Time in the Riverlands Purgatory did not flow; it stagnated in a pool of absolute, freezing darkness.
Days bled into a week, and then the week stretched agonizingly toward a fortnight. Within the pitch-black, damp cavern that served as his isolated cell, Yoriichi sat perfectly still on a flat, mossy stone protruding just inches above the water level. He had assumed the lotus position since the moment Commander Wu had locked the heavy iron gates behind him.
But his condition was rapidly deteriorating.
Without the robust, milky-white liquid Dou Qi to passively nourish his cells and regulate his core temperature, his mortal vessel was forced to rely entirely on its biological reserves. The freezing, ambient moisture of the subterranean air constantly sapped his body heat. His previously dense, sculpted musculature had visibly thinned, his cheeks hollowing out as his body cannibalized its own fat and muscle tissues just to keep his heart beating.
A profound, suffocating tiredness washed over him endlessly.
'My calculations were flawed,' Yoriichi admitted internally, his crimson eyes opening slowly in the darkness.
When he had first accepted the two-month sentence, his ancient mind had rationalized afterwards that he could simply enter a state of deep, absolute Zen meditation. By slowing his heart rate to a mere dozen beats per minute and shutting down non-essential biological functions, he had believed he could hibernate through the sixty days.
But he had underestimated the sheer, aggressive hostility of the Riverlands. The cold was not natural; it was a biting, Yin-heavy chill that actively invaded the pores. It forced his body to burn calories at an accelerated rate simply to prevent hypothermia.
Gurgle...
A violent, painful cramp twisted his stomach. It rumbled loudly, the sound echoing off the slick cavern walls. It was the primal, undeniable scream of a starving body.
'If this continues, I will not survive another week, let alone two months,' Yoriichi deduced, cold logic piercing through the haze of exhaustion. 'Meditation without Dou Qi sustenance is merely a slow, passive death. I must secure caloric intake.'
He could no longer afford to sit still.
Yoriichi uncrossed his legs, wincing as his stiff, freezing joints popped loudly. He stood up on the slippery rock, his legs trembling slightly before his unyielding willpower forced them to stabilize. He reached down and picked up the heavy brass token Commander Wu had left him—the array anchor that monitored his life signs. He tied it securely to the dark sash of his trousers.
He stepped to the very edge of his small, rocky sanctuary. The pitch-black water lapped against the stone, looking like a pool of liquid obsidian.
He had no light source. His standard vision was rendered completely useless in the abyssal dark. But as he closed his eyes, his Transparent World vision—which relied on his abnormally high Soul Power and perception rather than Dou Qi—expanded outward like an invisible sonar.
The water was teeming with life. He could feel the erratic, cold-blooded circulatory systems of dozens of creatures swimming in the depths. Far below, deep in the trench, he felt the terrifying, massive pulses of Rank 2 and perhaps even Rank 3 beasts.
'I must stay in the shallow perimeters,' Yoriichi instructed himself. 'Encountering a high rank beast in my current, powerless state in their native environment is absolute suicide.'
He inhaled deeply, drawing the freezing, damp air into his lungs, expanding his diaphragm to its absolute biological maximum. Without Dou Qi to provide internal oxygen, he had to rely entirely on his raw lung capacity.
With a silent, seamless motion, Yoriichi slid off the rock and submerged himself into the freezing black water.
The sheer cold hit him like a physical blow, driving the breath to the back of his throat. He gritted his teeth, suppressing the shock, and began to swim. His movements were slow, fluid, and incredibly deliberate, minimizing water displacement to avoid alerting predators.
Using his Soul Power, he navigated the jagged, underwater stalagmites. He moved through the shallows, searching the rocky walls for any signs of edible aquatic flora.
Minutes passed. His lungs began to burn, a dull ache spreading through his chest as the oxygen depleted.
Suddenly, the ambient water pressure to his right violently shifted.
Yoriichi's eyes snapped open in the dark, though he saw nothing. His Transparent World flared. A jagged, torpedo-like silhouette was barreling toward him at terrifying speed.
'A Frenzied Iron-Fin Shark,' Yoriichi recognized the biological signature of the common Rank 1 beast. It was blind, hunting entirely by vibration and the scent of the foreign warmth radiating from his body.
The shark unhinged its jaws, revealing rows of razor-sharp, serrated teeth, aiming to tear him in half.
Yoriichi couldn't outswim it. He couldn't use a Dou Skill to blast it away. He was in its domain, bound by the thick resistance of the water.
As the beast closed the final few feet, Yoriichi didn't panic. He twisted his torso violently, allowing the rushing water current pushed by the shark's massive head to aid his evasion. The snapping jaws missed his ribcage by a fraction of an inch, the rough, sandpaper-like skin of the beast grazing his arm and leaving a stinging scrape.
Before the shark could turn around for a second pass, Yoriichi capitalized on its forward momentum. He grabbed the beast's dorsal fin with his left hand, anchoring himself to it. The shark thrashed wildly, but Yoriichi pulled his right arm back, fighting against the heavy water resistance.
He delivered a brutal, precision-guided punch directly into the shark's sensitive gills.
Thud!
The strike lacked the explosive power of Dou Qi, but Yoriichi's base physical strength and anatomical knowledge were absolute. The blow disrupted the beast's respiratory system, sending a shock of pain through its nervous system.
The Iron-Fin Shark spasmed violently. Realizing this strange, thrashing prey was too dangerous and difficult to consume, the beast's survival instincts overrode its frenzy. It violently shook Yoriichi off and darted away into the deeper, darker abyss, fleeing the encounter.
Yoriichi drifted in the water, his chest heaving as he exhaled a string of silver bubbles. The brief exertion had cost him precious oxygen and stamina.
He needed to surface soon, but he pushed forward, swimming over a small, underwater ridge.
As he crossed the ridge, his senses picked up the heavy, metallic scent of blood lingering in the water, completely masked in the darkness. His Transparent World revealed a grim sight: the floor of this shallow basin was a graveyard. Several half-eaten carcasses of massive aquatic fish and lesser beasts lay rotting in the mud, discarded by larger predators.
Instantly, his starving stomach violently cramped. A primal, instinctual voice screamed in his mind.
'Eat. Meat. Survival.'
The raw, bleeding flesh was right there. It would provide immense protein. It would stop the agonizing hunger. He just had to swim down and tear into it like a wild animal.
Yoriichi hovered over the carcasses, his limbs trembling from the cold and the sheer exertion of denying his own biology.
He closed his eyes.
'I am a swordsman. I am a cultivator of the Dao,' Yoriichi told himself, his willpower forging an iron cage around his primal instincts. 'My path is absolute. I will not defile my vows, nor will I descend into the savagery of a scavenger feeding on rotting flesh just to survive a few more days. If I break my discipline now, my Dao heart shatters forever.'
He violently rejected the temptation. He turned away from the bloody basin, pushing his heavy, leaden limbs to swim further along the rocky cavern wall.
But his body was failing.
Black spots danced at the edges of his vision. The burning in his lungs morphed into a cold, numb sensation. His muscles stopped responding properly, the lactic acid buildup paralyzing his arms.
He was drowning.
Slowly, his buoyancy failed, and he began to sink toward a jagged, subterranean reef. His stoic mind remained calm, accepting the darkness closing in around him. He had fought well. He had maintained his honor.
But just as his boots brushed against the rough stone of the reef, a strange sensation cut through the sensory deprivation.
It was a scent. Incredibly faint, barely discernible over the smell of the stagnant water, but it was undeniably sweet and floral.
His hand, drifting limply beside him, suddenly brushed against something sharp on the reef.
Slice.
A sudden, sharp pain flared in his palm. He flinched, his survival instincts forcefully jerking him awake. His hand had struck a cluster of long, needle-like thorns.
But as his fingers weakly curled inward from the pain, he didn't feel more stone. He felt something soft, spongy, and textured like thick moss hidden beneath the defensive thorns.
Yoriichi's Transparent World flared one final, desperate time.
He looked at the object his hand was resting on. It wasn't a beast. It wasn't dead flesh. It was a dense, sprawling cluster of aquatic plant life, actively pulsing with a faint, incredibly pure Yin-aligned worldly energy.
'Abyssal Thorn-Weed,' Yoriichi realized, a sudden jolt of electricity firing through his exhausted brain as he recognized the rare, deep-water flora from his studies in the Library pavilion. It was an incredibly nutritious, energy-dense aquatic plant that wrapped itself in razor-sharp thorns to deter fish from eating it.
His crimson eyes shot open in the dark, lighting up with a profound, quiet hope.
Ignoring the pain of the thorns biting into his hands, Yoriichi violently gripped the soft, spongy core of the weed and ripped a massive handful of it free from the reef.
Clutching the life-saving harvest to his chest, he kicked off the rocky bottom with the absolute last fraction of his strength, shooting upward toward the pitch-black surface.