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Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈

Chapter 57: The Records Officer's Cleanup (3)

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The special physician checked the pulse at my wrist, fetched some long needles, and inserted them near my head. After making me sit and stand several times, he finally looked at me with intense interest.

"You're certainly doing a little better than last time."

"I knew it! How much has my lifespan increased?"

When I had first been carried out of Soul-Severing Mountain Villa, I had been told I would die in about a year. Now it was two years, perhaps even five if I was lucky...!

"By about three months, I suppose."

"What?"

A sense of injustice welled up inside me.

"How can that be all I got after swallowing an Anomaly the size of a house whole?!"

"You likely took in far more turbid qi to begin with. But didn't you use it up during the fight?"

I looked over the passage in the investigation report before me again.

'With the limit of internal energy approaching, contact was made with Paoxiao as a desperate gamble, and it was defeated by using the Demon-Breaking Vajra Art (Note: unrelated to the Star-Absorbing Great Method).'

Fair enough. I had been desperately short on usable internal energy, so short that I had to use the turbid qi immediately without properly refining what I had absorbed.

If I had had time to use my cultivation method and refine the turbid qi, shaping it into a form that could harmonize with my martial arts, I would not have spent so much internal energy.

Clicking my tongue in regret, I remembered the strange phenomenon that had occurred when I focused the turbid qi absorbed from Paoxiao directly into my eyes.

The ghostfire burning in Paoxiao's heart, revealed when I forced unrefined turbid qi into my eyes.

"Come to think of it, something unusual happened."

"Something unusual?"

After hearing my explanation, the special physician nodded. He stroked his beard as he spoke.

"I see. So this is the difference between the internal energy gained by eating an Anomaly and directly absorbing an Anomaly's internal energy."

"What's the difference between eating it with my mouth and eating it through my palm?"

"Do you know the original purpose of the Grain-Avoidance Pill?"

In martial arts novels, Grain-Avoidance Pills were often depicted as complete meals that supplied every nutrient, including carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, even if one ate nothing but them day and night during secluded cultivation.

But their original purpose could not have been as meal replacements for secluded cultivation.

...Well, they were cultivation meal replacements. It would be more accurate to say that their use was not limited to secluded cultivation.

"I understand they were a secret formula created by Daoists cultivating the practice of abstaining from grains."

"Precisely. Cooked food causes fire qi to accumulate in the acupoints, which is harmful. They were made so one could avoid fish and meat, set one's essence right, and create a body more suited to the Dao of Immortality."

That explained the meaning behind the act of eating. Just as eating food exposed to fire caused fire qi to accumulate in the body, digestion naturally allowed the qi contained in food to settle within the body.

"Put another way, when people digest food, their bodies naturally expel impurities other than the qi that should settle within them."

That was another new perspective. Just as martial artists converted natural qi into their own internal energy through cultivation methods, digestion was the most fundamental means by which the body purified and absorbed qi.

"The kind of qi a person needs differs according to their constitution, so the specific means of regulating what one eats and drinks should naturally differ from person to person. Yet regardless of the food, it undergoes a round of filtration as it enters the mouth and passes through the stomach."

That was why the Anomalies I had eaten with my mouth, such as the Feathered-Human Gu and heavenly peach, had been purified once, becoming more like internal energy I could freely control.

The turbid qi I had absorbed from Paoxiao was different. It had entered my body in its raw form without undergoing that purification process, retaining its nature as an Anomaly.

"With your constitution, it will naturally assimilate after you use your cultivation method a few times. Still, this is fascinating. To think that using an Anomaly's original turbid qi... its Demonic Qi directly could have such an effect."

The Eccentric Physician continued muttering to himself for quite some time.

Was it because the Star-Absorbing Great Method had connected me to the flow of the Anomaly's Demonic Qi that I could see that ghostfire? Or had using Demonic Qi itself granted my eye technique the ability to perceive an Anomaly's core?

His curiosity as both a physician and martial artist seemed endless. The Eccentric Physician picked up a notebook from the records room and rapidly wrote down his questions.

"Good! One day, let's set aside some time and truly research this. I've never seen a normal human handle Demonic Qi like you do!"

"Uh... aren't you worried that I'll lose my mind during an experiment?"

The special physician grinned.

"If things go wrong, the Director will drive the malignant spirit out of your head."

He looked far too pleased. I asked without thinking.

"Oh. Then I suppose my body has become quite stable."

"Hm? What do you mean by that?"

"If I waste internal energy, my lifespan will shorten, but you weren't worried about that."

The Eccentric Physician's face stiffened before he let out a short cry.

"Oh, blast!"

"What?"

* * *

"My apologies. That's what happens when one gets old."

I held the back of my neck. At least the flaw had been noticed while the experiment was still only being planned.

I had nearly died of qi depletion, not because Demonic Qi had spread into my marrow during an experiment and I had to be put down.

Trying to hide my devastated expression, I turned my gaze back to the investigation report and spoke.

"Th-then. Please tell me exactly what condition my body is in."

The words, "Shouldn't you perform Golden Basin Handwashing if you're that old?" rose to the tip of my tongue, then fell away.

He was senior to me in both generation and realm, and he had saved my life, so I could not go so far as to mock him.

The latter reason weighed much more heavily than the former. Probably.

"What happens if you pour water into a bottomless jar?"

"It spills out."

The special physician explained that my acupoints were in such a state. No matter how much water, in other words, internal energy, I poured in, the vessel that was my acupoints was damaged, so it could only leak away.

"Then what should you do if you want to fill a bottomless jar with water?"

A koan from a film I had seen on Earth came to mind. I answered without much thought.

"Wouldn't you throw it into a pond full of water?"

I expected an immediate response, but even after some time passed, I heard nothing from the special physician.

I turned my head. His eyes had widened in surprise, as if he had heard an answer he had never imagined.

"Throw it into a pond... If it sinks into a place full of water, even if water keeps leaking out, it would be no different from being full? Since inside and outside are the same, emptiness and fullness cannot be distinguished."

I instinctively realized that I should not speak.

Moments of enlightenment required silence.

Before long, the special physician's gaze, which had been fixed somewhere far away, returned to the present.

The moment I noticed it, I delivered the line I had prepared. Something I had learned back in my days as a wandering martial artist.

"Congratulations on your enlightenment. Now the White-Robed Miracle Physician's name will shake the entire martial world..."

Life at work was easier when you stayed on the good side of important people.

The special physician gave me an incredulous look.

"Do you think I've gained some enlightenment into the Mystic Realm?"

"Uh. You didn't?"

"An enlightenment it is, but it lies in a somewhat different direction from martial arts. If I had to say, it is closer to medicine."

The special physician briefly touched his chin, then muttered, "No. Since I am a martial artist, it may yet connect to martial arts." Then he gave a frank smile.

"But not right now."

His smile faded. With a solemn expression, the special physician clasped his hands in salute toward me.

"Thanks to you, I've found a clue to a problem I've been probing for a long time. Thank you."

I silently nodded. There was no reason to spoil it when an important person was grateful to me.

"Then from now on, please prioritize the patient's well-being when researching martial arts."

"Come now. Do you take me for someone who uses people so carelessly? You are such an exceptional case that I became a little impatient, but I am a physician filled with compassion who cherishes people by nature."

"...Isn't that the sort of thing people say when they're trying to defend themselves because they have a guilty conscience?"

The special physician confidently denied it.

"If I truly had such an impatient nature, would the Black Lotus Society not have taken me?"

That was an argument worthy of admiration.

* * *

The special physician gave me a detailed answer to the question I had asked.

For the analogy of the bottomless jar, he had thought of two answers.

Either pour in water faster and in greater quantities than it could spill out, or patch the broken part of the jar.

"In your case, both apply. The part of the Demonic Qi replacing your True Origin Qi can be seen as repairing the broken jar, while absorbing natural qi through circulation and breath regulation is filling it with water."

Both were the right direction, so the special physician's diagnosis was that I should continue as I had been.

He also kindly explained that although I had absorbed Demonic Qi through the Demon-Breaking Vajra Art, it would naturally be purified whenever I used my cultivation method, so there was no need to worry about Demonic Qi invading my body.

Each time the flow of the Lesser Heavenly Circuit began in my lower dantian and circulated through the Conception Vessel and arteries, the Demonic Qi would gradually be diluted and filtered between my existing internal energy and the internal energy newly received from nature.

"That aside, how about gathering the Demonic Qi remaining in your body separately?"

"What?"

That was the Eccentric Physician's diagnosis.

Author's Note (Afterword)

I, too, merely threw you bottomless jars into my heart. - Hi, Dharma! (2001)

Footnotes:

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