Ivor had finished his practice session. “How the hell does the sect have my personal information anyway? Wait, I bet they deduced it. I want to deduce things. Hey, the spleen governs thoughts. From that information, I deduce that my spleen can deduce if given a treasure specialized in deductions. From my prior experience, there’s probably a treasure like that at the treasure hall.”

After a short walk to the treasure hall, Ivor realized that it did, in fact, have a deduction tool; he just couldn’t afford it. Right before he walked out, Ivor had the second-worst idea of his life so far. “Moldvanna, get me a carcinogen.”

Moldvanna raised his eyebrows sufficiently while he reached under the counter. “I’m not sure why you would want that, or why you assume the sect has it in stock, but you want it, and we do, in fact, have it.”

Moldvanna threw a pill at the back of Ivor’s head, which he easily caught. “Just give me thirty energy pills.”

Ivor sighed in frustration, more with himself than with Moldvanna. “Can you just put it on my tab? I totally forgot to bring my pills like an idiot and I ran out of spirit stones. I visit here multiple times a day, so I should be trustworthy enough, right? Plus I already ate it.”

Moldvanna’s eyes shot open in disbelief. “Excuse me… what the fuck are you on?”

Ivor shrugged. “The carcinogen pill. I’m trying to refine my cancer into a treasure. It might seem like a bad idea, but don’t worry, it’s terrible enough that the word ‘bad’ can’t even begin to describe its absolute idiocy anymore.”

Ivor activated his bladder meridian to flood his body with vitality and encourage the replication of cancerous cells. He left the treasure hall before Moldvanna figured out what to say and went back to his apartment to cultivate. A few hours of directing vital energy to his spleen later, Ivor had a tumor. He pulled out a mug and activated his liver meridian, vomiting up nearly a gallon of ill omens. “Alright, it’s stable. Now I just have to refine it into a treasure.”

Ivor continued to flood his spleen with vital energy before stabbing it with his spear and injecting death energy. The two opposing forces whirled around and began to fuse with his tumor. Ivor coughed up blood three times along the way. That may seem nonsensical, as the spleen isn’t connected to the lungs, but it was actually caused by qi deviation. After a while, the cancer was refined to the point it was a treasure and instantly absorbed by Ivor’s spleen. “Oh it’s nice not to have something in my spleen anymore. Anyways, what does my meridian even do? Well I guess I should empower it before checking.”

Ivor pinched the scab on his spleen and pulled it off to reopen the wound, inserting ten pills into the spleen before using his bladder to close it once more. Before it closed, a small orb of blood spilled out. “Is this… an egg? I guess the spleen filters blood cells and cancer is a mutation, so maybe I can nurture monsters in my blood? Seems plausible. On an unrelated note, I sure hope doing this doesn’t have any lasting consequences.”

The egg of blood warbled and distorted before hatching into something resembling Ivor’s mental image of a baby Jabberwock, a white puff with holes in it, like some sort of deflated, fleshy wiffle ball. It had two black beads for eyes and a mouth full of fangs. “You know, I’m hoping these things don’t come out through my stomach. Ah well, I guess I’ll trigger the ability and find out.”

Ivor activated his spleen meridian, but it didn’t do anything immediately. “Maybe this one came out so fast because it cannibalized the cancer? That would make sense, considering this thing’s resemblance to a tumor. Anyways, little buddy, you’re named Jabber.”

Jabber squealed in happiness at receiving a name. Its voice warmed Ivor’s heart, causing him to begin petting it, maintaining a vigil to avoid making the creature suffocate. It was at this point that Ivor noticed the copious amounts of impure black blood on the ground. His last thought as he blacked out was this: Oh, the spleen had a lot of blood in it, didn’t it? Guess I should have paid attention in biology.

Ivor woke up to Jabber whiffling back and forth above his face. He was in a cellar of some sort. He stood up and looked around the dark, cold stone room before noticing a flight of stairs blended in with the background. He moved towards the stairs before climbing up toward the wood portion of the ceiling that appeared to be a trap door. He reached it, pushing it open and jumping upwards into the treasure hall.

Ivor swiveled on his right foot towards Moldvanna, staring straight at him. He only did this for a second as he spun a full thirty degrees too much before stomping his food on the ground to halt his rotation. He kicked off and began rotating once more, actually stopping while facing Moldvanna this time. Moldvanna was puzzled by Ivor’s actions but just shrugged in confusion without asking. “So, you put me in the cellar this time? Makes sense, please don’t hurt me OR make me clean up the impurities. Also, have people died of bleeding out impurities?”

Moldvanna closed his eyes to ponder, but he hadn’t ever heard of it. “I’m not sure, but I’m assuming that somebody has, because you might have died if I didn’t give you an elixir IV. I’ll be taking your daily fee from the sect today as payment for that and cleaning up your mess. I’d ask you not to do it again, but full disclosure, I’m making non-negligible amounts of money on this, so feel free to do it again.”

When Ivor heard that Moldvanna was making a profit, he nearly snapped, but then remembered that he didn’t have to clean the floor and shut up. “I’ll try not to trouble elder with my breakthrough again.”

Ivor returned to his house, pondering how to open his stomach meridian before the next beast wave, which was due in four days. It was already sundown; he had been out for a while. “Maybe I just… eat a lot? But magic meat. Yeah, that seems like it might work. I could nourish my stomach until the Gu qi in it is enough to mix with the vital energy from my bladder and Kong qi I breathe in! That’ll create a powerful vitality qi, which I can mix with the Yuan qi from my kidney that was affected by my kidney’s attribute of balance to make a powerful, stable, body qi! If I put a natural treasure inside, maybe a piece of metal… no, I should use fire, since that nourishes earth, and I still have that fire marble from back then, so I guess I’ll use that. I can use the body qi to refine it and then fuse it with my stomach to open the meridian! If so, I should be able to use it as a furnace to refine treasures, and fire will be useful for that.”

Ivor’s eyes lit up as he spun seventy degrees and took a step forward. He grinned in delight as he took in the faint scent of food. As he took this step, a thought occurred to him. “Why the hell did I learn all this stuff? I get a feeling that this’ll work, but were those acupuncture websites really accurate? Eh, I’d say my intuition is pretty good, and they’ve probably got at least some of it right, so I’ll just go with it.”