Hui stumbled back, throwing his hands up. “Eh? You—eh?”

She frowned. “You’re here to cleanse my qi, yes? Won’t you need contact with bare skin?”

Hui blinked. Do… most people need skin-on-skin contact to manipulate qi? Wait—is that why dual cultivation, or even simply sharing your qi, is such a taboo in this world? An epiphany struck him, and he staggered back. I… never saw it that way before! When you phrase it like that—

Another epiphany struck him like thunder. Eh, but… then… doesn’t that make hand-holding… actually lewd?

He looked at his hand and swallowed. I and Li Xiang… already…

No, no, no, Hui, what are you doing? Don’t get sucked in by this world’s pace! It’s ridiculous to consider that lewd. Besides, what Bai Xue and I did in the demonic sect—er, let’s not think about that, okay!

Li Xiang… I hope she’s okay. Peak Lord Lan Taijian spent all his effort to teleport her out of the encapsulation before it could activate, so she’s probably somewhere safe. He wouldn’t have spent all his energy to transport her somewhere dangerous. If I had any idea where she was, I’d go check on her, but… but, but, this small cultivator is somewhat of a shut-in! I’ve only been to three sects and one city, I haven’t even explored the continent or investigated what other sects exist yet! I have no idea where would be reasonable for Lan Taijian to send her, let alone having any idea where she actually might have been sent. I… would love to go find her, but… given that I could spend ten years searching and not find her…

Ah, she’s probably safe, probably—safe! She’s a powerful sword cultivator. I’ll have to trust in her abilities until I find her again!

By this time, Fu Liyu had already stripped her outer robes. She reached to undo her inner robes, but before she could, Hui startled back to life and rushed forward, hands out. “No, no, Elder Sister, it’s fine, it’s fine. I—have a special technique, I don’t need skin contact.”

“Are you sure?” Fu Liyu asked, narrowing her phoenix eyes.

Hui nodded emphatically. “For the diagnostics at least, certainly, no skin required! In any case, if I need you to, er, to… if I need skin contact, it’s not too late to strip… er, disrobe later.”

Harrumphing, she sat down on a nearby chaise. “If that’s the case, say so earlier.”

Elder Sister—er, Young Miss, you’re the one who stripped on your own! Don’t blame this small cultivator for the misunderstanding you generated by yourself, okay?

Shaking his head, Hui approached her and took her hand. “Young Miss, I’m going to examine your body, is that okay?”

Fu Liyu nodded.

He looked her in the eye. “Don’t circulate your qi or make any attempt to hide your state. I am here to diagnose your body, not to cast judgement. Anything you do to obfuscate your state will only hinder my efforts.”

“Naturally, I understand this. I’ll ask you not to blame it on me if you fail like the rest, as well,” Fu Liyu replied, rolling her eyes.

“Then, let’s begin,” Hui replied. He closed his eyes and sent a small strand of qi directly inside her, carefully weakening it to the sort of probe even someone with the simplest, most foundational cultivation could accomplish. The quality and purity will still be suspiciously high, but… in the end, I do need to properly diagnose her if I’m going to cleanse her qi. If I lower the amount, the quality, and the purity, I might as well be someone without cultivation, for all the good it will do me. Still, I told her not to circulate her qi, so she shouldn’t be able to properly sense the quality or purity, and I’ll extract it all when I go. It’s a bit suspicious, but it shouldn’t be suspicious enough to draw anyone’s attention.

Quietly, he probed through her meridians and qi passages. A few hints of foreign qi stood out here and here. Hui easily collected them as he went, using the foreign qi to mask the aura and quality of his own qi. He hummed to himself, almost bored. Compared to breaking curses, cleansing someone's qi is child’s play! Do people get paid for this? What a fabulous career!

He coursed through her body, then retreated out the way he came, dragging the foreign qi with him. Having no interest in keeping his own body pure, he took the foreign auras and integrated them into his dantian, setting a part of his consciousness aside to observe and mimic them. Ah! If I absorb foreign auras, I can study them, and once I study them, I can copy them! If I know the looks of these cultivators, I can directly transform into them with the snakeskin technique, and then use my knowledge of their aura to alter my aura to match! Although this body doesn’t have the rush slippers, I’ve gained a small comprehension on how to alter my aura by using the rush slippers, so I should be able to accomplish it on my own. Of course, it won’t be as easy as using the slippers, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to play dead and fake an aura at the same time, but it’s worth a try.

So thinking, he stole a bit of Fu Liyu’s aura as well and squirreled it away in his dantian, silently memorizing her looks at the same time.

Letting out an exhausted sigh, Hui released her hand. “Done. Your body is cleansed.”

Fu Liyu frowned. “I’ll be the judge of that.” She assumed the lotus position and circulated her qi, brows faintly furrowed.

Hui stood obediently to the side, waiting for her to finish. Halfway through, however, Fu Liyu abruptly frowned. At nearly the same instant, foreign aura burst out of her body, nearly strong enough to overpower Fu Liyu’s own aura. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and her face paled from pain. The aura grew stronger, and her pain grew more evident at the same time. All at once, her eyes flew open.

“You’ve done nothing!” Fu Liyu shouted, frustrated.

She started to rise, but Hui quickly jumped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “Resume the lotus pose! Circulate your qi exactly as you were doing. I need to see what’s going on!”

I eliminated the foreign auras, I’m sure of it! But that was doubtlessly a foreign aura, and thicker on Fu Liyu’s body than ever. In fact, compared to the auras I gathered, that aura couldn’t possibly have hidden inside her. There’s something else going on here! Someone deliberately inserted their aura somewhere in her body. He furrowed his brows and sent more qi inside Fu Liyu.

This time, he exerted less care in holding back, only suppressing his qi to the second level of cultivation. Ah… whatever! A second-realm wandering cultivator is nothing to write home about. No one’s going to take note of me, even if I have a trifling cultivation like that. I simply can’t continue to fully hold back. I missed it the first time… I can’t afford to ruin my good reputation by missing it a second time!

Even as he searched her body, Hui furrowed his brows and frowned, even biting his tongue to let a little blood ooze out of his mouth. As if he could barely hold on, he trembled like a leaf, sure to keep close contact with her hand the whole time even so. Dramatically, to add the final touch, he growled, “Wherever you’re hiding… come out!”

Obediently, a strange array appeared in Fu Liyu’s dantian at his words, as if it had been startled out by Hui. Hui blinked, surprised. Huh. It’s that easy?

No, no. My qi reached her dantian and provoked the array into appearing. That’s all. Natural cause and effect.

But if that’s all it took, how come no one else found it yet?

Hui put a hand to his chin and frowned. The sensation that something was wrong grew stronger, though he couldn’t say exactly what. Bai Xue… it’s ludicrous for Fu Liyu to be worried about them. It’s possible she knows next to nothing about them, but then why is she willing to marry them if she doesn’t know anything about them? Is her clan poor enough to need the Bai Clan’s wealth that badly?

Then the foreign auras in her qi… I counted one, two…five auras in total. I guess she’s free to live her life, but… it feels off. All the doctors before me failed to find the array as well, when it popped up so obviously to me. It’s entirely possible that the doctors before me were mortal or of such low cultivation that they couldn’t activate it, but… Hui shook his head. Something’s off.

“Did you find something?” Fu Liyu asked, anxious.

“I’m not sure. Let me focus,” Hui said. Peeking at her, he took in her expression. She really looks anxious, and her qi is stirring as well. I don’t think she’s faking it. If there’s something going on, she doesn’t know about it. He closed his eyes and focused all of his energy on the mysterious array.

Unlike the previous spells he’d found in peoples’ bodies, this one didn’t appear to be a curse. Instead, it almost reminded him of Chen Wuya’s array, on a much weaker level. His brows furrowed. Containment… some kind of soul-modifying array, maybe?

Hui cleared his throat. “How many auras should I look for?”

Fu Liyu frowned at him. “One. I’ve only had one other partner. We were betrothed, but… it fell apart when my family’s fortunes changed a few years back. The Fu Clan was once a very wealthy clan, but now, we clutch at straws, backed into this tiny backwater estate.”

One? There’s definitely more than one other aura in her meridians. If she’s only worried about that one aura… where did the other four come from? Hui rubbed his chin. Maybe… they’re the doctors who failed before me?

A bitter expression appeared on Fu Liyu’s face. “Everyone who’s kicking us now… once I marry Bai Xue, I’ll kick them all down!”

Ignoring her outburst, Hui hummed. “How many physicians have tried to solve this, aside from me?”

“Huh? Two,” Fu Liyu replied.

Two isn’t four. There’s… er, how to put it, a very bad explanation for how this happened, but I’m not seeing any evidence for that sort of foul play. One of the auras is fully entwined with hers, the way you’d expect it to be. The other four auras… two might be the physicians, but that still leaves two. Then the mysterious array… I’m missing too many pieces. I don’t know enough about the Fu Clan to unravel this mystery. Hui’s frown grew deeper, and he subconsciously shook his head.

“So? Can you fix it?” Fu Liyu asked, concerned.

“Eh? Yes,” Hui said, confused. A second later, his eyes cleared. Who cares if I know what’s going on! As long as I fix the issue at hand, it’s all fine! I’ve already cleared the auras once. As long as I undo that array, I can solve the issue, and that’s that! She hired me to remove the auras from her body, not to figure out why there are mysterious spells inside her.

So decided, he put the rest of the problem to the back of his mind and turned to the array.