei Shen opened his eyes.
The burning pain was no longer there. The deadly weakness was gone. The "beast core" that had been in his hands had turned into just a dull gray stone, completely devoid of any energy or heat. It soon crumbled into fine dust and scattered with the first breeze.
Wei Shen slowly rose and stood on his feet inside the hollow log. He felt no pain. He moved his left arm, which had been broken two days ago. It was completely healed, and stronger than before. He examined his body; all his wounds had disappeared, leaving only faint scars that would soon vanish with a few more cycles of Qi.
He felt power flowing through his veins with a strength he had never known before. He hadn't broken through to a new level; he was already at the peak of the ninth.
But his foundation at this level had now become as solid as a mountain, and his "Blood Qi" had become denser and more potent, now carrying with it a touch of magma's resilience. He had fully recovered, and had even become stronger than he was before the battle with the serpent.
"This is what it means to be on the brink of death and return," he thought, and a cold, confident smile, the smile of one reborn from the heart of fire, stretched across his lips. "Every tribulation… is indeed an opportunity."
He stepped out of the hollow log and looked at the bright morning sun. He was no longer the wounded survivor crawling for mercy, or the phantom hiding in the shadows.
"Blackrock City," he said in a quiet voice, his eyes staring at the distant horizon. "It's time to claim my reward."
He began to walk with steady, powerful steps, leaving behind his battlefield and his healing den, heading towards civilization. His journey in the depths of the forest was temporarily over. And now, his journey would begin in a different kind of forest, a forest made of stone and men, a forest where he would impose his own laws, and from which he would harvest the fruits of his power.