Examining the woman’s body, Hui’s brows knit. Her surface wounds are bad enough, but internally… internally, she’s a total mess!

The woman’s qi passages twisted wildly inside her body. In places, they were entirely shredded. Meridians laid mangled and shattered, broken nodes amidst the wreckage of her passages. Her qi leaked out, slowly poisoning her. At the same time, she bled out, losing both her body’s vitality and cultivation strength at the same time.

Her dantian… can I salvage her cultivation? Hui sent his consciousness deeper, seeking it out.

At last, a beat of warm energy met him. Swirling qi turned in her dantian. Deep rifts and gashes scarred its surface, and her qi escaped in blasts as it turned.

Shit! If she loses much more qi, she’s going to die outright… or at least lose her cultivation, and given the short lifespans of mortals, that’s a fate equal to death! Hui drew a deep breath. Calling his life qi to his hands, he led it through her body, bypassing her shattered meridians to lead it directly to her dantian.

The woman wrinkled her face and tensed.

“Elder Sister, bear with me. I know it hurts, but I’m here to help,” Hui assured her quietly.

Her brows un-knitted. She relaxed a hair.

She must be braced for death, even now. After all… I can’t imagine Liu Guang intended to allow a ‘demonic cultivator’ to survive. He likely means to destroy her as soon as I’m done. Which means… I have to make up an excuse to save her as I’m healing her!

Um… but what can I say to make him decide not to kill her? Uh… ‘I took a fancy to her!’ He twisted his lips. No, that’s uh, a bit… much. There’s enough girls in my life right now, between Li Xiang, Bai Xue, and now Gui Yutong claiming me as her lover.

Hmm… what about ‘I want to convert her’? Hui snuck a glance at Liu Guang. But I don’t know if he’d listen to that. That depends on his personality… it’s a gamble, at best.

Think. What do I know about him? What would he listen to?

The woman moaned softly in pain. Hui jumped back to reality and drew his qi back. Whoops. I need to pay attention to healing, for now. I can figure out an excuse later!

He sent another pulse of life qi into her dantian. The fragile surface healed slightly, but too slow. Qi continued to gush out.

Using normal life qi is too slow. What should I do? Hui frowned thoughtfully. He spun his finger around, twisting the life qi into a thread. With his other hand, he summoned a needle. The acupuncture needle had no eye for him to thread the life qi through. He hesitated a moment, uncertain of his plan, then shrugged. Whatever. This is the best I have! It’ll have to do!

Pointing his hand, he sent the needle into the gash in her chest and sent it down to her dantian. He guided the needle up to a gash, then took a moment to regulate his qi. Alright. Here goes nothing!

He gripped the needle tightly with his qi, and held the life qi tightly in the other. Using the needle, he pierced through the material of her dantian on either side of one of the gashes with the needle. A second later, he darted in with the life qi thread, feeding it through the tiny hole. He knotted the far end of the thread, then tightened the thread, pulling the gash slightly closed.

Well, that wouldn’t work if I was mortal… but I’m not mortal, so… it’s working! Nice. Let’s keep it up, then.

Slowly, Hui laced the gash shut. When it closed, he tied off the thread, cut it off, and moved on to the next gash. His qi-hands darted back and forth, the thread chasing the needle. Steadily, he closed the gashes. As each one shut, less of her qi leaked out with the circulation of her dantian. Instead, qi began to leak out of her shattered meridians and mangled qi passages.

Damn, he really chose a messy victim to hand to me. In all my healing outside the sect, I never saw anyone this messed up inside, Hui thought, pausing to take in the mess. The sheer extent of the damage is… overwhelming. I don’t know where to start.

Though I guess if someone was this mutilated, they couldn’t come to me, and even if someone brought them, they’d probably die before they got to me. It’s only because Liu Guang put her in stasis that she’s still alive.

To some extent, he saved her… but at the same time, he froze her in the moment of her most extreme agony, without trying to heal her, as an admitted healer himself. No… this is still unforgivable.

Shaking his head, Hui chose the nearest mess of qi passages. The qi passages lay in tatters, incomparable to her dantian. Her dantian only had gashes. The qi passages, on the other hand, were so torn apart and ruined that he couldn’t tell what piece of what went where.

Hui bit his lip. Dammit. What to do? I can’t stitch it up. I don’t have Master’s immaculate control and puzzle mastery. I don’t even have a proper needle, for that matter!

He tilted his head, then reached out and grabbed ahold of an uninjured portion of her qi passages just beyond the mangled section. Turning around, he found a piece of her qi passages in the other direction. Hui licked his lips and tilted his head, considering, then shrugged. I’ll join the two together for now. Naturally, it won’t be long enough, but with time and her own efforts, it should be possible to re-lengthen her qi passages. It’ll be a setback on her cultivation, but a setback is better than losing it entirely.

Drawing out the needle and the thread again, he laced the passages together. In some places, her passages were so tattered that he couldn’t find enough good passage to connect. There, he gathered what little he could and closed off the passages to keep her qi from leaking out. His nose twisted. It isn’t going to be easy to come back from this, but it’s still better than dying here.

At last, her qi passages no longer leaked. Only her meridians still leaked qi. They were completely splintered. Almost nothing remained of the nodes.

I have no idea what to do with these. Where do I even start? I could just seal them shut, but then… I might as well shatter her dantian. Ugh. What can I…

The body-reforging technique. Why don’t I use that on her?

But… I’ve only tested it on lotus clones so far. Lotus clones… they have human-esque bodies, but their bodies aren’t fully human. As long as a lotus clone’s core remains, they can survive. Humans… even cultivators need their heart and brain and internal organs. On top of that, cultivators need their dantian, qi passages, meridians…if I mess up on recreating any of those, it’s a crippling injury for her. If I messed up on me or the clones, we could easily regrow or recalibrate our qi organs or physical bodies. It isn’t the same.

A cool hand touched his arm. Hui startled and opened his eyes. The woman looked up at him.

Hui took a deep breath. “Elder Sister, I can… I might be able to fix you completely. But… it might kill you. I—”

“Whatever you need to do to show off your skill. Even if the skill is risky and fails, I can still judge you on the complexity of the skill,” Liu Guang said.

“Elder Sister,” Hui repeated, locking eyes with the female cultivator.

She closed her eyes, then nodded.

Okay. Alright. Here we go! I’ve got to… at least try!