Before they knew it, it was afternoon.
In the inn room, Ye Jingtang lay beneath a thin quilt. After a night's rest, his complexion had mostly returned to normal, though a trace of exhaustion still lingered between his brows.
After standing watch for a short while before dawn, Niao Niao had also returned to the room to rest beside Ye Jingtang. Now hunger had woken her, and she poked her head out beside his pillow, nuzzling his face back and forth.
"Phew..."
Ye Jingtang slowly woke. His limbs felt filled with lead, and his insides felt hollowed out, as though his wives had taken turns with him for seven days and seven nights.
Apart from that, however, there was nothing wrong with his body. Seventy or eighty percent of the Dragon-Prison Miasma's poison had already been expelled. The little remaining was probably because he had exhausted too much stamina, causing the Flame-Rebirth Diagram to slow down automatically. Once he ate something nourishing to replenish his essence, energy, and spirit, he should recover completely.
After taking a moment to collect himself, Ye Jingtang opened his eyes and saw a large, round, white head tilted toward him.
"Chirp chirp?"
Ye Jingtang raised a hand to rub Niao Niao's head, then braced himself against the bed, sat up, and looked around.
The room was clean and tidy. He could hear the even breathing of someone sound asleep next door, while downstairs in the inn's main hall, martial artists were chatting noisily.
"The waters of the martial world really run deeper than I imagined. Xie Jianlan, Shi Daoyu, the Three Great Commanders of White Owl Camp-which of them couldn't make the martial world quake three times with a stamp of their foot? Yet in less than half a night, they were devoured clean..."
"It's