Eternal Life from the Golden Needle Technique

Chapter 396: Chapter 393: Method to Remove the Gu

’The Gu Techniques of Nanyue truly live up to their reputation!’

’Finding an antidote, I’m afraid, won’t be so easy...’

After carefully examining the cultivators from the front lines—haggard, lying on their sickbeds with fading breaths, all of them poisoned by Gu—

Shen Changchuan sighed.

He gently closed the door, shook his head, and walked outside.

The Gu Insects afflicting these people were of a staggering variety.

Some were parasitic, some fused with their very flesh and blood, and there were even imperceptible, microbial types.

All sorts of them.

Different Gu Insects, different symptoms, and different methods and patterns of attack!

How incredibly difficult would it be to find an antidote?

This was not a problem that Shen Changchuan, with his mere Tier Two mastery of Gu Techniques, could solve.

Even if the casters who had poisoned these cultivators were themselves only at Tier Two, finding an antidote was still incredibly difficult.

This wasn’t hard to understand.

An ordinary person could find something to use as a poison,

but detoxifying the victim was not something an ordinary person could do.

Even an experienced doctor

would have to identify the specific poison through the patient’s various external symptoms, and even run various tests, before finally prescribing a reasonable treatment plan.

No wonder, then,

that the many Soul Emergence Late Stage Realm cultivators stationed in Barbaric City were completely helpless against this.

”Ah, then does that mean these comrades can only wait for death?”

Seeing this, Gu Xuanqing, who was following beside him, couldn’t help but show a worried expression.

”It hasn’t come to that...”

Shen Changchuan waved his hand, his tone shifting.

”While I am unable to determine what kind of Gu Insects they are afflicted with in a short time, nor do I have the ability to concoct the antidotes,”

”...treating a poisoned cultivator doesn’t necessarily require a specific remedy.”

”What do you mean by that?”

Gu Xuanqing’s eyes lit up as he looked at Shen Changchuan.

”I may not have the ability to prescribe the perfect remedy, but I do have a knack for treating the head when it aches and the foot when it hurts!”

As he spoke,

Shen Changchuan nodded slightly at him, a faint smile on his face.

It was true that he had no antidote, nor could he develop a corresponding one in a short amount of time.

But removing a Gu Insect didn’t necessarily require an antidote.

The last time he had removed Wu Tianhao’s Gu Insect, he had done so by using another Gu Insect to expel it.

He hadn’t used any specific antidote.

In any case,

as long as the Gu Insect was expelled from the body or killed,

the body would naturally and gradually recover when supplemented with treatments like the Rejuvenation Pill.

It was just like surgery in the Western medicine of his past life.

Cut out the sickness wherever it was found. It didn’t require any profound understanding of pathology or pharmacology to create a specific remedy.

Of course,

this method also had its own drawbacks.

First,

introducing another Gu Insect into the body, effectively turning the person into a battlefield, would cause the cultivator to suffer a great loss of Primordial Qi. Their injuries might even worsen as a result.

Furthermore, with their Primordial Qi heavily damaged, it could also affect their future Cultivation.

Second,

this method was difficult to scale.

Take Shen Changchuan’s method, for example. He could control Xiaojin, sending it into a body for the Exorcising Gu.

But he was only one person, and he only had one Tier Two High Level Poisonous Insect King, Xiaojin.

In contrast, there were hundreds of Poisoned Cultivators in Barbaric City who had been withdrawn from the front lines in the worst possible condition.

And on the front lines, there were even more whose injuries weren’t as severe and could still be suppressed!

Therefore,

Shen Changchuan’s resources were limited.

He could only save the most severe cases, the cultivators whose conditions were so dire they were on the verge of death.

As for the others, they could only continue to endure and try to pull through on their own.

Regarding this,

Shen Changchuan didn’t hide a thing.

He told Gu Xuanqing everything.

”Being able to perform the Exorcising Gu and save a life is already an incredible feat!”

”In all these days, I don’t know how many poisoned cultivators I’ve watched die right before my eyes.”

”I implore you, Martial Nephew, to do your utmost!”

”Whatever you need, Barbaric City will provide it all!”

”If you succeed this time, I will definitely report it to the Alliance and request a hefty reward for you!”

Gu Xuanqing was overjoyed, not caring in the slightest about the after-effects Shen Changchuan mentioned, like the severe damage to Primordial Qi.

Compared to one’s life, what did seriously damaged Primordial Qi matter?

Even with a temperament honed over nearly two hundred years, he couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement at this moment.

This was because among all the poisoned cultivators, the disciples of his Ancient Sword Sect were the most numerous!

Because the Ancient Sword Sect practiced the Sword Dao, its disciples were basically all Sword Cultivators,

and since a Sword Cultivator’s strength was fundamentally concentrated in their sword,

while this granted them immense killing power that surpassed cultivators of the same level, it also left them lacking in defensive abilities, making them more susceptible to being afflicted by Gu Insects.

During this time,

the Sect’s Sword Cultivators, with their weak defensive measures, had lost a batch of elites.

If Shen Changchuan could resolve this matter, he would undoubtedly save the Sect from immense losses!

”Then I will do my best.”

...

「Five days passed in the blink of an eye.」

During these five days,

Shen Changchuan repeatedly controlled Xiaojin, sending it into the bodies of the poisoned cultivators to expel the Gu Insects within them.

At the same time,

after the Gu Insects were expelled,

dedicated personnel would administer Healing Elixirs, like the Rejuvenation Pill, to these poisoned cultivators, who were so weak they couldn’t even move.

Furthermore, healer-cultivators who practiced with Wood Attribute Magical Power would help them regulate and recover a small fraction of their Primordial Qi.

This was to at least ensure that these cultivators, whose bodies had been tormented to the brink of death, wouldn’t just drop dead immediately after the Exorcising Gu due to the immense drain on their Primordial Qi.

However, this part had little to do with Shen Changchuan.

He was solely responsible for expelling the Gu Insects from the cultivators’ bodies, a task that already consumed a great deal of his energy. The follow-up care had to be left to others.

In five days,

performing one exorcism after another,

Shen Changchuan completed the Exorcising Gu for a total of three hundred and ninety-three people.

Among them,

twenty-one died instantly after the procedure because the Gu Insects had multiplied so much within them that their bodies were already eaten hollow.

And apart from these three hundred and ninety-three people,

there were another sixty-eight

who seemed to be afflicted with some kind of microbial Gu Insect, invisible to the naked eye, which Xiaojin was unable to expel.

Of course,

it wasn’t as if they were completely out of options.

Seeing the desperate eyes of those weak, dying cultivators for whom the exorcism had failed,

and noticing that one of them was an Outer Disciple from the Dragon Cloud Sect,

Shen Changchuan couldn’t bear it and, as a last-ditch effort, suggested they try injecting alcohol-purified Penicillium mold into their blood vessels.

’I can only take a gamble.’

’The worlds are different; I have no idea if something like penicillin even exists here.’

’And even if it does, I don’t know the proper purification process.’

’But an impure version should be fine.’

’After all, the ones poisoned are all cultivators.’

’Their constitutions are different from ordinary people’s.’

’Besides, with Immortal Cultivation elixirs and magic like the Rejuvenation Pill and Rejuvenation Technique, a little toxicity should be fine, right?’