Void Cultivation-Chapter 248- Green Gas (3)

Very soon, Grey passed by the same location where the Soul Devouring Bird had once absorbed flesh and where his saber had slashed repeatedly. However, when he glanced around, he did not see any signs of damage at all. There were no torn patches of flesh, no lingering saber marks, and not even a trace of black blood.

It was as if this had never been the place where he had swung his saber.

The recovery speed of the flesh was simply too fast. By the time Grey arrived, the tunnels had already fully healed, smooth and intact, giving no indication that a battle had ever taken place there. Of course, Grey did not notice anything off.

The shadow did not notice anything off. The purple phantom did not notice anything off. The Soul Devouring Bird did not notice anything off. Even the purple crystal, which was always silent and unresponsive, did not notice anything off.

Yet, despite this, the feeling of dread in Grey’s heart continued to rise. It was faint but persistent, like cold fingers slowly tightening around his chest. His body unconsciously grew tense, every nerve stretched tight with an inexplicable fear.

After running for several hours without encountering a single monster, fatigue finally caught up to Grey. He slowed down and decided to rest. The strange absence of monsters allowed him to focus entirely on recovery while the shadow and the purple phantom stood guard nearby.

The shadow alone was not very reliable, so Grey deliberately summoned the purple phantom as additional protection. After that, he placed a thin trace of divine sense outside his body, ensuring that he would immediately detect any disturbance in the surroundings.

Only after making these preparations did Grey feel slightly at ease.

Without hesitation, he dived inward.

His mind entered a delicate state of meditation. In this semi-conscious condition, his thoughts drifted while remaining faintly alert, allowing him to recover spirit essence at a faster pace while simultaneously repairing his injuries.

At the moment, although he appeared mostly fine on the surface, the situation inside his body was far worse. Internal bleeding had yet to fully stop, and several of his organs were damaged to varying degrees.

Among them, his eyes were in the most fragile state.

After accidentally gazing upon the door covered in countless scratch marks, Grey’s eyes had exploded instantly. Worse still, a foreign and sinister energy had invaded his body, suppressing his natural healing ability and preventing his eyes from regenerating.

It was only after several hours of relentless effort, and with the combined assistance of the purple crystal shards, that Grey was finally able to endure the excruciating pain of growing new eyes.

Even now, those eyes remained extremely weak. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Thus, the first organ Grey focused on after entering meditation was his eyes. Gentle purple light seeped out from the crystal and slowly enveloped them, nourishing and stabilizing them bit by bit. Only after that did Grey guide the purple light to spread throughout the rest of his body, illuminating his organs one after another.

With the addition of the purple crystal’s power, his injuries healed at a noticeably faster pace.

"In the end, this world is full of constant danger," Grey murmured softly. "I’ve already faced countless near-death experiences just from this place alone..."

Gradually, all internal bleeding ceased, and the damaged organs stabilized. After some time, Grey suddenly spat out a mouthful of thick black blood. This was stagnant blood that had accumulated inside his body for quite a while.

He vomited several mouthfuls in succession before finally stopping.

When he was done, the pallor on his face faded noticeably. His breathing steadied, and when he opened his eyes, a sharp glint flashed within them, cold and piercing, as though capable of cutting through steel.

Blood had long since dyed his clothes crimson. Even his hair and face were not spared. Despite this, Grey only felt mild discomfort. After all, this was far from the first time he had been injured this badly.

There were even times when his injuries had been far worse.

’With the recovery power of the purple crystal, I can heal almost all of my organs as long as they haven’t been reduced to dust,’ Grey thought inwardly.

Just as he finished stabilizing his condition, two muffled booms echoed deep within his body.

Boom.

Boom.

Grey’s body shuddered slightly as the sounds reverberated through him. These muffled booms were the unmistakable sound of spirit perforations being opened.

Startled, Grey immediately turned his attention inward.

Within his body, at the locations of his spirit perforations, he saw two new apertures slowly taking shape. They shimmered faintly as spirit energy surged toward them from all directions, flooding into the forming nodes.

In the blink of an eye, the spirit energy merged completely with the nodes.

They became his... spirit perforations.

Although Grey was shocked by the sudden breakthrough, after all, he had not attempted to open any perforations, he quickly began to reason out how this could have happened.

"Well, after experiencing countless dangers in this place, my body has already been pushed to its absolute limit," Grey muttered to himself. "Being injured, healing, and then being injured again has placed an enormous strain on my body. That strain, in turn, stimulated my latent potential and allowed the remnant spirit energy within me to surge toward the nearest spirit perforations and break them open."

"This method was completely different from the previous ones," he continued calmly. "It wasn’t forceful at all. It was gentle... natural. There was no need for brute strength."

Although his voice remained steady, his heart was fluctuating slightly.

Grey could clearly feel the changes taking place within his body. The addition of two more spirit perforations caused a subtle but profound shift in the circulation of his spirit energy. Even though he only had thirty-nine spirit perforations at the moment, he could tell that the last two were fundamentally different from the others.

They felt deeper with a more dense spirit power flowing through them. They were also stronger and seemed to be more refined than the others.

"Undoubtedly, the spirit power they release will be far denser than the rest," Grey said softly, his expression solemn.

If he could continue opening spirit perforations through such a gentle method, one that did not cause violent backlash or force his body to reverberate, then his overall combat strength would rise far beyond what his current realm suggested.

Grey was already abnormal.

With only one ball of Spirit Fire, he could already fight cultivators who possessed two. That alone placed him well outside common sense. However, if he continued breaking perforations in this manner, then even with just one ball of Spirit Fire, the output of spirit power he could unleash would rival that of someone wielding two.

In fact, if he went all out and his opponent underestimated him, he could even contend against a cultivator with three balls of Spirit Fire.

After all, the difference between possessing Spirit Fire and not possessing it at all was like the gap between Foundation Establishment and Qi Accumulation.

No matter how much a Qi Accumulation realm cultivator trained or refined themselves, they would always be thoroughly suppressed in front of Foundation Establishment. This was not a matter of talent or effort, it was an absolute difference in cultivation realms, a fundamental law that those of lower realms simply could not defy.

As Grey continued observing his body, he briefly checked the Mosasaur residing within his sea of consciousness. The massive beast lay dormant, its presence steady and oppressive as ever. Finding nothing unusual, Grey moved on.

At no point did he notice the tiny figure that had hidden itself perfectly within his purple moon.

The purple moon showed no outward changes. It continued to hang silently above the spirit sea, reflecting gentle purple moonlight across the surface of the still waters. However, once in a while, a faint shadow would appear upon the reflection, a tiny figure sitting cross-legged, eyes closed in silent meditation.

The shadow was extremely small and vanished almost the instant it appeared. It could only be seen for a brief moment when the purple moonlight struck the surface of the spirit sea at a specific angle.

Still, Grey noticed nothing amiss.

After observing the silent blank expression of the Mosasaur for a short time, he withdrew his attention and gazed at the purple moon and the calm spirit-water below it. He let out a quiet sigh before finally retracting his divine sense from his body.

Grey opened his eyes.

Nothing in the outside world had changed.

The walls of flesh continued to squirm and contract rhythmically, as though they were breathing. From time to time, green gas seeped out from swollen veins, diffusing slowly into the air. Beneath his feet, the fleshy ground trembled faintly, sending subtle vibrations through his body.

Yet none of this caught Grey’s attention.

What truly drew his gaze was the black blood he had vomited earlier, which was still pooled on the ground.

Normally, blood would have dried up long ago or been absorbed into the surrounding environment, especially in a place composed entirely of flesh and blood. However, the blood before him remained exactly as it was. It had neither dried nor been absorbed by the ground.

"Strange... why hasn’t the blood disappeared?" Grey muttered to himself.

Given the nature of this place, his blood should have been readily absorbed by the flesh tunnels. Although he wasn’t sure what kind of change that absorption might cause, Grey instinctively felt that it shouldn’t have remained like this.

Still, he shook his head.

After all, when he had first arrived here, he had bled as well, and nothing immediately bad had happened.

At least... nothing that he noticed.