The Alliance Leader's voice was quiet, yet it struck Lin Qingzhu's heart like a heavy hammer.
The mist of tears she had stubbornly held back froze in her reddened eyes. She swayed, as though every last ounce of strength had been drained from her.
But barely half a breath later, she bit down hard on her lower lip, forcibly suppressing the panic that had nearly broken her.
"Devouring him?"
Lin Qingzhu's voice was hoarse, yet remarkably steady.
"Then we replenish what he's lost!"
Without wasting another question, she turned and rushed to Zhou Xuan's side.
This was the Healing Chamber in the deepest reaches of the Purple-Gold Immortal Vein. The entire chamber had been hollowed out of a single block of ten-thousand-year warm jade. Zhou Xuan lay in the center of the jade bed beneath an ice silkworm silk quilt as thin as a cicada's wing.
Lin Qingzhu spared these priceless furnishings not a glance. She took a Needle Pouch from her Storage Ring, containing silver needles she had commissioned the finest craftsman to fashion from star meteorite iron unique to the Northern Lands.
"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"
Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Qingzhu's hands moved like phantoms, driving needle after needle precisely into the major acupoints across Zhou Xuan's body.
Her technique was exceptionally skilled. Each needle carried a faint current of spiritual energy, attempting to reactivate the meridians within Zhou Xuan that had already run dry and even begun to wither.
The Alliance Leader stood beside her, watching her work, and his tightly knitted brow eased a fraction.
He neither interrupted her nor pressed her about what had happened in the Return to Void.
He had long since experienced this young woman from the Northern Lands' extraordinary talent for business.
But he had never imagined that her mastery of