Chapter 27

The next morning.

“Ugh…” Zairen lightly groaned as he sat cross legged on his bed, quietly circulating spirit energy throughout his body to help heal his organs and surface wounds. He paused to pop a injury-healing pill into his mouth, and then promptly continued.

He was heavily injured! Several of his ribs were broken, and he had suffered a large amount of internal damage. In fact, the previous day, it had taken all of his effort to not collapse as he struggled to put up an indifferent front against the governor and walk back to the cabin. As soon as he had returned to his room, he had almost immediately fallen unconscious. He had only woken up just now after sleeping for sixteen hours.

Zairen could tell that even with the aid of his miraculous health-restoring pills and Heaven Divine Healing technique, it would still take him a few days to completely recover from his wounds.

His recovery methods could not be underestimated! In his past life, they were the pinnacle of the medical world.

Zairen’s eyes palpated. That was dangerous! This time, he really could have died!

His strength was insufficient. If Finn had not stopped the fight, who knew what could have happened?

Experts were everywhere. Since both the masked assassin and the governor were spirit energy users, there were certainly countless others that were even more powerful! The next time he encountered a strong opponent, Zairen did not want to rely on the black stone’s spirit energy to prevail. He would have to train diligently!

After pondering for a moment, Zairen suddenly thought of something. He put his hand into his pocket and took out the small bag of spirit stones that Finn’s father had gifted him.

Dumping them out onto his hand and examining them, he involuntarily smiled. The stones were small, each one about as big as an acorn, but were very glossy and had pretty blueish tints to them.

Zairen recognized them. They were low-grade spirit stones, which were relatively ordinary items for cultivators back in his old life. Each of them contained concentrated demonic energy and were thus incredibly versatile, useful for formations, training, and countless other tasks. Thus, they served as a form of commonly-accepted basic currency.

However, Zairen had a different use for these stones. He wanted to store their energies into the Shadow Dragon Sword’s black stone! Due to the mystical qualities of that black stone, it could automatically convert demonic energy to spirit energy and absorb it. This was a miraculous skill that, even until now, was still inconceivable to Zairen!

He knew better than anyone just how rare the black stone was… if others in his old life had known of the extent of its abilities, it could have definitely caused a war!

Without any more delay, Zairen pulled out the Silent Shadow Sword from his conscience, and with his other hand, lifted up a spirit stone. He held it up and carefully brought it toward the black stone.

Fuoosh!

The spirit stone’s bright blue glow immediately dimmed, and an almost transparent river of spirit energy could be seen shooting like a rocket from the spirit stone to the black stone. The black stone absorbed this stream ravenously, as if it had not had a proper meal for days, and only a moment later the low grade spirit stone no longer glowed anymore, causing the flow of spirit energy to stop.

He sucked in a breath. Was it his imagination, or was the black stone’s absorbance rate much higher than in his previous life? He had barely lifted the stone before its essence was completely sucked out and stripped from it.

After the spirit stone had been drained of all its energy, he put it down and pondered for a moment. Then, he picked up the pouch that contained all the other twenty or so spirit stones, proceeding to hold it near the black stone as well.

Whoosh! He could barely keep his hand still as he could feel an immense amount of the spirit stones’ demonic energy immediately violently scramble to reach the black stone, as if it were the most precious thing on earth.

Only a moment later, the sensation stopped.

Zairen furrowed his brows. What had happened? It was already over? Did something weird happen? There were around twenty low-grade spirit stones in the pouch, which should’ve taken at least a minute to absorb the demonic energy out of.

He dumped the pouch over, spilling all of the stones inside onto the ground.

He let out a breath. They were ordinary stones, without a single strand of demonic energy in them! They were all sucked dry!

In just a moment… All these spirit stones had been completely absorbed!

How could this be? Zairen was amazed. It seemed that somehow, the black stone had evolved in some way to absorb energy at an absolutely absurd rate! He had never seen anything like it!

A bit stunned, Zairen glanced down at the black stone studded on his sword. He wondered if there was something different about it.

However, as he thought about how many spirit stones the stone had absorbed, he started to smile. He was very happy with this situation. Each spirit stone was equivalent to roughly five times the amount of spirit energy of Zairen’s current capacity. By adding all of this excess energy to the black stone, he was quintupling its total amount of stored spirit energy!

Just as he was about to put away the Shadow Dragon Sword, he suddenly groaned and bent forward.

Painful! His injuries were flaring up again. He quickly waved his hand to retrieve a painkiller pill from his interdimensional space and shoved it into his mouth. Then, as he waited for the pill to take effect, he clasped his hands together and started to channel his spirit energy throughout his body again.

A few minutes later, his chest finally stopped heaving and he started to relax again. However, his eyes revealed a pained expression. ‘I’ll have to spend some time to recover. Forget about healing the mysterious women in the interdimensional space, currently I won’t even be able to approach her!’

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In a flash, five days passed.

Currently, Zairen was sitting cross-legged on his bed, training the Shadow Dragon Art. An eerie atmosphere permeated the air.

During these past few days, he had rarely exited his room, meditating constantly to heal his body. As he had started to feel better, he gradually began to continue training the Shadow Dragon Art again as well.

He wanted to get stronger, quickly. Who knew what insane enemy he would face next? He was miraculously given this second chance at life, so he didn't want to waste it!

Before he trained, he occasionally ingested a Spirit Building Pill, which greatly accelerated his training. With the combined effect of these pills, compared to how fast he had advanced in the past, it was like he had burst through a bottleneck, and his cultivation leapt forward! He suspected that this was not only because of his pills, but also because he had just been in a life-or-death situation, and his body was rebounding and improving itself from it.

In just these few days, his spirit energy capacity nearly quadrupled! Although he had possessed a small capacity in the first place, this growth couldn't be underestimated! If anyone in his previous life saw his progress, they would have been shocked.

Furthermore, he could tell that his body was becoming significantly physically stronger and quicker as well.

If he faced that knife-wielding silver masked assassin again, Zairen suspected that he would be able to defeat him much more easily, and without having to use a feint to trick him.

In this time period, Alivia and Grandpa Dinran had visited him a couple times, and Zairen was able to put up a pretense that everything was fine, and that he had just carelessly tripped himself and hit his head, so he was slowly recuperating now.

As for attempting to heal the woman in the gray ring, Zairen still checked up on her status daily to monitor the poison, but he momentarily forgot about trying to do anything. If he couldn't even approach her, how could he possibly be able to attempt to cure her at all?

At this moment, there was a knock on the door.

“Zairen! Are you there?” Alivia’s voice sounded out.

Zairen was slightly startled, and gave a puzzled look. “What is it?”

There was a slight pause, and then: “Finn is at the front door, asking to see you. I tried to tell him to leave, but he has been standing there unmoving for the past hour.” From the way she spoke, one could tell that she was annoyed.

Zairen was bewildered. Finn was here?

In the past few days, Finn had not bothered Zairen even once. In fact, ever since the event in the clearing, the boy had seemed to have disappeared. According to Alivia, no one had seen him in the past week.

Since this was the case, why had he shown up now?

“Alright, I’ll go talk to him.” Zairen responded. He stood up and walked toward the door.

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“What are you doing here?” Zairen interrogated. He was standing behind the opened front door of the cabin, staring at a fidgeting Finn who was a few feet in front of him.

Hearing Zairen’s voice, Finn immediately snapped to attention. He looked up, bowed deeply, and then implored with a reverent tone: “Master... please accept me as your disciple!”

Finn’s words took Zairen totally by surprise. His eyes opened wide, he observed Finn with a disbelieving expression.

“You heard me correctly, master!” Finn confirmed, and then added on. “I profusely apologize for acting so rude to you weeks ago! I was immature and couldn't recognize how much of a martial expert you are. I've now grown as a person, and wish to seek your guidance for training!” As he said that, he put his two palms together in a respectful gesture, as if he was reporting to a higher authority.

Zairen stared at Finn silently, unable to tell if he was serious or not. He couldn't help but be extremely suspicious.

Finn had previously been extremely spoiled. He had constantly tried to put down and bully Zairen. But now, he was asking to be his disciple… was Zairen really expected to believe he had changed so drastically?

After thinking for a moment, Zairen suddenly smiled, and then replied: “As a martial artist, it’s important to physically condition your body. If you’re my disciple, your first task is to run one hundred laps around the village square.”

As he spoke, he carefully observed Finn’s reaction, knowing full well that this was an absurd task! One hundred laps around the village square was nearly two hundred miles. Considering his current physical state, there was no way Finn could actually physically do it.

Finn merely stood there and gawked at him, with a perplexed expression on his face. It seemed that he was truly amazed by what Zairen had said. Suddenly, he shouted out: “Does that mean master accepts me as his disciple?” A radiant smile burst onto his face, and he immediately turned around and ran off. A few seconds later, his figure disappeared into the trail in the woods.

Seeing Finn’s reaction, Zairen was dumbfounded. Was this the same Finn that had tried to bully him a week ago? What had happened?

He shook his head, and then made his way back to his room. Alivia had been watching them and was equally as shocked.