Prismatic Shield skill modified by Rank 1 Bronze Quickness: Success!
You successfully summon Prismatic Shield before any other party member can react!
Alex immediately sprang to his feet, crackling shield held at an angle before him, dao held at the ready for powerful lunges and fast cleaving blows.
Yet his eyes caught sight of nothing but endless desert sands… before a voice immediately jolted him out of his dismay.
And it was all he could do to freeze himself before tragedy could ensue, when he felt powerful arms wrap around his own as endless sand from which he sensed nothing unusual at all suddenly transformed into a girl gifted in elements and ways he had yet to fully fathom.
“Alex! You made it. We feared you dead!” Sobbed none other than Ya Ling, holding him so tightly, inhuman grace letting her slide effortlessly past sword and shield and there she was, in his arms, her head leaning into the crook of his shoulder as his arms dropped to hold her close in turn.
Tear-stained eyes gazed up into his own. He could see so clearly the exquisite interplay of emotions and questions racing through her mind, before parsing them to a single gentle query. “Alex, what happened?”
Alex grinned. “I played the idiot and survived to tell the tale. The important thing is that we made it out, right?” He winced at her pained look. “I mean… most of us made it out.”
“Except for poor Luo,” she whispered, shaking her head.
Alex winced, recalling all too well the man’s animated expression, eyes twinkling with hope and excitement, like he was finally living his dream. The hero of his own tale.
Alex shook his head, regretting that he hadn’t been able to make everyone understand just how often the hero’s tales ended in bitterest tragedy, where he came from.
Just like Luo’s own.
“How are the others?”
Ya Ling swallowed, pressing her eyes with the palm of her hands. “Reny’s hurt, Alex. The poison in her blood… she’s stable, but uncle is beside himself with worry, and even with a healer’s natural gifts, there’s no telling when, or if, she will wake up.”
Alex froze at those words, feeling his stomach drop.
The worst possible news. For all of them.
Desperate, hope-filled eyes gazed into his own. “Alex… I won’t pry into your secrets, but… please tell me you can do something?”
Alex met her gaze for long moments, before nodding his head. “I’ll do my best, Ya Ling. I can promise no more than that.”
She bit her lip, but nodded. “That’s all I could ask for. And Alex?”
“Yes?”
She flashed a brilliant smile. “Thank you for saving my life.” She swallowed. “Again.”
Alex smirked. “Of course! What kind of idiot would I be to let my one worthy training partner go so easily? You’re absolute shit at fighting in the forest. But out here, you’re actually not that bad!”
Her eyes widened in outrage, before she smacked his chest. “Horse’s ass.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
He was genuinely surprised by her tackle, as the sands immediately gave out under his feet, Qi Perception having detected absolutely nothing until he was already on the ground, and she straddling him, her sheathed knife to his throat, eyes dilated with a wildness that was both chilling and intoxicating.
“I’m a damned good fighter,” she declared, right before her lips claimed his own.
And had he not so recently mourned a pair of beloved disciples he now feared lost to him forever… were they not both worried about the wellbeing of Reny, things might have gone much further than a single teasing kiss before Alex led the way to their shelter in the storm, momentarily stunned by the look Qing Wu gave him when Ya Ling made their presence known.
It was the look of a man confronting a monster, his own worst fears… his long lost son. All in one exquisitely complicated expression that settle in a bemused shake of his head, lips curling in an exhausted smile.
“You actually survived. Survived and returned.”
Alex merely dipped his head, suddenly not sure what to say, or if downplaying his feat and the peril they had all endured would perhaps be the absolute worst thing he could do at that moment. So he said only, “I’m glad to see you have as well. But I know we’re running out of time.”
The Silver actually flinched. Before girding himself and forcing a nod. “I fear we are.”
Eyes filled with desperate hope met his own. “Can you pull off another miracle, Alex?”
Alex smirked. “If by miracle you mean once more make use of the eclectic handful of apothecary lessons I picked up years ago… sure. Let me see what I can do. But Elder Wu?”
“Yes?”
“I will need several drops of your wife’s blood. Preferably where she was injected with the venom.”
Qing Wu gazed at Alex for long tense seconds before at last jerking a nod. “Of course. Come inside. Both of you.”
Alex tried not to grimace at the stench of sickness permeating the air, a bitter counterpoint to the fragrant scents of wildflower and fruit blossom that otherwise permeated the wagon, thanks to the miniature garden that the Wu’s herb collection effectively was, and Alex had to give Qing Wu credit. Placing Reny’s comatose form in the heart of what he now realized was an arboreal formation was perhaps the smartest move he could possibly have made. Even from here Alex felt Wood and a trace of Water Qi revolving circulating through both Reny’s meridian channels and the plants as a whole.
As if even the plants were desperately trying to cleanse her of the poison trying to kill her.
Alex felt an awful sense of dismay. He thought he had saved her! He had felt the surge of group potency being channeled right through her. He knew he had done some good. He was sure of it! Even if she wasn’t a pure-blooded Ruidian with an interface sheet, or whatever exactly he was, still, there had been enough of a connection for him to do at least some good. He had sensed it. Felt it!”
Anxious eyes peered into Qing Wu’s own. “I thought… I had hoped...” Alex lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Elder Wu. Truly.”
The man gave a bitter shake of his head. “It’s a miracle she was so intact when I tore that gods-awful silk from her form. I was filled with such hope, feeling her heartbeat, her breathing even even when I raced for the portal! But it wasn’t enough. Whatever healing arts my wife was able to apply before slipping away...”
Alex didn’t hesitate to squeeze the man’s trembling hand, even as Ya Ling gave him a tight hug, tears running freely down her cheeks. “I am so sorry, uncle. Sorry I pressed you both with my desperate need to escape my fate. I should never have involved you in my plans… Why didn’t I just run away? None of brother’s pawns match my gifts in the deep desert, even wounded as I am. Even if I’ll never make it to Silver, what does it matter? We should never have dared this stupidity!”
Alex’s heart ached at the look of sorrow, grief, and love on the older cultivator’s features. “Nonsense. We love you like our own, Ya Ling. You know that. Our daughters consider you their baby sister. Happily married to strong men in city-states throughout the desert sands, they have no need of us now, save that we visit our grandchildren as time and opportunity allows. You, however, were not so fortunate, even if my sister thought herself brilliant, marrying a desert prince.” He gave a bitter shake of his head, making it clear there was definite family history there.
But as much as he felt for his friends at that moment, all his attention was on the woman slowly slipping away before his eyes.
“Elder Wu?”
Tired irises darker than obsidian locked with his own. The older Silver didn’t bother wiping the tears of his cheeks. “Yes, Alex?”
Alex swallowed, heart pounding in his chest. “May I?”
The man froze, gazing at Alex for long awful seconds. “Can you really do anything?”
Alex bowed his head. “I can try.”
“Then please, lad, do whatever you can!”
With consent given, Alex immediately sprung into action. He didn’t try securing a cultivator’s oath or anything like that, to assure a tragic loss wouldn’t become yet one more enemy wishing for his death. Because Reny really didn’t have time for games, and he could only hope that his first gift would do some good.
“She can’t drink, so please say nothing!”
With that, he proceeded to give the comatose woman a kiss.
You have successfully injected: Universal Antidote! This antidote comprises neutralizing compounds mirroring all known toxins.
You have further depleted your reserves!
Vitality check successful!
Alex grimaced and lurched as the room started spinning. He desperately looked Qing Wu’s way. “If you’re wife has any stew or you have any prepared food at all… please. I need whatever nutrients I can get!”
Qing Wu was giving him the strangest stares as a wide-eyed Ya Ling immediately sprung into action, revealing a crock of still piping-hot stew slipping free of a well-polished hardwood cabinet under the shared bed in the lower split-deck of the oversized wagon. Alex immediately understood it to be a low-key storage device focused on preservation, on taking advantage of the slower flow of time, than any crazy multiplier of storage space. But even if it just tripled the volume, that was still significant with a space as big as the underside of a bed, and explained how Qing and Reny lived so comfortably in their wagon. It’s time dilating properties were immediately evident when Alex found his hands full of a bowl of piping hot stew.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Yet he wasted only a split second admiring the efficient use of space and the glorious scents of the stew, all his focus now on Qing Wu once more. “If you would be so kind, while I devour this soup… draw me some of your wife’s blood.”
The Silver wujen clenched his jaw, glaring at Alex for long seconds while he devoured the stew, forced to heed his body’s needs.
“Uncle, we’re running out of time! He’s just being respectful, not doing it himself!”
“Is this part of your cultivation path, Alex?”
Alex gave a quick nod. Knowing that the man already suspected as much, just needed that final bit of reassurance as he swallowed his tears and, with hands that barely trembled, knicked his wife’s wrist.
He closed his eyes and turned away. “Please...”
Alex, stew devoured, immediately claimed the wrist, not bothering with anything so crass as to play vampire, merely gently placing his finger on her forearm and commanding her blood, most specifically, the poisons and byproducts trapped in her blood to flow towards him, absorbing it, and the toxins it contained, directly through his skin.
Then a quick nod to Ya Ling and she immediately placed one of her aunty’s healing poultices, also kept fresh in storage, on the wound.
His eyes widened, suddenly terrified that he had misstepped, using an ancient ability he only recalled using as if in a…
Congratulations! Your synergistic use of eight elemental Qi formations has allowed you to understand and make use of the unique properties of Blood! For what is blood but a unique configuration of multiple elements? Water as the vessel; Metal and Air the hemoglobin rich compounds catalyzed with Spirit, Lightning in the form of biochemical impulses, and the Fires or metabolic functions of life! So rich with Earth’s minerals and Wood’s nutritious bounty fueling the entire body from one generation to the next.
You have learned the totally new and previously unheard of skill: Blood Mastery at Rank 1!
Alex froze, for long seconds fearing the weight of doom as he felt a sudden weakness completely overwhelm him.
But that was just the Silver Tier spider venom he had actually dared to absorb, now killing him at a frightful pace.
It seemed that he had somehow squeaked past divine notice once more, and that his use of an eight-element Cycling technique and Shield was sufficient pretext for him to claim Blood by a similar path. Which meant, he thought in those dizzying seconds as he toppled off his seat to Ya Ling’s desperate cry as the world began spinning and he focused only on mastering this poison on time… he could indeed reclaim his former arts, so long as he could do so by a logical path of progression, walking different footsteps than those that had affronted so many powerful Divine-tier cultivators.
So long as he left completely alone the most exotic of techniques he had once dared to make his own. And if fortune truly favored him, he would soon have the opportunity to attend a cultivation academy here in the desert, and learn and grow in ways he never could have imagined before.
Assuming, of course, he was able to neutralize the poison killing him right now.
You have suffered 1 Critical Wound! You have saved versus Cardiac Arrest!
You have depleted the last of your Silver Tier kill potency.
You have successfully achieved 20% immunity to Spider Queen Venom.
This Silver Tier venom is beyond anything you’ve ever faced before! Partial tolerance brought by myriad immunities has allowed your diaphragm to keep working. You’re now able to take additional breaths!
You have taken one additional Critical Wound.
Your liver has suffered extensive damage.
You have successfully achieved 40% immunity to Spider Queen Venom.
Alex’s stomach was roiling, feeling dizzy and disoriented, as if he were roaring drunk and lost as sea. It was all he could do to focus, humbled by the sudden awareness that, for all that he had made and neutralized truly toxic concoctions before, including solvents deadly enough to burn right through a Silver’s face or inebriate him with contact narcotics… never had he actually dealt with venom of this caliber before. At least not without Eternal Fox giving him near total immunity from the start.
He bit his lip, the surge of pain helping him to focus. Much to his horror, he hardly felt any pain inside his body at all. And he was certain that that was a VERY BAD thing. Thoughts of his internal organs being liquefied like a bug’s sent a jolt of panic that directed his focus like nothing else. He knew that Biochemical Mastery was, for him, an instinctive thing, but nonetheless he did his best to regulate his breathing, to slow his metabolism without falling unconscious and dead soon after… to toe the line between awareness and oblivion as his heartbeat slowed the surge of venom coursing through him.
Venom that slowly weakened over time, but only after devastating damage had been inflicted, showing what an utter fool he had been to think himself the equal of a Bronze Tier healing specialist who had still been incapacitated and nearly killed, even after both her own and most of Alex’s share of the potency of their kill had gone into pulling her from the brink of death.
You have successfully achieved 60% immunity to Spider Queen Venom.
You are now suffering significant Internal Damage!
You have successfully saved versus Mortal Injury!
You have successfully achieved 80% immunity to Spider Queen Venom.
You have lost vision in your Right eye!
You have lost partial vision in your Left eye!
Congratulations. You have achieved 100% Immunity to Spider Queen Venom.
Biochemical Mastery Achieved! You may now generate this venom or it’s antidote, at will!
“Alex! Alex? Heaven’s mercy, uncle, he’s dying!”
“Foolish boy, throwing his life away so cheaply! Even I had to burn off every trace of clothing I wore, and would have counseled you both to leave immediately, lest the smell alone sear your lungs! That was a Silver Tier Monster! Even the JiangHu would think twice before daring to truck in venom so vile! If my wife hadn’t specialized in understanding and mastering so many toxins...” He broke into a fresh sob.
Ya Ling’s gasp could be heard with exquisite clarity, even as Alex forced himself to his hands and knees, His vision broken and blurry and oddly flat, horrified by just how close he had come to death, what a fool he truly was. Though he did take small comfort in the disbelieving gasps when Alex forced luminescent drops from the tip of his finger into a wheezing Reny’s throat.
“She dying!” The wujen’s desperate cry belied his earlier mien of jaded acceptance.
“No, uncle, look! Her breath… thank the gods, it’s easing! Alex, what did you do?”
But Alex was no longer paying any attention to the world around him, sinking into the blackness of his soul even as he forced his mind’s eye open, refusing to let oblivion claim him just yet.
Instead he forced himself to gaze upon the ruins of his own ravaged system. That it was intact enough to keep him alive, or that his blood-brain barrier had kept sufficient toxins back that his brain hadn’t turned to soup, was a miracle. Yet with so much extensive damage, he was doomed if he didn’t get healing NOW! And what better start than the life-giving carrier of everything that was him? He immediately went to work at purifying and invigorating his blood, recalling the eight-element revelation that had allowed him to effortlessly claim Reny’s tainted drops as his own.
A newly discovered technique that had come so close to killing him, might now help to save his life, restoring damage so catastrophic he doubted even a powerful Silver could survive it without an equally powerful healer or unorthodox gifts like his own.
His breathing had become an audible wheeze… but got no worse, as he sensed the nutrients in his blood rushing to countless damaged organs, slowly but surely taking the first steps to repair. He remembered in that moment with exquisite clarity his first forays into using Eternal Fox to heal himself, speeding up metabolism and the removal of waste using White Qi and Dark Qi as what was effectively a heat sync and entropy counter. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder if there was another, equally valid approach to accomplishing the same feat. He already knew that he didn’t have to worry about waste Qi buildup, as most thought of Dark Qi as. Thankfully, all his excess Dark Qi would be absorbed right into, and serve to further strengthen, his Prismatic Bone Technique. Even if the actual use of that element was cut off to him right now, for what he suspected were extremely good reasons and new better than to pursue until he was much, much stronger than he was right now, on the border between awareness and oblivion.
Fortunately, there was another path forward, with quite a few parables to Dark Qi, now that he thought of it. Because what element better fit the paradigm of transformation and change than heat itself? Or, in this case, Fire.
A fire so hot that the cells touched by his psyche found their metabolisms shooting up at a meteoric rate.. before exploding.
Alex winced internally, curbing his desperation, only gently heightening his natural healing abilities with the gentlest application of Fire, while simultaneously paying exquisite attention to the order or organization of his internal systems, refusing to let entropy reign as he channeled Fire’s blessing in just the ways needed to catalyze rapid growth, filter away damaged organelles, and expel excess heat from his body. Heat that his Draconic blood allowed him to effortlessly absorb and process.
Heat that was only the tiniest fraction of that felt by Fire Whip, Fire Shield, or even Flame Fist. Even as he heard the concerned murmurs and cry of dismay in the outer world, he refused to lose focus, though he counted it a blessing when he sensed soothing Ice being used to cool his smoking-hot skin.
With the added assurance of knowing that Qing Wu was, on some level, looking after him, he dared to push further. Recalling countless hours lost between life and death as he strove to master his metabolism via Eternal Fox, he now attempted once more to do so by a different paradigm, paying exquisite attention to each element of the process, slowly infusing his blood with all the elements needed to carry oxygen, nurture his cells, and control all the biological processes of life, until all eight were being used almost as harmoniously as he had once used White and Dark Qi alone.
Minutes stretched to hours, an eternity that passed in the blink of an eye. And the exquisite focus he had needed to understand and master the metabolic flow of nutrients, waste, and spiritual energy in one cell at a time soon became as instinctive as walking. As breathing. As feeling his strengthened heart beating steadily once more, feeling the exquisite flow of elemental Qi cycling not just through his meridian channels but all of his peripheral channels as well as through his entire circulatory system. Rejuvenating, life-giving spiritual energy now flooding his body with every beat of his heart.
Congratulations! You have had a Major Breakthrough!
You have unlocked a new healing path! You have learned the eight-element Prismatic Fox Restoration Technique!
Prismatic Fox Restoration Technique is now Rank 1. You now have a base passive regeneration rate of: 1 health point per minute. Your focus on mastering the interplay between heat and entropy has unlocked the Ageless Perk. - You may now make use of your Prismatic Fox Restoration Technique Rank as a bonus in saving versus all poisons, toxins, mental ailments, curses, taints, and all other areas where another UNDEFINED art had once reigned supreme! Continue to master your body and yourself to expand this art and it’s capabilities!
A tiny portion of Alex’s mind not focused on stabilizing himself and saving his own life reveled in the news. It wasn’t Eternal Fox, but it was most definitely a variant. And even a slow rate of regeneration was still miraculous compared to what most enjoyed. And if the healing rate was Health dependent, it also implied a major increase as his Vitality increased, or when he finally broke through and Ascended. Though he wasn’t quite certain what his ascension would entail, at this point. Would he achieve Bronze in the near future? Was that even possible? Or was having his furiously spinning Supercable achieve Rank 6 the bitter hard work of countless lifetimes?
Which of course begged the most relevant question of all. Would the final breakthrough after achieving Rank 7 take him to Bronze…
Or do so much more?
He had no idea, and he didn’t have the brainpower to spare, trying to figure it out.
All his focus was now on embracing his newest revelation to the utmost, sensing the flow of spiritual energy coursing through millions, then billions of cells as what had promised to be a bitter slow process of months was now occurring hundreds of times faster, and that was him playing it safe. Making sure he truly understood the weaves of spiritual energy every cell in his body naturally embraced in the dance called life, until his comprehension and understanding of his body as a whole blossomed and his healing rate doubled yet again.
All negative organ failure cascades have been successfully stabilized! You have repaired all damaged peripheral nerves. You are now experiencing PAIN in full!
Alex suddenly felt like his insides had been filled with bitter black flames, consuming him alive.
He choked back a sudden cry, every inch of his body now lit by an awful searing pain his Draconic heritage could do nothing to diffuse or mitigate, forced to experience the exquisite agony of spasming nerves shrieking their discomfort as they were regenerated and restored in minutes that should have taken months, or never, as his art continued to blossom, showing that its drawbacks were very much like those of the art he had mastered before.
You have saved versus howling like a child!
Congratulations, Prismatic Fox is now Rank 2!