Experiments (3)

Tianlong discovered that the flower was leeching off his vitality.

Usually, due to the cover provided by his body refining, he wasn't able to perceive it. But now that he had exhausted his blood qi, and had someone with whom he could draw parallels, he was able to see the problem.

"Since it's drawing my vitality, it means that it is connected to my cultivation base. And currently, the meridians constitute my Qi refining base …which means that the flower must also be connected to them…

"For starters, I'll have to make at least 361 observations. Each pertaining to one of the acupoints. Hmm, I'll start with the liver meridian then. It was the first one that became spiritually active and is also the most I'm familiar with."

He took a small silver needle from his stack of medical equipment. It was an excellent conductor of spirit sense and was used to diagnose someone.

Locating the cyclic gate acupoint of old Zhan, he pierced it and injected a stream of spiritual qi inside his body. Tianlong closed his eyes and observed how the external qi was handled and assimilated by the meridians.

Noting down the results, he did the same thing with himself. The results were similar.

"Next up is the gate of ordering."

"Next, the Swift pulse."

"The Yin side."

"The Pool spring."

"Hm? Something's not right… there seems to be a difference in nature between the two qi vortexes."

Sending his spirit sense inside the acupoint, he saw that the suction here was slightly more than the surrounding ones. He concentrated his entire attention on the point but couldn't spot anything.

Since he couldn't see any differences, he connected his spiritual sense with that of old Zhan. With his now doubled spiritual sense, he could finally sense a tiny thread of qi connected to the point. The thread was as thin as one-fifth of a hair.

With a serious expression, he started to follow the thread back to its source. But due to its thin thread-like structure, it was extremely difficult to keep track of it.

Nevertheless, he persevered and followed the thread. In the end, it connected with the vine as one of its roots.

Tianlong was immediately excited. Since the orifice allowed the entry of spiritual qi from outside, it could also be used to send his spiritual sense inside. With a serious expression, he conjoined the two spirit senses and went through the same path as the thread.

Bang!

Tianlong felt as if his mind was struck by a bolt of lightning. His mind trembled and seemed to split apart.

Pu!

Both he and old Zhan spat a mouthful of blood. Their connection immediately terminated.

It required him a few moments to recover from the mental shock. As soon as he recovered, he sucked the blood back. There was a huge grin on his face.

"Heh, Finally I have some lead!"

If his parents knew what he was doing, they would immediately stop him. The memory of the plant's origin was fresh in their minds. When it was still with her, she could be harsh with herself and take extreme means to drive it out. But even after it had severely weakened, she wasn't able to kill it.

And now that it had taken Tianlong as its host, she was completely helpless. She couldn't her son to the same pain as her. Due to this, she subconsciously felt fear towards the vine.

However, just because she felt fear, didn't mean he also did. It was a classic example of how a newborn calf doesn't fear the tiger.

Being weakened by her mother, it was currently at its weakest state. But just like how he was growing, the flower was also growing along with him. If he needed to remove the problem, he needed to be fast.

He took out a beast skin. There was a diagram that depicted the meridian pathways in humans. Lifting his brush, he carefully drew a fine line that connected the cyclic gate acupoint to the flower. He numbered it as "one".

Next, he drew the figure of the flower on an empty parchment. A thin thread extended from one of its places. It was similarly labelled as "one".

Lifting his brush, he looked at the diagram with furrowed eyebrows. He tried to link it with all the medical journals he had read. Unfortunately, he couldn't find anything.

"Since I was able to find a path so early, it means that there must be quite a few of them spread out amongst the acupoints. Hmm, I have got a long way to go…"

…

Time passed and days went by. It was already over three weeks that he had assumed his identity as Zhan Damian.

There was no thrill of hunting beasts and exploring new lands.

His days were filled with acting as a guard and researching in his off-time. It was just a boring and arduous process.

However, Tianlong liked this feeling.

Even though he had completed school, the student in him was still alive.

During this time, he completely neglected his body refining and spent his time researching the various aspects of his Qi refining. Only during his duty, he would cultivate, but even then his mind would be filled with the thoughts of his research.

He would often slash open his skin and old Zhan's to observe the difference in their flesh and Qi.

But since old Zhan was a pure Qi refiner, their body's internal alchemy had a huge difference. Their difference in cultivation art also created minute differences in their body.

Thus he needed someone whose body wasn't changed due to any cultivation art.

He chose the demonic beasts.

Both himself and the beasts were demonic in nature. Hence, their physiques had some similarity.

At first, his experiments were pretty tame.

But that soon changed when he realized that, unlike old Zhan, he could kill them.

As such, his experiments started to get more and more bloody. It was partly due to his research and partly due to curiosity.

He would feed them different medicines, inject qi from various acupoints, sometimes even dissect them alive.

His room will be constantly filled with anguished cries of the beasts. Once a beast died, he would further experiment on its corpse. After all that was done, if it was still edible, he would snack on it.

Since there was no lack of demonic beasts inside the mountain, a new replacement would soon arrive. As for transporting them, he would beat them half dead and take them inside the interspatial ring.

Through this cruel process, Tianlong's knowledge regarding the biology of cultivators increased at a breakneck speed.

Currently, he was sitting beside a spirit pond.

His current appearance looked completely haggard. His skin was pale, eyes bloodshot. Dark circles covered his eyes due to a lack of sleep.

It was the result of hundreds of hours of possession, operating two spirit senses at the same time, and receiving mental backlashes every now and then. All this persistence finally paid off.

Sitting beside the pond, he was carefully observing the anatomical diagram in his hands. If one observed, they would see 33 fine lines extending from various acupoints and going towards his heart.

"Cloud gate, Cubit marsh, Spirit platform. yang stream, Diverging passage, Heavenly pivot, Qi surge, Surging Yang, Great pool, Sea of blood, Celestial cleft…

"Green Spirit, Spirit Gate, Qi sea, Yang valley, Heavenly window, Wind palace, Ethereal soul gate, Corporeal soul door, Kunlun mountains, Wind gate, Thought abode…

"Willpower room, Blazing valley, Yin valley, Spirit manor, spirit ruin, Heavenly pool, Heavenly spring, Yang Pool, Sun and moon, Life gate, and finally the Violet palace."

Tianlong recited all these names in a single breath.

"Fu~ these are the 33 acupoints where I discovered the qi threads. I have no idea if I missed any other point. Even if I did miss something, it's due to my current spiritual sense…

"But even if I increase my cultivation, the flower will strengthen along with it. In fact, its growth might be even faster than mine! So in the end, the increased spiritual sense won't bring me any benefits...

"Sadly, I can't ask anyone else for help, not even my parents. They are too much worried about my life. Even if I do manage to convince them, I don't know if my body can handle their violent spirit sense …In the end, I can only rely on myself…

He gave a helpless smile and shook his head.

"There's no point in thinking about this anymore. Even before I started my research, I knew what I was getting into. Drowning myself in self-pity won't get me anywhere!"

Taking a deep breath, he dispelled all unnecessary thoughts from his head.

Next, his gaze shifted to old Zhan. Compared to three weeks before, he was much skinnier. For the past few weeks, his sea of consciousness had to suffer multiple attacks along with Tianlong. And unlike the latter, he couldn't recover due to his soul being wiped out.