After confirming that his refined Piercing Acupoint Pill was indeed effective, Lu Li's spirits soared.
Rushing back to the Daoist temple, he immediately began refining again without pause.
In the blink of an eye, the sky darkened.
Lu Li successfully refined two more Piercing Acupoint Pills. At his current pace, he could refine one pill in about half a shichen.
As he grew more familiar with the precise heat control required for the Piercing Acupoint Pill's ingredients, his refining speed increased considerably. He even felt that he could slightly increase the flames for certain materials to quicken the process.
Although night had fallen, Lu Li showed no intention of stopping. Inside the main hall, the flickering candlelight cast a faint, lonely glow in the darkness.
Whoosh-
A fierce wind suddenly whipped through the courtyard outside, its desolate howl sounding like a shrieking ghost.
Lu Li frowned slightly. With a backhand wave, he shot out two streams of wind-attribute True Qi, slamming the hall doors shut with a sharp clatter.
The night passed without a word.
In the blink of an eye, dawn arrived.
As morning sunlight spilled through the cracks of the doors, Lu Li finally extinguished the earth fire. Having refined pills continuously throughout the night, he felt mentally exhausted, even though he had only used his Divine Sense intermittently.
To his delight, the night's labor had yielded ten Piercing Acupoint Pills.
He went to the kitchen, cleaned a hare he had caught, and quickly stir-fried it for a meal. Afterward, he entered the eastern bedroom and sat down cross-legged.
"After exhausting my heart and mind for so many years, I can finally enjoy the fruits of my labor."
Lu Li gripped the medicine bottle, his eyes shining brightly.
He popped the stopper, poured out an emerald-green pill speckled with red dots, and swallowed it in one gulp.
Having swallowed it so hastily, he didn't even taste it before it hit his stomach. A savage medicinal potency instantly exploded outward, hurtling directly into his Dantian.
It was like a long dragon formed of countless sharp arrows rampaging through his Dantian, violently churning his True Qi into a frenzy. The medicinal potency was actually several times stronger than the pill Zhang Song had given him!
Lu Li was both delighted and alarmed.
He was delighted because this wave of power could likely break through more than a single acupoint. He was alarmed because the potency was far too savage; if he lost control, it might puncture his Qi channels entirely.
With no time to think, he hurriedly manipulated his True Qi to wrap around the arrow-like dragon, forcefully dragging it toward his fifth Qi channel.
Thus far, he had only broken through five acupoints in his fifth Qi channel.
Under Lu Li's strict control, the arrow-dragon roared toward the sixth acupoint.
Pfft-!
A single strike.
The acupoint barrier, nine layers thick, was instantly pierced through like flimsy paper. Even the flesh and tissue connecting the Qi channel were violently torn apart, leaving behind a mangled, bloody mess.
"Ah, ah! Damn it!"
Caught completely off guard, Lu Li howled in pain. He never expected this acupoint piercing to be so violent. Not only had it smashed through the barrier, but it had also ripped away a chunk of the flesh connecting the barrier to the Qi channel! Having broken through, half of the arrow-dragon instantly dissipated.
Before Lu Li could even react-
Pfft-!
The remaining half of the arrow-dragon smashed through the seventh acupoint, and the medicinal potency finally exhausted itself completely.
This time, Lu Li didn't scream, but the veins on his forehead bulged wildly, and he nearly shattered his own teeth from gritting them so hard.
He had no idea how that white-clothed youth from the Qingyang Sect had endured it. Was it because he had beaten the youth up first, allowing the two kinds of pain to cancel each other out?
"That hurts like hell."
Lu Li collapsed backward onto the bed, panting heavily.
Only after a long while did he finally recover his breath.
Looking inward, he discovered that the barriers of the two newly shattered acupoints and their connections to the Qi channel were a bloody, mangled ruin. The slightest circulation of True Qi would trigger agonizing pain.
"There are side effects."
Lu Li's expression turned bitter. The acupoints had indeed been breached rapidly, easily matching several months of bitter cultivation inside the Time Hall, but the sheer physical damage was far too severe. Pinching the jade bottle, Lu Li found himself caught in a dilemma.
Without a doubt, his refined Piercing Acupoint Pill was a massive success, but the medicinal potency was far too fierce. His Qi channels simply couldn't withstand the burden. He felt certain that if he consumed another pill right now, the rampant medicinal power would completely shred his freshly torn Qi channels.
Worse yet, he couldn't recklessly use his True Qi after taking it. Mobilizing his True Qi would only aggravate the injuries, making the torn Qi channels even harder to heal.
Sigh.
With a heavy sigh, Lu Li stowed away the remaining nine Piercing Acupoint Pills.
He couldn't take any more Piercing Acupoint Pills for the time being. Even if he wanted to, he had to wait until his damaged acupoints fully healed.
Lying flat on the wooden bed and staring up at the ceiling, he felt deeply unwilling to accept this.
He had suffered through countless hardships to gather the ingredients for the Piercing Acupoint Pill, wasting five or six years of his life. How could this be the result?
He had honestly believed he could just swallow them without consequence.
Was there any way around this?
Lu Li pondered bitterly.
Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him-didn't the Time Hall accelerate time? If he slept inside... would he heal faster?
Lu Li's eyes lit up. Without a second thought, he directly entered the Time Hall.
In the blink of an eye, Lu Li slept inside the Time Hall for over ten days.
In the outside world, it was merely noon of the following day.
He eagerly emerged to check on his condition, but his expression instantly turned ugly. Although the bloody injuries showed marginal improvement, the difference wasn't obvious. He still couldn't be sure if the temporal flow of the Time Hall actually affected his physical recovery.
Lu Li decided to run another test to compare his natural recovery speed outside versus inside the Time Hall.
Thus, he remained in the outside world for another ten days.
During this period, Lu Li continued to refine pills, though not as frantically as before. To avoid aggravating his internal wounds, he refined at most four or five pills a day before stopping to rest.
Finally, he reached a conclusion: the time flow of the Time Hall did impact natural healing. Over these ten days in the outside world, the recovery of his acupoint injuries hadn't even matched the single day and night of real time he had previously spent inside the Time Hall.
Realizing this, he didn't dare waste any more time. During the day, he spent only an hour or two refining pills; he spent the rest of his time sleeping and reading inside the Time Hall.
He had no other choice. He didn't dare circulate his True Qi right now, so aside from sleeping and reading, there was nothing else he could do.
A little over a month passed in the outside world, meaning nearly a year had passed inside the Time Hall.
On this day, after stepping out, he was delighted to discover that the injuries to those two acupoints had completely healed. His True Qi flowed smoothly without the slightest discomfort.
He sat on the stone steps in front of the hall, silently calculating. "Based on this, recovering from a single bout of pill consumption requires about a month in the outside world. And during that time, I can't use True Qi... Does this mean I have to hide in some remote mountain forest just to secretly take medicine?
That's not worth it at all.
At this rate, I can only take twelve Piercing Acupoint Pills a year to break through twenty-four acupoints. That's even slower than normal cultivation!
Plus, I have to endure that heart-wrenching agony every single time. Why even bother?"
But what could he do to solve this problem?
Lu Li sank into deep thought once more.
If only there were a pill that could rapidly heal acupoint injuries, Lu Li thought with anticipation, propping up his chin and staring at the azure sky.
A pill that heals acupoint injuries...?
Lu Li's eyes suddenly lit up. "Right, how could I forget? That scoundrel Wu De said the Meridian-Nourishing Pill was designed specifically to treat injuries caused by violent acupoint piercing!"
"No, I need to find him. I must get my hands on the Meridian-Nourishing Pill formula!"