Night was about to fall.
A low rumble of thunder suddenly sounded, though it was impossible to tell whether it came from the mountains or the sky.
For the town's residents, that hardly mattered. At most, a few worried that it might rain overnight and wondered whether their cheap, obviously mass-produced tents would keep the water out.
Of course, no one knew about the small matter of "a stranger suddenly vanishing on a nearby mountain," either.
Everyone had their own concerns: ordinary people, researchers, and Main God Users alike—
As night fell, Li Jiye returned to his temporary lodgings, dusty and exhausted.
He even smelled of blood.
After taking off his clothes, he gave the knife wound across his chest a cursory cleaning.
The wound had bled quite a bit, but he had reacted quickly enough that the blade had not cut too deep. In just ten or twenty hours, the torn flesh had already begun to show signs of healing.
Even the surface of his skin now held a faint, frostlike sheen.
Honestly, Old Li was once again struck by how remarkable pure physical enhancement could be.
But what mattered most right now were the two Meteorite Fragments he had acquired.
One was the size of a dragon's eye, its crystal cloudy and cold to the touch. Most importantly, it carried a distinctly perceptible, unusual aura—
a thing worth more than its weight in gold.
The other was nearly half a palm wide. It looked like a piece of Tianhuang Stone and was plain at first glance.
From Old Li's initial observations after obtaining it, the stone seemed able to absorb incoming light. The small pocket of air around it therefore looked unusually dim.
Beyond that, he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
In fact, it was for