Sage was leaking blood and Icesilver onto the ground. The dagger fell out of his hands, not bothering with his external conditions any longer, he had to focus completely on the changes happening within him. While he’d found a solution for the physical overload, the energy overload was barely at a standstill. He’d reach an equilibrium with the Blue Icesilver, adding just enough energy to counter the dilution of the ever growing mass inside his Dantian. It wasn’t good. He could only maintain this heightened state for so long, and worse yet, once the Blue Icesilver expanded to completely flood his Dantian and Meridians, it would get even stronger. Having progressed to this state, he could only resort to another risky plan.

He stopped sending energy into the Blue Icesilver. Without his Qi fighting it, it suddenly expanded through his Qi channels like a wildfire. It was what he was aiming for. It swept out towards his limbs and up his throat. As it reached the meridians in his mouth, he felt the change and quickly willed his third set of meridians into action. The flood of Blue Icesilver was suddenly diverted, drawn into that alternate pathway. The Blue Icesilver had been swallowed into his stomach, kept at the place that overlapped with his Dantian. When it spread through his energy system it started in his Dantian and followed his natural meridians. Now that it had spread into his mouth, it ran into the power of the Warp Worm.

The third set of meridians he’d created to handle incoming energy. The Warp Worm’s whole inner body was lined with this style of meridian set. It could absorb even the most harsh or dangerous of energies from anything that passed through its earthworm like body. It also had a matching physical body passage, letting it eat unusual and dangerous things, absorbing the dangerous energy and then ejecting the remainder from its tail. It was the ability that Sage enhanced and strengthened from the Refinery Worm. With his own body he’d done something similar, linking this third meridian set to a group of unusual organs all over his body.

Those unusual organs were adapted from the Fire Crested Iguana. They were the reason it could walk around all day with a crest of flame upon its head and back. They acted as modified Qi Pores, ones that were very efficient at releasing energy and could handle large amounts of power without any damage. The problem was that they didn’t have an off switch. They were always open. If he were to make a comparison, normal Qi Pores were like tiny water valves. A cultivator constantly trained their Qi Pores to make bigger and stronger valves, and their Qi channels were trained so they had larger pipes leading to those valves. The Qi Pores from the Fire Crested Iguana were more like nozzles, not just releasing a fluid, but controlling and altering the flow. Cultivators worked for years to train their Qi Pores to be efficient like these Qi Nozzles, shaping the output to give them more control.

Without any way to control them, they were too dangerous, and that’s why Sage had put them into their own separate meridian system. If he had these Qi Nozzles in place of his normal Qi Pores all of his energy would drain out in only a few minutes and he’d never be able to retain any of it, just venting it everywhere like his body had sprung hundreds of leaks. Thankfully, right now he needed just that sort of outlet. He couldn’t control the Blue Icesilver, so he couldn’t just direct it out of his body through his normal Qi Pores. Instead, he had to let it expand far enough to reach his mouth at which point the power of the Warp Worm sucked it up and fed it into his third meridian system. Then it was pushed out through his Qi Nozzles. He couldn’t control the Qi Nozzles or the Blue Icesilver, but he’d built blocks in the third meridian system, letting him redirect the flow to the nearest Qi Nozzle.

His shirt was torn open, ripped apart along his spine. Between each of the bones in his spinal column, a sort of pock mark appeared, and a frosty blue icicle poked out. As time passed, the tiny spikes slowly grew longer and larger. They tore right through his shirt and robes, and creating a very unusual looking sight behind him. The Qi Nozzles converted the Fire Crested Iguana’s Qi into burning flames without any control from the Iguana itself. The same happened with the Blue Icesilver, transforming the strange energy into a more destructive and external form.

With the pressure relieved for both his energy and physical body, Sage sent the full force of his Qi through the spike of Spirit Power and flooded into the Blue Icesilver once more. With the third meridian system to vent the growing amount of Icesilver, Sage finally had the advantage. The Blue Icesilver had built up to a huge level inside him, but it could no longer dilute his energy and it was now only a matter of time. As long as he could hold out long enough, he would be victorious.

Now all I have to do is not bleed to death, and hope my meridians don’t rupture.

Sage grit his teeth and soldiered on. He brought out one of the higher ranked recovery pills he’d picked up after nearly dying the last time. Blood Restoring Pill. It quite literally stimulated the body to create more blood, this world’s improvement on a blood transfusion. Hopefully it would keep him alive long enough for him to finish.

Time passed, and his Qi system was strained to the limit. The blue icicles spreading from his back had grown larger and merged together. Where Sage sat, it looked like he’d sprouted a peacock’s tail made of ice. A side view looked even more surprising, like a giant icy hedgehog had left behind its quills and Sage was sitting in front of them for a photo op. The forest of ice spikes was only part of the picture, the floor of the cave chamber was now submerged beneath a layer of blue liquid. Bits of red were marbled through it, the blood not mixing with the Blue Icesilver. Continuously spilling from his belly, Sage had downed multiple bottles of Blood Restoring Pills to stay conscious.

Finally, the Blue Icesilver was refined by him. Sage felt a strange sensation. Something slick and warm. It took him some time before he realized that it was what the Blue Icesilver was feeling. He latched on to that feeling and experimented with it. A few creepy internal undulations later, he figured out how to control it. It was like having another limb, though given its composition it was more like a huge expandable tongue. With some practice he reined it in. It stopped spilling out of him and no longer flooded his meridians. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his chest. Hurriedly, he let his regeneration kick in and the hole in his stomach healed in a few seconds. He willed the Blue Icesilver to be still and then succumbed to his exhaustion, falling asleep on the spot.

He slept for who knows how long, and when he woke up, he was surprised to see the Blue Icesilver being so well behaved. Just floating there like a frozen chunk of ice in his Dantian. He also realized he was laying back against a forest of brittle and partially translucent metal spikes. Thankfully, the pointy ends were facing away from him, and they fit him so well it made for a comfortable backrest. More surprising was the lack of activity from the Seed of Life and the other Heavenly Materials. They had even stopped vibrating. Thinking back, they had stopped that as soon as he began to refine the Blue Icesilver.

That said, he was quite glad. His Qi channels were a mess. The stress of channeling so much energy for so long of a period combined with the overflowing Blue Icesilver had done a number on him. Most of his meridians nearby his Dantian were torn up, their walls cracked and strained. The last few hours of the refining process were pure torturous pain. If he hadn’t been practicing Ebb and Flow training then instead of stretching and cracking his meridians would most likely have burst and his cultivation would be destroyed. At least in his case it wouldn’t be the end of the world, there was always the nuclear option of just committing suicide and starting over from scratch. Even now, if he were a normal cultivator he would require the assistance of very powerful and expensive healing pills. The healing ability he gained from the Fat Grass Worm had fueled his Ebb and Flow training and now also could help him recover from these deep injuries.

It would take a few months to recover completely, but at least he survived!