Looking at how creepy Dong Qianyi was being, Xiang Ning finally surrendered and quietly entered the dark room. The door was closed behind him. “Hey, I think I just need an hour. Could you open the door after that? There’s no toilet in here and I was already traumatized last time,” he sheepishly said.

“Heh.” Dong Qianyi didn’t even bother listening and walked away. Xiang Ning was left like a prisoner.

Looking at Dong Qianyi, he was thinking about whether he should stay longer or not. He thought that it would be troublesome if he consumed so much knowledge. But when he paid fifteen thousand Fury Points to comprehend the book on spatial planes, his brain expanded and hurt, as if there were a million rocks being crammed into it. He felt dizzy and slumped down, his brain pulsing with pain.

“What the fuck! What is this?! My brain hurts! I feel like it’s going to explode!” Xiang Ning’s expression was contorted as his face turned red with pain. Veins popped and he sweated like crazy.

After thirty minutes, he was finally relieved of the pain. At that point his shirt was drenched. He painfully crawled toward the door and took deep breaths. “Shit, can’t they make the fine print bigger? Who would’ve noticed it?!” Xiang Ning wanted to cry, but had no tears. He had checked the interface while he was in pain just moments ago and found out that he required a certain threshold of Mental Power to use Comprehension. If there was too much information, it would place too much burden on his brain and may damage it.

To put it simply, if a human was a machine, then their brains were CPUs. When there was too much data, the brain wouldn’t be able to swiftly handle it. Usually, the brain would slowly process the information, but the data that was obtained from using Comprehension wasn’t controlled and rushed all at once into his brain. But at the end of it, Xiang Ning could easily fish out any information regarding spatial planes, and he would never forget any of it.

That said, he knew that he had reached his limit and would need to wait until the next day if he wanted to use Comprehension again.

He rested for another hour and a half before the pain had fully subsided.

At the same time, Alia tried peeking into the room using the small window on the door, but couldn’t find anyone.

“Xiang Ning, are you in there?”

“Yeah, I’m in here. Could you let me out?” He suddenly stood up and scared her.

“Wait, where are you running?! Come back and open the door!” He tried reaching out of the small window and called for her but to no avail.

“Huh? Am I that scary?” He held his face as he questioned himself.

Soon a lot of footsteps were heard coming toward him. There were at least three people. It was Alia, along with Dong Qianyi and Lei Zhongyuan. Everyone took a look at Xiang Ning and was scared witless.

Xiang Ning saw that everyone was there, so he tried to persuade them. “Could you let me out? I need to use the toilet.”

But when he saw the expressions of everyone else, he was weirded out too. “Don’t tell me you guys are going to continue locking me up here? I just completed a book, there’s no way you can expect me to learn everything today?! I’ll die!”

Dong Qianyi's face stung as he heard the last sentence and opened the door. Before Xiang Ning could say anything, Dong Qianyi pulled his hand and apologized. “I’m sorry, I was too rash.”

Xiang Ning couldn’t believe his master was apologizing to him. Am I dreaming?

Dong Qianyi and Alia were both feeling sorry for him.

“It’s my fault, I should’ve stopped master.”

“You shouldn’t push yourself too much. Your health is very important.” Lei Zhongyuan scratched his head.

“What? What are you talking about?” He still had no idea what they were saying. Alia took out a small mirror and handed it to him.

Xiang Ning was curious, but he almost fell down when he saw his reflection. “Why did I become like this?!” He was looking at his reflection in terror. Why do I look like I’ve been sucked dry?!

His eyes were sunken eyes, his face was fleshless... even his jaw bones were protruding. He looked like a refugee that had been starved for ten years. He looked more like a ghost than a human.

“Don’t panic, now tell me what happened throughout the day. Were you poisoned by a beast in the fortress?” Dong Qianyi was extremely anxious. He regretted not taking him for a checkup first, knowing that he had just returned from fighting the beast stampede.

“No, I don’t think so. With the exception of the Tyrant Spider, I didn’t fight any beasts with venom. Plus, the Tyrant Spider didn’t use any venom on me.” Now he was anxious too! He wasn’t sure whether this would affect his face in the future. If he returned like this, his sister would cry! “Master, please save me! My sister will cry if she sees me like this!” he begged.

“Come with me, I’ll give you a full check up.” Dong Qianyi furrowed his brows. He had never encountered something like this before.

Alia went ahead and contacted some of the medical staff to assist them.

Ten minutes later, Dong Qianyi was reading the report in his hand and couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

“What’s the situation?” Lei Zhongyuan came over.

“The data suggests that he’s suffering from severe malnutrition.”

“What? Malnutrition? How could that be? Didn’t he just have dinner? He used to be poor, but not to the extent of not being able to eat!” Lei Zhongyuan was shocked as well.

Even Dong Qianyi was stumped. He asked Xiang Ning about what had happened to him that day as he was giving him some nutrient solution. 

Xiang Ning nodded and told them the truth. Lei Zhongyuan almost couldn’t believe his ears when he heard that Xiang Ning had slain a tier four beast with his tier two cultivation. Even though the beast was already wounded, that was too scary!

But then Xiang Ning came to the part where it was most likely the reason why he looked like this. He told them how he had completely devoured the information in the thirty-centimeter-thick book about spatial planes. 

Getting sucked dry for the wrong reason. smh Xiang Ning.