Life Qi and Death Qi
“… Y-Your shifu is Sword Shadow Dust Gale?” Daoist Yun Dan gulped and asked.
“Overdramatic much? Did you know my other shifu is Eternally Youthful Ku Mu?”
Elder Leng turned to Ku Mu. “Hey, Ku Mu, were you aware of that all this time?”
Ku Mu quickly flashed a subtle smirk before wiping it away. “And if I did? Who gives a toss about True God’s disciple? If there’s something you should be jumping about, it’s that he’s my disciple. Mu Yu, let’s go. If you don’t recount the entire story at Second Heaven, see that leg? I’ll break it.”
Mu Yu grumbled, “Gramps, can’t you spare me for once in public? I’m Bamboo Peak’s leader and True God’s direct disciple.”
“Cut the drivel out. I don’t give a damn even if you’re the jade emperor’s disciple.” Ku Mu turned around and strutted off with a smug grin he didn’t want Mu Yu to see.
“Sorry, Elders, but I must be on my way. If you still have business, please help yourself. You do not need to worry about us.”
“Our business was apprehending you!” so they wanted to blurt but could only vent with an involuntary face twitch.
Mu Yu put together another timber home at Bamboo Peak.
“Gramps, what happened to the big earthworm? Why wasn’t he around to protect you,” Xiaoshuai queried.
Mu Yu: “Oh yeah, what happened? Don’t tell me Shi Dengt-.”
“After news of your mishap was made known, I had him hide out in the valley because I knew people coveted him. Are you ready to tell me what happened yet?”
After hearing Mu Yu’s recount, he spent a prolonged period mulling over it. Once he was ready, he queried, “You have both dark herb and nine qi soul purifying flowers, correct?”
“Yes. What should I do with them?”
“You think it’s that simple to help someone with them? Remember the original restoration yang pill I mentioned? It’s a rank eight pill; only level eight alchemists can produce rank eight pills. We don’t have a level eight alchemist here.”
“Neither are you. How are we going to produce the pill, then?”
“That’s why we’re not going to concoct an original restoration yang pill. You think my experimentations were just to kill time?”
“Should’ve said so earlier. You worried me for nothing.”
“Still, working with herbs requires cultivation as a foundation. Your shoddy cultivation and skills aren’t good enough to work on the herbs’ vital essence.”
“Come on, Gramps, I beat Shi Dengtian with those shoddy skills today. Moreover, I’m the authority on plants. Herbs’ vital essence is at my beck and call.”
“I forgot about that. Well, that makes things easier.”
“You still haven’t told me what the devil Ultimate Immortals Ranking is. Do I have to fight anyone else with my life on the line?”
“Weaklings should just stay home and train. Once you can hold our own weight, you can try to improve your ranking. I must stress that, though Shi Dengtian will get off your tail now, I guarantee assassins from Shadow Syndicate have made the rankings. He could hire Celestial Star Sect or Shadow Syndicate to assassinate you,” Ku Mu sternly warned before elaborating on the ranking.
“I know Celestial Star Sect, but what’s Shadow Syndicate?”
“They’re an assassination organisation. They’ll take on any job as long as you pay. I hired them to track you down when you escaped my valley. You don’t need to fret about their reconnaissance teams; however, they will send adepts out for assassination missions.
The most famous team is Solar Term. As you might know, the solar term is any of twenty-four periods in the lunisolar calendar that signifies some natural phenomena. They took on the name Solar Term as there are twenty-four members in the team. I have no doubts Shi Dengtian will hire any of them who cracked the rankings.”
“Man… You know what? Let him do his thing. I want to sort this dark herb out first.”
The sight of the black and white herb reminded Mu Yu of moments where he lost control, and his eyes changed.
“Dark herb exists on the border of life and death. It accumulates life and death inside itself. Once it enters a human body, should the balance of life and death tip one way, the consequences won’t be desirable.” It was Ku Mu’s first time seeing the herb had had only read about in books.
For one to remain alive, the equilibrium between life and death needed to be balanced – where balanced meant life qi kept death qi in check. Once organs began to fail, death qi would begin to spread until death qi overran the body.
“In other words, my job is to make sure the two are kept in check?” queried Mu Yu.
“No. Because Heaven and Earth Formation have a hold on him, his life qi will eventually be robbed from him, allowing death qi to win dominance. Therefore, you need to forcibly extract the life qi and transfer it to his dantian, thereby mending his dantian. That will free him from Celestial Prison’s restraints.”
“Life and death are necessary to each other. Extracting life qi forcibly would trigger the death qi into gushing out and killing everything within dozens of kilometres. If in reverse, the life qi would overfill all living organisms until they breached their limit and exploded. In the end, any imbalance would spell demise. Therefore, a crucial consideration is whether or not Shifu can hold all the life qi inserted into him.”
“I know that. That’s the point of having a nine qi soul purifying flowers. Each flowers within the flowers itself has different spiritual qi, namely life qi, death qi, yin qi, yang qi, soil qi, earth qi, divination qi, collection qi, and absorption qi. While it possesses the life qi and death qi mandatory to our strategy, those qis aren’t exactly pure. Consequently, we can’t use them directly. They’re better off used for control.”
“So, what you’re saying is to switch in the life qi from the nine qi soul purifying flowers after extracting the life qi from dark herb to balance them?”
“I expect you to catch on as you just did. That’s not all, nonetheless. You also need to use nine qi soul purifying flowers’ death qi to control the life qi extracted from dark herb. Unfortunately, it can only balance it transiently, so you have a year from then to deal with the inevitable burst.”
“Will Shifu be able to withstand the life qi?”
“Once his dantian is repaired, Celestial Prison will absorb the excess spiritual qi. He’ll be able to escape it thereafter. You don’t need to worry about him given his cultivation. What you should be worried about is how to deal with the death qi from dark herb.”
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