At the bottom of the Buried Demon Abyss, fiend qi hung thick as ink, and deathly silence reigned.
Han Li sat cross-legged deep within a narrow rock crevice, his body shrouded in a thin, dark halo like a dying candle in the wind. His face was pale as paper, his aura faint, and every breath brought tearing agony throughout his body. Although the bleeding from the bone-deep slash across his back had stopped, the trauma to his internal organs and damage to his meridians were far beyond what ordinary pills could quickly heal. Worse still, the Nascent Soul-level fiend qi that had invaded his body clung like an ulcer to the bone, relentlessly eating away at his vitality.
[Warning! Host severely injured. Vitality continuously draining. Corrosion from foreign fiend qi within the body intensifying. Expulsion or refinement urgently required. Recommendation: locate a place of extreme yin and use pure profound yin fiend qi to counter-refine the foreign fiend qi; alternatively, consume an extreme yang pill to forcibly expel it. Current environment: extremely high concentration of profound yin fiend qi. Meets the first condition. Risk: host in extremely poor condition. Forcibly drawing fiend qi into the body for refinement has a success rate below 30%, with risks of fiend qi backlash and soul disintegration.]
The system's notification was cold and objective.
Han Li slowly opened his eyes. They were bloodshot, yet unusually clear. Examining his body internally, he found his condition even worse than the system's assessment. The lingering force of the Black Fiend Cult Master's palm strike contained not only violent spiritual power but also a trace of the "law imprint" unique to Nascent Soul cultivators, making it exceedingly difficult to purge. Had the Profound Fiend Asura Art not possessed a natural affinity for fiend qi, and had