She could think about it after catching Yu Lin.

Right now, the most important thing was not letting her escape again.

Xiao Ran’s eyes were cold and unwavering, filled with ruthless killing intent.

"Ran’er, wait for us."

Seeing Xiao Ran suddenly leave, the Gou brothers no longer cared about improving their bodies.

They activated their magical artifact, unleashing powerful force to wipe out all blood mist figures, and hurriedly chased after her before new ones could form.

Nearby, Chi Jia swung his flying sword while glancing at Xiao Shou who was still calmly maintaining his sword net.

After a brief pause, Chi Jia also unleashed a powerful attack to clear the surrounding blood mist.

Then he leapt away as well.

Before leaving, he called out casually, "Fellow Daoist Xiao, I will go take a look as well. We shall meet again if fate allows it."

"Mm." Xiao Shou responded without much sincerity.

After all their figures had disappeared, he finally relaxed slightly.

He waved his hand, took out a formation disk, and set up a defensive array.

Only then did he enter the array.

He pat his chest lightly as he said in a relaxed tone, "This way, they will definitely follow Xiao Ran and quickly find the location of the great treasure. I do not have to go through the usual trope of fighting a life and death battle with the guardian of a treasure, only for it to end up becoming the protagonist’s opportunity in the end."

"Putting aside that unknown treasure, just this blood mist alone is already a pleasant surprise."

Xiao Shou rested his chin on his hand while recovering his spiritual energy.

His cultivation had already reached the nine level of the Foundation Building stage through cultivation inside the flower bud space, but for some unknown reason he could not break through.

In the end, he had no choice but to leave.

During these past days of traveling with them, because of his massive spiritual energy at the peak of the ninth level, even if he claimed to be in the Foundation Establishment stage, they would not believe him.

So he could only pretend to be a Golden Core cultivator.

Now it was different.

With this blood mist here, perhaps he could break through that unknown restriction and advance to the Golden Core stage.

Thinking of this possibility, after fully recovering his spiritual energy, Xiao Shou excitedly walked out of the formation disk and began to fight the blood mist in earnest.

Every time his spiritual energy was depleted, he simply swallowed spiritual spring water to recover. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

He continued until both his divine sense and physical strength were completely exhausted, then returned to the formation disk to rest.

After about a full day passed like sand flowing through an hourglass, the blood mist began to disappear.

The color of the ground and stone pillars also began to fade, turning into a diluted red as if ink had been washed out by water.

The red was still there, but no longer dense.

Seeing this change, Xiao Shou adjusted himself, prepared his defenses and attacks carefully, then headed in the opposite direction of Xiao Ran and Yu Lin to search for new blood mist.

He could feel it.

Just a little more.

Only a little more of this blood mist energy, and he would break through into the Golden Core stage, gaining the initial strength to survive in this world where the strong prey on the weak.

As he moved forward, Xiao Shou continued searching for blood mist.

Soon, he noticed something unusual.

It turned out that within this blood colored space, not only were the stone pillars near the entrance identical, but even deeper inside, the pillars were exactly the same.

The undulations of the blood red ground also repeated at fixed intervals.

In other words, there were no distinguishing landmarks at all.

Once he left the black entrance, everything in every direction looked the same.

Would he not get lost very quickly?

Xiao Shou frowned and thought for a moment, deciding to try a simple method.

He swung the Dark Night Spirit Sword and carved a notch into a stone pillar.

Just as he was about to step forward and leave a mark on the next pillar for navigation, something unexpected happened.

The pillar he had just cut suddenly seeped out strands of blood colored fluid.

Then it began to churn and twist and astonishingly, it started to regrow back to its original shape.

Seeing this horrifying scene, Xiao Shou felt goosebumps rise all over his body.

Having seen too many similar scenes in descriptions, novels, and animation, a frightening thought emerged in his mind.

Could it be that these blood colored stone pillars were alive?

No.

Or perhaps he was actually inside the body of some living being.

Thinking this way, that pitch black entrance outside suddenly looked very much like the mouth of a monster.

How was that possible?

Such absurd things only appeared in novels and comics.

Realizing this, Xiao Shou felt like crying but had no tears.

He could only carefully raise his sword, infuse it with spiritual energy, and attempt to cut off the entire pillar with a single strike.

In an instant, the blood colored stone pillar split into two halves.

In that instant, a mass of energy even thicker than the blood mist surged out from the broken pillar, like a cloud of blood.

In the blink of an eye, it formed a blood cloud humanoid figure resembling Young’er, holding various weapons as it charged toward Xiao Shou.

Xiao Shou quickly raised his sword to block.

The moment he met it, he immediately felt that the strength of this blood cloud figure was on a completely different level compared to the blood mist figures.

Both its attack and defense had increased nearly tenfold.

It was like the difference between Qi Refining stage blood mist and Foundation Establishment stage blood cloud.

Realizing this, and based on the logic he had learned from countless novels, Xiao Shou immediately understood.