The battlefield fell quiet.
Seated cross-legged within the Human Realm Path, Jiang Ding drew spiritual energy from a storage jade pendant to replenish his mana. He closed his eyes and tended his wounds outside Blood Lake Bone Mountain.
The Blood Lake Ancestor had not injured him.
But the Strong-Interaction-Like Force Droplet formed by that strike of the Causality of Metal had dealt a devastating blow to his soul and body. It had left him gravely wounded, from the inside out.
A sword cultivator's body was remarkably fragile.
"I'll probably need more than twenty years to recover, and that's with the Immortal Sect's healing facilities..."
Jiang Ding quickly finished examining himself.
He abandoned the idea of healing himself now and beckoned. A fist-sized Blood-Jade Little Mountain, nine skulls, and a bone-shaped jade slip flew from the ashes of the Blood Lake Ancestor's body into his hand. They were the Blood Lake Ancestor's storage artifacts.
"Stay here for a while."
Jiang Ding took a head wrapped in layer upon layer of seals from the Human Realm Path and tossed it to the ground. With a light press of his toe, he buried it tens of thousands of meters deep, beyond the detection of even a Void Refining cultivator's spiritual sense.
The Blood Lake Ancestor was not dead yet.
Unlike the lone Rogue Cultivator Swamp True Venerable, this man belonged to an order. A soul lamp, life-and-death tablet, or something similar might exist in its Founder's Hall. If he died or suffered serious injury away from the order, it would show on the soul lamp, allowing its cultivators to come to his aid.
Of course, in a demonic order, such things were more often used to hunt down disciples who had defected.
Jiang Ding's new seals within the Human Realm Path accounted for