That night I spent six hours going over my body and looking for flaws. I must have found several hundred minor flaws, places where the qi flow was restricted or looped back on itself, leading to inefficient flow. There were also a few places where the various chemicals in my body were out of balance on the small scale, like areas where waste products built up slightly or certain nutrients were at lower than average levels. I spent the time optimizing all of those areas as best I could. All of my cultivation had worked on a much larger scale, so it had allowed flaws to go unnoticed on the small scale of a few millimeters.
When I finished I could feel that the flow of qi had improved by several percent. Furthermore, when I attempted to use qi it flowed more smoothly and more quickly. While the qi flow within my blood vessels and nerves wasn’t as fast or efficient as the qi flow in my true meridians and soul sea, it was likely better than the qi flow within ninety five percent of initial level three cultivators.
I now felt comfortable attempting another round of Rebirth. I set up the seal plate to only allow ambient qi in, and turned on the formation which pumped qi in. After an hour of constructing generic body mind seeds to act as overflow seeds, I sent my qi sense outside myself to check on the ambient levels. For some reason, while the note on the wall promised ten times the background level, the room had barely reached six times that level, and I couldn’t feel it increasing any further. ‘Great, I got a room with a defective formation’, I thought. I briefly considered reporting this so that the formation could be repaired, but decided against it. Not only was the person in charge of the maintenance most likely currently sleeping, I didn’t actually need that high of a level to trigger another rebirth. With less qi the rebirth would simply take longer.
I constructed two more seeds within my soul sea and true meridians, being sure to incorporate everything from the flood dragon meat, Xiao’s seeds, and what the young flood dragon had shown me. I was about to activate them when I decided to try one of the Rainbow Fruits I had bought earlier. After all, these fruits had a maximum level they could enhance my mind to, one which I was likely close to, but the seed had no such limit. It could theoretically work to improve my mind until I hit the limit of the human body at the end of level four, after which I would have to find a new way to expand my mind. The daoist techniques might hold the answer to how to do that once I reached that limit, as they focused on the development of mental power, but for now I had too far to go to worry about that.
Like their cousins from the hidden realm, these fruits had pits like a peach, which I stored in the bag with all of the other spirit plant and alchemical supplies I had bought. This bag would be given to Maria or the seeds inside planted once I got to Earth. I also had one for talismans, which contained all of the leather I had made as well as any ink and paper I had left. It was much less full than the alchemy bag. I hadn’t divided the rest of my belongings up into categories yet, other than a library bag that contained all of my books and jades, but I didn’t have enough things from other categories to really need to do so.
Once I had removed the pit, I ate the rest of the fruit. The inside was structured into sections, like an orange, with a pulp forming a network inside of it which made it firmer than it should be. It tasted like a mixture of apples and lemons, with maybe a touch of pear added in. I didn’t have much time to savor the unique flavor, however, as I soon felt something start to change within my brain. It felt similar to how a muscle felt after working out, like it was tired, but also like it would be stronger after recovering. This change went throughout my mind, and seemed to upgrade many parts of my brain to be better than they were previously. Strangely, this didn’t seem to involve a cultivation seed of any kind, the way similar effects I had gotten from spirit beasts always did. It felt more like a medicine suppressing the symptoms of a disease, though I wasn’t sure if that was an accurate description of what had occurred.
When it was finished I surveyed the improvements. My brain now seemed to work slightly faster, but without any of the stress that would normally require. It was like the neurons had been improved to better handle the effect. My memory also seemed to have greatly improved. Before this, I had refined my memory to be better than most cultivators of my level, but now it seemed much clearer, like my ability to remember details had been updated. Had this been my brains biggest weakness, or was the memory just the first thing these fruits updated? Maybe they primarily upgraded memory, and the texts had overlooked this fact?
Either way, I knew it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to eat another fruit so soon after the first, so instead I returned to my first goal of going through one more rebirth. I remembered to remove my clothes first, the new improvements likely helping with that, then started drawing in qi. The level in the air hadn’t gotten much above six times the background density, but I ignored that fact as I drew it in at a rate that was just shy of the tribulation level. I wanted to test the limits of my meridians, and this test showed a moderate amount of improvement. Hopefully, this rebirth would bring me a few percent further down the path to level four.
After a few hours, during which time I sent out over a dozen waves of liquid qi throughout my body, I started noticing that in some locations there was a small shadow where the cells weren’t getting as much qi as they should, dropping the limit just enough to prevent the rebirth process. Over the next hour those shadows started getting bigger. Assuming it was just a defect I had somehow overlooked in my earlier scan, likely being something that I hadn’t seen before and therefore not knowing about the possibility, I started drawing in proper tribulation lightning to strike near these locations. With every strike, though, the shadow seemed to grow a bit more. Now the shadow areas were between one and two centimeters long, but only one or two millimeters wide.
If this continued, they would grow too large to contain and I might lose the ability to trigger a rebirth, so I decided to try and brute force a rebirth. I started drawing in tribulation lightning and converting it into liquid qi as quickly as possible, pushing the rebirth forward a few percent per lightning strike. The shadow areas couldn’t keep up with the rate at which my cells were being replaced, so eventually I managed to push the shadows out of myself as new tissue grew in their location. Within a few minutes all of my cells had been rebuilt and replaced once more, and I could no longer sense any shadows within myself.
When I was finished I wiped the black oily substance off of my body. I noticed that it wasn’t a uniform sludge like when I broke through within the hidden realm. Instead there were tiny streaks in it that moved on their own. I focused on them and realized that they looked much like a small roundworm but solid black in color. I looked around my room for something to store it in and found an empty pill bottle. I put most of it in the bottle using telekinesis, then burned the rest using fire qi. My qi had seemed a bit low before breaking through, but not only had my reserves refilled but my maximum had increased by a few percent, which I was happy to use to burn the parasites.
After corking the bottle I set it to the side. I searched through myself for any more shadows, which I assume the worms had appeared to be, but didn’t find any. Once I was certain that Rebirth had purged them from me, I started studying the creatures. Most of them were dead, but when I injected a bit of qi into the bottle those that were still alive started moving again. I felt them rapidly absorb the qi into themselves, so I stopped feeding qi into the bottle. A few seconds later, the qi levels dropped considerably and they started to grow dormant. They must have been feeding on the qi inside of me.
At my birthday party prior to leaving Earth someone had theorized that the fact that human DNA had defenses against automatic qi absorption might mean that there was a disease which only targeted cultivators. This would appear to fit that description, as it was a parasite that needed to feed on qi within a person. Could I have brought it here from Earth, and it just awakened now? That didn’t seem likely, as I had never heard of this type of parasite on Earth. Had I instead caught it in the hidden realm? That seemed plausible, though I hadn’t seen them there either, and I had cut open many dead spirit beasts, which they would have to have infected in order to survive. Maybe it only existed within certain environments? I was in the water during the fight, and was injured. Was it possible I had swallowed some water or gotten infected through a wound while in the Flood Dragon lake? That seemed the most likely scenario. After all, the water wasn’t the cleanest, so it could very easily contain spirit parasites. The Flood Dragon hadn’t appeared to be infected, as I had seen its meat, but maybe they were resistant, either because of their dragon or snake genetics, and the fish in the water were the actual carriers?
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I knew I would have to go to the alchemist in the morning to see if they had heard of this parasite, knew where it was from, and had a way to kill it outside of Rebirth. After all, if someone below level three became infected because of me, I would need a way to cure them.
Knowing that I had almost succumbed to a parasitic infection, I lost my ability to concentrate on my cultivation. Most of the cultivation seeds hadn’t been grown during the rebirth, as I had focused as much qi as possible on the rebirth itself, but I didn’t think I could continue to gather qi right now. I decided to, instead, work on my skills.
First I pulled out what talisman papers I had and started making talismans. First, I made one hundred of the lantern talismans which I gave the prototype of to Five, something which took less than an hour. I would sell these to one of the talisman shops in town tomorrow to see if there was a market for selling these things to rich mortals. In this city, mortals commonly bought spirit material based goods, unlike in High River, so this would be a better place to do a test run. Next I made level one rechargeable talismans from some level two leathers, using the stun bolt effect or a barrier formation or effect. Some of the barriers contained the simple level one barrier formation I had learned before Blood attacked, some contained a Metal barrier, and some contained a Fire barrier. I made fifty of each, taking around three hours to do so. I only used what spirit beast leather I had for these, keeping the Vrooshkin leather in reserve. I didn’t want to distribute those, as they could make the user more violent, and, as they were only really useful for attack talismans, I couldn’t use them for most of my talismans anyway. I only had a few pieces of level three leather left, all from a shadow hyena, so I would keep them in reserve for now, in case I needed them.
There was about an hour left before sunrise, so I decided to leave my room and go to the training field. I turned off the formation, gathered the qi that was left to fully develop the meridian seeds, both true and false, then left. Once at the field I started going through the forms of the Dancing Dragon technique. I did one hundred each of the first three moves, to guarantee that I was as prepared as I could be for what came next. I then executed the fourth move, the one that had caused me so much trouble on the way here. While I could feel the fire qi flow through my meridians, they didn’t seem to be damaged by the action. I repeated the action several more times, each time feeling it flow through me in an identical pattern. After about twenty repetitions the meridians started to hurt slightly, so I stopped. It didn’t really feel like I had damaged them, but like they needed to recover from the strain of a workout.
As the sun rose I sat down and started constructing a manifestation body for Ryuu. Ten minutes later I started hearing people move by me, and decided to call an end to my training for now. I opened my eyes and sent the manifestation out of my dantian, and a small mass of fire qi in the form of an eastern dragon floated in front of me. I struggled a bit to keep it stable, and when I started to lose control I drew it back into myself so that it could recover. I had far better control over the qi within me, and due to my dual cultivation training I could visualize the qi inside of myself far better as well. I showed Ryuu the body, only to realize that I hadn’t yet imbued it with its own will yet. I would need to do so tonight, as well as integrate it with the body, so that it could grow on its own.
I stood up and noticed one of the family members standing nearby. “Making a fire dragon spirit?” he asked, and I nodded. This man appeared to be in the middle of the third level.
“I found a Master quality copy of the Dancing Dragon technique in High River, so I’m trying to learn it. Should be able to give the spirit its own will and integrate it into the body tonight.”
He nodded. “Nice. I bought a High grade copy of the Sea Dragon Manifestation Technique three years ago at the auction and formed a Water Dragon spirit. It’s one of my favorite forms of attack, so hopefully it works out for you.”
“Thanks.” I said. “If you want to spar after I practice with Ryuu a bit, I would be willing.”
“Ryuu?” he asked. “Is that your dragon spirit?”
I nodded. “Yes. In one of the languages of my homeland it means Dragon. I’m not the best with names. For example…” I asked Xiao to come out of the beast bag, and he flew out, then landed on my shoulder. “This is Maque Xiao. In a different language, that means ‘little sparrow’, with sparrow as the family name.”
He smiled. “Honestly, most people use the beast’s race as the surname. Makes it easy to remember. I’m surprised that you were able to find a lightning sparrow, though. I’ve only seen them in books, and on one sect elder that was in town. Some swordsman that was proud of his speed.”
“Elder Swift Wind?” I asked, and the man nodded. “I actually sold one from Xiao’s tribe to him about two weeks ago. Is he still in town? I’ll go and say hello.”
The man nodded. “Should be. People from several sects have arrived over the last week. Mostly level three or four elders, but a few level fives as well. The auction is drawing in a huge crowd. I hear they actually have several twenty thousand year old Sacred Peach trees someone got from a hidden realm this time, and with it being able to help awaken the soul and aid in viewing past lives, many level fives are traveling here just to bid on it. Though, the fact that they are saplings grown from samples of the roots means that the people will have to wait years even with Wood techniques speeding its recovery before they can harvest anything. That will definitely lower the price.”
I nodded. “I’ll have to tell my boss about that. If he can get one, I’m sure he’ll be able to use it. The company he works for has several level five customers.” The man nodded. “I’m Li Kev, by the way,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Ji Tul” he said, shaking it. “Well, I’d better go get something to eat. Maybe we can talk later.” I nodded and he left.
Deciding that it was time to eat for me as well, as I had nothing but a Rainbow Fruit and a few cups of tea for supper, I quickly topped off my qi reserves and walked towards the dining room as well. I asked one of the servants where I should sit and he lead me to a room full of level three cultivators. Unlike the branch family, where the backup table was full of level twos, with level threes and fours at the main table, in this family only level four and five cultivators got to sit at the main table, and all of the level threes were in a room across the hall. The family’s three level five cultivators were all in seclusion or would be eating elsewhere, however, so that main table was filled with level four cultivators.
Surprisingly, when I got there I saw the Ambassador sitting at the table. I went over to sit beside him. “Failed your breakthrough last night, sir?” I asked as I sat down.
He nodded. “Nothing seemed to go right. While the tea made things easier, I seemed to somehow have qi blockages that I had to work around. I also seemed to have just a bit less qi than I thought, maybe one percent at worse. And, of course, the gathering array was broken and couldn’t make liquid qi. It only got to around eighteen or nineteen times the background level, even when I turned the setting to maximum. Without enough qi or the ability to move it properly, I couldn’t form a core seed.”
Something seemed too familiar about that. I had experienced similar issues last night. Could there be a problem with the entire manor’s gathering array? Maybe the qi tap that connected the estate to the dragon vein was damaged? While that was possible, it wouldn’t explain why his qi was low or the blockages. As I had experienced the same thing last night, I was worried that I might know exactly why he was having those two issues. “Can I take your pulse, sir?” I asked, “I might have an idea why you were having internal problems.”
He shrugged and pulled up his sleeve, offering me his wrist. “If you think you can solve it, feel free to do so.”
I grabbing his arm and put my fingers on the veins in his wrist. As he was a body cultivator, his meridians were much more durable than most people’s, so I could send more qi than normal into the technique. I searched his body and quickly found the reason for his issues. Within his body tissue I found one hundred and thirty seven reasons. One hundred and thirty seven shadows.
