Chương 26: Chapter 15 Part 2

Evanthe couldn't answer. Her jaw locked shut with bone-breaking force as her entire body violently arched backward, suspended in a rictus of unimaginable agony. Her skin, previously pale and cool to the touch, instantly became blisteringly hot, radiating a feverish, lethal heat that physically warped the air around her in shimmering waves. Beneath her flesh, her veins began to bulge in terrifying, jagged, and aggressive patterns, crawling up her slender neck and spider-webbing across her cheeks.

They weren't the natural blue or green of human anatomy; they throbbed with a sickening, blackish-red hue, looking exactly like a network of cracked, dry earth leaking boiling magma. Her fragile lungs seized. Her chest heaved frantically in a desperate, failing bid for oxygen, culminating in a violent, rattling cough that tore her throat. Dark, corrupted blood splattered violently onto the pristine, polished wooden floorboards of the pavilion.

It was thick, dangerously viscous, and literally steaming in the cool morning air, hissing as it burned into the wood. In a blur of motion so impossibly fast it completely defied human perception, Ming Xuan Ji was kneeling beside her. The composed, untouchable grandmaster, the aloof immortal who observed the world from a high peak, was instantly gone. In her place was a worried master.

"[Divine Eye of Veritas]!" Xuan Ji commanded, her voice ringing out with a commanding authority that seemed to silence the very wind in the garden. Instantly, Xuan Ji's dark, abyssal eyes flared with an intense, piercing golden light. The skill activated at full capacity, completely bypassing the physical, mundane barrier of flesh, muscle, and bone to reveal the truth of Evanthe's internal spiritual state. What Xuan Ji saw made the blood in her veins run completely cold.

The human spiritual network was a remarkably delicate, intricate thing, explicitly requiring years of meticulous, painful body-tempering to reinforce and stabilize. A martial cultivator was supposed to slowly, patiently widen their meridians over a decade, gradually strengthening the internal walls with mild, ambient Qi until they were thick and resilient enough to handle higher, lethal concentrations of power. But Evanthe was only fourteen years old.

She had never practiced a single day of foundational body-tempering in her entire life aside from a normal workout routine. Through the piercing golden lens of the Divine Eye, Xuan Ji could see the brutal, horrifying, and irreversible reality of Thorne's forced awakening. The Heavenly Killing Star constitution was a legendary and rare phenomenon, generating internal Qi so dense, so aggressively and uncompromisingly Yang-aligned, that it was practically corrosive to mortal flesh.

By violently ripping the floodgates of her soul open with his dark blood ritual, Thorne had entirely bypassed the required years of physical preparation. Evanthe's mortal meridians looked exactly like dry, incredibly brittle glass tubes trying desperately to contain a raging, pressurized river of acid. Xuan Ji watched in horror as the crimson energy raged and tore through the primary pathway in Evanthe's chest.

The walls of the meridian weren't just struggling to contain the overwhelming pressure; they were physically, violently fracturing. Microscopic, glowing fissures spider-webbed aggressively along the delicate spiritual pathway. With every agonizing, frantic heartbeat, boiling, corrosive Qi leaked out through the cracks, dripping directly onto Evanthe's unprotected internal organs. It was a catastrophic, total failure of the spiritual architecture.

The sheer density and heat of the legendary constitution was acting exactly like a violent parasite, rapidly consuming its host from the inside out. The martial diagnosis was immediate, harsh, and utterly indisputable. If this rapid spiritual decay was left unchecked for even a few more minutes, Evanthe wouldn't just lose her ability to cultivate martial arts. The micro-fissures would trigger a violent cascade.

The primary meridian would shatter entirely, the Dantian would violently collapse, and the girl would literally burn up from the inside out, reduced to a pile of steaming ash.

"Damn it," Xuan Ji cursed aloud, a raw, guttural sound of unadulterated fury that she had not uttered since arriving in this world.

"Thorne, you son of a bitch. You broke her foundations to force the awakening." Ming Xuan Ji's knowledge about rare constitution has only come from the game lore. Facing the physical reality of it, she was out of her depth. Evanthe whimpered, a small, broken sound, her body curling involuntarily into a tight, trembling ball as another violent cough wracked her fragile frame, bringing up a fresh wave of steaming, dark blood.

"Hold on to me, Ev! Do not close your eyes!" Xuan Ji ordered, her hands moving with blinding, surgical speed. Without a single second of hesitation, Xuan Ji pressed both of her pale palms flat against Evanthe's back, positioning them directly over the exact center of the collapsing meridian. She knew she couldn't magically heal the cracks; raw Qi, no matter how profoundly powerful, could not instantaneously rebuild the shattered spiritual architecture of this magnitude, but she could forcefully freeze the decay.

She could buy them precious time. Xuan Ji completely closed off the violent, destructive Yang pathways of her Heavenly Demon arts. She ruthlessly bypassed the internal fire and the blood, diving deep into the darkest, coldest abysses of her own Dantian to draw purely on the freezing Yin aspect of the Frost-Devouring Demon Qi.

"Brace yourself," Xuan Ji whispered fiercely, her jaw tight. A massive wave of pure, crystalline cold surged forcefully from Xuan Ji's palms directly into Evanthe's burning body. It was not a gentle, soothing healing art; it was a brutal and forceful suppression of the violent energy. Using the piercing vision of the Divine Eye to guide her, Xuan Ji visualized her freezing Yin Qi plunging deeply into Evanthe's chest.

She wrapped the absolute-zero energy tightly around the fracturing primary meridian like an icy, suffocating, and impenetrable cast. The extreme Yin clashed violently with the extreme Yang of the Heavenly Killing Star. The resulting internal metaphysical shockwave made Evanthe gasp loudly, her spine bowing backward as the two conflicting forces warred within her fragile frame. It required microscopic, terrifyingly flawless precision.

If Xuan Ji used even a fraction too much Yin, she would instantly freeze the blood in Evanthe's veins, shatter her heart, and kill her. If she used too little, the crimson fire would effortlessly melt through the ice and consume them both in a fiery explosion. Cold sweat beaded heavily on Xuan Ji's flawless forehead. Her teeth ground together in unwavering concentration as she waged a silent, desperate war inside her disciple's body.

Slowly, forcefully, inch by agonizing inch, she pushed the boiling crimson energy backward. She packed it tightly down into the depths of the Dantian, sealing the cracked, fragile meridian under a thick, impenetrable spiritual layer of heavy frost. Agonizingly, the terrifying, ambient heat began to recede. The blackish-red veins protruding starkly from Evanthe's neck and arms finally stopped pulsing, gradually fading back beneath her pale, sweat-slicked skin.

The violent, bone-breaking convulsions slowed to fine, rattling tremors. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. With a final, broken gasp for air, Evanthe's glowing eyes rolled back into her head, and she went completely limp, slipping gratefully into the merciful, painless embrace of deep unconsciousness. Xuan Ji caught the girl before her head could strike the hard wooden floorboards.

She sat there in the suddenly quiet pavilion for a very long time, holding Evanthe's slight, fragile frame securely against her chest. Her own breathing was heavy and ragged, the sheer mental exhaustion of executing the impossibly delicate, high-stakes procedure taking a massive toll on her focus. She looked down at the dark, corrupted blood staining the beautiful, polished wood of the pavilion. The paradigm of her existence in this world had fundamentally, violently changed.

This was no longer a casual exploration of a new reality. It wasn't just about training a promising disciple or treating the kingdom as an elaborate stage to test her martial prowess. The comfortable, detached illusion of being an untouchable wanderer had just been violently shattered. A lethal, ticking clock had just been slammed down onto the table. The stakes were no longer abstract concepts or personal amusement. They were warm flesh, fragile bone, and spilling blood.

She was holding a dying child in her arms, a child she had sworn to protect.

When Evanthe finally opened her eyes again, the harsh, bright light of the morning sun had shifted entirely to the muted, golden, and heavy hues of late afternoon. She was back in the massive, luxurious four-poster bed, tucked carefully beneath the thick, comforting silk sheets. For a long, terrifying moment, she didn't dare move a single muscle, paralyzed by the fear that any slight shift in her posture would reignite the agonizing liquid fire in her chest. She breathed in slowly. Out. The fire didn't return.

Instead, her entire body felt completely hollowed out, as weak, brittle, and fragile as blown glass. There was a lingering, deep-seated, and profound chill centered heavily in her chest, Xuan Ji's Yin Qi, acting as a frozen, desperate dam holding back the nightmare. Every beat of her heart felt sluggish, heavy, and cold against her ribs. She slowly, carefully turned her head against the plush silk pillows. Ming Xuan Ji sat in a high-backed velvet chair by the open balcony window. She wasn't meditating.

She wasn't practicing her breathing techniques or writing in her journal. She was simply staring out at the sprawling, golden skyline of the Royal Capital, her ethereal expression darker, colder, and more intensely, terrifyingly focused than Evanthe had ever seen it. The ambient air around her master felt dangerously heavy, suffocatingly charged with a silent, simmering fury that seemed to physically warp the very shadows gathering in the corners of the lavish bedroom.

Hearing the faint, whispering rustle of the silk sheets, Xuan Ji turned her gaze away from the glittering city and looked directly at the bed.

"You're awake," she said. Her voice was softer than usual, entirely stripped of its normal, arrogant, untouchable edge. Evanthe swallowed hard, the metallic, bitter, and foul taste of her own corrupted blood still clinging stubbornly to the back of her throat. A massive, crushing wave of profound shame and bottomless despair washed over her, thick and suffocating.

She had tried to do the simplest thing in cultivation, to merely circulate a single, tiny thread of energy, and she had instantly collapsed, coughing up blood like a dying, pathetic invalid. She was broken. She was utterly useless.

"Master..." Evanthe's voice cracked horribly, hot, stinging tears instantly welling up in her red eyes and spilling over her cheeks.

"I'm sorry. I failed you. I couldn't control it." Xuan Ji stood up immediately. She crossed the lavish, expansive room with silent, measured steps until she stood directly beside the edge of the bed. She looked down at the crying girl, her dark eyes entirely devoid of pity, but filled instead with an unwavering, fierce resolve that bordered on pure intimidation.

"You did not fail, Ev," Xuan Ji said firmly, cutting off the desperate apology with a sharp, decisive wave of her pale hand.

"What happened in the pavilion today had absolutely nothing to do with your willpower, your focus, or your martial talent. It was the unavoidable, physical reality of what Thorne did to you." Evanthe stared up at her, her lip trembling uncontrollably.

"What is wrong with me? Why did it burn so badly?" Xuan Ji did not sugarcoat the reality of the situation. She did not treat Evanthe like a fragile child who needed to be shielded from the harshness of the world with comforting lies. She treated her with the respect of a warrior facing a brutal, undeniable truth.

"The Heavenly Killing Star is a constitution of legendary, unparalleled power," Xuan Ji explained, pulling a velvet chair closer to the bed and sitting down, her gaze never leaving Evanthe's.

"But it is biologically meant to awaken naturally, over a rigorous decade of meticulously tempering the physical body. Thorne didn't have a decade. He violently forced the awakening with that blood ritual. In doing so, he flooded your mortal, entirely unrefined meridians with energy far too dense and far too hot for them to ever safely handle." Xuan Ji reached out, placing a cool, steadying hand against Evanthe's feverish, sweat-dampened forehead.

"Your spiritual pathways are physically cracking under the immense strain, Ev. If you try to cycle that energy, it leaks out of the channels. It burns your internal organs. It literally consumes you from the inside out." The horrific words hung in the quiet air of the bedroom, heavy and utterly terrifying. Evanthe felt the last, fragile, desperate remnants of her hope crumble into fine dust. She closed her eyes, the tears spilling over her lashes and soaking into the pristine silk pillows.

She thought of her father's kind, proud smile. She thought of the loyal guards who had died trying to defend their home. She thought of the sacred vow she had made in the mud of the ritual cave to wipe the Blood God cult from the face of the earth. All of it, slipping permanently through her fingers because her own body was fundamentally, irreparably destroying itself.

"I'm going to die," Evanthe whispered, her voice barely audible over the distant, bustling sounds of the vast city below them.

"I'm going to die before I can even lift a sword against them."

"No." The single syllable cracked like a steel whip through the quiet room. Evanthe flinched, her red eyes snapping open, startled by the sheer, undeniable, and overwhelming force of the word. Ming Xuan Ji leaned down, bringing her face mere inches from Evanthe's. Her dark eyes were blazing with a terrifying, apocalyptic intensity that completely chased the shadows from the corners of the room. In her place was a guardian. Fierce, uncompromising, and immovable.

"You are not going to die," Xuan Ji stated. It wasn't an empty comfort; it was an absolute law being violently written into existence by her sheer willpower.

"I pulled you out of that blood-soaked cave, Evanthe. You are my disciple; I have accepted you as my own. Do you really think I am going to let a botched ritual take you from me?" Evanthe's breath hitched in her frozen chest.

"But... my meridians... you said they were cracking."

"I have sealed the fissures with my own Yin Qi," Xuan Ji explained, straightening her posture, the tactical, fiercely calculating mind of a martial grandmaster clicking back into place.

"But it is a temporary fix. It violently suppresses the decay and it numbs the pain, but we are officially on a ticking clock. That ice seal will only hold for a month at the maximum before the Yang heat of your constitution inevitably melts through it." Xuan Ji turned her gaze back toward the open balcony window, looking out over the sprawling, gilded Royal Capital.

Beneath the wealthy, sunlit streets and the towering spires lay the yawning, black maw of the Grand Abyss Dungeon, a legendary, subterranean labyrinth of ancient secrets, terrifying monsters, and mythic, untouched materials.

"I cannot heal this level of physical destruction with raw Qi alone. The physical damage requires a physical catalyst to repair," Xuan Ji said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, deadly, and calculation.

"But this world is vast, and this city sits directly above the deepest, most dangerous dungeon in the Zareth Kingdom. There is a cure down there. The universe demands cosmic balance. Where there is extreme heat, there must be a source of extreme cold. There has to be." Xuan Ji looked back down at her disciple. The fierce, unyielding protectiveness in her eyes was a martial vow written in iron and blood.

"Rest tonight, Ev. Do not try to access your Dantian under any circumstances. Save your strength and let my Qi do its work."

"What happens tomorrow?" Evanthe asked, her voice trembling slightly, but this time, catching on a faint, desperate, and beautiful spark of genuine hope. Ming Xuan Ji's lips curved into a sharp, incredibly dangerous smile that promised apocalyptic devastation to any monster, man, or dungeon that dared stand in her way.

"Tomorrow," Xuan Ji said softly, the weight of the Heavenly Demon backing her words, "we find a cure."