novelraw Chapter 238 - 237 - Last Hope
Chapter 238 - 237 - Last Hope
Lind led them to an area exclusive for his work in elixirs. There were various racks of herbs being studied with another area of beast cores, elemental crystals and various other ideas of ingredients Lind thought to combine as grade 4 in the future.
The medicinal smell came from several tables full of elixirs being studied for stability and longevity. Lind had learned that outside of a storage treasure, his elixirs could degrade at slow or remarkable rates.
His Tempering Elixirs were quite impressive on their shelf life from what he could tell but the Cure Elixir could degrade in less than 6 months if not stored properly. Lind had begun to understand the frustration of finding good elixirs even in Ruins.
It was also the room where he planned to do examinations.
"So long as there is no objection, please remove that cloak and lay down on that cot there." It was a powerful defensive armor on her but she would not be helped by it there. Midnight nodded and a tiny frail girl was revealed.
Her skin was incredibly pale but she had signs the frailty was recent from what Lind could see. The way she tried to carry herself but her body betrayed her. It was similar to how a broken limb had healed but would not work the way someone wanted right after the cast was removed.
The mind remembered the commands but the body could not perform it.
She had a rather nice set of robes but they were clearly for a larger body than she currently had. They were too loose on her. She fumbled with the pins holding it closed but Lind held up his hand.
"No need for that at the moment. First, just lay down and relax. What I did will give your body some peace for today." Lind watched as she struggled to even simply lay down and frowned deeply. That lack of coordination was more severe than he expected.
Once she laid down, her short blonde hair splayed out around her head. Her face finally relaxed a bit and she fell asleep before even Midnight noticed the subtle formation.
"She was exhausted and sleep is more beneficial in her current state than staying awake." Lind set up some artifacts he had Forged. They were not useful to anyone but him. His knowledge of Earth found cultivators relied far too much on what they could sense to tell them what was in front of them.
While their senses were no joke, it ignored a large swath of knowledge Earth too for granted. Diagnostics for instance.
Cultivators seemed to feel they held all the secrets of the universe but Lind was living proof that was fundamentally untrue. They grasped an aspect of it that granted them incredible powers but that was all, an aspect.
Lind could only claim to have gotten a slightly better grasp of it.
The difference was he was like many, striving to grasp more. It was vitally important for him as he was blindly forging a new path. Here was another young girl on a similar path as him but she was burdened in a different way from Lind. Her body was conflicting with the delicacy 6 elementals needed at the start.
Several of the artifacts simply gathered Qi at a higher rate than any array he could currently set up and were much faster as well on the go. Lind did not want to have a lot of cleanup when he left that mansion.
The next set of artifacts would not look out of place in a hospital. Lind pulled back a sleeve to reveal a discolored arm on the girl. He gently applied a paste that healed under his control.
He then applied a metal disc that began a pulse line as well as pieces of information most cultivators could not perceive with their senses. Midnight was curious but he was more impressed by Lind Frey.
Not too long ago, the young man was skating by the edge of his teeth, but now he was a valued master of his craft. He could see the precision in each artifact even if he did not understand them.
The care that went into a work was easy for experienced cultivators to see. The large flat jade stone was inlaid into a metal framework that Midnight guessed to be simple steel yet the aura came off as peak grade 2 to him.
The discs applied to her arm and then to her temple made him concerned but as no blood flowed nor pain showed on her face, Midnight calmly waited as the 2 artifacts began to make noises on a consistent basis with some numbers.
He did not know what they meant but he understood by the frown that Lind was not happy with them.
"How long since she broke through?" The question was long expected but Midnight frowned.
"I am not entirely sure. She said she was in pain for a month before we took a close look at her. It was only then we learned she was a Soul Realm. I swear I did not even suspect she had broken through!" It was true. Neither he nor his other children had suspected their youngest member had even made it that far.
She was never given resources since she showed all the other physical abilities of her mother before her. They did not want her to die like that.
"One month, so how long since then?" Lind could tell she was long into tier 1 but even his artifacts lacked a precise way to figure that out.
"A year, but I exhausted every method in the hopes it would help her." Lind nodded at that but it gave him a timeline and helped put context on everything he could see with his Eyes as well as what his artifacts were giving him.
Her blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration were not fantastic but workable with simple healing and recovery. Her meridians were frayed from the improper circulation of Qi but her body kept demanding more Qi to flow. Lind had never heard of a body that pulled more Qi like that.
If not for being a 6 elemental, she might have died long ago. The complex balance actually slowed her body down. Still, it did not give him the answers he hoped so he turned to the other artifact.
Lind had used this to try and directly compare dantians to some success but he honestly only truly understood his own. The things he taught led others to enlightenment but what they took in was only understood by the individual.
Still, every piece of knowledge added to his own when talking with them. He had designed this artifact to look deeper into his foundation for any further secrets he could find and it worked.
Dantians were a physical existence but there was a component he knew was tied to the soul. The artifact displayed the flow of Qi in the dantian that he was able to move and turn to see at different angles much like his Eyes but with more details.
"It is not just her talent, the body is trying to pull more Qi than she can handle. If she had not been a 6 elemental, she would have died." Midnight felt tension rise in his chest at those words but it all came back to her body. Lind had in fact already offered comprehensions for Innate Cultivators to help them in the past.
The flow of Qi was very different from his balance but the body was not incompatible with it. The problem was the body and talent were pushing the dantian far beyond its capacity and the excess Qi was tearing her apart.
She had no techniques nor capacity to even grasp control of the issue since she had no starting point. Lind, at least, had studied the scrolls of the Frey Clan and had his previous life memories to anchor his young mind when he broke through accidentally.
Lind suspected the odds against his combination of talent and 6 elements was low but Midnight's story made Lind wonder if like the Gu Clan, talents could also run in the family. Her mother died in a similar way which meant the same combination of talent and body physique was too much to handle.
Just what was that physique?
"Midnight, I need to come here." Lind summoned 2 identical artifacts and the man was surprised peak grade 2 artifacts could affect him yet he did not feel anything enter his body. Lind had tested these artifacts on his wives and learned how to avoid their natural strength from crushing them.
Despite his power, Midnight was a completely normal cultivator. Still, it gave Lind more data. He summoned a final artifact and pulled jade slips from the girl's and Midnight's. He then slotted them into what seemed a great deal like a computer but it was mostly an overly large comparison machine.
The slots took the information and displayed the pieces of data against all the slips entered. Lind was able to compare a lot of information but at that moment he was only looking at the physical aspects.
The data he had was limited to the over 100 people near him for World Realm, but he had a couple unique Sky Realms from the Maidens that volunteered. He also had Ryu allow some demons to be examined by Lind at his request.
The whole point was simply to see if they would work for the various races and in many ways it did, but even Lind could not sift through all that data in a short time. Even so, what he was looking for were clues.
All physiques were a result of bloodlines mixing and Qi re-awakening characteristics. It was an aspect Lind wanted a firm grasp over as he felt the need to heal. Physiques were a wide variety of quality but their effects were not always beneficial for the descendents like in the case of the young girl in front of him.
The data scrolled and his speed left even Midnight in awe as while the numbers were not clear, the words did make sense. Midnight knew a lot of languages and saw that Lind was able to read at a speed he could never match.
Suddenly, Lind stopped.
There were 2 lines glowing and Lind sighed.
"Of course, that is what happened." Lind stood up but his face was not relieved as Midnight hoped but very grim. "Your daughter had a bloodline in common with demons. They are unlike humans in that their bodies sometimes actively incorporate Qi absorption rather than a simple technique doing it."
Midnight was surprised but the words on the jade screen did not make sense to him that way.
"How do you know that?" He hoped Lind was right, because it meant there was hope.
"I was allowed to get a healthy baseline of demons, humans, and aether children for my artifacts here. In that information was some knowledge on physiques and your daughter shows signs of what is known in Darkmoor as the Hell Wall Physique." It was the weakness of cultivators to not understand how a demon physique could show up in humans or vice versa.
The issue was that Heaven and Earth seemed to follow rules Lind did not grasp yet. So when the physique showed up in a different race, it acquired other effects. Lind suspected the Innate Cultivator talent was tied to the body effect.
Clearly such a combination was lethal unprepared and why the woman had been an orphan when Midnight met her. Her parents likely died or were killed by their own Qi and the other one had to make hard choices in the brutal world they lived in.
"Can you save her?" Lind felt a weight fall on his shoulders with that question. Knowing its origin did not answer all the questions but it gave him a direction.
"Perhaps but it will be a gamble no matter what. Her lack of training cannot be resolved nor can her weak body. I can attempt to get as prepared as possible but the unknowns could make it worse." Lind held nothing back as he turned to see a concerned father instead of a guild master.
"Please, I will do anything, but please save her." Lind often wondered how much more powerful cultivators could control their emotions but he realized there were always going to be soft spots. Heart demons became more dangerous because of that very fact.
"I will do all I can. I promise." Lind began to draw up a list of ingredients and summoned Qing to him. They were going to need help, a lot of it.