61 Betting It All On The Absurd (1/2)
Elizabeth's eyes snapped open as she once more felt the totality of her Inner Strength return. She glanced over at Jane's current state and gave out a sigh of relief. Even after all the time she spent recovering, Jane's Dantian hadn't continued that much further into its impending implosion. Naturally, this meant that she wouldn't have to trouble herself that much more.
Thus, Elizabeth drew a familiar Taiji symbol on Jane's exposed torso with her needles. Even as Elizabeth placed needle after needle into Jane's various acupoints, she felt that her movements were too slow, this being the case even if in reality anyone watching her would stand wide-eyed and mouth agape by virtue of her speed.All it took was a quick 3 or so seconds and by then all of Elizabeth's needles were prepped and ready to receive energy.
However… As Elizabeth began the mending process, it immediately became apparent that Jane's end was about to be realized! ”Fuck!” Elizabeth cursed, hateful that the crystallization in Jane's Dantian expanded at a rate just barely faster than her speed of restoration. All she could do now was just delay the inevitable, as Jane's Dantian did as her technique originally intended!
It was a shame as this would have been a moment Jane herself had been eagerly anticipating. Little did she know that when her breakthrough to ascend past the Soldier Stage came, so too would she breathe her last breath…
But! Elizabeth wasn't about to give just because the conventional method of treating Jane lost its value. Rather, she would continue on with the unorthodox, using what she knew from the path of medicine as well as her newfound knowledge of Jane's cultivation technique to figure something out.
Elizabeth squinted her eyes in half guilt for the horrific damage she was about to instill on Jane's unconscious body as she started stimulating Jane's energy along a somewhat jagged and loose alternative energy cycling route she had thought up. If Jane were up and about, there was no telling how painful a state she'd be in as Elizabeth drove her energy through the burnt and torn up remains of her meridians and acupoints. Alas, now that the option to heal Jane by healing her Dantian directly was invalid, this was the second best method Elizabeth could think of.
Unfortunately, even with a new path laid out before her, Elizabeth wasn't having an easy time treating Jane as she now had to work extra hard to drive foreign energy all whilst healing Jane's Dantian on the side.
She thought up the path of where she'd be driving Jane's energy based on more reasonable release points where the cold could leave Jane's body at the extremities of her body. Avoiding the center of her body as well as her head, startling cold and heavy bursts of energy could be felt gushing out of Jane's hands and feet. To a certain extent, the frigid coldness could be visibly detected by the normal naked eye as it interacted with the relatively tame temperature of Elizabeth's room and phased into a hazy mist.
For a while, this second best method worked plenty fine… Gradually, with less coldness invading Jane's Dantian, Elizabeth was managing to slowly undo the crystallization process. Alas, Elizabeth wasn't the type of expert that could instantly reverse engineer a cultivation method and improve upon it at a moment's notice… Her attempt though valiant in intent lacked the experience and knowledge required to work seamlessly as even though her work was going just as planned, Jane's energy having not a bit of trouble cycling through the pathway she concocted, after a bit of time, the shortcomings of Elizabeth's shallow foresight began manifesting…
Unfortunately, for fear of causing new mistakes in the cultivation method's energy pathways, Elizabeth hadn't changed the cycling route of the energy she'd be driving too drastically. Now that various acupoints and meridians on Jane's body were starting to freeze over once more, she realized that her ”mistake” was discovered too late for her to mend over. If only she had introduced more release points placed within Yang Governing Medians into the pathway, perhaps, the cold energy would have been warded off long enough for the crystallization process to completely vanish and therein guarantee Jane's Dantian safety.
Now normally, Elizabeth would just enter a fit of cursing and continue on with whatever else there was for her to get through. But at the moment there were only two more options she could adopt. She could either prioritize Jane's life over everything else and directly move to remove the imploding Dantian from Jane's body, turning her into a cripple as a direct consequence. Or… She could take a ”small” risk to her personal safety and attempt to continue preserving Jane's martial ability. Only, the second option, if failed, wouldn't just harm Elizabeth, it would almost entirely guarantee that Jane died.
Elizabeth looked at the haggard and destitute state she had put Jane's body in and with that familiar glint of madness taking over her, she threw caution to the wind as option one became void. Elizabeth thought there wouldn't be a reason for Jane to live if she came out of the operation without a Dantian to continue cultivation anyway.