Chapter 228

  Legend of the Sage Alchemist (X)

  Lao Shun stared rather disinterestedly at the monkey performance being put on in front of him; if it wasn't so haplessly inane, he might have even applauded the entertainment value of it. Though he knew from the onset that the two morons in front of him had no means of 'curing' the young girl, life had become... dull.

  Dull in ways he never thought would happen, not to him at least.

  He was bored.

  Depressingly bored.

  He was almost 550 years old now and had finally begun understanding some of his Seniors who entombed themselves for centuries at a time, coming out only for a few decades to experience the new things in the world before 'falling back asleep' yet again.

  As such, any time an opportunity presented itself or something different, anything, really, he took it--as he took the one today.

  He barely stopped himself from giggling at their moronic theatrics: lighting up taol petals, soaking dyra seeds, and mixing yin and yang herbs without dissolving their harsh natures... if he'd been told these two had never so much as mixed a concoction together, he would have believed it.

  In no time, he knew, things would backfire--spittle of flames would erupt, and the young Madame would chase them out and profusely bow toward him, begging him to rescue that skeleton she calls her child.

  ... any moment, for certain.

  The theater show continued--yet there were no flames. The lit-up taol petals smelled the freshest they ever did, and he could visibly see the vapors opening up the girl's pores; the soaked dyra seeds melted into a cooling salve that seemed to stop the girl's vitality from leaking; and even the strange mixture of yin and yang herbs that should have become unstable at the moment of touch seemed to work in concert to bring forth a pandemonium of Life Qi.

  He tensed all his muscles to ensure he remained as indifferent-seeming as possible; he couldn't believe it, not one thing of what he was seeing.

  Though, naturally, none of this would actually 'cure' the girl, that was irrelevant--just those three things alone were enough for him to reevaluate both of them.

  And there were many more.

  For almost thirty minutes, he watched the duo take turns 'ruining' medicinal ingredients, yet somehow managing to evoke a different pattern from them. He couldn't believe it--none of it.

  Even as the woman asked questions, that child answered them so clearly--by lying through his teeth. Within two sentences, it became evident he wasn't even a Body-Rank Initiate, the lowest level of an Alchemist.

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  And yet, he spoke with such confidence and bravado that even Lao Shun nearly bought into it. Pulling himself out, he took a deep breath to calm down.

  Taking that boy in as merely a servant will be a waste--as someone who loathed the politics of the Alchemy Tower, where resources were allocated not based on merit but on political pull, he'd been shelved to the side for centuries, given the bare minimum. Most of what he had he had to earn by himself; he was happy if the Tower simply never interfered.

  But if he had that boy with him? Would his future not be completely different?

  Despite all the miracles they've performed, it was futile--though the theater of it was improving the girl's condition, it was all temporary. They were simply force-sealing her vitality inside of her body, something he could have done, too. No, something that was done dozens of times before. It had probably even been relatively effective at some earlier point, but, by now, they'd at most be able to buy a few days with this method.

  The girl cannot be cured, as she was not sick.

  He'd seen this condition before--several times, actually. There was a parasite eating away at her Life Qi, storing it somewhere in the city. He'd been searching for it ever since he came here, but to no avail.

  In previous cases, all he could do was watch the kids die, withering away like trees in the fall. It wasn't just him, either; even the more Senior members of the Tower were helpless when it came to this 'disease'. There was no cure besides the theoretical one--finding the parasite and ending the bond.

  "Step back for a moment!" the child announced seriously as he stepped toward the bed, taking out a strange-seeming needle. It was long and thin, deeply black to the point it seemed to swallow all light. Just then, he seemed to 'stab' it between the girl's eyes, though the needle never actually made contact with the skin--nonetheless, at that precise moment, as though ordained by fate, black plumes and vapors shot out from that precise spot and into the air, almost like smoke.

  Within a breath, Lao Shun realized--the girl was 'cured'.

  He shot up to his feet and ran over, grabbing the girl's wrist and inspecting her body; it was gone. The teeming bond with the parasite was cut.

  Impossible.

  His eyes darted over to the young child who was staring back at him with a sneer. Ignoring the other two--as they certainly had no clue what was happening--he couldn't wrap his mind around it.

  "... leave us," he ordered in a cold tone, never breaking the eye contact.

  "Master Lao, what--"

  "If you don't leave immediately, I will kill both of you on the spot."

  "Just go, you two. It's fine." The child hurried them out; he'd been holding something in the palm of his hand all this while, likely a defensive treasure of sorts, but Lao Shun had no intention of harming him.

  Why would he?

  He'd just found his lifeline.

  "I'm not opposed to it," the child said.

  "Opposed to what?"

  "Reneging on the bet," he said. "Just pay a few Spirit Stones, and we can forget about it."

  "Those two morons clearly weren't helping you," Lao Shun said. "So, who was it? Who helped you find the parasite?"

  "...!" he pulled back, an expression of shock on his face. "What, what are you talking about?"

  "The moment I arrived," Lao Shun said, ignoring the boy at last and turning toward the girl. Almost immediately, her complexion had turned ever so rosier. She wasn't healed--of course not. But she was saved. "I immediately recognized what it was. A parasite, feeding on her vitality. When that woman told me it's been years, a simple inspection revealed that this pathetic little thing has a truly rare constitution, one ripe with Life Qi. But even so, she was waning. Withering away. Using ginseng, I was planning on buying a few months of time while I located the parasite... but there were no traces. No signs.

  "So, young one," he turned back toward the child. "How exactly did you find it, pray tell?"