17 Chapter 17: Visitor.

"Doctor Paracelsus, it has been some time since my last visit." Said energetically the girl, who had now decided to just make herself at home, taking one of the floating chairs in my office as her seat.

"Indeed it has," I lied; it hadn't been long, maybe a month? Honestly, I stopped counting the days; the all-nighters I pulled took more and more of my sense of time away, but maybe she counted a month as being a long time. "How may I help you today?"

I sincerely hoped that she would reintroduce her name; while cultivation seemed to make my memory better, it had done nothing for my memory of people's names.

"I would like to make a reservation for a day of your time, if you don't mind." She replied, failing to hide her curiosity about my floating chairs.

If I ever found a way to mass produce them, I could make a killing out of them.

I wasted no time to reply to the pretty lady, "It will not be a problem; is there a patient you would want me to see?"

"It's not a patient in particular, but rather the possibility of a few injuries," she began explaining. "You see, the Profound Palace is setting up a banquet, and with the banquet there will naturally be a competition for the members of the younger generation to challenge each other, and as you must know, injuries are inevitable on such occasions."

A banquet? It sounded nice, but I would never get used to the idea of people fighting all the time as they did in this world; every time I went for groceries, I came across at least one brawl. It was honestly insane.

Thankfully, there seemed to be a tacit understanding not to cause trouble in any doctor's clinic; we were the ones that had to patch them up after a fight, after all.

"How would you usually manage such occasions? I doubt you don't have other doctors to turn to." I replied, asking for some more details.

"The profound palace naturally has a medical division, but I would still prefer to have some more assurance that things would go well in the case of heavier injuries. Naturally, any less serious injuries will be taken care of by our own people, so you would most probably be able to just enjoy the banquet." She explained dutifully.

"Might as well," I mumbled after thinking for a few seconds. I needed a day off. "When does this banquet take place?"

"It starts in three days; it should go on for the entire day, but if you are otherwise busy, I would understand your absence; I did notify you shortly before." She said it with understanding.

"No, I should be free for the day in three days; give me a second," I said, summoning my agenda from the green realm. This thing kept getting more and more useful. Yes, it's all free, but I have to ask you to give me some indications; I don't know the road to reach the Profound Palace."

"I will send someone to retrieve you at an opportune time; would your usual opening time be okay for you?" She asked.

This girl seemed very nice; it was a rare thing from anyone in this world. I couldn't help but wonder if she wanted something from me.

I shooed away those bad thoughts, though; thinking that every nice person had some ulterior motives was a sad way to live life. I would rather believe she was genuinely nice until proven otherwise.

"That would be perfect; thank you. Is there anything else I can help you with?" I asked, to which she shook her head in denial, so I continued with a slight smile on my face, "In that case, could I ask you a favor? It's alright if you refuse, obviously."

"Yes, doctor, what is it that you need?" She asked, suddenly taking on a much more businesslike smile, I liked this kind of attitude.

"It's not anything invasive or that would require any time on your part, but I have devised a new kind of scanning procedure to better understand my patients bodies, but I have no data on what a healthy and strong cultivator should look like. Would you mind if I tried it on you?" I explained.

It was indeed a big flaw in my ERI machine; the stronger the cultivation of the individual, the more their profound veins should evolve, in one way or another.

My own energy veins were very different from those of any of my patients on whom I had tried the scanning; now I had to figure out whether it was because I had a much more developed cultivation, being on the higher end of the second realm, or if it was a difference between normal veins and those given to me by Jasmine.

Understanding whether my own body was fundamentally different from that of anyone else would be a good first step into learning more about this weird phenomenon.

It was unfortunate that my machine still wasn't good enough; there seemed to be large areas where I couldn't scan. I would have thought they were part of the vein network, but they were mostly separate from the circulation.

Adding to the fact that I saw nothing when looking in those parts with my energy sense, it added another thing to research on my already never-ending list of things that I knew I didn't know.

It was fascinating.

"I'm sorry, doctor, but what does this procedure entail?" She replied, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

"Follow me; it's faster if I show you," I replied, leading the girl to my laboratory, where the ERI second model was. I had added a bank where all the scans were saved for further research. I was working on making the scans tridimensional, but I still had no luck on that front. "I call this the ERI."

I let the sense of wonder sizzle for a moment as I turned on the various machines in my laboratory, which were necessary for the proper functioning of everything.

The sterilizing and perfuming runes began working, giving the room a nice, clean smell, while the light runes added to the modern atmosphere.

I was so proud of this room, the source of countless sleepless nights.

"With it, I found out part of the reason behind living beings passive resistance to other people's energy inside their bodies," I continued. "As you should know, if I tried working on the energy inside your body, I would find incredible resistance."

I looked at her, waiting for confirmation, which came back in the form of a nod: "I have restricted the cause behind that phenomenon to the material the profound veins are made of."

"The material? You're saying that the profound veins are made of something other than profound energy?" She interrupted, voicing her doubts.

"But of course, if they were made of profound energy, then how come they behave so differently from profound energy? Is that what the people here believe?" I asked back out of curiosity.

As dumb as it sounded, it was a thought that I had entertained too.

"I think so." She replied, sounding uncertain herself, so I could only let go of the matter. Seeing the girl blush from her own assumption made me feel guilty for having mentally called her dumb.

So I turned back and continued as if it were nothing; that's how you deal with embarrassed girls, in my experience at least: "I still don't know what it actually is; it's a weird thing, not quite matter, but not energy either; it behaves weirdly; it follows part of the laws of actual matter, but it also behaves like energy; it's weird."

That was an awful way to put it, but it was the best I could manage. It had to be some weird quantum mumbo jumbo; maybe it was neither matter nor energy, but that was still far from anything I needed for my purposes.

At least for now.

"Well, that doesn't really matter, does it?" I chuckled, snapping the girl from her thoughts. She looked at me very weirdly, but I didn't really take note. "This machine will diffuse my energy inside of your body, taking note of which areas show the most resistance; those areas are your veins. Any questions?"

I turned around, and sure enough, there were questions like, "Why does it matter?"

"I'm sorry? Why does what matter?" I hoped that what I understood her question to be wasn't actually what her question really meant.

After all, how could one not find meaning in understanding how they themselves work?

"Can't you just use your energy sense? That will show you exactly how your Profound Veins look; what more is there to see?" She continued.

I sighed in relief; it was just ignorance.

It was okay; I could deal with ignorance. "When you think of your blood vessels, you think only of the major ones, the big veins and arteries, right?"

"Yes?" She replied uncertainly.

"Well, take a look at this; it's just an introduction, but it should give you an idea." I said, snapping into existence a copy of the first of many works from my old world that I had replicated to spread the knowledge in this one, De Motu Cordis.

It was an introduction to the circulatory system; obviously, I had taken away all the outdated notions and added a few of the more modern theories on how things worked, but it was still a light and enjoyable read.

At least for me it was; when I gave it to anyone else, it always seemed like I had given them a text in some ancient dead language, but this lady was the messenger of the princess of an Empire, and I hoped she was at least educated enough to understand the basis behind this work.

The Lan lady, or at least I vaguely remembered that to be her first name or last name, either of the two, wasted no time and began reading the few pages worth of words and drawings that I recreated.

The more she read, the more her eyes widened. I had no idea the reason for this; did she have that much of an impression of how the circulatory system worked that this kind of surprise was warranted?

"You can take that home, but what's important is the essence; most of the blood vessels are invisible to the human eye; the profound veins are the same; this machine, however, shows all of them, or most of them, at least." I concluded.

"What do I need to do?" She replied, not wasting a single second on any more explanations, which was good, but I wouldn't have minded answering more questions.

"All you have to do is lie on it and stay as still as possible; I will do the rest, and please don't actively resist the process; that might skew the readings." I explained, and soon enough, it was done.

I had the girl stand up to look at the imaging. I took a very thin, wooden tablet from under the table, on which I could see the precise vein pathways in her body, and it was different from that of most people I had met.

There were far more thick passages than most people I had visited, which I guessed were the profound openings in which the energy flowed in from, but that should be normal since most people whose readings I did were not cultivators.

My own were the most extreme; the thinnest part of the main pathways was as thick as her entrances, which led to far faster energy flow and intake, speeding up the process of making my energy denser.

This explained a lot, but I needed further study.

"This should be everything. Thank you for your cooperation. Do you wish for a copy of your veins for your own study?" I asked out of curtesy; she agreed, and I copied the veins on another tablet. "Here you are."

"Thank you very much, doctor. This is a favor that I will never forget. If there is ever anything I can help you with, please give me a call. There are few things that I can't access in this empire." She said this, bowing to me in respect.

These people were really weird, but I just sighed, motioned for her to get up, and replied, "Don't worry about it, miss; it's nothing important; you did me a favor by accepting to do the scan."

The girl kept trying to thank me, but I just shooed her away and closed the door.

I sighed, "That was exhausting."

"You say that every time someone comes in here." Jasmine replied, coming out of the green tattoo.

Because it's true every time.