As Jie lay unconscious on the floor, Ming stared at her, his mouth agape.

"This child..." he said.

He'd kept a keen eye on what was happening within her dantian while she cultivated for the first time.

She'd rotated Essence and purified it at a freakishly fast speed and then drawn in even more Essence before stopping the rotation and detonating it to create dragon lightning qi.

He saw that qi now, flickering within her dantian.

More qi than the most gifted followers of the Great Lightning Dragon had ever made their first time... and she'd survived the explosion too and without any internal injuries!

"This kid is monstrous," Ming muttered as his lips split into a smile.

He'd chosen well.

It would normally take disciples of the lightning dragon a week or more to make the qi she'd created in just an hour.

Though she'd been knocked unconscious by it, did that matter?

The problem with dragon lightning qi was how painfully slow it was to refine Essence to its purest form and then beyond that into dragon lightning qi.

There was no telling how much longer they had before Fang Zhuyu's followers freed him, but her insane cultivation speed gave him hope.

"This kid was born to be a cultivator," he said as he watched her sleeping form.

He frowned when he noticed her filthy, sweat-soaked hospital gown. "Hmm... I'll have to get her some clothes. Can't have her running around like this. It's absurd," he said.

Ming coughed into his hand and looked at it.

More blood. Damn it. The travel here and remaking the girl's body had taken a hefty toll on him, badly damaging his cultivation, and he was suffering greatly. He'd poured what healing energy he could into his wounds, but for some reason, they were not closing as they should.

He'd begun to think that perhaps their mysterious helper had cursed him, but when he scanned those foreign energies, he found them to be doing quite the opposite. They acted like a bandage upon his wounds and without them, he would surely be dead. But, why then was he not healing as he should? He wondered.

Ming shook his head. Perhaps he was being overly concerned. Such injuries could take time to heal after all... he activated one of the storage rings upon his taloned fingers and a green sphere appeared between his thumb and forefinger. A healing pill for the god rank.

A treasure that those below his rank would kill for. He tossed it into his mouth. The instant it touched his tongue, it melted into waves of soothing, healing energy that flowed all through his body. Some of the pain and discomfort that'd been nagging at him melted away.

Yet, his injuries barely seemed to respond at all to the influx of healing energies. He frowned at that. A healing pill of such power should've done a great deal more to repair his internal injuries.

Is there something I'm missing? Ming wondered as he scanned his body once again, yet still felt nothing that would reveal why he was having such difficulty healing.

Just to be safe, he withdrew a pill that burned with a ghostly white light and tossed it back into his mouth as well. Its ghostly fire burned through him, dispelling any curses of the god rank and below. It was hard to tell if it helped at all.

Still, despite his concerns, Ming was confident that he would find the answer and heal himself. Hopefully, they wouldn't encounter any great dangers before he'd undone the damage.

And despite the blow to his health and the fact the girl wasn't what he'd left in search of... he couldn't help feeling like he was doing the right thing. The deepest parts of his instincts told him that this insane gambit was the right move. He just hoped those instincts were right...

***

On a distant planet, a skeletal man wreathed in shadow sat upon a throne with a dark mist swirling around him.

A woman with red skin, clad in a black dress that hugged her sensual curves and barely contained her ample breasts strode into the throne room. "Do you have new orders from the master?" she asked. Her voice was sultry and brought with it images of every carnal desire imaginable.

The shadowy man remained utterly unaffected by her and waved away the mist that whispered around him in a thousand voices.

"No," he said.

"Then why have you called me?" asked the woman as her perfect eyebrows creased into a frown.

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"Someone has come to Xiannu," said the skeletal man.

"So? Is that all you interrupted me for? Do you realize I was in the throes of ecstasy with a newlywed couple? Oh, how his wife cried and screamed and begged me to stop... her face hot and wet with delicious tears... and you interrupt me over some vagrant wanderer?!" the red woman snapped.

"That world is of importance to the master and a god could disrupt our plans for it. It would be good to keep an eye out for this traveler, and either recruit them to our cause or destroy them," he said.

"What does it matter? One little god is hardly something to worry about. Can I go now? Their tears are still fresh..." she said as she licked her full, luscious lips.

The shadowy man sighed. "Do as thou wilt, but do not let your carnal desires distract you from our task," the skeletal man said gravely.

The red woman waved his words away with a dismissive gesture of her hand as she walked away, her hips swaying seductively with every step.

The shadowy man did not watch her leave. Instead, he crooked his head and listened to the whispering voices.

"Perhaps she's right. A single god can do little to stop us," said the skeletal man, "yes... if they cause any disruption to our plans for Xiannu, then they'll be dealt with."

Screams echoed from within the palace, joined by maniacal laughter filled with lust that rang out through the halls as the red woman resumed her twisted game.

The voices continued to whisper.

"The little lightning dragon? My cursed aura will kill him slowly and painfully regardless. If he's not already dead. His escape will mean nothing in the end. There are none alive who can stop you, my master," said the skeletal man, "you will be free and when you are, Xiannu will already be yours."

***

"Oooh... my head..." Jie groaned as she came to.

Ming chuckled. "So you're alive after all," he said.

She opened her eyes and sat up. Everything hurt. It felt like someone had doused her insides with gasoline and set them on fire.

She looked around to see Ming with lightning playing over his scales as usual. One thought sprang to mind before any other.

"Did it work? Did I do it?" she asked.

"You could say that," he said with a mysterious smile.

Jie rubbed her temples. "Ow... that really hurt. Is it always going to be like that?" she asked.

"It'll get easier with time," he said.

Well, that was something at least.

She closed her eyes and let her awareness drift down into her lower dantian. The cave she'd seen before with the tunnels going off in every direction greeted her.

However, this time the cave wasn't empty. There was a flicker of glowing, blue lightning darting around. It looked tiny compared to the amount of Essence she'd absorbed before.

"Is this all?" Jie asked.

Ming coughed violently.

Jie's eyes sprang open, and she rushed up to the dragon. She didn't know what to do to help him, so she just patted his scaly back.

"Are you getting any better?" she asked.

Ming coughed up more blood and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Not if you say things like that I won't be," he said.

Jie frowned. "Like what?" she asked.

"Do you have any idea how hard everyone else has to work to get as much dragon lightning qi as you just did? And on your first time no less!" Ming said.

Jie pouted. "It doesn't look like much," she said.

"That was just an hour of cultivation!" Ming said, "that would be decent if you were cultivating normal qi of moderate quality, but for dragon lightning qi, it's insane. So quit your whining!"

"Oh," Jie said, "sorry." She wasn't sorry, and she didn't fully understand what he meant. Was cultivation really so slow?

"Bloody ungrateful little monster cultivators," Ming grumbled.

Jie shifted her weight from one foot to the next. "So... am I going to cultivate some more?" she asked.

Then, her belly growled loudly, like a feral beast. Jie's cheeks flushed bright red, and she hugged her tummy.

Ming laughed. "You cultivate a bit more using what I taught you," he said, "I'll get something to eat. If you cultivate well, I may even let you have some."

Jie dropped to the floor and sent her spiritual sense out to greedily gather Essence.

She was starving, and if she had to cultivate to eat, then she would cultivate even more than she had last time!

***

Ming watched as the little girl sucked in Essence like water draining down a sink.

"Monster of a girl," he muttered too quietly for her to hear.

He checked what she was doing inside her dantian just to make sure she wasn't trying to rush it and end up with different types of qi or qi of poor quality. But, the girl was refining it as perfectly as she had the time before... only a lot more of it at once.

Ming shook his head. This little girl was frightening. He looked up at the starry sky.

She would need to be.

He took flight and soared over the overgrown temple and into the jungle that surrounded it.

She was cultivating well, and he would see to it that she could eat her fill. He could also do with some food to help his recovery...

He retracted his aura until not even a wisp escaped his control, and to the creatures of the jungle, he might as well not be there. He could've cloaked himself entirely but that seemed pointless. They would only see him when it was too late...

He spotted a wild-toothed boar and swept down to meet it.

The hulking beast roared at Ming's sudden appearance, and a red mist billowed out of the gem in its forehead and covered its curved tusks.

"Oh? You're going to fight me, dinner?" Ming said, "That's cute."

The beast pawed at the ground as it snorted angrily. Leaves fluttered around them, drifting down from the canopy above, and the boar charged. Its massive tusks bared down on Ming as it roared furiously.

Ming flicked his tail and swatted the creature aside like one of those beach balls he'd seen on Earth.

The four-meter-long boar crashed into a rock with a sickening thud and the crack of bone and slumped down, dead.

Ming waved his hand and the creature's corpse disappeared into one of his storage rings.

"Hmm, just a few more of these should be enough," he muttered.

Ming took his time and didn't use any of his internal energies to help him slay a few more of the beasts. When he had more than enough safely stored in his storage ring, he slithered through the air, back to the temple where Jie sat, still cultivating.

Essence poured into her and then detonated in the final part of the cultivation of dragon lightning qi. She flew back and landed hard on the dusty courtyard tiles.

Ming glided over to Jie and checked on her.

She breathed deeply and evenly. Three times as much qi as before danced around chaotically inside her lower dantian.

He shook his head and smiled. "This girl," he muttered.

With a wave of his hand, he brought the boars he'd killed out of his ring and set to work on preparing them.