In his room, Lin Yan sat cross-legged, his palms and the soles of his feet turned upward.
The stabbing pain in his sea of consciousness slowly ebbed like a receding tide, replaced by an empty, hollow sensation.
It felt as though someone had scooped out his entire brain, leaving nothing but a shriveled shell.
He examined himself internally. His condition was worse than he had imagined.
Within his Dantian Sea of Qi, the newly formed dantian embryo glowed dimly. It rotated at a pitifully slow pace, turning in fits and starts like a motorized top about to run out of power.
The true qi that had once surged ceaselessly through his meridians had dwindled to a trickle.
Several crucial junctions in his meridians had even developed tiny cracks from his earlier forced exertion, sending dull aches through him with each breath.
The biggest problem, however, was his divine sense.
That single Divine Sense Spike had drained almost all his mental energy.
Divine sense was different from true qi. When true qi ran out, he could gradually replenish it by meditating, regulating his breathing, and absorbing spiritual energy from the world.
But overtaxing his divine sense was like scraping away a layer of his soul's very essence. Meditation alone would restore it at an agonizingly slow pace.
"No, this is too slow."
Lin Yan frowned as he felt the free-floating energy around him being absorbed by his dantian embryo, strand by strand, and converted into true qi, which then nourished his divine sense.
The process was like filling a dried-up swimming pool through a drinking straw. He could forget about recovering fully in anything less than ten days or a fortnight.
But where am I right now?
The final stage of the Hunter Exam!
He was surrounded by monsters: Hisoka, Illumi,