My paranoia grows, as this seems like the perfect time for my cultivation method to come into play.

Before I approach the old man, I use my scan to verify the probability of such a thing. I’m a bit surprised to find that because of the speed and efficiency of my healing rats, as well as the ones from the city's groups, it was only a matter of time before this was done.

It was part of the reason that my scan wanted me to heal at every opportunity, to reach this moment.

While still suspicious, I can accept that when I think of the amount of pain and flashes that I got from that initial scan. In a sense, I was attempting to find secret and detailed information while predicting the future.

Divination. Causality perception.

Any number of words could be used to describe this.

All in all, this really might be my most dangerous power, even above my healing. Once I’m able to use it without dying.

It also explains why I almost died using it.

Well. This just reinforces how important it is that I don’t reveal the extent of my scanning to anyone other than those I trust with my life… or who I have no choice but to.

With this done, I use my scan yet again to study the old man and see what I need to do with him.

I’m immediately shocked by the state of his body.

He’s basically crumbling away. Back when I first saw him, he was wheezing and clearly in an enormous amount of pain. Now, it’s the same, but he’s silent and it’s more that his soul is in pain than anything else. It’s as if his soul has been dunked in a vat of acid and locked inside.

As I dive into the root causes of this, I can see that whatever’s been teleporting him in around and putting him in this state has tied his health inversely to the state of the city. To a point. He would always be sick, even in the worst state of the city. However, there are no such limits on making the city completely healthy. Even now, the city isn’t completely healthy, it’s just that all the homeless on the streets are now healed. There are still people who are sick but are not homeless or laying in the streets.

There are also those who don’t trust the rats and refuse to go into the streets to be healed out of fear.

Finally, there are people who couldn’t be healed by the rats as their injuries, diseases or curses are too specialized. All the rats would do for a person like that would be to keep them alive.

Because of these people, this man still lives.

Seeing this amount of pain and suffering, I step toward him with the intention to heal.

As I move closer, something seems to come over me and the urge to kill him becomes overwhelming. A curse.

My healing aura immediately combats it, removing the feeling from me instantaneously. It wars against it, and is clearly winning, as it is a condition.

As I move even closer, I’m thrust into seemingly another world. The old man stands in a smoke-filled, war-torn street with a bloodthirsty smile. My parents sit on their knees before him.

He raises his machete and…

My scan has been showing me the truth of the world. That I’m still standing in front of the dying old man, with nothing I’m seeing actually happening.

This is obviously an illusion, but one that seems unassailably real. Without my scan, I would be in that world until I became completely enraged and bloodthirsty towards him. The closer you get, the worse the illusions are.

I was at the farthest possible distance.

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Fuck that… I’m not getting traumatized if I don’t need to.

I step back in real life using my scan as a way to connect to my mind and body. With a struggle, I move myself away from this area. The illusion immediately falls away.

I gaze at the tortured old man.

Normally, to take this curse off him, one would have to get extremely close to him, place their hands on him and chant for three days a specific set of mantras (among other things) to break it. They would need to endure the illusions that would torture both them and their mind, to continue.

Even after going through that at removing the curse, they would still need to heal him, as the curse is also keeping him alive in a state between death and life. As soon as the curse ends, they would need to apply healing to him in the greatest amount, to even have a chance to save his life.

After it is all done, all it would leave you with is a broken old man, who would likely die of a lack of will to live immediately after.

There’s something else there, though. Something my scan can’t perceive without killing me.

Sigh…

Regardless of my bad vibes coming from this, the vestiges of information from that scan I had done are still telling me that the only way to get the cultivation method I need is by healing this guy.

With this in mind, I Decide to go with the safest possible method I know. I had about 200 kilometers away at high speed, while maintaining my scan on the old man. I leave a single rat with him.

He doesn’t move during any of this.

My scan still feels like this would work and achieve my aim, even with the distance.

Well, time to get to it.

If this isn’t far away enough to protect me from any ramifications, then I wouldn’t have been able to do anything, anyway.

I start the healing process.

Unlike how I did with other people when using the rats, I’m doing both generalized healing and the specialized healing at the same time. My scan is also watching the changes in his body in real time as if he was right in front of me. A 3D image appears in front of my eyes, showing the different areas of his body.

His whole body is covered in flashing red warning signs. Whoever did this to him spared no expense at causing the maximum amount of torture in every area they could.

I especially see extensive damage in his dantians and meridians.

Even so, I’m able to easily heal these.

Surprisingly enough, it suddenly becomes a battle of attrition. Neither the curse nor the negative conditions on his body seemed to want to be fully healed. To be specific, it’s reminiscent of the mental illnesses that I had seen on some people where they would return, albeit in a weaker state. Here, it comes back instantaneously.

The bad part about it is that I have to heal them at the same time, as it seems there is a trigger involved that allows it to be sequential if you’re actually standing next to them.

If you try to heal the old man at a distance, it regenerates the curse instantaneously. Erasing any progress you’ve made.

The person who made this, REALLY wanted the person who helps him to suffer to do this. Forcing you to get up and into the illusion.

If it wasn’t for the OP-ness of my healing and the sheer ocean of mana at my disposal, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Over and over and over again, I heal the same conditions and curses. The curse draws on his life force to maintain itself, but my scan overwrites it, making it harder and harder for it to gain a foothold in his body, as his body adapts.

This process takes longer than I anticipated, leading me to spend 30 minutes on just this.

As I do, though, it reveals part of what was hidden before. This man used to be at the high range of nascent soul. His cultivation was stripped from him and he was hidden away and cast down into this form by a secret group of elders in the Chia Continuum (the country).

And if I want to get this method…

*checks notes*

… I will need reinstall this ‘likely mentally ill’ old man’s cultivation, besides everything else.

Why does this seem like an increasingly bad idea, as I’m about to go into a forest to retrieve something for a sect?

As I think that, I finally achieve a breakthrough in the curse. I healed this old man all the way to full health almost instantly after.

But he doesn’t wake up.

There is one condition left that is required for him to wake up and be fully healed.

Crippled cultivation.

It appears the way they had done it caused him to go into self-induced unconsciousness. It was his way of trying to protect himself, but was overwritten with all the other things they had done. So, he still ended up going through all the pain that they had intended for him.

Because of all this, it is only when he feels safe that he will wake himself up. Something that will probably occur in a month or so.

Time, I don’t have.

I throw extensive healing at his crippled cultivation. Expecting another trap or repetitive healing session.

But there’s nothing.

It’s done almost instantaneously.

There’s silence before I can feel a creak in the world.

I realize something a bit too late.

I just healed this guy countless times to full. Didn’t I just refine his body into its perfect form? If he was already high Nascent Soul… wouldn’t that increase his ability to cultivate and grow by several times?

…Ah. I may have made a monster.

Right as I think this, his eyes snap open and the light from them literally shines into the sky like a Superman laser beam.

My eyes snap over to the mountain with multiple nascent soul cultivators.

…I think I fucked up.