After raising my hands, I let my body radiate a soft, golden glow.
Something unnecessary, but quite fun for the moment.
Right after, I unleash my Fingers of Life technique. Following the ritual and words that can help me manipulate it more finely.
“The palm opens, ready to embrace those around us. Let these reach out and probe the origins of us all.
“Fingers of Life.”
Right as I finish the ritual, thousands of glowing lines of qi stream out of me, like a willow tree. Spreading out over the enclosed space, but leaving an opening that the Nascent Soul father and the Masters can see.
Out of these thousands, 75 lines come out of the tree to reach down to each of the patients. In just 15 seconds, a touch heals all of them.
I could have shortened the time and skipped the ritual, but it’s important to show them a bit of this process…
The reason being, is that my cultivation method, while almost unknown, is just that…. Almost unknown. This will let others look into it and determine more information about it.
And just how impossible it is to learn, normally.
Madame Liao scrutinizes the lines of qi, seemingly sensing their complexity.
While for the normal cultivator, these would look like normal lines of qi, someone of her experience can tell exactly what these are. Infinitely packed and intertwined threads, used for both sensing issues and injecting healing directly to needed areas. So complex and intricate, that it would require unheard of calculations to just have them exist in my body, let alone moving and having them heal people.
And that’s for just one line.
Rather than looking impressed, she looks at me in horror. Like looking at some eldritch being from another world.
She wouldn’t be totally wrong about that. Without my scan helping me to grasp the method, and in the special space I received it in… it would have been impossible to learn for me.
After a moment, she recollects herself. Like the others, spreading her spiritual sense over all the people that I’ve healed, verifying that they were healed correctly. Of course, they find they are all healed and far better than before their ailments occurred.
However, I play a trick on everyone.
After healing, I let the lines of qi flicker before disappearing. As if running out of energy. I rest my hands on my knees, taking a breath before speaking.
“…would I be able to take time before the next test to recuperate?”
Everyone freezes. Mostly because this process evaluating Master level healer applicants normally takes days, rather than the hours that I’ve spent instead. Meaning, some level of recovery time would be expected.
A glance at each other has the Masters nod before standing, with Madame Qian speaking for the group.
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“That is acceptable. Simply notify us when you are recovered and wish to continue with the next test.”
While they dismiss us, the crowd waits for them to leave, as is courteous, before starting their wild theories and assertions. I don’t stay to listen, though, as I rush out of the room. The last thing I focus on with my sense, being the powerful gaze from the Nascent Soul father. Following me long after I’ve left the room.
Immediately, I head to a designated recovery area and activate the talisman that Sister Nuan gave me for privacy. As I activate it, a shield generates around me, shielding me from view, spiritual sense, and contact Sister Nuan to notify her of what happened, using the jade slip.
As soon as I connect with her, preparing to tell her what happened, she says something unexpected.
“Congratulations on impressing those Masters. This will work well for our plans.”
How the heck does she always know?!
Of course, she continues on, as if this is normal.
“I assume that you took the break to let me know to have the people you mentioned before moved? After all, Gong told me about your plans with the iridescent worms. With that man there, there’s no way you wouldn’t have noticed.”
…I should just stop being surprised.
But with her already understanding the situation and our communication slips to everyone back home, it takes only moments to inform everyone to prepare themselves for an influx of people. And to let Gong know to start something we’ve been planning for a while.
The liberation of everyone in the parasite areas.
It has to be done now. So, I speak to Gong without delay, through the communication slip.
“Gong, it’s finally time to save those people.”
There’s only a moment’s time before I hear a response. One more serious than any other time I’ve spoken to her.
“Understood.”
No explanation or clarification needed. After all, this has been something close to her heart for so long. Especially since she lost someone precious to her, to the parasite long before I met her. Having to know others were suffering like that, but being unable to help them…
It’s been killing her inside.
The instant that she spoke, I could already sense half of her forces in Monchon City moving underground, like an underground wave, through every nook and cranny of the earth. My taming connection to some spiders in her group providing me real time movements of them, while letting me extend my healing and scan out from them, at a lower cost, despite being such a vast distance away.
As she does this, I use that to give her updates on where she can find each group of people.
“You’ll want to go 5000 meters below the known locations. It seems there is a second layer that the victims were brought to, after they spent more than a year on the first layer.”
There’s a moment of pause before I sense her investigating that area. After a few moments, a wave of pain and sorrow flows through the connection.
She’s found it.
Deep in the caverns, person after person was dragged inside by the parasites. That place stores decades’ worth of victims, using them to create future generations of parasites. An area where all there are, is the warm, flesh like mounds, and the sounds of unintelligible moans.
Which is where my job comes in.
The instant that she brings her spiders closer to attack, I tame the parasites in the women. The only ones I plan to tame. Making it so that they won’t hurt the women, when eventually extracted and most importantly, so that they can control the response of the women to the slaughter that is about to happen.
Right as I tame the last parasite in the women, I let her know. To which she has the spiders crash against the fleshy walls of the caverns, biting, ripping, and tearing through them to get at the parasites. Devouring every single one in their path.
Some parasites try to escape, going through other passages, but are hunted down. Some attempt to head to the humans they’ve captured, looking for them to protect them with their bodies, like normal.
However, the parasites that have been tamed inside them have already altered the brain chemistry of the people to not give off the protective response. Letting them just sit there blankly, as the spiders eat through the other parasites outside their bodies.
Altogether… a horrifying sight.
But Gong is efficient and quick. And this was only one of many locations that she was striking with the spiders.
When the blood finally stops flowing, the spiders walk across the rivers of residual flesh to bring out my new patients. All in a way that no one else would have a clue about the revolution that is soon to take place in Monchon City.
One that by the time that the powers that be in the city recognize might be possible, when I heal the Nascent Soul father’s daughter… it would have already occurred.
Now… how will I heal them from a continent away?