Arthur clutched his side, breathing hard. He felt his life’s blood pumping out, the warm slickness of the liquid slipping between his fingers. Every short and fast breath he took made Arthur all too aware of the broken ribs.
“You fool!” Amah Si was by his side, skidding to a stop. “You stupid idiotic man! I had it!” She yanked a bandage from her bag, pushing his hand aside as she forced it on his wound.
“You. Had. Nothing,” Arthur snarled. “I won’t. Let anyone. Die.”
“Then you’ll let everyone die. Eventually. You’re a leader, not a damn hero!” Amah snarled back, shoving the bandage even harder and eliciting a cry of pain from Arthur. She kept it pressed tight, even as his breathing deepened and energy began to flow from her arm.
“I. Can be. Both,” Arthur panted around the pain, even as he felt the healing energy suffuse him. “Have to be both.” Then, as the pain subsided a little, added. “You can heal?”
“A little. Not enough. . .” Amah’s voice had trailed off, for her energy was questing in him. Mingling with his own Accelerated Healing method which had already begun the process of fixing him. Blood had clotted fast, split ends of capillaries and veins and arteries having curled up, compressing themselves to decrease the loss of blood. “What is this?” she asked.
“Accelerated. Healing.” Arthur had to close his eyes, for the loss of blood was making him weak. He found himself pouring refined energy into the technique, attempting to heal himself. But the technique was only at Grade II level, its method unrefined and unfocused. It tried to do too much at once, not just heal his wound but also fight the poison within him.
Sinking deep into his body, sensing the cultivation technique he was wielding with greater alacrity, Arthur embraced the pain and the floating sensation. The coldness of a Yin Body allowed him to clinically judge the situation, to grasp the greater danger.
Now, he just had to fix it.
Ignore the wounds on his arm or the creeping Yin-based poison that was leeching his energy and attempting to put him to sleep. Contain it, to where it could not do greater harm like reaching his heart or brain. Instead, focus on the still-bleeding wound in his side.
He felt the strands of energy weaving themselves. At first, Arthur attempted to stop them from flowing to his other wounds, using blocks like the one he formed for the poison to reroute the energy.
The energy built up, growing more intense behind the barriers he had created, eating away at the blocks he had created. At the same time, the pain in his arms, and along his hip where he had picked up a cut, somehow intensified. He groaned, collapsing at the same time as the blocks gave way.
Shouts from above, outside him. He felt warm hands gripping him, laying him down, but Arthur’s focus was not on them but deeper within. The blood at his side kept flowing outwards even as it failed to clot properly.
Not blocks then. Guidance?
He reached for the energy as it exited his dantian, attempting to grasp and lead it directly to his wounded side. Not all of it, for the mental grasp he had of the energy was slippery. Prone to escaping as he worked to move it in the direction he needed.
More than once, he would pull and pressure the energy upward from the dantian to his side, only for it to fall away. Yet, as it did so, he noticed that the energy kept moving, branching along unseen meridians to keep flowing.
Meridians . . .
He reached into them then, knowing that the flow of energy through the meridians in his body was how it shifted, changed to become more or less aspected for certain kinds of uses. He tugged at the lines that glowed brightest, opening up the channels that led to his wound.
The energy that had struggled against his grip earlier slipped through his meridians with ease. It no longer needed his bidding, a portion of the energy itself seeming alive and hungering to do its job. It reached the site of the wound. Injuries that weren’t along its path slowed in their self-healing, because he could only dedicate so much refined energy at one time.
The blood that had been pouring out of his side slowed and then stopped, the wound beginning to stitch together. Realising what might occur, Arthur moved to push Amah’s hand away, only to find the older woman already extracting the bandage herself. At the same time, Amah Si had her head cocked to the side, as if listening to the wound itself.
“Fascinating,” she muttered, her own energy pulsing through his. Her energy flow had slowed, trickling to a much-reduced rate as Arthur himself took over the work of healing his wounds. Her lips moved wordlessly, and even if Arthur had the presence of mind to try lip-reading her, the occasional audible word indicated she was speaking in Malay. And rapidly too.
More importantly, Arthur was battling his own body. While the pain had decreased as the body healed, he found himself with an entirely new problem. Forcibly prying open portions of his own meridian network had created a gap that his own energy rushed to fill. He could feel the refined energy within his core trickle away, disappearing at a rapid rate as more energy than ever flowed through him.
Right now, it was healing him, but what happened when the initial injury was over? What happened when all the injuries were healed? Would the energy continue running, without pause? Isn’t that how cancer happened? And that aside, what would happen when his core ran out of refined energy?
Would his core break? Or would it attempt to drain unrefined energy directly from his body and soul?
Rather than answer those questions directly, Arthur did his best to forestall the need to find out. He worked on his meridians, attempting to close a smaller branch off from the gushing energy. At first, pushing against the energy did not work; the energy simply poured around his mental block. Only when he pinched his meridians shut, the action a weird flexing of muscles he had never even known he had, did the energy pouring through him slow down.
Noting that the majority of the damage to his side had been dealt with, the veins and arteries stitched together, Arthur turned his attention to the rest of his body. He worked as quickly as he could to slow down the gushing energy, gripping and squeezing meridians one after the other even as his refined energy levels dropped precipitously.
Moments before it was entirely drained, he managed to shut down the runaway cultivation exercise, leaving him to release a long-held breath of relief. As he relaxed, exhaustion and blood loss swarmed him, pulling him down into the land of noctis.
Just ahead of a notification that the Tower was pressing upon him.