“Brat, you can’t do this to me! I waited thousands of years for my vengeance!”
Joseph ignored Mo Li Bei’s floating head. He was currently looking through all the drawers and other storage containers in the cultivation cave. He was searching for a bandaid, since he had cut himself a bit deeper than intended. Joseph wasn’t even sure if band aids existed in cultivation stories. Did they use a healing pill for every tiny scratch? That seemed wasteful.
“Brat, listen to me! I’ll haunt your nine generations if you don’t fulfill my revenge!”
The decapitated ghost cultivator swirled around him like an angry bee. It appeared that Mo Li Bei couldn’t interact with Joseph at all besides talking and shouting.
“Do you know where I can find a band aid? I don’t want the cut to get infected...”
“A help chain? Stop worrying about some mortal diseases. Even a body cleansing cultivator doesn’t get affected by those. And stop distracting from the actual issue! I won’t teach you if you don’t give me my vengeance!”
Shortly after Mo Li Bei spoke the last few words, his head started to vibrate. His head started to warp into a grimace of pain. It looked so horrifying that Joseph winced just from watching.
“Stop, by the heavens, I’ll teach him! Even if he is a dirty rat trying to weasel out of his deals!”
The pain seemed to stop and Mo Li Bei’s floating face relaxed.
“So, can you tell me now how to get this wound closed? It hurts pretty bad.” Joseph held up his bleeding finger. “If you are nice to me, I might kill even one or two descendants. You know, as a treat.”
The floating head looked at him with exhaustion. “It’s a tiny cut. Don’t worry about it. We need to focus on the larger problems right now. The lacking memories isn’t an issue. Just stay in seclusion for a month and tell them you had an epiphany about the dao or something. In this third rate sect, they’ll attribute your changed behavior to your enlightenment. The larger problem is your incapability to cultivate.”
The head inspected his body. He stared at Joseph’s stomach for an uncomfortable length.
“It’s actually easier to fix than you think. It seems like your spirit hasn’t been properly seeped in Qi. It’s a known phenomenon in areas with very low ambient Qi. If you wait for a bit longer, meridians should appear naturally in your body. if we can clean your body from all impurities beforehand, they might even form perfectly pure and you can skip the whole next realm of meridian cleansing.”
“So if I get this right,” Joseph thought out loud. “I just hide in a cave for a month and pretend I’m some kind of genius afterwards?”
“That’s about it. Jing Bao should have enough contribution points saved up so you can buy some ingredients for a body cleansing elixir. I’ll instruct you on how to brew it. Don’t worry, it’ll be better than anything you can get here. It’ll be more believable if you come out of seclusion if you manage to ascend to the next realm of cultivation.”
Joseph could see the plan working. Cultivators having a change of heart due to an epiphany was something he had read about in the past.
With a sigh, he stood up and made his way to the exit of the cultivation cave.
“Okay, Mo Li Bei, what do I need to buy?”
----------------------------------------
It turned out to be easier than he thought to get the ingredients. Jing Bao had more contribution points than expected, so he could get a one month access ticket for an advanced cultivation cave with a higher Qi density.
He got stopped on the way by a few of his fellow disciples, but he told them that after his win against Chao Heng, he wanted to fully focus on his cultivation. When he spoke about renting a cave for seclusion, they lost interest in him quickly.
Mo Li Bei explained to him that it was somewhat unusual to go into seclusion while in the body cleansing realm, since the normal way to cleanse the body was mostly through exercise, which could be performed in social settings without issue. As such, only the most dedicated disciples tended to cut off access to the outer world just to get through the body cleansing stage a few days faster.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
After a few hours, he was led to his domicile for the next month. A thin ledge along a cliff let to a hole in the wall that could be closed with a giant stone. Joseph was currently too weak to move the stone by himself, so he wouldn’t be able to leave early.
The cave itself was cut into the stone with angular precision. The floor, walls, and ceiling formed a perfect cube. The only source of light was a dim stone set into the ceiling that gave barely enough light to navigate. The guide told him that the light was constant and could not be controlled, but it was kept at a low level so you could sleep comfortably.
It wasn’t furnished. There was meditation mat in the middle of the room and two indents in one of the walls. One indent was a faucet for water, while the other would dispense small yellow pills with the turn of a knob. Apparently, the pills could be used to replace a regular meal and were the only source of food for the entire month.
He wasn’t even given a proper sleeping mat. But before he could make any kind of complaint, the guide had already closed the large stone door on him.
Joseph swallowed. He’d thought this would be a slightly more comfortable stay. He wasn’t unused to long periods of loneliness, but those were typically accompanied by a nice bed, his computer and the internet.
He sat down on the mat. It was harder than he thought, barely an upgrade over the raw stone floor.
Mo Li Bei’s head rose in front of his face. “Okay, let’s get started. First, put one of the food pills into your mouth. Alchemy is best done without mortal distractions.”
He turned a small knob, and a pill dropped out. It had an off-white dull color and wasn’t perfectly round. It felt like clay in his hands.
Joseph had thought that cultivation pills were magical medicine. Instead, he had gotten something that looked awfully like chewing gum. Without another thought, he popped the pill into his mouth and started chewing.
“What are you doing, brat! You’re supposed to put the pill under your tongue, not chew on it like it’s a dumpling!”
The pill tasted like nothing, or more accurately, from the first chew onwards it had the taste of a piece of bubble gum that had been in your mouth long enough to lose all taste. Joseph didn’t particularly mind, so he just kept chewing.
The floating head sighted. “It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Now take out the alchemical ingredients, tools, and the pot. The sooner we start, the better.”
Joseph took out the things he had gotten for Jing Bao’s contribution points. First, there was a small clay pot, that as far as he could see, had no magical properties whatsoever. Next, he took out mortar and pestle, which was another set of mortal tools.
The next item was a bottle of Lightning Flax Seed Oil, a transparent bottle full of oil that looked similar to those plasma orbs from earth you could touch without hurting yourself. He played around for a few seconds, letting the lightning strings connect to his fingers.
He had also bought a few acid prunes, small fruits that were supposed to taste horrible but had great medicinal effects.
The last ingredient was purity hemp seed, which were normally used to grow plant fibers that could be spun into bandages that had some antibacterial and purifying effects.
“Take the seeds and crush them into a fine paste with the mortar, then put them into the pot.”
Joseph followed the instructions of the old ghost. The seeds were quickly reduced into a fine powder. It needed to refill the pestle multiple times until he had processed all the seeds. When he asked Mo Li Bei about the ratios between ingredients, the floating head waved him off. Apparently that only mattered when Qi was involved. Pills and elixirs for body cleansing cultivators were mortal recipes that weren’t fickle.
Next, he took the prunes and added their juice to the pot. The fluid stung his hands like an aggressive cleaning agent.
The last step was emptying the oil into the same pot and stirring until thoroughly mixed.
The end result looked like a green-brown sludge. The plasma-like strings of the Lightning Flax Seed Oil had vanished. It smelled surprisingly neutral.
“Now drink all of it,” Mo Li Bei instructed.
“All of it?” Joseph was hesitant. It was nearly two liters of fluid.
“Yes. It’s very important that you drink all of it at once to get the best benefit.”
After a deep breath, Joseph lifted the pot to his mouth. It had the texture of warm mayonnaise, but tasted bitter, like herbal medicine. The acid sting of the prunes was absent, somehow subsumed in the oil and powder.
It took him minutes and multiple breaks before he could get the last drop down. At the end, he needed to use his fingers to scoop the rest out of the pot.
“Now what?”
“Oh, you just need to wait. The toxins and impurities will be expelled from your body through natural means. All you need to do is to relax.” Mo Li Bei’s head smiled evilly. “Also, this is payback.”
It started with a grumbling in his stomach. Next came strong cramps that made Joseph buck over. It quickly escalated to a watering mouth, as if preparing for what would come.
He could barely remove his pants before the first “impurities” left him. It didn’t stop at one end. Seconds later, he felt the “impurities” coming up his esophagus as well.
Minutes later, he got a minor break. His skin was flushed from the exertion and his eyes were wet from the pain.
“When will this stop?”
“Oh, it should take only around three weeks. It’s actually a well-known recipe, but due to its explosive properties people rarely use it. Don’t forget to drink enough.”