Having gathered himself, Qin He sat down cross-legged.
The backlash from his avatar shattering after taking the High God's palm strike head-on still lingered deep within his soul.
It was not the pain of flesh, sinew, and bone, but the sluggish emptiness left when the rhythms of his origin had been forcibly crushed by the laws of heaven and earth—prolonged and stubborn.
He did not force it down, merely regulated his breathing in silence.
The path of cultivation was to follow the current.
Wounds of the soul had to be nurtured slowly. Hasty pursuit of success would only leave hidden dangers within one's Dao Foundation.
An entire day quietly slipped away amid this silent recuperation.
By the time the faint light of the following dawn appeared, the sluggish emptiness shrouding his soul had completely vanished. His state of mind and cultivation had both returned to their peak, as steady as before.
In the military camp outside the tent, the aftermath of the Demonic Calamity had thoroughly spread across the entire encampment.
In this Second-Level Demon Calamity ambush, the central army alone had lost several hundred cultivators, nearly a tenth of all border troops across the domain.
On the Returning Ruins frontline, where the defenses were firm, this number was already an exceptionally grievous casualty count.
Before the remnants of battle had even been settled, military orders were already being issued layer upon layer.
With the central army's combat strength hollowed out, urgent transfer orders sped to the left and right camps. Large numbers of elite cultivators were dispatched overnight to the central army, filling the gaps in its defensive line.
Requisition documents for cultivators from the rear domains were likewise stamped one after another and delivered with the speed of sparks. A steady stream of reinforcements was already on its