Nie Tian didn’t turn around.
Instead, he faced the stone wall and gradually sank into his inner world, holding a handful of spirit stones.
He had consumed almost all of his spiritual power and sustained heavy injuries during his battle against Li Langfeng, so he needed to recuperate as soon as possible.
One spirit stone after another was rapidly drained of its power and reduced to a normal stone.
In the meantime, his spiritual power was gradually restored.
It wasn’t very long before his spiritual sea was restored to twenty percent full, and that was when he stopped cultivating and opened his eyes.
It had been quite a while since he had sensed any movement from Pei Qiqi.
As he turned around to put his back against the ice-cold stone wall, he shot a glance at the girl.
Wearing shot, blue battle garments that were exactly the same with the ones she wore before, Pei Qiqi was also sitting with her back against the stone wall, recovering her strength with spirit stones.
Bathed in the precious light from the numerous pearls in the wall, Pei Qiqi’s skin seemed translucent and sparkling, as if she was made of jade. Her exceptionally long eyelashes were covering her eyes like two fans.
Sitting there completely still, she looked like an unearthly, beautiful female immortal from a painting.
A layer of strange spatial energy was rippling around her. Because of its existence, even though Pei Qiqi was right in front of Nie Tian’s eyes, he had a feeling that they were separated by infinite space, which made her seem even more ethereal and unreal.
Then, Nie Tian closed his eyes and used his psychic awareness to examine her.
However, when his psychic awareness reached where Pei Qiqi was sitting, all it could see was empty ground where not even the slightest sign of life could be detected.
“Strange woman,” Nie Tian whispered to himself, sighing over the fact that Pei Qiqi was different from everyone else he had met.
A while passed…
Nie Tian took out a giant piece of Golden Stone Rhino meat from his bracelet of holding. Then, he built a fire with a Flame Crystal and cooked the meat with a thin sword.
The injuries to his fleshy body would heal faster if he nourished himself with the rich essence of flesh and blood.
The reason why he had awoken after restoring merely twenty percent of his spiritual power was because he intended to use the rich flesh power within the meat of the fourth grade spirit beast to boost his healing process.
Moments later, the considerable piece of meat was cooked yellow and dripping fat.
Although the Golden Stone Rhino meat was bitter and hard to chew, Nie Tian didn’t eat it for its taste.
Within a very short time, he tore up and wolfed down the meat that weighed several dozen kilograms.
Afterwards, he took out a large canteen of water and drank a few gulps.
“It’s about enough.” He mumbled as he prepared to put away the thin sword, sit back in his original place, and continue to recuperate with spirit stones.
That was when he noticed that Pei Qiqi had already awoken and was staring at him at this moment, her eyes filled with curiosity.
“Were you eating the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat?” Pei Qiqi asked.
It was Pei Qiqi who had slaughtered the Golden Stone Rhino, but she had only taken its horn and skin, and left what remained of its body to Nie Tian.
Back then, she had thought that it was meaningless for Nie Tian to ask for it.
After all, all the living spirit beasts in the Realm of Split Void had undergone mutations so that they could survive the poisonous spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth.
Although those spirit beasts became stronger after their mutation, their flesh and blood were tainted and carried all sorts of impurities and toxins.
At the beginning, some Qi warriors in the Realm of Split Void had tried consuming and using those spirit beasts’ meat to temper and refine their physical bodies.
However, almost all of them had failed. Even though a handful of them had successfully absorbed power from the meat, they had to spend even more power to rid themselves of the toxins.
Since then, everyone had treated the meat of the spirit beasts in the Realm of Split Void as garbage.
However, the meat Nie Tian had just consumed was none other than the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat.
Furthermore, from the poised look on his face, it seemed that it wasn’t his first time eating it.
Pei Qiqi also knew that Li Langfeng had been cultivating with the tainted spiritual Qi in the Void Illusion Mountain Range. As he extracted the green toxins from the spiritual Qi, he also couldn’t avoid being corroded by the other foreign impurities.
The reason why Li Langfeng coughed all day long and looked like a man who was being tortured by a fatal disease was that those impurities and toxins were piling up inside of him.
While he was building up his battle prowess and improving his cultivation base, he was actually damaging his own health.
Pei Qiqi despised Li Langfeng’s way of cultivation, which was obtaining strength at the cost of his own longevity.
She was aware that Li Langfeng had a sworn enemy, and he only cultivated so relentlessly so that he could acquire enough strength to kill that person.
But why did Nie Tian adopt such a cultivation method?
The moment she saw Nie Tian eat the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat, she sorted Nie Tian as another lunatic.
“No wonder he possesses such monstrous strength while he’s only at the Heaven stage. He’s just like Li Langfeng.” Pei Qiqi assumed that she had finally found a rational explanation for Nie Tian’s uniqueness.
Then, she began to sympathize with Nie Tian for having a sworn enemy at such a young age and building his strength at the expense of his own longevity just to have his revenge.
In her eyes, if that was the case, no matter how strong Nie Tian was, it wouldn’t mean anything.
Sooner or later, he would suffer from the backlash and die in the prime of his life.
“Yes, it was the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat.” Nie Tian answered without much thought.
Pei Qiqi had already reached a conclusion as to why Nie Tian did it, so she didn’t feel the necessity to ask if he could process the impurities and toxins within the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat.
She also didn’t want to bring up painful memories for Nie Tian by asking about it.
“I’m hungry too,” she blurted.
Nie Tian went blank for a moment before saying, “You can’t eat the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat. You won’t be able to process it.”
“Of course, I know.” Pei Qiqi felt that Nie Tian’s reply confirmed her assumption. Believing she had figured out Nie Tian’s situation, she was no longer cranky towards Nie Tian. She took out a piece of meat from within her ring of holding and tossed it to Nie Tian, ordering, “Roast it for me.”
“Alright.” Nie Tian took out another Flame Crystal and used it cook the meat Pei Qiqi had tossed him.
Moments later, the meat became yellow and greasy, and gave off a delicious smell.
Then, he walked up to Pei Qiqi with the cooked meat on his thin sword.
He handed the meat to her, along with the sword, and said, “Here.”
Pei Qiqi grabbed it and began eating in a graceful fashion. “When will you be able to recover your strength?” she asked as she ate.
“I probably need one to two days to recover all the spiritual power I’ve spent.” With these words, Nie Tian pondered for a moment, then continued, “As for the injuries to my body, they might take longer to recover. Li Langfeng sent his toxic, corrosive power through my arm into my internal organs. It nearly killed me.”
Pei Qiqi was astonished. “His toxic, corrosive power entered your body?!”
Nie Tian nodded unwittingly.
“Freak!” Pei Qiqi’s expression flickered, since she was no stranger to Li Langfeng’s bizarre, poisonous attacking skills.
She had witnessed quite a few Greater Heaven stage Qi warriors die after having their flesh corroded by Li Langfeng’s poisonous attacks.
The Spirit God Sect from the Realm of Dark Underworld was known for their use of poison and toxins, which were usually beyond cure.
Even though he was suffering a backlash himself, Li Langfeng was among their most skilled and ruthless experts.
It was unbelievable that Nie Tian was still alive after being infused with Li Langfeng’s toxic power.
However, Pei Qiqi suddenly realized that Nie Tian had picked the same path as Li Langfeng, so she thought it through.
She frowned as she stated her situation, “I’ll need five to six days to restore my spiritual power, and another two weeks to heal my physical injuries. During this period, we’ll stay in this stronghold, and we won’t try to contact the Blood Skull.”
“Why?” Nie Tian took a glance at the spell formation which they could use to seek help from the Blood Skull.
“I don’t want to see anyone before I’m fully recovered,” Pei Qiqi answered coldly.
“Alright.” Nie Tian didn’t say another word, but sat back down and started to recover his strength with spirit stones again.
At that moment, the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat he had consumed was gradually digested and began to unleash flesh power.
At first, he was somewhat worried.
He was afraid that the green aura in his heart would swoop out and savagely devour all the flesh power, just like how it had rushed out of Nie Tian’s heart and torn the energy Li Langfeng had left in him to shreds.
Furthermore, the green aura had somehow healed his ruptured meridians and broken bones. It must have consumed a substantial amount of energy to display such a magical bloodline power.
Therefore, it wouldn’t surprise him if the green aura suddenly appeared and predominantly harvested all the flesh power the Golden Stone Rhino’s meat had generated.
However, it remained calm.
More and more wisps of flesh power rose from his abdomen and naturally flowed towards the parts of him that had sustained the most severe injuries.
He could sense with great clarity that the injuries inside him were healing at a noticeable speed.