"Wh— What happened? Is he out?" Gion asked in a surprised voice. They had seen all that happened around the lake and were surprised to see Ning get taken out so easily.
"That monster— That was a Flood Dragon, wasn't it?" Yelca asked with a serious face. That was a level of danger that they hadn't expected for the competition.
"That's it, Elders. That's the monster that killed me. I couldn't even see what it was," A voice came from ahead of the group.
The one speaking was the first person that had exited the secret realm. The group finally understood why he was thrown out so soon.
"So… did he lose or not?" Gion asked still not seeing a sign of Ning being thrown out of the secret realm.
"He probably got transferred along with the date change. It is the afternoon after all," Yelca said. "If the attack had been fatal to Doctor Ning, he would've been thrown out of the realm much faster. The fact that he didn't mean that he is probably alright."
********
Ning wasn't alright. Pain coursed through his body as the broken bones in his ribs hurt beyond imagination. Even his arms burned from being exposed to the air due to his skin being ripped off of them.
He slowly got up from the long grasses he had appeared in. He saw that he was in another grassland somewhere. He looked around for the barriers and saw that it was really far away.
He looked back and saw that the other side was right inside the forest behind him. Up close, the barrier looked iridescent rather than purple.
He tried to walk but the ribs hurt a lot with movement. Even breathing was bad right now. So, he just got down and laid on the grass.
He sent his divine sense inside his body and checked the problems. 3 of his right ribs and 2 of his left ribs were cracked really bad. Thankfully, they didn't protrude inside of him and he had no danger of them accidentally stabbing his lungs or heart.
They just hurt a lot. Broken ribs weren't treatable in a day or two. It took more than a week and that was with a cultivator's natural healing.
His arms, however, he could treat just fine. He brought out some ingredients from his storage; Some he gathered here, and some he got from the outside world.
He quickly mixed them together with his hands and applied the resulting paste on his two arms. Soon, a cool feeling entered his arm from the place where he placed the paste.
"Ahh," he moaned in relief. The medicine would soon heal the arm, but it would still take overnight for him.
Next, he moved on to dealing with the ribs. While it wasn't possible for him to heal the ribs, he could deal with the pain. He quickly took out more ingredients.
This time, however, he didn't make any paste. Instead, he just crushed the ingredients all together and brought it on top of his face. He squeezed the mess real strong and juices started flowing that went directly into his mouth.
Soon, he could no longer feel any pain. Once that was done, he stood up and started walking. However, he made sure to not be hasty or make sudden movements as that may worsen the wounds.
Suddenly, a boar appeared quite close to him. When he noticed the boar, the board noticed him too. He quickly looked into his storage to bring out his spear, but he couldn't.
There was no spear. "What?" he was surprised. He thought if he left it behind at the place he came from but that wasn't possible. He had used his divine sense since then, so he would've noticed.
Finally, he remembered what happened. "Ah, the flood dragon," he said and got disappointed at the fact that he lost such a good spear.
"Sigh, at least I have this sword," he said as he pulled out the sword. The Boar was barely a 6th Qi condensation realm monster and thus couldn't survive a single attack of his.
Once he killed the beast, he took its corpse and moved forward. Along the way, he found a few beasts and found a few ingredients, but without question, he could say that the rate at which he was encountering both had significantly dropped since last time.
"Have we been killing so much that there just aren't that many anymore?" Ning wondered. If he couldn't find beasts or different ingredients, then he wouldn't get many points anymore.
"Wait, that's not right. There is a third source of points," Ning thought as he realized why the tournament holders had reduced the land by so much.
"They want us to fight each other and gather points," Ning thought.
Now that the land had been reduced by 4 times in size, he should be meeting more and more people soon. As he imagined, within the hour, he saw a man in a green robe walking out of the forest Ning was about to walk into.
He looked a bit frustrated from the lack of monsters and ingredients as well, so when he saw Ning and his 5th Qi Condensation aura, he immediately smiled and ran towards him to attack with not a single word.
"Well, I like this more. No talking and just fighting," he said to himself. Ning couldn't really run forward like the guy due to his ribs, so he waited for him to come instead.
The man took out a spear along the way and tried to stab Ning. However, there was no way that was going to work. The man was at the 8th Qi Condensation realm, and there was no way Ning was going to have problems dealing with the man.
Ning grabbed the spear by the body just after the blade and pulled it towards him. The man couldn't control his body and was pulled along with the spear.
Ning left the spear and made a fist with the same hand.. With just a punch to the chest, the man's talisman worked up and he disappeared from the spot.