Three months had passed in the upper realm.
Mo Xing knelt in the center of his chambers, where he had spent countless days wrestling with the aftermath of the Dark Binding elixir. The double dose that had saved him now extracted its price. Each day brought a fresh battle as liquid fire turned to creeping frost in his veins, the brutal re-chaining of the beast within demanding its toll. His meridians, still raw from that initial exorcism by force, pulsed with remembered agony. Yet still, that damned smile played at the corners of his mouth, as if the pain itself was nothing more than an amusing inconvenience.
"Master, please," Mian Mian's shadows flickered anxiously around him. "You need more time to recover—"
"What I need," he interrupted, voice smooth despite three months of strain, "is to stand."