Xiao Hua steeled his heart with a snort. With a sweep of his hand, he took a Marrow Cleansing Pill from his space and swallowed it in one gulp. Silently circulating his cultivation technique, he refined the pill's medicinal power to replenish the true qi draining from his meridians while stirring up his magic power and flying forward at top speed.
Ordinarily, Xiao Hua needed two hours to refine the medicinal power of a Marrow Cleansing Pill. But at this life-or-death juncture, he could no longer care about such things. He drove his true qi through his meridians with all his strength, rapidly refining the medicinal power. The true qi produced from that refinement was partly converted into magic power to support Xiao Hua's flight, while the rest filled the void left after the Mist Beast devoured his true qi.
Very quickly, in no more than the time it took an incense stick to burn, one Marrow Cleansing Pill had been refined—far faster than usual. Logically, refining a pill so brutally and forcing true qi through his meridians without regard for anything else should have overwhelmed Xiao Hua's meridians, perhaps even damaged them. Yet... contrary to his expectations, his meridians were extraordinarily tough. He did not feel the slightest discomfort. And refining Marrow Cleansing Pills this way was just barely enough to make up for the loss of true qi!
"I'll stake it all!" Xiao Hua knew this was no time for hesitation. He swallowed another Marrow Cleansing Pill and maintained his original flying speed, continuing deeper into Yulian Mountain... In Xiao Hua's perception, he had been flying straight inward all along, but the reality was not so. Within a massive mass of cloud and mist, his flight path formed an extremely irregular circle, one tightly enclosed within that cloud