novelraw Chapter 454 - 453 - Reconstitution
Chapter 454 - 453 - Reconstitution
"How is that Senior Romana?!" Qing was not given to shouting usually. If she got angry, she could give a tone so cold it felt like it was shouted and she was also the master of wanting her to shout but sounding disappointed.
Many disciples had wept that her disappointment was far worse than her anger.
The transformation of the once nearly spent Romana into a vital young girl was just too shocking. Lind actually had a reference but it was entirely fictional. Maybe.
He began to suspect cultivators had touched Earth in the past and left legends behind but he had no way to confirm it.
"I saw it happen. She and I were discussing my plans to try and study the Dao of Time when she mentioned how it felt to experience shifts in time. Her Qi and mine started to resonate–" Lind suddenly felt a hard slap on top of his head.
"STOP DOING THINGS LIKE THIS!!" Qing had hit him! How was it his fault?!
A sudden flash of everything came to him as if waiting for his question from nearly leveling the Heavenly Maiden Sect in Sarth during his heart demon trials to the Inheritance competition.
He had ended the storms in Rakathi and broken through to the Gold Tier and Diamond Tier in rather spectacular fashion. He had brought 2 legendary beasts back from the Rakathi Wastes that apparently died long ago and yet were alive.
The more his memory went the more he felt guilty.
He did seem to do rather terrifying and impossible things. The fact he was alive at all was not so easily explained by miracles and luck anymore.
Still, heinous evil had flourished as well without anyone knowing and quite likely still did. Compared to all of that, an old woman being rejuvenated was quite minor.
"She is showing the vitality of a 17 or 18 year old human. Her Sky Core and foundation are solid as well. Her meridians and body are in perfect health. There are few to no impurities I can find in her body which should be impossible." Qing was calming down as she examined Romana once more.
Her frown coincided with her eyes shifting blue a bit. It told him she was still concerned.
"I checked the few diaries I had about her and all described her as the old woman I met but her lineage had silver hair. Without being able to check, I feel safe in saying she did not have pink hair before." Lind spoke the words but Qing waved it off.
"A shift in hair color could be explained by the sudden change or any number of elemental shifts. There are those that break through and can have the hair, eye, or even skin shift colors depending on many factors at the time. Senior Tyr is a good example of that." Lind slowly nodded but realized he had only ever seen Senior Tyr with blue skin and golden eyes.
"Who is the girl?" Shoti came in with her arm at the wrong angle but seemingly unconcerned. The lack of blood told Lind it was a training incident.
"Would you please stop training with the aether beasts, they are much stronger than you!" Qing tossed an elixir as well as a pill at Shoti. Clearly, it was not the first time she had come in.
Lind saw no issue with cross training but he was concerned if Shoti was coming in regularly with limbs in the wrong directions.
"This is Senior Romana." Shoti nodded at Lind's words as she downed the elixir and pills before a glow covered her arm as Qi gently flowed into her dantian. She was all healed up and about to leave when Qing snapped at her.
"Is that your only reaction?!" Shoti turned around confused and looked at the young girl and then up at them.
"We are a sect of cultivators in the middle of an aether beast island and our husband is turning into a Divine Dragon. We have an adopted daughter, close friend, and sister wife who are all aether beasts that should not be down here but can also turn human in the Sky Realm." Shoti pointed out that in general their lives were normally ridiculous.
She then swept out and left as if all was fine.
"I think we need to really talk about all of this at some point." Lind spoke words out loud as Qing nodded. They had accepted a lot but clearly they needed to actually take a look outside their focus on cultivation a bit more.
"There is something more serious than the change in hair color. While getting younger is difficult or at least not feasible in a cultivator normally, it is possible at least, but that is not what happened here." Qing brought out a jade stone that projected the way Romana used to look.
"The white hair was longer and she was taller but I don't see–" Lind froze as he looked from one face to the other. While skin could sag and become bloated, the skull would generally maintain the same shape.
Having healed and worked on many races, Lind could now discern at a glance issues of bones, muscle, and so forth but at that moment he was questioning his sanity.
"It can't be…" LInd trailed off as he carefully looked over the information displayed on the jade stone projection and the girl laying on the bed. If he had not seen it, he would categorically claim they were not the same person.
Further, she had called out his name as if they had been about to continue their previous discussion.
"I have heard the Dao of Samsara can lead to regaining previous memories but the cultivator still has to live through life normally. It is also very taxing on the soul and body during break throughs but senior Romana simply ran out of time and potential as many cultivators do." Qing relayed what she knew as Lind had expressed interest in her long ago.
As a specialized healer, she had some access to the Floating Isles but nothing in Romana's record called out such a specialized Dao as Samsara. Further, the Dao of Samsara dealt strictly with the soul, not time.
As a by-product, the Dao of Time could be grasped but was again parallel to the Dao of Samsara.
"It is not Samsara. Living multiple lives to return to the original is not what I saw. She was the same person but gained a new body from the old one!" Qing stared at Lind as if he was insane. Taking over a body, yes, a cultivator of sufficient strength could do that, but simply make a new one from the old? No!
The vitality would not be restored no matter if they succeeded or not but the young girl was exactly what she looked like, young!
"That is not possible, it would invite karmic retribution to defy Heaven and Earth's natural order!" Lind found such an argument subjective considering cultivation in general was the same but it was allowed. Still he knew what had happened, he just did not know how.
"It was something she said but think of the body like a pattern. It settled one way to progress but the original combination is in there and could be juggled around. We are all made of the same base material, just the details are jumbled up." Lind then turned to Qing as he saw she was having trouble grasping it.
DNA was not a concept cultivators understood and frankly he was not sure it applied given bloodlines and what was happening to him as well.
"Just look at me. My body was human and it is changing. The process is different but the idea is the same. I am keeping my original shape and gaining a new one while she somehow reset the combination of pieces to get this result." Qing shook her head.
"They are not the same at all. You are being changed by your soul as you progress in your cultivation. We all are for that matter, but the vitality is the key thing. There is nothing any of us can do to restore lost vitality." Lind frowned as he knew Qing was wrong.
There were vile methods but there were in fact ways to recover vitality but Romana found the first one he knew of that was not against Heaven and Earth.
"You are forgetting the Dao of Time. She grasped something that added a factor you are ignoring. I think she not only rejuvenated the body but took it back in time. The cultivation was left untouched but you said it yourself. The body is pristine, like new." No one could avoid impurities.
It was driven out during break throughs but could also be induced by alchemy or elixirs as well. Even the best conditions, though, left some behind.
Romana's current body had none at all, like a baby newly born!
"You are saying that not only did she gain a new body but she took her body back in time to regain the vitality of youth?" Lind felt it was far off the mark but the only reference he could really give was from Earth and fictional. He doubted the same rules applied at all.
"Not quite, but you are close, Little Qing." Both of them jumped as a groggy Romana tried to sit up. Her body did not seem to respond the way she wanted. "Ugh, this will take some getting used to."
Qing quickly summoned a glass of water and had Romana drink. The pleased face made Qing want to pat the young girl on the head but she quickly retracted her hand.
"Senior, you understand what has happened?" Lind diverted the attention to himself but he saw Romana smirk at Qing anyway.
"Reconstitution. I understood I could rebuild my body from the ground up and reverse my life at the same time. It seemed so simple when I did it but now I feel like I will take centuries to even grasp the basics." Lind could empathize. Many of the impossible things he pulled off were in his memory but the knowledge behind them was barely coming to him even centuries later.
"Why did it not affect your cultivation?" Qing asked a good question but Lind suspected the answer.
"I can't touch my soul, child. My soul is my foundation, thus I am always at the cultivation I started with. Wait…" Romana assumed a lotus position and began to cultivate when the pressure rose in the room.
Lind smiled as he bowed to her.
"Congratulations senior on reaching tier 8!" Romana had tears in her eyes as she sat there. She almost fell but Qing caught her.
"I can advance! I really can advance!" Her foundation was a little unstable but only just. A few days and it would be solid once more. Lind suspected the voice that spoke to him was a possible future version of herself.
A flash to his own future had him wonder about how much freedom he had but as he progressed he realized that to reach what he saw was not a certainty. It was a goal, but he could still die.
"I have to be alive to hear the song." Words left him that made him dizzy. For just a moment, he felt like he saw that study once more and a man was behind that large desk. He looked exhausted but in that very moment the old and young saw each other.
A smile spread on that old face and Lind knew he wanted to see that day! He wanted to see the future! Romana was looking at him in an approving nod and he knew she had heard him.
The Daos had many facets and they both followed different ones. He had so much to explore and he felt happy to question Romana and so many others on all he could find!
Qing now pat Romana on the head but her face was one of pity. She had seen that look on her husband's face many times and it never bode well for his targets. He would ring them dry of all knowledge until he was satisfied.