Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex looked at the stark white scar of the badly healed wound on the old man’s chest that barely poked through his clothing. He could make out a bit of it, and that alone confused Alex quite a bit.

A Scar on an Immortal’s body could only be because of one of two things. First, the cultivator simply didn’t have any Qi to heal their wounds. Second, the wound was made by something or someone so strong that it didn’t heal right.

As far as Alex knew, there was no other way such a thing could happen.

Well, there was actually one other way. It was whatever Grimsight had done to get himself a body that wouldn’t heal properly. But that wasn’t something Alex could guess here. Alex had asked Silvermist about the one-eyed old man and had been told in return that there was no way to heal the old man, and Alex didn’t have to worry as he wouldn’t come across such an issue in his life.

Grimsight himself had told Alex on multiple occasions that he was a unique case as well. As for how he was wounded to such a degree, his only answer was atonement.

Whatever was happening to this old man, it had nothing to do with Grimsight’s issue. So it was either the first reason or the second.

Alex ignored the scar for now. That was only something that had caught his eye. He needed to check the old man’s body to see what was making him wish death more than anything.

“I will have to check your body thoroughly,” Alex said. “Should we do it inside the house?”

“Just do it here and be done with it. Once you see what is wrong, you too will leave like everyone else.” the old man sounded dispirited. Alex took the old man’s wrist and sent his senses into the man’s body through the veins and meridians.

The very first stark contrast Alex saw in the man’s body from a regular person was that it almost felt like he was out of Qi. There was no Qi flowing through his meridians, even though he was clearly someone with a cultivation. He could sense the aura of his cultivation base right that very moment, so his not having Qi was quite… strange.

Alex continued sending his senses further and further into the man’s body, searching for his Qi. It was still surprising to him that there was no Qi anywhere in the man’s meridians, so finding that was the main thing Alex did.

And then he finally found it.

Only, the state it was in was not what he expected to find. It wasn’t even something he knew could exist.

Inside the man’s meridians, just a bandwidth away from his dantian, there was a wall of frozen Qi, completely solid. It was hard and difficult to penetrate with Spiritual Sense.

Beyond the wall of Qi, Alex saw nothing as well. This was the first time he had come across something like this.

He expected an idea to pop up in his head, courtesy of the Alchemy God, to help him know what he was dealing with. But to Alex’s surprise, he saw nothing. That was to say, either the old man’s issue with his Qi was something the Alchemy God had never come across.

Or, it was something that just couldn’t be helped at all. ‘Surely I would’ve still known about the issue even if there was no way to heal him,’ Alex thought and retracted his sense back from the old man’s body.

“Did you see it?” he asked. “My issue.”

“Your Qi is frozen solid,” Alex said.

“Like a spirit stone,” the old man said. “Can you heal something like this?”

Alex couldn’t answer. “I don’t even know what this is, honestly,” he said.

The old man looked at Alex for a bit and shook his head. “At least you are honest. Go, I won’t hurt you. You tried to heal me and that is enough.”

“I’m sorry, senior, but you must’ve misunderstood me. I said I didn’t know what was wrong with you, but I will still try to help you,” Alex said. “But first of all, I need to find out just what is wrong with you. How did this happen.”

“If you’re so good then why don’t you figure it out?” the old man said rather harshly.

Alex didn’t argue. “How is your Dantian? My spiritual sense won’t reach it so I can’t see inside,” he said.

“Fine, for the most part at least,” the old man said. “The Qi inside the Dantian is fluid if that is what you’re concerned about. I just can’t bring it out because it is blocked by the solid Qi.”

“You should’ve shown your conditions to other healers. Someone must have tried to or even succeeded at removing those solid Qi from your body,” Alex said. “What was the end result?”

The old man nodded. “They did test, and they did succeed. But it doesn’t last for long. The very next time I try to use my Qi, it freezes up once again.”

Alex was completely flabbergasted by the situation. The issue with the Qi seemed so specific and yet so out there that the middle-ground possibilities here were endless. Alex looked at the man’s chest again, the small scar peeking through. He wondered, could that be part of the same reason?

“Your scar, did you get the wound before this happened to you?” Alex asked.

“No,” the old man answered.

“So after,” Alex said. “That does make sense.”

“Sure,” the old man said.

The old man wasn’t really helping him help him. He just wanted to get rid of Alex as soon as possible once Alex saw how fruitless his decision to help him was. It seemed after all these years, the old man was more than certain of his own inevitable demise.

Alex wasn’t so certain though. There was no way things could ever be so set. Certainly, there had to be one way or another he could heal this old man’s condition.