Surviving in Misery

His Soul Power was nearly depleted, multiple meridians had been damaged, and his vitality had faded like a candle guttering in the wind.

If his foundation had not been so solid, he would already have been dead.

"Title Douluo... truly terrifying."

Zhou Qiubai smiled as he pulled out the last two items from his chest.

One was a jade bottle containing three of the most common healing pills.

Even so, each one was worth three Gold Soul Coins.

He had bought them from Hundred Herbs Hall before leaving Suotuo City, just in case.

He had not expected to use them so soon.

The other was the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's Sword Talisman.

Chen Xin's token...

If he crushed it, that Sword Douluo might sense it.

But Zhou Qiubai merely glanced at it before putting the Sword Talisman back into his clothes.

Debts of favor were the hardest to repay.

Besides, in his current state, what could Chen Xin do even if he came?

Tang Hao had already left, and the immediate crisis had passed.

He had to walk the rest of the road himself.

They would meet again in the future, but next time, it would be a fight to the death.

He poured out a pill and swallowed it.

But that was not enough.

For injuries this severe, the three pills could at most keep him alive. To fully recover, he needed at least a month of rest.

And during that time, he could not use Soul Power, or his injuries might relapse and even worsen.

But where was he now?

At the bottom of Poison Miasma Cliff, in a desperate and perilous place.

If a Spirit Beast appeared, even a hundred-year-old one could take his life, let alone a thousand-year-old one.

And this was a massive sinkhole-like cliff bottom with almost no way out.

At least judging by the echoes, this platform was a dead end.

If he climbed up, he would fall before reaching thirty meters in his current condition. If he jumped down, there was an unknown abyss below, and life or death was uncertain.

Zhou Qiubai fell silent.

A dead end.

A true dead end.

Leaning against the rock wall, he watched the churning poisonous miasma before him and suddenly remembered the wuxia novels he had read in his previous life.

When protagonists jumped off cliffs without dying, they were bound to encounter some great opportunity.

But those were novels.

Reality was that he was gravely wounded and near death, trapped in a poisonous miasma wasteland, with only two pills and a sword in hand.

"I can't... really die here."

Zhou Qiubai took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

Listen to Rain continued operating tenaciously despite his severe injuries, gathering the sounds around him bit by bit.

Water dripped down the rock wall. Drip, drip.

Poisonous insects crawled through the dirt, rustling softly.

In the distance, there was the sound of flowing water, murmuring and babbling.

And then...

Wind.

A faint breeze blew in from a certain direction.

There was an exit.

"Still, I need to stop the bleeding first..."

His voice was so hoarse that it did not sound like his own.

He laboriously shifted his body and leaned against a relatively dry boulder.

His pack had been lost during the fall. Fortunately, a few things remained in the inner pouch against his body.

A small bottle of Gold Sore Medicine, and that Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect Sword Talisman.

Zhou Qiubai tremblingly opened the medicine bottle and sprinkled the powder over his wounds.

The instant the powder touched his flesh, the intense pain made his vision go black.

But he gritted his teeth and tore off part of his garment to bind the wounds roughly.

The shattered bones in his left shoulder could not be treated. He could only secure them for now and deal with them later.

After finishing all that, he was so exhausted that he nearly fainted again.

He swallowed another pill and began slowly healing his injuries.

Zhou Qiubai leaned against the boulder, closed his eyes, and felt sensation gradually return to his body.

Pain. Pain everywhere.

But pain meant he was still alive.

"Tang Hao..."

He murmured the name, his tone calm but carrying bone-deep frost.

So what if he was a Title Douluo?

If you failed to kill me today, then one day, I will challenge you with my sword.

Time passed in the darkness.

Zhou Qiubai did not know how long he had been unconscious. Perhaps a few hours, perhaps an entire day.

When he opened his eyes again, the cliff bottom was still dim, but the poisonous miasma seemed to have thinned somewhat.

Through the sparse fog, he finally saw his surroundings clearly.

This was a deep, secluded valley. The cliff walls on either side towered into the clouds, and when he looked up, he could see only a sliver of grayish-white sky.

The valley floor was roughly three hundred meters wide and filled with many strange, bizarre plants.

The ground was damp and soft, covered in thick moss and decaying leaves.

The sound of water came from the eastern side. There should be an underground river there.

Zhou Qiubai struggled into a sitting position.

The first thing he needed to do was find water.

Following the sound of the water, he laboriously moved about thirty meters before the view suddenly opened up before him.

An underground river surged from a crack in the rock wall, carving a shallow channel across the valley floor.

The water was so clear that he could see the colorful pebbles beneath its surface.

More importantly, clusters of pale-blue moss grew on the rocks by the river.

"Clear Heart Moss..."

Zhou Qiubai's eyes lit up.

It grew in places of extreme yin and could clear the mind, detoxify the body, and nourish the meridians. It had nearly vanished from the outside world, yet there was so much of it here.

He picked a leaf and put it into his mouth.

A cool current flowed down his throat and instantly spread through his limbs and bones.

Under the wash of that current, the stagnant blood and palm force within his body actually showed signs of loosening.

Good stuff.

Zhou Qiubai did not hesitate any longer. Enduring the pain, he bent down to gather it.

Before long, he had a large armful in his embrace.

After returning to his original spot, he sat cross-legged, crushed the Clear Heart Moss, and applied it to his wounds.

The cool sensation replaced the burning pain, and his wounds began healing at a visible pace.

Though his bones would need time to mend, at least the injuries had stopped worsening.

Next, he took out his final pill and swallowed it together with the Clear Heart Moss.

His cultivation method sped up, and Soul Power surged through his meridians, repairing the damaged acupoints and energy channels.

Time passed bit by bit through cultivation.

Three days.

Zhou Qiubai stayed in this secluded valley for a full three days.

During those three days, he did three things.

He healed, explored, and thought.

His injuries recovered faster than expected. Though he was still far from his peak condition, he at least had the strength to protect himself.

His exploration gave him a deeper understanding of this secluded valley.

The valley's vegetation was lush. Besides Clear Heart Moss, he found several other rare medicinal herbs.

They were not young, either.

If he took them outside to sell, they would surely fetch a fortune.

And the most precious discovery was an Earth Vein Lingzhi he found near the entrance of a cave.

Judging by its appearance, it was a treasure at least five hundred years old.

But Zhou Qiubai did not dare pick it rashly.

Because beside the lingzhi lay a massive python, entirely black in color.

"Flood Dragon Python..."

Zhou Qiubai's heart tightened.

A Spirit Beast at least a thousand years old.

Not all Spirit Beasts were gathered in Soul Beast Forests. Some lived in deadly places humans could not discover, and they did not venture outside either, so no one had ever noticed them.

The Soul Beast Forests raised by humans, along with those large gathering places for Spirit Beasts, only contained ninety-eight percent of all Spirit Beasts. A small portion were more solitary.

Flood Dragon Pythons had the potential to transform into flood dragons, and their strength far surpassed others of the same rank. Even at his peak, dealing with one would have been difficult, much less now, when he had not recovered from his serious injuries.

So he did not make a move and merely remembered the location.

The third thing was thinking.

The martial world was crueler than he had imagined, but also more exciting.

The strong preyed on the weak. That was an iron law.

Tang Hao could hunt him down over a movement technique and try to kill him because he refused to pledge loyalty.

There was no reason, only strength.

But the martial world had its own rules as well.

At the very least, Tang Hao had not attacked directly in the arena. At the very least, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect had chosen to build goodwill instead of taking by force.

"So... in the end, I still need to become stronger."