Pills that specifically targeted the soul were all priceless treasures.
'A Soul-Protecting Pill, a sixth-rank Divine Soul pill... I think Father has one...'
After a moment of thought, Zhao Min sighed deeply. Thinking about these things was useless.
What Zhao Min didn't know was that the "Soul-Protecting Pill" Wei Zhongran had possessed was given to Li Yan over a month ago; he was now empty-handed.
There was another thing she was unaware of. When Li Yan's consciousness had been fading as he pulled her out, he had overlooked one crucial item.
The "True Essence Pill," a supreme-grade eighth-rank Immortal Pill refined by True Lord Qianchong.
A single pill that, in any realm, would be enough to cause a storm of blood.
Forget Li Yan's current condition; even if his Divine Soul had already left his body, as long as it hadn't drifted too far, it could have been forcefully pulled back.
And within a dozen breaths, Li Yan would have woken up, his physical body swiftly returning to its original state.
Perhaps in his fading consciousness, Li Yan had thought of pulling out the "True Essence Pill," but his final decision to bring Zhao Min out of the "Earthen Patch" was the correct one.
Otherwise, even if he could have woken up within ten breaths, the demonic beasts would not have given him that much time.
They would have long since swallowed him, pill and all. That demonic beast would have been blessed with immense fortune; under the effects of the "True Essence Pill," it might have advanced several ranks in a row, possibly even becoming an overlord of a region.
Zhao Min extended a jade-like hand and gently pulled. Li Yan's levitating body floated towards her and then slowly landed in front of her.
She didn't let his body touch the ground; the coarse sand and gravel would have pressed against his back.
Several sections of Li Yan's spine were exposed on his back. Even with clothes as a barrier, that would not do.
After checking him over several more times and finding no adverse conditions, Zhao Min knew she had done all she could. All that was left was to wait for the results.
Cultivators' methods were truly profound. In the eyes of mortals, saving lives and curing illnesses was like child's play.
Faced with all sorts of dying people, often with a wave of a hand or a single pill, the person would awaken in the next moment, or even stand up.
However, cultivators themselves knew that while their methods seemed endless, if they had already used their strongest techniques and pills to no effect, then the process of healing became very simple. All they could do was wait, or leave it to fate.
Fortunately, Li Yan's situation was the former. It was likely that after the pills took full effect, guided by Zhao Min's Spirit Power, his awakening was only a matter of time.
Li Yan's large robe covered his body as he floated silently less than a foot from the ground, his eyes tightly shut, completely motionless.
Zhao Min held a Spirit Stone in one hand and extended a slender, jade-like finger from the other, gently pressing it against Li Yan's side. A steady stream of light blue Spirit Power slowly wrapped around his body.
She was simultaneously absorbing Spirit Qi from the Spirit Stone and using her own Spirit Power to gently comb through the blocked meridians in Li Yan's body. Some of these meridians had been severed, while others were newly formed.
At the same time, the concentration of Spirit Qi here was not very high; it was relatively thin. Most importantly, it contained a trace of Demonic Qi.
Although this Demonic Qi could be slowly expelled after being absorbed, it was, of course, better to disperse it immediately.
Zhao Min was also constantly dispelling this Demonic Qi from her own body. While continuously outputting Spirit Power to Li Yan like this, the ambient Spirit Qi was clearly not enough.
Zhao Min actually had quite a few Spirit Stones on her: four Mid-grade Spirit Stones and over three thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones. She was quite wealthy.
But she knew that the Spirit Qi here was mixed with Demonic Qi. If a fierce battle were to occur, her needs would be very high.
Over three thousand stones might seem like a lot, but they wouldn't last long.
Zhao Min didn't seem to care about this at all. After one Spirit Stone was depleted, she took out another without any hesitation, continuously maintaining the purity within Li Yan's body.
This was the time when the medicinal pills were taking effect, and Li Yan needed a large amount of Spirit Power for nourishment.
She could now guess that Li Yan's treasures were probably all hidden in that strange space.
At that time, she had only briefly scanned that strange space with her Divine Sense before immediately beginning her recovery.
So, she didn't find where Li Yan's treasures were hidden. She reckoned that even if she wanted to know, she wouldn't be able to find them. As the master of the space, Li Yan had absolute control.
"Cunning!"
Zhao Min, with her beautiful eyes closed, muttered the two words. The Storage Pouch Li Yan usually wore at his waist was just a diversion. She estimated that even if it were snatched, there would be nothing of value inside.
She could guess that with Li Yan's cunning, that strange space would definitely be divided into different areas, some of which would be specifically used to store important treasures.
Unless an outsider killed Li Yan and re-refined it with their own blood, they would never be able to find the treasures within.
By the time eight gray, spirit-depleted stones lay beside Zhao Min, the sky outside the formation had already brightened.
During the night, many wild beasts had appeared outside the formation, including four large, ferocious ones.
Zhao Min had only glanced at them with her Divine Sense and ignored them. These beasts, whether passing by or inadvertently straying into the formation, became trapped, pacing back and forth in her vision.
But they always remained more than twenty zhang away from her, and the closest they got to the "Mountain-Breaking Gu" was only two or three zhang.
The small eyes of the "Mountain-Breaking Gu" glinted with a cruel light, but without a command from Zhao Min, they only stared intently at the beasts, not attacking.
In the eyes of those beasts, however, they were running wildly through the grasslands. But to their terror, no matter how much they ran or how much they roared, they could not escape the dense grass. The grass swayed before their eyes, and no matter how hard they ran, the weeds before them remained endless, as if they would accompany them to the end of time.
Only after daybreak did Zhao Min gently flick her sleeve, tossing the beasts out of the formation.
Once outside, the beasts rolled over and immediately stood up. They looked around at the familiar yet terrifying scenery, and in the next moment, they bolted away as if their lives depended on it.
They ignored even the smaller, weaker beasts that suddenly appeared beside them. In the past, these would have been easy meals, but now they had become objects of mutual terror. Only after running for some distance did the beasts discover with joy that all the familiar scenery had returned.
They had finally returned to a world that felt as if it had been lost for an age. At this, some of the beasts stopped abruptly and let out a series of roars towards the lake, as if proclaiming their final victory. But not a single one dared to go back.
Zhao Min looked at Li Yan, whose wounds had already grown a significant amount of new flesh, and she let out a light sigh.
"Still hasn't woken up!"
She then simply closed her eyes, stopped channeling Spirit Power for Li Yan, and began to slowly recover her own cultivation.
Although she had recovered in that mysterious space yesterday, her cultivation had never returned to its peak.
This night, she had worked tirelessly to heal Li Yan, and almost all the Spirit Qi she had absorbed was used on him; she had not stored much in her own Dantian.
Although it seemed she had only used eight Spirit Stones overnight, the mental energy she had consumed was immense.
Li Yan's injuries required being nourished little by little with Spirit Power; it was not a case of the more, the better.
Now, there were basically no bones exposed on Li Yan's body. The muscle-regenerating effect of Zhao Min's pills was excellent.
Coupled with her careful nourishment and guidance with Spirit Power, new flesh had already grown over Li Yan's important wounds, and even some of the cracks on his bones had begun to slowly heal.
Zhao Min didn't know that Li Yan had encountered a similar life-and-death situation before. Last night, she hadn't discovered the silver light emerging from Li Yan's body, nor had she seen it rapidly reshape his body as Wei Zhongran had.
None of this had happened, so in Zhao Min's eyes, the severely injured Li Yan was no different from anyone else.
...
Li Yan felt as if he were constantly falling. When he appeared, he was standing on a long bridge of flames.
On both sides of the bridge was a bottomless, pitch-black abyss. The flame bridge seemed to have no beginning and no end. He stood on it, alone.
The sky was gray, and the wind blew past him, causing the tranquil blue flames on both sides to sway in unison, chilling him to the bone...
All of this felt very familiar to Li Yan, as if he had been here before. But at the same time, it felt extremely strange.
"Where is this?"
Li Yan looked around, feeling a sense of déjà vu. The burning flames on both sides carried an endless chill, causing his body to rapidly lose sensation.
After standing for a long while, Li Yan suddenly felt that the flames on the bridge had thinned out.
'They don't seem as vigorous as last time...'
This thought suddenly popped into Li Yan's head, and then he became confused again. He didn't know why he had such a thought.
He looked at the thinning tranquil blue flames on both sides of the long bridge. Some memories were on the verge of surfacing, but he couldn't recall them no matter how hard he tried.
As Li Yan pondered this, he subconsciously took two steps towards the edge of the bridge, wanting to get a closer look at the tranquil blue flames, perhaps to remember something.
But as soon as he took a step, he felt his foot slip, and in the next moment, he plunged headfirst off the bridge.
Li Yan was horrified. His hands flailed in the air, trying to grab onto something to save himself, but it was too late. As his hands flailed, he was already falling into the pitch-blackness below the bridge.
'An abyss again...'
This sentence flashed through Li Yan's mind, but he didn't actually understand what it meant. Had he fallen into a similar abyss somewhere before?
...
Under a gray sky, six people stood on a giant Jade Ruyi, speeding through the air.
There were men and women among the six, standing against the wind.
At the head was a graceful young woman in a pale, ink-colored palace gown. The young woman's face was like a flower, with a high nose, almond eyes, and dark brows.
Her exposed skin was like a rare, holy, beautiful jade, like a piece of exquisite, white-glowing porcelain. Even the palace gown couldn't hide the breathtaking curves beneath.
Her expression was gentle, and there was not a trace of Spirit Power fluctuation from her body, making her seem like a princess from a mortal imperial family.
At this moment, her brows were furrowed, as if she were thinking about something.
Behind her were three men and two women, all around the age of twenty. Like soldiers of a mortal realm, they were guarding Her Highness the Princess.
All five were clad in silver armor. At this moment, they were looking at the young woman's back with respectful expressions.
If Zhao Min were to see these six people at this moment, she would be shocked as to why so many people with looks comparable to her own would appear at once.
Because, including the young woman in the palace gown in front, they all had a prominent feature: the men were exceedingly handsome, and the women were enchantingly beautiful.
And each one's skin was as white and translucent as jade. Among the cultivators Li Yan and the others knew, it wasn't that there were no handsome men or devastatingly beautiful women, but it was rare to see so many at once.
Apart from the young woman, who had not a trace of Spirit Power fluctuation and was no different from a mortal, the five behind her all had long and deep auras. Astoundingly, each of them was already a mid-level Golden Core stage cultivator.
"Martial Uncle Shanggong, the Black Demon Clan has been making all sorts of excuses this time. Even when you came personally, they just brushed it off as a heaven and earth anomaly, saying they are also investigating the cause and will reply to us later. It's obvious that their 'God's Road' has a major problem, which is why so much Demonic Qi has been released, affecting the stability of our region. They're deliberately hiding it. Their arrogance has been growing again in recent years!"