As sunlight touched Li Xingkong, the Qi Refining Method began circulating on its own, and his wounds began to heal.
Since he had only one mote of Spiritual Qi, he could only heal himself in stages, treating the critical injuries first and then slowly recuperating.
The first and most important step was to regulate the blood vessels throughout his body, repairing those that had ruptured from the massive impact.
The blast had struck his right hand first, then his entire body. Countless capillaries inside him had burst to varying degrees, making that the most serious part of his injuries.
Treating so many capillaries would take a considerable amount of time, so Li Xingkong could only direct his Spiritual Qi through the arteries throughout his body first, plugging the wounds in the main arteries.
When the human body was injured, arterial wounds were the most serious, because arteries were involved in blood circulation. If the wound was too large, it could not heal on its own, and leaving it alone would only result in death from blood loss.
As his Spiritual Qi made a circuit through his body, Li Xingkong gained a rough understanding of the injuries throughout it and began repairing the first damaged artery. It was in his right arm, which was covered from end to end in cuts of varying sizes, but a deep gash on his forearm was still bleeding.
The first step in repairing an artery was to stop the bleeding. It was just like fighting a flood: to repair a breach with floodwaters already pouring through it, the first thing to do was plug it.
At Li Xingkong's command, the Spiritual Qi carried some of his mana to the wound first. Then, with the Spiritual Qi's help, he shaped the mana into a soft mass and gently laid it over the wound.
Although mana was only energy, it could still affect the body once it had been combined into a specific structure.
After plugging the bleeding wound and slowing the blood loss, Li Xingkong felt less drained. Losing too much blood would cause problems with the brain's oxygen supply, further affecting his ability to use his mental power.
Only after plugging the wound did Li Xingkong begin manipulating the Spiritual Qi to repair the blood vessel.
The vessel had been torn open, which meant some bodily tissue had been lost. Repairing it would require more than simply stitching the torn vessel together.
It was like a cracked water pipe: a little glue could make it usable again, but if a hole had been smashed straight through it, something would be needed to patch it.
By the same logic, he needed to find material to repair the blood vessel.
Even Nüwa had needed five-colored stones to mend the heavens, and he couldn't create something out of nothing now.
The best way was to quickly eat some food containing the nutrients needed for repair, supplying the necessary materials from an external source.
Unfortunately, he was lying here now, barely able to move, and where was he supposed to find food in this prison?
He didn't have much time left to treat himself. After what had happened here, other factions or organizations would probably come to investigate soon. He didn't have that much time.
So Li Xingkong could only resort to a somewhat unorthodox method.
It was simple: tear down the eastern wall to mend the western wall.
Human blood vessels had thickness, and their walls varied in thickness from place to place. Long-term high blood pressure could cause a person's blood vessels to harden, meaning that the vessel walls thickened. Just as with water pipes of the same outer diameter, the thicker the walls, the less water could flow through them.
That was also the mechanism behind a cerebral hemorrhage.
What Li Xingkong needed to do was use his Spiritual Qi to scrape a layer of material from the walls of blood vessels that were still intact.
Then he would use the material stripped from those vessel walls to patch the gap first.
It sounded troublesome, but with the help of his Spiritual Qi, and with his body's poor condition leaving plenty of broken debris in his blood vessels, he soon gathered enough material.
Then, like a textile worker, he began weaving a net over the hole in the blood vessel, working from the outside inward and from the edges toward the center.
The net he wove amounted to only a very thin layer of blood vessel tissue, and it couldn't compare in any respect to a blood vessel formed through natural healing.
But at least it worked for now. It successfully stopped the bleeding and allowed the vessel to temporarily "reopen to traffic."
Having stopped the bleeding from the worst wound on his body, Li Xingkong still had no time to catch his breath.
In the time it had taken to repair the wound, he had lost quite a bit more blood, making it even harder to concentrate his mental power.
He had to hurry and patch up the holes throughout his body first.
After nearly another five minutes of patching and mending, Li Xingkong had more or less stitched up all the bleeding spots on his body.
At least, as long as he made no large movements and only walked around, he no longer bled.
Even so, his skin had turned a sickly white, making it clear that he had suffered considerable loss.
With the bleeding stopped, the next step was to get himself moving.
The prison was no place to linger. He had to get out as quickly as possible.
Of course, he also had to take Mike with him.
There wasn't much time to attend to the finer details of his recovery. Next, he would set the bones inside his arm and get his ruined right hand back in action first.
The bones in his hand were badly damaged. Quite a few had been shattered to pieces; this was no simple fracture.
Repairing them would be like assembling a large 3D jigsaw puzzle with an enormous number of pieces.
And there were no instructions.
So after repeatedly examining his arm, Li Xingkong decided to put the main structure together first. In other words, he would start by assembling a rod; if he could get it moving, that would count as a success.
He would leave the smaller shattered bones alone for now and first put together the large fragments he could see.
There was no helping it. He could only make do with that for now.
Of course, the scene was still a little bizarre: he was personally directing Spiritual Qi to churn around inside his own arm, all to piece the bones back together.
Playing with a jigsaw puzzle inside his own body gave him an indescribably strange feeling.
Of course, Li Xingkong could walk around now. He no longer had to lie sprawled on the ground.
So he decided to continue repairing his body as he withdrew.
He used his one remaining working hand to haul Mike along. Luckily, he hadn't untied all of Mike's ropes. Otherwise, with how heavy Mike was and the condition Li Xingkong was in, he couldn't have picked him up, much less taken him along.
He could only make Mike suffer a little for now. Li Xingkong found an end of rope on him and wrapped it around his own waist several times, then dragged him along the ground like a dead pig.
When he walked out of the prison, there was no one left outside. It seemed those people had run away fast; they had disappeared in no time.
Luckily, his car was still outside, untouched by the routed soldiers who had fled in panic.
It was also thanks to that bunch running ahead of him. Otherwise, how Li Xingkong would get out of the minefield would still have been a problem.
With the tracks left by that group, he only had to follow them to get out safely.