Xiang Yi squeezed his eyes shut, panting heavily as he hid in a corner of the cargo hold.
This was to avoid being crushed by the mechanical wreckage and other scrap being loaded in after him.
The protective suit he wore was plenty durable. As long as it wasn't an impact like the one from his earlier jump, it wouldn't be torn by the scrap in the cargo hold.
Once his breathing steadied, Xiang Yi slowly opened his eyes.
His gaze was unsteady.
The trembling wasn't from fear, but because he felt his Spiritual Power had been drained, and his brain itself was quivering nonstop.
At the last moment, he had clearly felt something accelerate his consciousness. His thought process had sped up by hundreds, even thousands, of times, allowing him to find the optimal solution in that brief instant.
The solution was to use his Spiritual Energy to modify the equipment he was carrying, using the steel rebar piercing his left leg as the material.
He had succeeded, and so he had survived.
But that mental acceleration had almost completely depleted his once-abundant Spiritual Power in an extremely short time.
He weakly pulled some of the fragmented mechanical wreckage toward himself, trying to use the scrap metal to hide his form from any surveillance cameras in the cargo hold.
But before he could pull much over, his arm went limp.
The exhaustion of his mind had completely overwhelmed the strength of his body.
'I wonder if those two pilots will check the surveillance footage for the ship's tail or the cargo hold after boarding.'
'If they do, I'm probably done for.'
'What could I do about it? There's nothing I can do right now.'
'It's not like I could have avoided jumping into this ship's cargo hold. The prison must have realized I'm gone by now. I had no time to look for a better chance. All I could do was gamble.'
"I'm still not familiar enough with Spiritual Energy..."
Xiang Yi lamented silently, finding the most comfortable position he could and lying down.
He pulled a small medkit from his backpack as he thought about what had just happened.
'If I were more familiar with my Spiritual Energy, I could have reacted the instant the rebar pierced my leg and known how to solve the problem.'
'I wouldn't have ended up in this situation, almost crushed to death with my Spiritual Power nearly depleted.'
'But on the bright side, it seems I've grasped, to some extent, the ability to use Spiritual Power to accelerate my thoughts.'
'It's not the hundreds- or thousands-fold increase I got when I was on the brink of death, but it's still something.'
'A blessing in disguise, I guess.'
Xiang Yi quickly tended to the wound on his leg.
For a puncture wound like this, all he could do was plug the entry and exit wounds. He managed a crude disinfection, but proper debridement was out of the question.
He could only hope that after landing, he could quickly find a professional doctor to treat the wound properly.
Otherwise, if the wound became inflamed, festered, and got infected, he figured he only had a few days left.
'Wait, that's not right.'
A thought suddenly struck Xiang Yi. He immediately opened the panel on the Mining Gun in his backpack, preparing to modify it.
'Right now, I'm surrounded by a pile of mechanical scrap; materials are the one thing I'm not short on.'
However, the only material he was interested in was the rust residue left in the muscle tissue of his calf.
'That definitely counts as a material, and I can use it to reinforce the Mining Gun's casing.'
'Now I have a way to debride the wound.'
'Still, I'd better wait for my Spiritual Power to recover a little before I try it.'
Otherwise, Xiang Yi was genuinely worried that he might suddenly pass out if he wasn't careful.
Time passed, bit by bit.
As the last load of mechanical scrap was dumped into the hold, the sound of the cargo bay hatch closing echoed from above Xiang Yi's head.
He couldn't help but glance in the direction of the engineering robot outside the ship. Although he couldn't see anything through the cargo hold walls, he knew the robot he had just controlled was out there.
He'd had no opportunity to bring it with him. Besides, if he got too far away from something he controlled, his influence over it would soon fail completely.
Just like now, he could no longer exert any control over the modified wristband and Nanochip back at the prison.
"What a shame..."
'First the spaceship, now the robot. I couldn't manage to take either of them.'
'I'm still too weak.'
'Is there a way to get stronger? To increase my reserves of Spiritual Power?'
'I'm sure the existence of Spiritual Ability Users isn't a secret in this world. So, are there special schools for them? Or does the ruling class of human civilization gather them all up for special training?'
'Maybe. But none of that is accessible to someone like me right now.'
Xiang Yi didn't dwell on it further. He closed his eyes and began to rest and recuperate.
He soon felt the g-force of the ship's departure, followed by a brief period of weightlessness as it detached from the space station.
Taking advantage of the brief weightlessness, Xiang Yi easily found the access point leading from the cargo hold to the ship's interior and slipped inside the freighter.
A ship this large was being piloted by only two people; there would be more than enough space for him to hide for a while.
After finding a suitable, hidden corner to sit down in, Xiang Yi finally let out a long sigh of relief.
It felt as if freedom was beckoning to him.
At the same time Xiang Yi was finally aboard the ship, back at the Asteroid Prison, the guards had completely suppressed the inmates trying to cause trouble. By using the hardline tactic of publicly executing serious offenders without any regard for human rights, basic order among the population had largely been restored.
Although vast areas of the lower levels were still occupied by Blood Crystal Worms, as long as no one else died, the creatures would have no way to expand their territory.
Several well-prepared teams had already begun to clear out the Blood Crystal Worms, using weapons and tools developed from He Dong's years of research on Blood Crystals.
Even though this would likely result in some casualties, it was better than letting the Blood Crystals continue to occupy the area.
He Dong himself even personally led a team into the depths of the mining tunnels.
Specifically, to Mining Tunnel 21—the last known location of the Nanochip that had been injected into the back of Xiang Yi's neck.
The long, narrow, and deep mining tunnel did nothing to dampen He Dong's eagerness to skin Xiang Yi alive.
But when he and his team arrived at the location of the last signal, they found no trace of Xiang Yi.
The group of a dozen or so men squeezed into the tunnel, looking at each other in confusion before finally turning their gazes to He Dong.
He Dong's face flushed red. He couldn't believe that Xiang Yi could have vanished from the tunnel without a trace. Even if he'd been devoured by Blood Crystal Worms, there should have been *something* left.
Just as he was at a complete loss, he suddenly noticed something glinting from a crevice in the rock wall.
He quickly took a tweezer-like instrument from his satchel and walked toward the glinting object, carefully probing the instrument into the crevice.
Slowly, he extracted the Nanochip that was supposed to be in the back of Xiang Yi's neck from the crevice.
He Dong's expression turned uglier than ever.
Xiang Yi had never been here at all. The only thing that had come here was the Nanochip he had implanted in Xiang Yi's body.
In that moment, he finally realized that all of his previous deductions were wrong. He had been completely played by Xiang Yi.
And for Xiang Yi to have done this, there was only one possibility.
"A Spiritual Ability User..."