Progress was being made.

Yi Ming had coasted through life as an extraordinary talent born from the moderately wealthy Yi Clan. Having reached Foundation Establishment at the age of twenty-five, at a time when such a feat was unprecedented even among the highest of talents, he lived a self-important life.

The century he spent in military service of the Empire had even risen him to the Nascent Soul stage well before his second century of living, proving how much of a talent he was. No pills, special physique, bloodline or bodily alteration. Just pure, unadulterated talent.

In his blood-soaked formative years, he would admit that it was in the fire of battle and in the blood of his enemies that he first discovered a tiny, minuscule spark of a Dao. Instinctively, he knew that it was blood. The Dao of Blood, something no other Nascent Soul stage cultivator had ever managed to achieve enlightenment from.

Numerous experimentation and copious bloodletting gave him all sorts of information regarding blood. Eventually, he discovered a medical miracle. Inside blood, there were tiny organisms of such small stature, comparing one to a dust mote would be the same as comparing a bull to a mountain. Eventually, he learned the function of these microbes, gave them names and realized the part that blood played in the body.

Even then, he wasn’t any closer to reaching enlightenment. He knew everything there was to know about blood, every microbe, shape and chemical make-up of them. He even single-handedly constructed a table of chemical elements to give names to some of the building blocks found in the microbes, a table radically different to an alchemist compendium.

He made no progress then.

When a man half a millennium his junior pointed that he was wrong and imparted pure humility in him was when he began to make progress. The Dao of Blood was empty, it was a misnomer, and names mattered. Especially Names. The Dao of Life encompassed his research plus many things more.

And when that very same junior brother suggested he wrote a book about his research to maybe further his own Dao, he did. He also summoned all his friends and colleagues fellow admirers of the natural sciences and gave each of them a copy of his tomes.

And at that moment, Yi Ming had pushed the City into a new age of medical enlightenment. Yi Ming made a clear difference between medicine for cultivators and mortals.

Cultivators were of the heaven, capable of harnessing heavenly energies. They had no use for elaborate medicines because Qi is the only medicine they need. All they need aside from that is the correct know-how on where to apply it.

Mortal medicine was infinitely harder. Mortals were brittle. Even a single breath seemed to be able to destroy them. They could not regenerate limbs or destroy errant tumors with but a thought. Mortals were bound by their imperfect vessels until they learned to perfect themselves and reach towards the heavens.

But alas, everything had its reasons for existing. Mortals aren’t inherently worse than cultivators. Mortals aren’t pointless and superfluous. Mortals are required to balance the cosmic scales. That much was a truth that he instinctively knew, and so it could never be a waste of time to study the medicine of a mortal. Especially after the incident with Shao Lei, an episode he liked to reminisce on. So many broken pieces mended together satisfied Yi Ming almost to the point of wanting to half-destroy another mortal and fix them up, but Yi Ming didn’t.

His friend had affected him, granted him a set of morals he was sure he had abandoned on the first few days of his century of service. Power gained through any means necessary wasn’t real power. To truly reach the Dao, he had to restrict himself. Humans were auspicious creatures, granted the best vessel to reach enlightenment. Driven by desire, they can also rise above them and set restrictions on themselves. Principles that they must follow and Yi Ming did that, inventing a Hippocratic oath.

He shall harm no soul to further his own research, not even ones that are willing to subject themselves to him. All of his research should come from healing others.

This incentivized him to orchestrating mass healing. In the outer districts, in the places where wounded and discarded war veterans came to rest, he let his healing glow diagnose them before exerting a minuscule amount of Qi to correct whatever issues they may have had. Everywhere he passed, he did so.

Missing limbs, shattered and disfigured bones, infections, tumors, none stood a chance before Yi Ming’s indiscriminate cleanse.

When it was all over, he invited his colleagues over to visit him once more, curious to see what they had made of his research.

Obviously, because they had nothing productive to add, they simply opted to use backhanded remarks, near-undetectable slights, and subtle barbs to undermine his opinion as the ‘perennial half-step’, ignoring the fact that he had, indeed, broken through.

He really didn’t know what he expected.

In his study, he wrote a treatise on immortality.

'Cultivators below Immortal Ascension are by and large still mortals but aren’t referred to as so, whether out of arrogance or easier identification. Both, however, (mortals and cultivators, that is) each have their own consequences to reaching the end of their longevity or natural lifespan.'

'Mortals are invariably tall towers.' He paused before continuing to write. 'Despite how long they stand, they will eventually wear and tear to the point where collapse is inevitable. Mortals don’t die simply because they run out of time. When a Mortal’s body was old enough, they would begin to develop tumors, their bones will be weakened, organs susceptible to failure, minds deteriorating, Qi drainage and many other things under the sun. It is death by a thousand cuts, and taking care of all symptoms as they arrive with a Godly capability would theoretically allow a Mortal to live forever.

'Theoretically.

'The presence of Qi in mortals is vital as long as there is a small amount to energize organs and vitality receptors, but other than that, Qi is largely irrelevant.

'Cultivators are wholly different. Once they have set their paths on the Immortal’s Journey, their bodies have gone through a completely qualitative change. Qi is now relevant to their physiology.

'Eventually, once they reach the average end of a cultivator’s lifespan in their stage, the Qi in their dantian will seep out rapidly, like a broken glass vessel, and this will kill the cultivator. It is not just a lack of Qi, but the dantian that collapses completely beyond any type of cultivation crippling.'

His pen paused when he heard a sound from behind him. Looking behind himself, he saw a naked man wreathed by coiling lightning protecting his modesty.

“Yi Ming, the ‘Blood Dragon Patriarch’,” He spoke succinctly, his voice resonating with the lightning to form a strange inflection.

“You have the right person,” Yi Ming smiled. “How can I help you, fellow Dao Seeker Leigong?”

“Your presence is requested by the Great One.”

Yi Ming stood up slowly and nodded his head. “I take it he wants to peruse the new arrival?”

Leigong clicked his tongue. “You are not to assume his words. Come.”

Yi Ming chuckled. “I suppose I’ll be seeing Junior Brother Lao Chen where we are going?”

Leigong shook his head. “Not likely. Now come.”

The visitor removed the pendant on a necklace on him and crushed it, summoning a vortex mid-air.

“The Great One does not enjoy waiting.”

Yi Ming raised an eyebrow. “Would he kill me if I said no?”

Leigong smiled. “We are not incapable of doing so.”

With a sigh, he approached the vortex and dipped a hand inside. Deeming it safe, he entered fully, appearing in what looked to be a cloud where a court of flying individuals stood still with a blond, long-haired man with a beautiful smile in the middle.

“The Blood Dragon has arrived,” the man smiled. “Welcome, fellow Dao Seeker. I am Du Yen."