After failing for the ninety-ninth time to draw qi into his body, Chen Li began to bleed from all seven orifices. The immortal sect’s steward declared that his meridians were like a sieve and that he would never have any hope of reaching the Great Dao. He was thrown into an abandoned mine filled with baleful qi and left to die. The mine was thick with corrosive, bone-eating miasma, something every cultivator avoided at all costs. Chen Li discovered that each time the baleful qi ate through his meridians, it left behind an extremely faint trace of spiritual dust. Enduring the agony of countless ants devouring his body, he spent five years gathering the dust. At last, when he condensed a wisp of spiritual power, the mine collapsed. He used that wisp to protect his heart meridian and became the only survivor to crawl out of hell. The immortal sect was enraged. “How could there be fluctuations of spiritual power in the baleful mine? It must be a demonic spy!”
