The advancement tournament progressed steadily, Shrek Academy's winning streak stretching like a string of ever-lengthening pearls, dazzling and brilliant. With every victory, the name of the Eight Monsters rang louder, and those shit-green uniforms became a symbol of resilience and strength.
Yet beneath that growing glory, Tang San's tent had become the camp's most hidden battlefield.
Late at night, the campfires had gone out, and even the insect cries had grown sparse. Inside the tent, only a dim soul tool lamp was lit. Tang San sat cross-legged on the bed, bare from the waist up. The savage scars across his back had faded to deep pink; the newly grown skin was tender, but the meridians beneath remained fragile. His right arm was still wrapped in bandages, though part of them had now been undone, exposing the area from his elbow to his wrist.
The skin there was an unnatural bluish-purple, with faint charred lines spreading through it like a spiderweb. This was evidence that the lightning energy buried deep in his meridians had not yet been fully expelled. Several specific acupoints were pierced with needles as fine as ox hairs and about an inch long, crystal-clear throughout and emanating an intensely cold aura.
The ice needles were not physical objects, but formed through a special method of the Mysterious Heaven Skill, condensing highly concentrated ice-element Soul Power with the medicinal properties of several frigid herbs. They were called Mysterious Ice Thorn Meridian Needles. This was an extremely dangerous treatment Tang San had found in the Tang Sect's secret records, used to stimulate and clear meridians that had become congested and blocked after suffering severe external damage.
At that moment, he controlled his Soul Power and carefully guided the Mysterious Ice Thorn Meridian Needles, inching them with extreme slowness toward the