The tension in the water is palpable.

I continuously move away from the floating cart, which is following closely behind. Now, whether that is because of an automatic function or the twins staying close in a gesture of responsibility, I don’t know.

And I don’t exactly have the spare capacity to focus on other things right now.

The massive expectant dragon guardian before me shows me that much.

Considering the strange distances and sizes that this dragon, Elder Lu, uses with his body, it isn’t long before I appear in front of a now apartment block sized segment of rotting flesh, displayed all around and within the gash.

Before I move to heal this obvious injury and dive deeper, I’ll need to do an important step.

“Elder Lu, forgive me for my presumptuousness, but would you allow me to treat you and take the steps necessary to do so? As a healer, I typically confirm consent before working.”

It stills feel weird to not actually hear my voice, but still understand it.

I can practically see the eyebrow raise before he speaks out.

“That’s fine. Do whatever you need to relieve this injury of mine.”

…

…

He spoke like a normal person.

The dragon spoke.

Ah. I guess the twins said that the guardians would talk to people to investigate them. So he would have been able to understand us the whole time.

But I see why I had to go through all of this, to make sure that the interest would at least make it, so he would give me a chance.

The twins seem surprised and look at each other quickly, but relax far more soon after. The dragon’s tone and words clarified that I’m using my healing techniques (which are well known by those with connections) to treat him. It doesn’t change the seriousness of the situation, but changes the severity.

Reaching my hands out, I hover over the nearest section of his body I can see. There’s no good place to start, so I just begin there. Spreading my abilities throughout his gargantuan body, I can see the source of this rot.

As could be expected, it’s a rare poison embedded into a wound… because why else would a core formation expert in the sect still have such a wound?

My focus shifts to understanding the body before addressing the poison or the wound.

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Mostly because this dragon is a completely different level of lifeform than what I’m used to.

Dang. The sheer complexity of all the different systems that interact in his body is astounding. My cultivation healing ability provides insight, yet I still need to use the scan to fully comprehend the task.

… I’m also getting the feeling that I shouldn’t go above healing him to full.

That means no optimization.

This dragon certainly has a contract with the Library/Sect, of which I do not know the terms. Adding to that, I’d like to keep some amount of leverage for future negotiations.

I dive deeper and deeper into the mysteries of his body. Trying to make sure that I don’t make any mistakes with treating him. And even though the abilities will take care of most of the work, I still work within both the abilities to make sure it did correctly everything between the two of them.

I did it!

It’s somewhat of a combination of fish and snake physiology, but with a huge number of differences. Either way, I can use this to make sure the healing works together correctly.

Using the Healing Aura, I focus its energy on the skeleton of the dragon, moving it along the vertebra and down each rib cascading off of it. On the other side, my healing cultivation method goes into the wound and spreading inward along both sides. The whole time, the dragon is watching what I do and I can see the surprise play out within its body.

It’s working.

The poison is being neutralized within it, and I’m healing its wound at the same time.

However, despite the size it is displaying before me now, showing around a person's body of diameter, it is actually far, far larger than that. Around the thickness of my tower.

A terrifying thought, since my tower has at least 20,000 square meters on its smallest floor.

Meaning that this wound is actually massive. Surprisingly enough, the human-like arm still lodged within its body remains the same size even with the body size changes.

This is going to take a while. I’ve never had to do something this large.

…

…

It quickly becomes monotonous work once I get the hang of it.

Heal this chunk, move on to the next. Clear the poison from this part, repair the damage.

It certainly would move quicker if I could use more of my healing aura, but even with my qi recovering so fast, it wouldn’t be able to explain the difference. So, I’m forced to go at the pace of my healing cultivation, which to heal a normal person of something like this, would be (at my best) a minute. Luckily for me, since I don’t have to go through identifying a totally different body and am still working with the same person, this should allow me to cover the body much faster than that. At about 6 seconds for the same amount of coverage.

By any metric, that is still absurd, but luckily still in the realm of possibility for highly specialized cultivation methods and an in-depth understanding.

As I do this, the dragon seems to relax and I actually hear it speak out towards the twins, with quite a bit of mirth.

“Well, well.

“Your companion here is even more skilled than the Head had said. However, this will still take many hours. Would you two like to wait in the bubble? It might be more comfortable than the cart.”

The open mouths of both twins make this all worth it.

It doesn’t take long before they both shake their heads and resume watching my actions closely.

In the meantime, my mind drifts to some problems I’ve been encountering lately.

Namely, not being able to expect or handle situations in the sect and with cultivators as easily, because I can’t scan them or the situation.

… this is really getting to me.

There has to be a way for me to not get my mind read by protection formations. Or, like in the case of my awareness, not being caught in perceiving something.

With all the time I’m spending, I use the extra space in my scan to run this, as this is going to take around 8 hours.

…

Still researching.

…

…

Still looking.

…

And found something.

An idea from my world. And something that was just being implemented by the time I left.

Quantum Encryption.