Chapter 40: The poison eats away at one's heart, life for life
Inside the Lotus Tower, the lights were bright, but the atmosphere was oppressive, as if a rainstorm was about to come.
The Medicine Demon emerged from the inner chamber, his expression a look of unprecedented solemnity and defeat. He slowly shook his head at Li Lianhua, Wuyan, Shi Shui, and the others guarding the door, his voice dry, "The Ziqi within Your Excellency's body... has fully awakened, entangled and symbiotically coexisting with the heart meridian... Any external force forcibly removing it will instantly devour the heart meridian's vitality. I... am powerless to stop it."
Wuyan's face turned pale, and he suddenly fell to his knees. Shi Shui and the others also looked despairing.
Li Lianhua stood there, his figure so thin that it seemed as if a gust of wind could blow him down. His face was even paler than the unconscious Di Feisheng, and his lips were completely bloodless. But his eyes were terrifyingly calm, with no despair in them, only a calmness that was close to nothingness.
"How much longer?" he asked, his voice unnaturally steady.
The Medicine Demon said with difficulty, "If you don't use your internal energy again, with Your Majesty's foundation... you might be able to hold out for three months. But the pain of the poison gnawing at your bones... is unbearable for a human."
Three months...bone-eating pain...
Li Lianhua closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his eyes were filled with a resolute clarity. He pushed open the door to the inner room and walked in.
Di Feisheng lay on the bed, his eyes closed, his brow furrowed in agony. Cold sweat streamed from his forehead, soaking the pillowcase. Even in his coma, his body twitched slightly from time to time, his teeth clenched as if he were enduring the torture of being cut into pieces. The once powerful and feared man was now as fragile as a candle in the wind.
Li Lianhua sat down beside the bed, her fingertips trembling and lightly brushing across his furrowed brow, wiping away the cold sweat. The skin she touched was scorching hot, yet it also had a dead, gray quality.
"Everyone get out." Li Lianhua said softly, but her tone was an unquestionable command.
Wuyan and Yaomo wanted to say something, but were stopped by Shi Shui's eyes. They retreated silently and closed the door gently.
There were only two of them left in the room.
Li Lianhua leaned over, resting her forehead lightly on the back of Di Feisheng's cold hand, and her voice was as low as a dream: "A Fei... don't be afraid..."
He maintained this posture for a long time, not moving, as if drawing strength, or as if making some difficult decision.
Finally, he stood up, his eyes becoming resolute. He took out the silver needle he had brought with him, unbuttoned Di Feisheng's clothes, revealing his strong chest, which was slightly cramped due to the ravages of the poison.
Li Lianhua's fingertips brushed over several specific acupoints. She took a deep breath, her eyes sharp, and with lightning speed, several silver needles pierced the vital points around Di Feisheng's heart! The needle tails trembled slightly, emitting a very faint humming sound.
This isn't a cure, but an extremely dangerous, nearly forbidden acupuncture technique—[Locking the Heart and Imprisoning the Insect]! Using silver needles to temporarily block the area surrounding the heart meridian, minimizing the Gu's range of activity, it can greatly alleviate pain and delay the loss of life force. However, the price is... the acupuncturist must use their own pure internal energy to maintain the needle array at all times. Once initiated, it cannot be interrupted until... the acupuncturist's internal energy is exhausted, or... the host dies.
Li Lianhua sat cross-legged on the bed, with her hands lightly pressing on the silver needles. The purest and softest Yangzhou slow internal force was like a warm stream, slowly flowing through the silver needles and into Di Feisheng's heart meridians.
Time passes by little by little.
Li Lianhua's face grew paler, his body began to sway slightly, and a fine layer of cold sweat oozed from his forehead. The internal energy required to maintain the needle array was far beyond his imagination, not to mention his own old injuries.
But on the bed, Di Feisheng's tightly furrowed brows actually slowly relaxed, his body stopped twitching, and his breathing became much steadier and longer, as if he had fallen into a real sleep.
Outside the door, Wuyan and others were waiting anxiously, but did not dare to break in.
Until the sun sets in the west and the moonlight comes into the house.
The door to the inner room was gently pushed open. Li Lianhua walked out, holding onto the door frame. His steps were unsteady, and he could barely stand. His face was transparently pale, as if he would disappear in the wind in the next moment.
"Owner!" Everyone rushed forward to help.
Li Lianhua waved her hands and said weakly, "He... is fine for now. The pain has been suppressed... but this method... only treats the symptoms, not the root cause..."
"Owner! You..." Yao Mo took his pulse, his face suddenly changed, "Your internal energy is almost exhausted! The old injury in your heart meridian has also been triggered! This... This is simply..."
"It's okay." Li Lianhua interrupted him, looking at the sleeping person in the room, "It's worth it if it can buy him a moment of peace."
He pushed away the hand that was supporting him, walked step by step to the window, looked at the cold moon in the sky, and said in a soft but firm voice: "Medicine Demon, find all the books in Nan Yin about Ziqi Gu and Rama Ding and give them to me."
Yao Mo was startled: "Owner, you want to..."
"Jiao Liqiao can use Nan Yin's incense to lure out his poison, so Nan Yin must have a way to cure it!" A deep fire ignited in Li Lianhua's eyes, a determination to find a way out even at the cost of burning herself. "Even if I have to search through all the old papers and dig deep into the ground... I will find it!"
He turned around, the moonlight shining on his pale yet extremely determined face: "Before he wakes up... I must find a way to save him."
Even if the price is his life.
No one noticed that his hand, hanging from his sleeve, was tightly clutching a strangely ancient Nan Yin token he had found on Di Feisheng's underwear. It was deliberately left there by Jiao Liqiao... a provocation, but also a clue.
The night was still long. And Li Lianhua's battle had just begun. This time, he was risking everything in a race against death.
In the study on the second floor of Lotus Building, the candles were lit all night long.
Li Lianhua placed Di Feisheng on a couch adjacent to the study so she could monitor his condition at all times. While the Medicine Demon's [Locking Heart and Imprisoning the Poison] acupuncture technique temporarily suppressed the Gu poison's violent onset, it came at the cost of Li Lianhua constantly using her own Yangzhou slow internal energy to maintain the acupuncture array, like using herself as firewood to light a dim lamp, illuminating Di Feisheng's fading life force.
His face grew paler day by day, his lips devoid of any color. His once clear eyes were now bloodshot from exhaustion, the dark circles beneath his eyes thick and unblurred. Every breath stabbed with the sting of old wounds and new injuries, yet his grip on the scroll remained steady as a rock, his gaze sweeping across every line of the obscure Nan Yin script within the ancient tome like a hawk.
The Nan Yin tome that Yao Mo, Wu Yan, and the others had found filled the desk, even spilling onto the floor. Bamboo slips, sheepskin, and torn pages exuded an air of antiquity and mystery. Most were written in long-lost ancient Nan Yin script or encrypted symbols, making them exceedingly difficult to decipher.
Li Lianhua was almost relying on an amazing willpower to hold on. Sometimes he would concentrate on reading, his fingertips tracing over the difficult characters; sometimes he would close his eyes and ponder, dipping his finger in water to deduce on the desk; sometimes he would suddenly grab another scroll of bamboo slips and eagerly compare and verify them.
"Master, you should take a break!" Su Xiaoyong came in with ginseng soup. Seeing him almost collapsing on the table, her voice trembled with heartache. "If this continues, you'll collapse before Alliance Leader Di recovers!"
Li Lianhua didn't even raise his head, just waved his hand, and said in a very hoarse voice: "It's okay... let it go." His whole mind was immersed in the vast and dangerous ancient secrets.
He flipped through a fragment of scroll written in a dark red pigment, his fingertips suddenly pausing. It described an ancient mother-child Gu called "Tongxin Qi," whose properties were strikingly similar to the poison Di Feisheng had contracted! The mother Qi could control the child Qi, causing it to devour the heart and rupture the veins. It could also... using the blood of the host's heart as a guide, aided by specific rituals, reverse the Qi's nature and return nourishment to the host!
Li Lianhua's heart skipped a beat, and his breathing quickened. He suppressed the surging blood and carefully read the unclear ritual. His expression grew more solemn the more he read.
The ritual required extremely demanding items: in a very dark place, on the night of a lunar eclipse, three drops of the host mother's heart's hot blood were used as the "key" to ignite the "Soul-Guiding Lotus"... but the latter half was missing due to the broken bamboo slips!
"Soul-Guiding Lotus... Heartblood..." Li Lianhua muttered to herself, a flicker of hope ignited in her eyes, but then a huge haze enveloped her. The host of the mother demon... was undoubtedly Jiao Liqiao or her accomplice, Shan Gudao! Taking their heartblood? No easy task! And that missing second half was the key to the key!
He suddenly started coughing and quickly covered his mouth with a handkerchief. When he opened it, a glaring flash of bright red came into view.
He calmly put away the handkerchief and glanced at Di Feisheng's pale face who was still sleeping on the couch. His eyes became more determined, even revealing a kind of almost paranoid madness.
He must be found! He must be saved!
He no longer cared about his physical limits, and forced his remaining internal energy to force himself to stay awake. He flipped through, searched, and deduced more frantically... The candlelight reflected his thin silhouette, casting a desperate and stubborn outline on the wall full of books.
In the dead of night, he would walk to the bedside, lightly brushing his fingertips against Di Feisheng's cold cheek, feeling her weak yet steady breathing, and whispering softly, as if speaking to him, or as if warning himself: "A Fei... wait a little longer... I will definitely find her... I will never let you..."
Before he could finish his words, he burst into another suppressed cough, but he just raised his hand to wipe the blood from his lips and buried himself in the pile of old papers again.
Hope was as slim as a spark, and the road ahead was as dark as an abyss. But he never wavered for a moment.
The light of dawn shone through the window lattice, illuminating Li Lianhua's pale face. He remained cross-legged, practicing his internal energy, his hands lightly pressing against the silver needles in Di Feisheng's chest. The endless flow of his Yangzhou slow internal energy flowed like a gentle stream, struggling to combat the dormant, yet surging, cold poison. His body was at its limit, and every breath brought a stabbing pain to his lungs. His vision darkened, his vision surging, held on by an unwavering will.
His gaze was fixed on a roll of tattered animal hide spread across his knees. Inscribed on it in the long-lost Nan Yin code was a thrilling secret technique—the [Same Life Gu Reincarnation Technique].
This wasn't an orthodox solution, but rather a nearly unorthodox, forbidden technique based on Nan Yin's oldest symbiotic Gu. Its core principle was to "steal the sky and replace the day, using life to extend life."
The method is brutal yet direct: using the caster's own heart essence and blood as a guide, a reversal array is constructed. The raging offspring of the poisoned victim are forcibly channeled into the caster's own meridians, using their own vitality and cultivation as a cage to temporarily imprison and soothe the poisoned worm. Once the victim is freed from the danger of the poison gnawing at their heart, they then seek to locate the host of the poisoned worm, or find another method to completely eradicate it.
This is tantamount to drawing a deadly poison blade upon oneself! Not to mention the dangers of introducing the poison, even if successful, the practitioner will constantly suffer the backlash of the poison, their vitality constantly being eroded, their cultivation plummeting, and they will become a useless person! And if they fail midway, or if the poison cannot be eradicated, both will perish together!
Li Lianhua's fingertips stroked the obscure cipher text, and every character was like a red-hot iron, burning his heart.
There is no other choice.
The medicine demon was helpless. There were countless ancient books, but there was only this one way, with a glimmer of almost hopeless hope of survival.
He slowly raised his head, looking towards the flute's sound, which was so close. The man's brows were still furrowed in his sleep. Even with the acupuncture, the gnawing pain seemed to linger. His lips were purplish blue, and his breathing was weak, as if it would die at any moment.
Li Lianhua's heart felt like it was being tightly grasped by an ice-cold hand, causing her to feel suffocated.
He remembered Di Feisheng's usual proud and strong appearance, his broad back standing in front of him, and his eyes that were awkward due to their coolness... How could he watch such a person being tortured to death by the poison, or becoming a sacrifice for Jiao Liqiao?
no way.
A faint, almost gentle, yet cruelly resolute smile passed across Li Lianhua's lips. He spoke softly, his voice almost hoarse and inaudible, yet every word was clear, as if he were swearing a vow:
"A Fei...don't be afraid."
"This time, it's my turn."
He carefully channeled the last of his internal energy into the needle, steadying it. Then, with trembling hands, he took out a silver needle and pierced the tip of his left middle finger. A drop of crimson blood oozed out. Using his finger as a pen, he began to trace the complex and ancient reversal array on the blank edge of the animal hide, extremely slowly but steadily.
With each stroke, his face grew paler and his breath weaker. It wasn't just the loss of blood, but the infusion of his soul and vitality.
Outside the window, the sky gradually darkened and dark clouds gathered, foreshadowing a storm and also foreshadowing... tonight is the time of the lunar eclipse.
Wuyan and Yaomo were guarding outside the door. They could feel the increasingly weak but extremely persistent breath in the room. They were extremely anxious but did not dare to break in.
When the last stroke was made, Li Lianhua nearly collapsed. Her body swayed, and she barely managed to steady herself with her hands. The pattern on the edge of the hide glowed with an eerie dark red luster, and it moved slightly, as if alive.
He took a deep breath, struggled to sit up straight, and cast his gaze on Di Feisheng again. All the hesitation and fear in his eyes had faded, leaving only a calm and heartbreaking determination.
He stretched out his hand, and with trembling but precise fingertips, he began to remove the silver needles from Di Feisheng's heart one by one.
Every time a needle was pulled out, Di Feisheng's body would twitch violently, and he would groan in pain in his coma. The poison that had been forcibly suppressed was like a wild horse that had broken free from its reins, and began to attack his meridians frantically again!
Li Lianhua's eyes flashed, and he stopped hesitating! He bit his tongue hard and sprayed a mouthful of blood onto the drawn formation diagram!
“Buzz!”
The formation diagram suddenly burst out with a dazzling blood light, illuminating the entire inner room with a scarlet glow!
Li Lianhua quickly formed seals with his hands, chanting the difficult and ancient Nan Yin spell, and suddenly pressed the formation diagram that emitted an ominous light towards Di Feisheng's heart!
"Ah--!" Di Feisheng, who was in a coma, suddenly arched his body and let out an extremely painful roar. The meridians in his body bulged, and it seemed as if countless living things were moving wildly under his skin!
At the same time, Li Lianhua felt as if struck hard, spitting out a mouthful of black blood! He clearly felt a chilling, piercing, violent, and insane evil force rushing through his meridians like a flood bursting through a dam at the point where the two of them touched!
A piercing pain instantly swept through his body! It was even worse than when the green tea poison had taken effect! The worm seemed to have found a new lair, gnawing and ramming frantically inside him, bringing devastating pain!
Li Lianhua's vision went dark, and his body collapsed, but he held on to Di Feisheng with his last breath, clinging to him tightly, preventing the formation from being interrupted. Blood continued to seep from his mouth, nose, and even the corners of his eyes, staining his plain robes.
He could feel his vitality rapidly fading away, his internal strength dissipating like the tide.
But he could also feel that the raging poisonous power in Di Feisheng's body was being drawn out bit by bit and flowing into his own body which was already riddled with holes.
I will give you my life in exchange for yours.
Outside the window, the lunar eclipse was at its peak, and the sky and earth were dark.
Inside the room, the blood light gradually faded, leaving only the overlapping figures of the two people and the faint but stubborn breathing.
The gamble has begun, and life and death are uncertain.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
