Choice (II)

“Ah——” Meng Qi shouted. The silver knife gleamed slightly before being swallowed entirely by the black devil aura, but Meng Qi had no time to care about her weapon. She took this opportunity to dash towards the other side. Before the devil aura had the time to turn its attacks towards her again, Meng Qi’s feet had landed on the opposite cliff.

Meng Qi let out a long breath. Her robe was soaked with cold sweat. She turned around and saw the bridge of ghost puppets completely disappeared behind her. Even the light from the array on the opposite cliff had become extremely faint. Meng Qi lowered her head and looked at the sea of ​​devil aura that was beginning to crash against the cliffs again, one after another. Her silver medical knife had disappeared a long time ago, not leaving even a trace of light behind.

“Hey…” The woman sighed softly. “At most one hour. The devil aura can break through the cliff barrier and attack.”

“Thank you for Senior’s guidance.” Meng Qi bowed towards the empty air again. She then turned around and strode towards the unconscious Ji Wujiong.

At this moment, her cauldron had been broken into pieces, and she had also lost her knife. Losing the cauldron was still okay, since she still had ready-made medicines and pills in her storage space. The silver medical knife, however, was a different matter. That was a weapon she personally tailor-made for herself according to Yun Qingyan’s teaching. For Meng Qi, the knife was far more important than the cauldron. Although she could refine another one later, losing the knife still made her a little distressed.

Her mind was full of thoughts, but Meng Qi didn’t delay for a moment. She half-knelt beside the unconscious Ji Wujiong and carefully examined his condition. Against his pale skin, the young man’s thick eyelashes were drooping down. The three scars on his face looked more conspicuous and hideous. However, other wounds on his face had been healed. And his shoulder, which seemed to also be injured before, now looked better.

Ji Wujiong’s breathing was fairly steady, and his injuries weren’t visible from outside. If it weren’t for his lack of reaction, Meng Qi would have thought that he was sleeping.

Meng Qi took out a silver needle from her storage space. This silver needle couldn’t be compared to Xue Chengxuan’s natal magic weapon, as it was just a general item that many medical cultivators liked to use. Cloud Immortal Pavilion sold it for the public: ten eighth-grade spirit stones for a set of fourth-rank silver needles.

Meng Qi stabbed the silver needle into Ji Wujiong’s wrist. The thin needle instantly penetrated into the man’s pale skin. Meng Qi’s aura pushed the silver needle forward and let it swam all over Ji Wujiong’s body.

Except for his spiritual sea, which was in a horrible condition and riddled with holes, there seemed to be nothing wrong with Ji Wujiong.

The silver needle flew out of Ji Wujiong’s other wrist and fell into Meng Qi’s palm. She contemplated for a while. Could it be that Ji Wujiong was fainted because of aura overdraw?

Even when the spiritual sea was in the best condition, repeatedly overdrawing aura until the spiritual sea was totally exhausted and dry would leave the cultivator extremely fatigued afterward.

Meng Qi had been in this situation before. Each time, she slept like dead, and it took hours until she finally woke up.

What’s more, Ji Wujiong’s spiritual sea was so damaged that a single touch might totally break it apart.

However, no matter how deep he slept, there was no way that he wouldn’t react at all.

“Huh?” Meng Qi squinted slightly. A light flashed in her eyes, and she suddenly flew the silver needle into Ji Wujiong’s body again.

Once a cultivator formed their inner core — Golden Core in human cultivators’ case — the inner core would steadily regenerate aura into their spiritual sea. Even if the cultivator overdrew their aura, it would slowly recover as long as the inner core was still functioning. In Ji Wujiong’s case, however, not only was that his spiritual sea was in a complete tatter, but even his inner core, which supposed to be there, was very dim and lifeless. That inner core was clearly damaged, just like his spiritual sea. Extremely thin cracks could be seen on the core’s surface, and no aura was trickling from it. The inner core’s condition was bad enough that it seemed to be going to fall apart at any point.

Meng Qi silently called back the silver needle. No wonder Ji Wujiong’s aura seemed to be very unstable. Sometimes he was very strong, and sometimes he was very weak. It was also no wonder that he always retreated after dealing one blow each time and never lingered for long. It turned out that the reason was this.

Meng Qi slightly lowered her eyes. It was her first time seeing such a severely damaged spiritual sea and inner core. Even if she wanted to heal them, it was impossible with her current medical cultivation level.

What should she do now? Meng Qi frowned slightly and sat down cross-legged. Her small bronze cauldron had been broken, and she had no way to refine any medicines. What’s more, the medicines she brought from outside were useless. She also checked her storage space and found that all unused medicines from Fengyu Town had all disappeared.

She was truly at wit’s end…

No, wait, she still had something!

Meng Qi suddenly remembered. During the one month she spent with ‘Yun Qingyan,’ there was a medicinal field on the valley they were living at. The field was full of various medicinal plants that she personally planted and tended. Later, some of the plants matured, so she harvested and put them into her storage space.

Meng Qi hurriedly checked her storage space and found a small pile of preprocessed medicinal plants. She quickly selected a few that could be used on Ji Wujiong from the pile. Without a medicinal cauldron, she could only directly extract the essence from the plants with spell and poured it into Ji Wujiong’s mouth. She also took out the last bottle of Beiming Pill and stuffed its contents into Ji Wujiong’s mouth one by one. The medicine quickly dissipated. Meng Qi waited a while and checked again, only to find that the spiritual sea inside Ji Wujiong’s body was still dry and empty.

Although those Beiming Pills were not of high grade, they shouldn’t be totally useless. Unless…