Chapter 24: Screw My Life
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He had already gathered all the materials, and now all he had to do was refine the medicine that would help him fix his deformity.
The process itself required first preparing the pill, and then using its effects inside the body to fix only the part of the meridians that had the issue.
It wasn't like some magical pill that would find the deformity and fix it by itself.
It was just a tool through which it was possible to repair the deformity.
Normally, you'd need at least two people to perform the operation:
one to direct the pill's effects to the affected part of the body, and another to manually work on the meridians.
Unfortunately for him, he didn't have that kind of luxury, and he doubted he'd be able to find anyone in a short time who even had the slightest idea how to do the procedure.
He'd been lucky enough in his past life to meet someone who had performed this operation a couple of times.
That was the same person who discovered his problem and told him that for him, it was already too late.
Back then, he was still too stubborn and hadn't lost hope yet.
Just discovering what the problem was, and that there was a way to fix it, at least if it was discovered in time,
had been enough for him to believe there had to be a way to solve even the more drastic situations like his.
Too bad for him he never found the cure for his condition back then, but that knowledge was coming in handy now.
He could only grit his teeth as he went on to prepare the various ingredients for the medicinal pill.
Needless to say, doing everything by himself, and on his own body no less, was going to hurt like hell,
but after waiting five centuries for an opportunity like this, a bit of pain wasn't going to stop him.
He'd prepared a total of five ingredients for the pill, which were:
- Green Spirit Root (3 pieces)
- Evening Mist Grass (5 leaves)
- Calm Lake Mushroom (2 medium mushrooms)
- Essence of Moonflower Petal (10 drops)
- Spirit Salt Crystal (a pinch)
Most of them were all things you could comfortably find in any random medicinal herb store
He'd grabbed an extra portion of Calm Lake Mushroom for the sole reason that it would act as an anesthetic for him.
Its effect would be just enough to dull the pain a little, while making sure his mind didn't get too foggy, since he had to perform the operation and couldn't afford to lose focus.
Of course, the effects of the mushroom were nowhere near enough for what he'd need to endure the pain, but right now, there wasn't much else he could do.
He immediately ground the Evening Mist Grass Leaves and the Green Spirit Root and tossed them into the water he'd set boiling.
He didn't have a proper cauldron, so he made do with an iron pot from the dorm.
If any alchemist saw him trying to prepare a pill in a pot, they'd cough up two liters of blood on the spot.
With precise, fluid movements, he prepared each of the ingredients one by one and added them into the mixture in calculated doses.
In alchemy, dosage was everything, and it didn't take much for the final result to turn into something completely different.
Cases of rookie alchemists accidentally poisoning their subjects weren't rare at all.
Even he, at one point, ended up poisoning a client.
He still remembers how he blamed someone else back then just to avoid getting his head sent to the chopping block.
He spent a good 30 minutes refining the pill non stop, and finally, it was done.
Seeing the little pill sitting in front of him, he couldn't help but let out a long sigh as he wiped the sweat off his face.
He had to admit, preparing a pill in a cooking pot wasn't easy, especially when you were so used to letting your Qi handle most of the work.
"Great, now comes the hardest part," he muttered as he held the pill, ready to swallow it.
He still had plenty of doubts, but whenever he thought about how he'd lived all this time without being able to cultivate past a certain point, his blood started to boil.
So without hesitation, he popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
This wasn't something you could chew, you had to toss it down into your stomach and let it gradually release its medicinal effects from there.
He didn't waste a single second and immediately sat down cross legged on the floor, starting to cultivate.
He'd avoided cultivating all this time because he didn't want to make his condition worse.
After all, his past self had already begun cultivating, but thankfully he was still only at the very early stages, far from reaching the first realm.
So now, he used what little spiritual Qi he had in his body to intercept the medicinal effects of the pill that had started to spread.
He had to direct them into the series of main meridians that showed the mutation.
In a normal human body, there were 12 main meridians, each with over 300 opening points.
Basically, they were the main points where Qi flowed in and out of the body,
from there, the Qi would travel along the primary meridians that connected the various parts of the body, and more importantly, converged at the dantian.
Because of a deformed connection between his dantian and the Heart Meridian, every attempt to refine Qi would get interrupted, and a big part of the spiritual energy he gathered would be dispersed at that point.
The dispersion happened inside his body, causing pain that varied in intensity depending on how much spiritual energy leaked out.
Needless to say, the higher his cultivation level got, the worse and more agonizing it became for him.
He had to make sure the effects of the pill reached this path and arrived at the mutation point, then loosen the surrounding pathways enough for him to start working on it with his spiritual Qi.
A normal person wouldn't have nearly enough control over their Qi to pull off such a delicate operation, especially if they were still at the early stages of cultivation.
But he'd had more than enough time in his past life to train his control skills and was extremely confident in his abilities.
He guided the medicine's effects, slowly passing through several points until he finally reached the deformity.
He could form a mental image of the deformity, and when he saw it, his expression grew even darker.
"Haa… screw my life," he thought as he examined the extent of the deformity.
It was definitely less severe than in his past life, but to his surprise, it still wasn't exactly good either.
According to his calculations, if he'd cultivated even just a week longer, he would've gotten dangerously close to the point of no return.
He realized that the intensity of the operation had increased, and along with it, so would the pain.
He cursed in his mind every higher entity he could think of as he prepared to make the first cut.