Jie struggled to cling to consciousness with all she had, terrified of what might happen if she blacked out.
A storm of dragon lightning qi howled within her dantian, roaring up into a part of her she'd not explored before, closer to her chest. Roaring, crackling, snarling dragon lightning qi slammed against black, red, and white energy that covered an ornate seal like some elaborate gate she just couldn't quite make out beneath the energy.
Lightning screamed, arced, and struggled against the energy barrier like a desperate beast howling to break through, adding to her pain.
Jie teetered on the edge of blacking out but clung to consciousness with a desperate, determined will.
As she refined more violet fire qi, so it joined the dragon lightning qi roaring against the barrier. Time ceased to have meaning beyond the increasing cry for air in her lungs.
Finally, she refined the last of the violet fire qi and her dragon lightning qi seemed to grow tired of its desperate attempts to break through the barrier and flowed back down to her lower dantian.
Her lower dantian had expanded significantly, she noticed. Yet so too had her quantity of dragon lightning qi. For once, her cultivation felt unbalanced and chaotic beyond her control. She felt full. As though one more drop of Essence and she'd explode.
The excruciating all-consuming agony settled down to a more bearable level of torment. Though Jie's lungs screamed louder for air than ever before. She tried to breathe but coughed around molten metal that'd poured down her throat and started spreading into her lungs.
Something scrabbled on the metal around her and Jie struggled to free herself. She reinforced her muscles with qi and pushed in every direction as she formed qi armor around herself and forced it to react to the metal around her.
Metal cracked and groaned and as it did so, Jie gained more freedom to move which she used to struggle all the more until at last, she broke through her metal cocoon with a dragonfist.
She felt air on her hand but still could not breathe. Her head grew lighter as the world around her started to fall away. She felt her grip on consciousness slipping and redoubled her efforts.
Jie struck out again and again and ripped her way free of the metal cocoon. It came apart all around her. Hands grabbed her and hauled her out of it even as Jie clawed at the metal blocking her airways.
Driven by sheer panic, Jie pulled on her qi and forced it up through her throat. It tore through the metal and sent it spraying out of her mouth, cutting up her tongue and cheeks as it did so and Jie exhaled a stream of uncontrolled dragon lightning qi that blasted a pillar on the opposite side of the room.
Jie took in a wheezing, gasping breath that tasted of blood and pain. Never had air tasted so sweet.
She coughed and took in another wheezing breath, her lungs still protesting against the metal half-blocking them even as she took in grateful, wheezing breaths.
A hand shoved a healing pill into her mouth and soothing energies melted over her tongue. Relief washed over her, and she would've given a grateful moan if she weren't still struggling to breathe.
Hands slammed against her back, trying to help her cough out the metal. They didn't help her do so, but somehow just the knowledge she wasn't alone and that friends were beside her, trying to help, lessened her fear.
Jie finally became aware of an insistent call that'd no doubt been screaming at her for some time as Xue tried desperately to communicate something via their bond.
Jie recognized it as the same thing he'd done during the fight with the ghosts and she listened to it now as she had then.
Her burned, blackened body lit up with an ethereal white glow and the unrefined pieces of metal giving her so much trouble came free. They slid through her body as though she were made of water, in an uncomfortable sensation that made her shudder. Her friends' hands did the same and Jie crawled away from them all as shards of metal fell through her onto the floor. She coughed again and took in deep lungfuls of air as the room spun around her.
Gradually, her breathing settled and she lost control of whatever it was that allowed her to phase through things. The ethereal glow died and she scrabbled forward and coughed.
Her friends were saying something but only now could she expend the mental energy to pay attention.
"Jie? Jie are you okay?" Pan Tian asked as she shoved yet another healing pill into Jie's mouth.
Once again, the soothing energies felt like heaven. Jie gave a satisfied moan which turned into a cough as something wet splattered on her lips with the metallic taste of blood.
"I'm awesome," Jie rasped.
She breathed through her nose now that she'd caught her breath, grateful that the etherealness had cleared those airways too. The room stank of burnt flesh and far too much blood.
Someone gave a relieved sigh. Pan Tian shoved another healing pill into Jie's mouth.
She'd make a good nurse... Jie thought with a smirk before she spat out a gob of what tasted like blood. She blinked and stared at it. It was indeed blood.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
"Ugh... this is so freaking cliche," Jie rasped.
"What's a cliche?" Pan Tian asked.
"Coughing up blood," Jie said as her chest itched and she coughed again.
"You've cliched a lot. Will you be okay?" Pan Tian asked.
"I... no... it doesn't mean to cough up blood. It's... ah forget it. I'll explain when I stop feeling like I'm about to puke," Jie said.
Her friends backed away.
Jie coughed.
Xue padded up to her and nuzzled her face, his whiskers tickling her as he did so. Their bond radiated relief and an undercurrent of remaining concern.
Jie gave him a scratch behind the ears and he purred.
When she no longer felt like she'd throw up at the slightest provocation, Jie stood on shaking legs and took out a healing pill from her storage ring, which she consumed. Thanks to the healing energies of the pills, she was already feeling a lot better.
Her clothes were a ruined mess, and her body was covered in burns, but they were healing quickly. She changed into a fresh set of robes from her storage ring. Her already-pale skin looked like it was glowing slightly. Some of the metal within her was still in the process of refinement, altering her body more than any body conditioning resource she'd consumed thus far.
"This one senses treasure within you. And your power has grown considerably, Pri... Jie. What did you do?" Ithilix asked.
"I refined its energies... and part of its body," Jie said as dragon lightning qi flickered over her, "I can feel the difference... my cultivation feels like I'm about to burst... I think I need to stabilize before I consume anything more. And the metal I refined... it's hard to say what it did exactly, but it feels like it's easier to cycle my qi. More efficient and effective somehow. Like I can now get more out of the same amount of qi if that makes any sense?"
Pan Tian smirked. "You ate the monster and now you're even stronger. Why were we ever even worried about you?" she asked.
Ithilix giggled softly.
Jie rolled her eyes and picked her blood sword out of the ruins of the treasure monster. She looked around the half-destroyed room with piles of ash and molten rock where bookcases and scrolls once were. And the hardened puddles of what used to be countless coins.
"Now what?" Jie asked.
"We collect what we can, I suppose," Pan Tian said, "you know... I don't think the dungeon is normally this hard. I thought only the plaques adjusted their difficulty... but it looks like this place can too. At least a bit."
"Well done," said the statue.
The suddenness of it speaking gave Jie a fright.
"Greed often blinds us to danger. Yet, not only did your eyes remain clear, but you defeated a treasure construct. The treasures in this room now belong to you as well as an additional reward for doing my Crimson Academy proud. Always remember that greed is good, but never let it blind you," said the statue.
A section of marble wall shuddered and bits that'd melted into the surrounding marble broke off as it moved, exposing a secret room that carried the rich scent of Essence.
They moved toward it hesitantly, the statue's warning fresh in their minds. Jie half expected a second treasure construct even stronger than the last one. The room had some shelves near the entrance, filled with books, scrolls, and a few other items that each gave off auras.
The rest of the room was filled with plants that had powerful auras of the ninth star Expert rank and even one at the first star of the Elementalist rank with glowing silver fruit hanging from their branches.
"Woah! Moonlight mangos," said Pan Tian, "there's a lot of them. And the lowest seems to be at the second star of the Expert rank. This is quite a find."
"Their trees are quite strong. Be careful," Jie said as she readied herself for a fight. Though she still felt like she had indigestion from the last one.
"Relax, Jie. Moonlight mangos don't attack as long as you promise to plant their seeds on fertile ground. My family has farms with a few of them, so we can just plant the seeds there. They normally don't grow out and take a lot of care but they're amazing treasures. And, their fruit is good for alchemy as well as cultivation," Pan Tian said.
"Unless this is some blood-sucking variant and they chew our faces off the second we get close," Jie said.
"That's a good point. Still, try not to attack them if you can help it. They look like normal ones," Pan Tian said.
Pan Tian pulled a scroll of wisdom out of her storage ring and unfurled it near one of the moonlight mangos. The scroll glowed and broke apart into motes of light.
"Yup," Pan Tian said, "normal ones. Let's gather their fruit. Make sure you bow politely to them and make it clear that we're going to be planting these where my family will take care of them for generations."
At her words, several of the trees near Pan Tian shifted, extending their silver fruit toward her.
Pan Tian bowed. "Thank you, I'm honored. We'll take great care of them," she said.
Wow... I think I'm starting to get used to this world. This isn't even weird to me. Jie thought.
Jie and her friends gathered up all the fruit, fifty-three Moonlight Mangos in total. Each one bursting with Essence. Though just thinking about that made Jie want to vomit dragon lightning qi. Her cultivation felt like it'd take a while to settle down after absorbing so much. So much so that she had hot and cold flashes and a desperate desire to burn some of it off. Like a restless energy that made the soles of her feet itch.
After they collected the moonlight mangos, they moved back to the shelves they'd seen earlier. There, Pan Tian and Ithilix used scrolls on items together. They found a few low-tier recipes for beginner alchemists, a flute that made plants grow a little faster, which Pan Tian said her family would love to have, and a bunch of scrolls of wisdom of various strengths. But Pan Tian and Ithilix paused their work partway through to regard Jie quizzically.
"Jie? Is something wrong? Aren't you going to help us sort through this?" Pan Tian asked.
Jie looked down at her feet. "I don't know how," she admitted.
"Don't know how?" Pan Tian asked, sounding even more confused.
"I don't know how to use those scrolls or how to avoid setting off traps or how to avoid getting cursed by an item," Jie said, "I'd just get in the way."
Pan Tian shook her head and smiled. "Don't be silly. Come here and we'll teach you," she said.
Pan Tian handed Jie a scroll of wisdom. "It's easy enough," she said, "just choose the item near to you that you'd like to identify, focus on it, and push a bit of your qi into the scroll. Just enough to activate it. You don't need to make it explode."
Jie focused on one of the books, the cover of which was stained with blood, and activated the scroll as Pan Tian instructed. The scroll glowed blue then burned away into blue motes that dissipated in the air as information flooded Jie's mind as though being hammered into her skull.
A bloodstained training manual for increasing the power and skill of slave warriors for arena combat.
It contains detailed notes on improving the strength of cultivators belonging to intelligent, sentient species. Everything from diet to training techniques, common mistakes and weaknesses in a variety of fighting styles, ways in which their cultivation could be improved, and even body refinement techniques. It's a most thorough treatise.
Penned by Zulman Kol'mar, the head of a renowned gladiatorial school in the Barrens of Yon'Garek. His teachings were so effective that some cultivators paid great sums to become his students even at the cost of their freedom.