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Qianye walked to the entrance of the cave and gazed out.
Night had fallen outside and there wasn’t a sound to be heard. Be it the nearby forest or the distant lake and rocky beach, everything was so quiet that it felt like they had been sealed in ice. He couldn’t hear anything else apart from the howling wind—the roaring beasts and buzzing insects from just now had been drowned out by the stillness of the night. If one were to remove the sound of the wind, the entire world be deathly silent.
Qianye s.h.i.+vered from an inexplicable sense of apprehension. That was the innate fear of a minuscule life form toward this ma.s.sive world.
As a man of firm willpower, however, he quickly curbed the fear after realizing it. With the sense of apprehension gone, Qianye discovered a certain problem. The temperature was actually within range of an ordinary winter, a dozen or so degrees below freezing point. This chill was negligible to an expert like him, so why would he s.h.i.+ver?
Qianye scanned his own body while observing the world outside and unexpectedly found that the beating of his blood core was slowing down. With this deceleration, the flow of auric flame blood had turned sluggish, and there were fewer specks of golden fire inside his blood. If his usual state could be compared to a sky full of stars, it could be said that there were only a few solitary stars hanging in the sky.
With his bodily functions on such a decline, it was only natural that he would feel cold.
Realizing where the problem was, Qianye quickly activated his blood core and accelerated its pulse. This could normally be accomplished through his will alone, but now, it was proving to be abnormally difficult. It felt like there were giant boulders stacked atop his blood core, making him expend considerable effort with each beat.
This sensation wasn’t limited to his blood core alone. Every part of his body was slowing down and feeling heavy, almost as though he had been injected with a powerful sedative.
Qianye concentrated his willpower on activating the blood core and finally managed to recover up to normal standards. Only then did his movements become natural.
He was suddenly alarmed as he thought of Li Kuanglan.
Qianye rushed to Li Kuanglan’s side and checked on her situation. As expected, her bodily functions were also fairly sluggish and her heart would stop beating every few times. This state wasn’t so serious under normal circ.u.mstances, but Li Kuanglan was heavily injured and only alive because of Qianye’s Venus Dawn origin power. Now that her metabolism was slowing down, it was quite likely that she would pa.s.s away unknowingly.
Qianye fished out a strong stimulant and injected it into her body. It would seem the shot was somewhat effective, as evidenced by the flush on her face. However, the drug would only last for a while. Qianye knew a single injection wasn’t enough to last the night, but he couldn’t inject repeatedly either as the effects would diminish rapidly if the medicine was used again within a short time. Besides, the basic principle of a stimulant was to activate the body’s potential functions—it wouldn’t be wise to use the drug repeatedly.
After Li Kuanglan’s situation had stabilized, Qianye channeled some of his origin power into her in an attempt to accelerate her physical functions.
However, things didn’t go so well this time. The large amount of the Venus Dawn origin power only served to hasten her heartbeat slightly and had no effect on her other organs. At this rate, she wouldn’t get through the night even if Qianye were to use up all his origin power.
Now that even Venus Dawn had no effect on her, there was only one way left to save Li Kuanglan. That was to give her the Embrace.
Qianye had never used the Embrace on anyone before. He wasn’t even sure if he even had that kind of power since he was only half-vampire. The effects of the Embrace were serious—Qianye’s dark golden blood energy was extremely powerful and destructive. It would likely kill Li Kuanglan immediately if it were to go out of control. Hence, Qianye wasn’t willing to use this method until the last moment.
Qianye contemplated the situation while injecting origin power. Although activating his blood core was difficult, it wasn’t an impossible endeavor. Apparently, Venus Dawn wasn’t really that outstanding in activating vitality while blood energy was highly effective. Taking this thought a step further, perhaps Qianye wasn’t quite reliant on origin power to resist the abnormal chill of this world, but instead, his strong const.i.tution.
At the thought of this, a certain idea came to mind. He removed Li Kuanglan’s internal armor and his own clothes, and then held her tightly in his arms, increasing the contacting body surface area as much as possible.
Qianye then took a deep breath—his blood core pulsed strongly as a layer of indiscernible flames lit up around him, enveloping Li Kuanglan as well.
Her heart and his blood core were currently pressed against one another, separated only by their flesh. Each pulse of his blood core would jolt the adjacent heart, helping it maintain a steady beat.
This was one of his ancient vampire powers, the ability to affect another creature’s heartbeat with his own blood core. Powerful ancient vampires would use the beating of their blood core to kill tens of thousands of lesser beings by making their hearts erupt. Those vampires were like mighty G.o.ds to the weaker races.
Qianye could only be considered half a vampire, but his blood energy was of unprecedented purity. Hence, he would still be able to maintain this power for one day, albeit barely.
Li Kuanglan was temporarily out of the woods now that her heart was being paced. The sanguine flames around them scorched her body constantly, activating her innate defenses. Some of her cells would die at the microscopic level, but the remainder would undergo a partial strengthening transformation.
Seeing that his method was effective, Qianye finally heaved a sigh of relief. He maintained this posture without further movement and focused his attention on driving his blood core. It was exponentially more difficult to maintain the pulse since his blood core now had to carry Li Kuanglan’s heartbeat as well.
Fortunately, Qianye still had essence blood in store and there was also some left in the Book of Darkness. At this rate of depletion, it wouldn’t be a problem to get through the night. It was just that he would need to find a way to replenish them tomorrow.
The night here was fairly lengthy. After what seemed like an eternity, it became easier for him to maintain the beating of his blood core. At that point, Qianye realized that midnight was behind them.
Along with the roar of a distant beast, the first rays of dawn descended upon the land and illuminated the cave. Qianye’s bodily functions finally recovered, and Li Kuanglan’s condition was also stable.
He retracted his sanguine flames, laid her down on the floor, and refastened the inner armor.
Having maintained the flames for an entire night, Qianye grew dizzy upon standing up and his vision almost darkened. Eventually, he made his way to the entrance and gazed outward.
The sky was lightening, and the rays of dawn were was.h.i.+ng over the land like a luminous tide, bringing with it not just warmth but also vitality. Wherever the radiance pa.s.sed, the world would spring back to life.
Qianye narrowed his eyes as he observed this strange new world with his True Sight. He would need to hunt and replenish essence blood during the daytime, otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to get through the next cold night. At the very least, he wouldn’t be able to pull Li Kuanglan through. Additionally, the latter was healing steadily and would wake up anytime. She would need food at that time since she couldn’t survive on essence blood like Qianye.
There was still some food left in Andruil’s s.p.a.ce, but it was only enough for a couple of days. Qianye couldn’t waste precious s.p.a.ce on food, so he had only brought the bare minimum. Besides, he hadn’t imagined that Song Zining would toss him into the pa.s.sage immediately after the battle against Luo Bingfeng.
Qianye could feel a vague sense of danger when he looked at the forest and the distant rocky beach. Nothing there seemed out of the ordinary, even in his True Sight, but the threat he felt was tangible.
Qianye frowned and temporarily gave up on exploring those regions. This was an unfamiliar world, so it would be troublesome if he were wounded. Minimizing injury was an instinctive policy of every predator.
It was at this moment that a rock near Qianye’s foot rolled away and a black shadow beneath it shot toward him.
Qianye’s eyes surged with a blue tint as he activated the Eye of Control, freezing the black shadow in the air and then moving it in front of him.
It was a fairly strange insect, similar to a caterpillar but with a finger-length stinger on its head. The stinger was hollow, clearly used for attacking and bloodsucking.
The insect squirmed around constantly, curling and shooting forward with great strength. This little creature’s momentum was almost comparable to an origin bullet. One had to remember that this was a high-gravity world—the same force in Evernight Continent should be enough to pierce through a human body.
More rocks flipped over and a swarm of similar bugs borrowed out from underneath.
A few of them appeared beside Qianye and shot toward him, but there was no way he would let them strike him. His eyes turned blue again as the Eye of Control fixed dozens of them in the air.
Flicking his fingers, Qianye sent out wisps of origin power to cut open the insects.
The bug’s internal structure was fairly simple. Most of it was made up of abnormally strong muscles along with some digestive and sensory organs. Apparently, they had no ability to think and were only acting on instinct.
Qianye removed the Eye of Control and allowed the bug corpses to rain down from the air. More insects were attracted by the flesh and blood. They gradually swarmed over and sucked their dead peers clean with their stingers.
The fed insects started mating rapidly amongst themselves, while those that hadn’t fed started killing one another. With that, a tidal wave of bloodthirsty insects surged up from the ground—it was a brutal scene.
Perhaps because they had figured out Qianye’s power, the insects no longer approached him and instead focused on killing one another.
In mere moments, only half remained of the large number of bugs. The survivors stopped killing one another in favor of feasting on the remains. At this moment, the mating bugs had separated and were lying silently on their own. The female insects started to bulge up at a visible rate and were soon laying eggs.
The eggs they laid were also fairly odd—they looked like long, slender caterpillars and could even move! These eggs drilled into the ground immediately after they were born. The steel-like ground was like tofu before these eggs as they bore deep into the soil, leaving only a needle-sized hole.