novelraw Chapter 1157 - 1156 - Body Secrets
Chapter 1157 - 1156 - Body Secrets
Lind was not a fool. He knew his deadline would be ignored by someone that was not an enemy but it was his enemies that would come calling to take advantage of that.
So he dove into his project fervently as the pressure was on!
He shed some scales, stoppered up some blood, and various other samples. Pain was an old friend to him long ago but it was nothing for taking samples.
His current goal was simple. He was going to get a complete breakdown and analysis of all aspects of his body. He had already studied his body for its limits before but he was going deeper now.
It was not about what he could withstand for attacks or how much Qi he could channel to strengthen himself, it was about what actually made it up.
He had zero knowledge to pull on aside from very basic DNA and other genetic information. Neither George or himself were ever interested in such things back then.
A smile crossed his face as he recalled several science fiction stories about genetic purity but that was the closest he ever got to such things!
As such, he was starting from square one in many ways. The only advantage he had was his millennia of healing and trying to improve the health of thousands of patients. He had to learn the flow of Qi and how to quantify issues in a given body.
Because he studied all the races, even Fiends, he had a wide base in that regard.
What he had never done before, however, was to see how elemental Qi could be integrated into the body. He knew the elements could make a body stronger or in the case of body cultivators, to be made a part of a technique, but he had never studied his own body in that way.
His coloring confirmed his harmony was clearly present but he had to go beyond that.
The basic tests did not reveal much he did not already know. His body was far stronger, more resilient, and could heal at an accelerated rate compared to humans. He found signs of energy far higher than he expected in all aspects of his flesh.
He expected to only find his harmony but like the Emerald Haven he had recently created, he found a delicate arrangement of all the natural elements as well! He understood his ease of using natural elements but it had never been too different from the demonic or Celestial Qi from what he had noticed.
He found that odd and began to run experiments running various Qi through them. He was not observing how it flowed in his body live but through the samples. He would do such a test later.
He saw immediate results but not the same across the board.
His scales withstood all 18 elements with ease which surprised him but they did degrade fairly quickly under the Celestial Qi over time of the 3 sets of elements.
His human flesh and dragon flesh were equally weak to demonic and Celestial Qi.
He had expected it but it quickly became odd when he got to his blood. He expected it to be the weakest result but instead it did better than his scales!
He was mystified at that result! Why would his blood be so good at all 18 elements?!
The testing took months but he moved on as he knew he was under a deadline.
The next step was more straightforward. Now that he knew what was the most compatible, he would examine his own body as the elemental Qi flowed through it. His harmony and healing would ensure his life plus he was not trying to push the limits yet.
He let the elements flow from his dantian along his meridians to all parts of his body equally. There were no issues since his meridian and dantain were already transformed by the 18 elements.
It was only then that he began to understand. Meridians and veins were very similar in nature. His blood reached everywhere, and so too did his meridians.
The 2 systems were interdependent in some ways so his blood had been partially transformed as well! He had hope!
Yet, there was a limit. Natural Qi could be pushed out as much as he liked and his blood showed zero issues with demonic QI as well.
The problem, as he knew it would be, was the Celestial Qi. His blood could maybe handle 25% of his capacity in his dantian before it began to break down.
That was far above the rest of his body but still low.
Yet, it told him his desire was feasible. He concentrated his aura down as far as it would go before a shock filled his heart.
His blood had traces of all 18 elements flowing inside it at all times! It was all tied together with his harmony unlike the other areas where the elegant arrangement of natural Qi was found.
The free flowing elemental traces should have caused major issues even with his harmony but there was none! His blood was the starting point!
Once he had that lead, he began various experiments to increase his blood's tolerance to higher density of all the elements. They were abysmal failures for the most part.
Even using his harmony did not completely resolve the issue. The harmonic Qi was fine balancing the elements but his flesh simply could not withstand that much Qi.
It was not a question of incompatibility at that point, but capacity. He had misunderstood the issue from the beginning!
It was not that his body could not incorporate the elements, it was that it was never able to hold all that much Qi at once!
"So do body cultivators change their capacity for their techniques? Does race have something to do with it as well?" It was interesting but there was no way he had time to test his theories much.
Instead he had to change his approach. His issue was not the elements but his capacity. He had to change his body to be able to hold equal amounts of the elements at a fundamental level.
Lind was in a chair looking at the ceiling as various jars and vials surrounded him on shelves. His scrolls and jade slips were littered on a desk nearby but he was just thinking.
He could not grasp how to fix the unexpected issue. His original thesis was wrong. He already had traces of the elements in his body, but the problem was his ability to hold all 18 equally without breaking down.
Celestial Qi, for example, seemed to take up a lot more 'space' in his cells than the other 2. Demonic and natural Qi were pretty close so they were fairly easy to balance.
He already had some ideas with them but the severe limits on Celestial Qi knowledge was an issue. He simply did not have enough data!
All his current knowledge was either self taught or from that first Ruin he explored in the Lotus Empire! It was simply that bad!
"My body can hold it but it bursts when I try to increase it at all. The damage spreads and leads to total breakdown. How do I increase capacity?" Lind drummed his fingers as he ran a hand through his emerald hair.
It was a far more difficult problem than his original one but there had to be a way. Cultivators were born mortal. They condensed and incorporated Qi into their bodies over time but Immortal Qi would destroy a mortal with ease so it was clear their capacity was increased as they advanced.
He had been using Celestial Qi since the Heaven Realm. It was woven into him and his tribulations so what was he missing? Why was his body unable to incorporate them directly?
"A flaw in my technique? It would be the most obvious but then I would be at a dead end. Damn it!" It was a real possibility but the spirits and other interventions made him think there was still a way.
Heaven and Earth seemed to want him to advance badly but could not spoon feed him answers. Not least because he would truly fail at that point. Using another's comprehension would help someone advance but only to the maximum of the original.
He had been warned his body was going to hold him back and he could see it now. If he tried to become a Radiant Tier, his body would likely withstand it but no more. He could never become a Sovereign!
His body would be torn apart!
"So it is not an issue of just the elements being balanced but my body being able to hold them. Why can I hold 12 but not 18 of them when they are all rela–" He froze in mid thought. The relationship between the elements!
His theory of elements that had changed the world had been based on his discoveries in that Ruin but he fundamentally realized he kept thinking of them as separate!
He let his fingers glow as he began to weave. His sigils had all 18 elements! He had been doing it for ages by then and he examined his soul closely.
His harmony burned with his soul and all 18 elements happily flowed around in it!
There was no pattern that he could discern at first but slowly, he saw how his harmony bridged the gap. It had transformed his soul at a baseline level!
"So I am only alive because ⅔ of my existence are in sync and compensate for the last part. How idiotic can I be?" He had been studying the problem of 6 elementals for so long, he had blinded himself to his body.
Maybe, if he had thought of it way back in the Soul Realm, he would have long ago solved it but now he had to rebuild his body's foundation from scratch.
He started a new set of experiments but with the secrets of his body revealed, he now knew what he had to do. He had to essentially face a tribulation, a nasty one.
He had to create a body tribulation that would alter his physique to be in line with the rest of him! It was going to hurt! A lot!