Next morning.
Mei Lin woke up early in the morning and went to the first floor to start a fire in the fireplace to make tea, then returned to the second floor. Mei Lin waited for the others to wake up so they could eat breakfast together.
After their usual breakfast, Mei Lin and Xu Yi went to cultivate while Xu Jie cleaned the tea house. They finished their cultivation session early in the evening. After eating dinner, Mei Lin went to her room and fell asleep.
With that, each day was the same as the day before. Ten more days went by in the same manner, but something unexpected happened on the tenth day, at noon. Xu Jie went to the second floor and carefully woke up Xu Yi. XU Jie told him about black smoke rising a few kilometers away.
Xu Yi went to look outside the tea house and returned after more than two hours. He discovered a large group of bandits surrounding the leaders, slug, and a few others, about twenty kilometers ahead of them.
All forces were engaged in a full-scale battle, hurling spells at each other without pause. Xu Yi had never seen such an intense conflict. Even from afar, he could feel the immense power of the large spells, which fell like rain on both sides. Alarmed, he rushed back to the tea house to wake Mei Lin. After a while, Mei Lin awakened as well.
"What's going on?" asked Mei Lin, looking at Xu Jie and Xu Yi.
"We have finally arrived at the caravan, but there's a big problem here. Bandits are currently attacking the rest of the caravan," Xu Yi replied.
Mei Lin thought for a while and then decided, "The caravan is probably alright, and there's nothing we can do anyway, so we'll wait. As for what you saw, only cultivators at the QI Condensation realm or someone with a special weapon or higher can use long-range attacks, so we have no way to help them." She sat at the tea table.
"Also, around the leader's slug, there is some kind of formation barrier to protect themselves, which I've never seen before," Mei Lin added, smiling. "Master must be behind this. As long as the master is inside the barrier, they will not lose. The worst problem is that if our slug goes there, they will surely catch us."
After listening to Mei Lin, Xu Jie, and Xu Yi became scared. Xu Jie was a non-cultivator, and Xu Yi couldn't fight someone at the third stage of BT. After pondering for a while, they all went out of the house and started shouting at the slug to stop.
The slug didn't halt his advance, steadily moving towards the leading slug. Not long after, even he spotted the billowing black smoke and instinctively froze in the middle of the canyon, completely exposed. Recognizing the danger, they all began to urge Slug to seek cover in one of the larger craters to blend in better. After another hour of frantic shouting, hunger finally convinced him, and he begrudgingly entered one of the craters.
The crater was vast, concealing its occupants from view. Only the second floor was visible to those outside, while those within could observe the smoke. Slug came to a halt, appearing almost as if he were hibernating.
*****
One month later inside the crater.
After more than one hundred days of cultivating, Mei Lin was on the verge of reaching the first stage of Body Tempering. She had been condensing natural energy into a wisp within her cultivation sea until it could hold no more. Sensing that she could no longer absorb any additional energy, Mei Lin ended her cultivation state and retrieved a storage ring containing the blood of the bandit she had acquired a month ago.
Mei Lin had already used more than half of the blood, leaving her with slightly less than a liter. After careful consideration, she decided to break through to the first stage of Body Tempering. With determination, she drank the entire contents of the pot in one go and discarded the empty vessel.
In just a moment, natural energy from the blood began to surge through Mei Lin's body. She initially entered her cultivation sea and focused on absorbing all the natural energy from the blood she drank along with absorbing natural energy from her blood collecting as much as possible natural energy into her cultivation sea.
This process took her another two days. Once she had absorbed all the blood into her cultivation sea, Mei Lin began to draw natural energy solely from her surroundings, overloading her now complete wisp of energy. As she accumulated more and more natural energy, the wisp representing her first stage of Body Tempering started to transform into a drop of blood, shining with a blinding red light that enveloped her entire cultivation sea.
Soon after, this shining drop of blood-dimmed and turned crimson red. Mei Lin's natural energy, now represented by this drop, began to rotate slowly. As it did, black impurities started to escape from the rotating mass, making it appear increasingly bright and pure.
Mei Lin's consciousness spread across her cultivation sea as she continued to rotate her natural energy, striving to purge as many impurities as possible. This purification process would enhance the power and purity of her energy. She became so absorbed in this task that she lost all sense of time. Eventually, she noticed that no more impurities were escaping, so she stopped.
As soon as she ceased the movement of her natural energy, Mei Lin's mind went black, and she lost consciousness. Simultaneously, her natural energy exploded across her cultivation sea, unleashing the true potential of the blood path.
*****