Chapter 5: Tempering (Part 2)
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With a small shake of his head, he put off thinking about such distant things and concentrated on the job at hand.

Cleansing the five viscera.

He would start with the most substantial poison container, the liver, before moving on to the most delicate organ, his heart.

Liver, kidney, spleen then lungs and heart. In that order.

His heart may contain another kind of poison, a heart devil, but that was a poison of the mind and not something the current him could condense and utilise.

Later he could use similar methods to controlling Yin Ghost spirit wraiths to condense the essence of any heart devil he may have into his qi and refine it as a potential weapon.

Given it enough yang qi and he could even have it materialise and attack independently.

Ghost cultivators were always difficult opponents to deal with given their possession arts, soul attacks and spirit servants.

Putting other thoughts on the back burner, he once more teased out that thin strand of yuan qi and began to guide it towards the first of his organs.

The structural complexity of the organ held no significance as long as he followed the meridians that permeated through it he’d be fine. At this stage, that was all that was required. Later he’d have to quench them with his Qi. He was making sure to penetrate deep into the flesh of each organ.

The time it took to purify each organ was twice as long as it took to cleanse the meridians and acupoints.

But as soon as that strand of qi brought back the last of the hearts impurities, he let out a long sigh as he floated back to the surface.

Generally during the cleansing process, a cultivator would expel a breath of putrid black air, but in this case, that foul air had joined with the black mercury-like substance floating in his dantian. It shimmered a dark purple and occasionally gave him a feeling like he wanted to throw up or pass a violent bowel movement.

He resisted these urges and focused on containing it even more.

Guiding his spirit sense to try to protect his very feeble life force, he used his yuan qi to rotate the murky mass much like one would do to step from the 2nd realm into the 3rd and form the qi core.

What was going on was precisely like a pill master guiding the ingredients in his furnace to condense out a pill.

The inky liquid began to move as he stirred it carefully with everything he could, focusing intently on it.

While at the same time preparing to open his pores gently.

Only when fully ready did he begin to do just that.

The medical qi rushed in, thundering through his bloodstream and whipping around his meridians and acupoints. Each channel was simulated and stressed by the sudden influx.

By now the black mass was turning at speed, and already heavier strands were being pulled out and knotted together in the slowly widening eye of the storm.

When the medicinal qi thundered into his dantian all that was left was a large rotating purple black sphere. Which, as soon as the new qi merged with the residual force, began to be compacted under its might. The black mass was growing smaller and smaller but also more concentrated.

He’d carefully chosen the medicinal qi, so it’d not to be too overbearing and thus dilute the final result.

In the ornate bathtub, ripples had formed and were growing into waves that were now slapping at the stone sides. The gathered soldiers held their collective breath in fear of what was happening to their Young Lord.

It gave off thick tendrils of noxious smoke, and small whirlpools formed in air pockets were bubbles had ruptured. The whole pool was moving and sloshing violently as if some caged beast was trying to burst free.

When it finally finished, both the volume and water content of the previous purple lake diminished substantially.

There in the sludge stood the sorry figure of the Young Lord, covered head to toe in an inch-thick layer of dark purple gunge. It was caked thickly in his now matted long hair. He waded out of the stone bath and to one corner of the wet room where a charcoal brazier had been silently heating an urn of water.

Two sturdy servants took hold of the long wooden poles bound to the neck of the urn and tilted the whole thing in one graceful lift.

Hot steaming water poured out into an awaiting basin in the hands of another diminutive demure maid.

Who, along with two fellow blushing maids, proceeded to rinse down the filthy body of the Young Master.

When the last traces of muck were scrapped off of him a feeling of genuine cleanliness washed over him, it was hard to describe the bright and fresh feeling.

He looked at the residue in the bath and could still feel it giving off some medicinal qi.

“Have the maids collect the remains and notify the gardening staff to use it on any plants that are having trouble growing, just make sure to dig it in well.”

The herbs he had used for his little soak were not the most potent, and thus the resulting medicinal qi was not as effective however he had chosen quantity over quality when he bombarded his freshly cleaned meridians with it.

The result being he had reached the first level of the Red Qi realm.

He held one hand aloft when circulated his thin hair strand of qi; a faint red aura surrounded it.

As a bonus, the medicine bath had nourished his feeble yuan qi, the result of which meant that the thin hair thread was a lot sturdier looking.

The overall result was good; however, he never wanted to attempt something like that again. Taking his life in his hands where one small mistake, one careless error, could have seen him settle at the bottom of the bath permanently.

Even his skin had lost a little of its sickly pallor.

The simple bath treatment had taken two full days, but its results were well worth it.

His blood was no longer as stagnant and coursed around his veins thick and robust; you could almost feel the vitality it contained. Likewise, his marrow had been washed clean and was almost radiant.

The pockmarked bones, previously riddled with corrupt pits and black stains, were now a natural gleaming white, although some holes remained, the whole bone structure was now much sturdier.

Ren Yao dressed, ate a light meal and retired to bed in the early evening light.

His body would still take a little time to get used to the new profound changes.

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