Several hundred miles outside Greenwood City, inside a cave in an uninhabited low mountain.
An upright figure sat cross-legged on the cold ground, his eyes lightly closed, his bare upper body revealing the contours of powerful muscles. Countless crimson blood lines surged across his skin, flowing into the vivid blood-red vortex mark on his chest.
Before him, a strangely shaped statue, seemingly neither metal nor wood, hovered quietly in the air.
Dark gold patterns flowed across it, and the heart design on its chest pulsed faintly, radiating a dense, savage infernal aura that made it difficult to look directly at.
Time passed. Perhaps it was an hour, or perhaps the better part of a day.
The figure sitting like a sculpture inside the cave suddenly opened his eyes. A scarlet gleam flashed through them, then vanished in the blink of an eye.
He slowly turned, revealing sharply defined features. Who else could it have been but Lin Sheng?
He drew a deep breath. The crimson patterns writhing across his skin like little red snakes rapidly contracted, finally condensing into vivid blood seals. The densely packed blood seals roamed across his skin, ninety of them in total.
"The ninetieth blood seal is complete."
Feeling the formidable power surging through his body, Lin Sheng murmured to himself.
In an instant, the countless blood seals returned to his flesh and vanished.
Then he turned his gaze back to the Ancestral Idol before him.
He glanced at the notification on the system panel. The blood essence extraction progress had reached 13%.
"It really is slow. Two full days without stopping, even through the nights, and it's only gone up by 9%."
Lin Sheng shook his head slightly. As he reflected on this, the phone beside him began to ring.
He reached out, and the