Pain

Daiyu stared at the pile of....er....suspicious excrement in front of him. Hua Yan didn't seem to be bothered at all by the horrific smell that was coming from the pile, and was instead using a small mortar and pestle to grind the herbs she had bought from a small town's market stall together with the cure's other ingredients. Daiyu, on the other hand, could barely suppress the urge to vomit. Why didn't he know before now that Giant Silver Ape poo was smelly enough to make the pores of a man with no nose pop?

It wasn't as if Daiyu was a stranger to disgusting aromas and vomit-inducing sights. After all, he had seen far worse things in his twenty eight years than a pile of animal feces. But this...this was more disgusting than anything he had ever smelled in his life!

Pinching his nose and attempting to swallow the food that was trying to come back up, Daiyu spoke to Hua Yan. "Night Rose, why does this smell so bad? It smells even worse than the time I had to dig up a kill from where I buried them two months after they died in order to reconfirm something!"

The Night Rose did not look up from her work, and also didn't seem bothered by the smell of the pile on the table between them either. Instead, she merely replied carelessly, "Giant Silver Apes eat a certain type of fruit that only grows in the territory they live in. That fruit happens to be one of the most smelly things known to man, and thus, the excrement of the Apes is even worse than the fruit itself. That's the reason why everyone refuses to go into their territory, not because the Apes are dangerous. In fact, Giant Silver Apes are actually quite gentle, especially for a member of the ape species. Most large monkeys and gorillas, whether they are magic beasts or not, are typically very aggressive and territorial."

Daiyu was unable to tear his eyes away from the pile of poop. Somehow, the more gross it seemed to him, the more he was unable to take his mind off of it. In a desperate bid to keep from throwing up and giving Hua Yan even more ammunition to toss at him, he asked in a strained voice, "If it smells so bad, darling, how in the world did you think to use it to develop a cure to the qi-sealing poison?"

Hua Yan's movements froze. The change in her facial expressions might not have been visible to others, but to Daiyu, he could clearly see that her eyes had turned dull, as if hiding some great trauma that she did not care to think about. She hesitated slightly, then finally spoke softly. "I've been poisoned with this before. At that time, I happened to have been studying the properties of the Qwib Fruit, and saw that its cleansing capabilities were increased exponentially by the Giant Silver Ape's digestive system. So if you're ever poisoned by something and you're dying and have no choice, just go get a pile of the Giant Silver Ape's crap and eat it. Your golden core body will ensure you won't get sick from it."

The Night Rose seemed to be trying to cover up her loss of control, directly turning around and trying to mess with him again. Daiyu could feel the wheels in his head turning, but he pretended to scoff at her. "I think I'd rather take my chances with death. King Yama might have more mercy on me than the smell of that Ape sh—"

"Done," Hua Yan interrupted him, as she dumped the disgusting paste she had made into a container. Part of the paste she directly mixed into a cup of water, then handed it to him. "Drink if you don't want to die."

Daiyu glanced into the cup, then did a horrified double take. It was actually...bubbling. And not merely bubbling, it looked like a cesspit. He lifted his eyes to stare at Hua Yan, but the other assassin was already smearing the smelly paste onto the skin at her wrists, ankles, and neck, probably so its properties would be absorbed into her blood through the pulses there. Without looking up, she said expressionlessly, as if it wasn't something important, "I would hurry up and drink that, or the qi-sealing poison will soon cause you to be unable to move. We're both in excruciating pain right now and our meridians are already half-destroyed. Pretty soon our cultivation will disperse because our dantians will be attacked and destroyed as well. Today is the seventh day."

Daiyu was still hardly able to even look at the cesspit concoction, not to mention think about drinking it! He finally decided that it was Hua Yan's fault if he vomited the stuff back up. Pinching his nose, he dumped the contents of the cup into his mouth and let it fall down his throat. This technique was something he had learned to avoid tasting the bitter poisons he had been building immunity to.

In the end, the taste of the so called cure was even worse than he had expected. He wasn't even able to vomit, it tasted so bad. His every pore popped and he felt cold sweat burst out of them. He could only curl up in a ball on the ground, making weak retching noises. It was utterly embarrassing, and yet he didn't even care. He only knew that he never wanted to experience that taste again even if he became an immortal that lived forever.

Hua Yan collapsed out of her seat as well, but it was most likely because she had reached her limit on acting normally through the pain. In the next moment, Daiyu understood. The cure had not eased the pain he was experiencing, it had in fact doubled or even tripled it. He felt his face turning red and his veins standing out from his skin. Had someone entered the rented room the two of them were staying in at that moment, the person would have likely been scared out of their wits by the appearances of the two people curled into balls on the ground.

The pain in his body had increased to such a degree that Daiyu could feel his consciousness slipping away, and yet still he refused to scream. He had experienced such pain before, so he would not lower himself to scream when he could still suppress it.

When Daiyu woke up, the first thing he noticed was the warm, comfortable feeling in his body. After days of intense and unwavering pain, it was a particularly relieving sensation. The second thing he noticed was the warm body that was pressed against his arm. Prying open his eyes, Daiyu saw the dyed hair of Hua Yan below his shoulder.

It seemed that though the two of them had been rather far apart when they fell unconscious, their bodies had instinctively sought warmth since night had fallen and the chill in the room had become rather noticeable.

Pushing himself to his feet, Daiyu smacked his lips together. The taste in his mouth was something he probably wouldn't be able to get rid of for an entire month, true to his companion's words.