The breathing technique in the Heretical Scripture operated on cycles of ten breaths, or one "revolution." Any single breathing frequency error within the cycle would reset the time spent in the cultivation vision.
Autumn wind swept up the withered leaves beneath the old locust tree in the courtyard. Within his cultivation vision, Qin Yi carefully observed the young woman across from him, streams of information flashing rapidly through his mind.
Ruan Su's learning speed was exceptionally fast.
On her third attempt, she completed a flawless breathing cycle.
But Ruan Su was, after all, not Qin Yi.
As a normal person learning something new for the first time, this older sister of his inevitably messed up her breathing frequency a few times afterward. However, by her tenth cycle, she too had completely stabilized the breathing technique just like Qin Yi.
It took four hundred breaths in total. Subtracting the one hundred breaths of initial preparation, Ruan Su had fully entered the cultivation vision at around three hundred breaths—twice as slow as Qin Yi. Yet the scale of the blue spiritual essence she was siphoning vastly surpassed his.
Qin Yi silently collected the differential data.
But with only himself and Ruan Su as samples, he couldn't definitively determine the connection between the time taken to enter the cultivation vision and the scale of siphoning.
At most, he could list a few baseless conjectures.First, the speed of entering the cultivation vision and the speed of absorbing spiritual essence were two separate talents.
Second, his cultivation talent was higher than Ruan Su's, and it was only the difference in physical strength or so-called "realm" that caused his siphoning efficiency to lag behind hers.
Third...
Qin Yi pondered the possibilities while observing his surroundings, his hands continuing to apply sauce to the dinner for the sibling pair. And it was precisely because of this unhurried multitasking that Qin Yi quickly noticed his older sister across from him hadn't moved since entering the cultivation vision.
Recalling briefly,
Ruan Su's motion of evenly flipping the Tiger Leg on the grill had frozen the moment she entered the cultivation vision.
Ruan Su seemed unable to breathe rhythmically and move normally at the same time like he could. What caused this difference?
Was he the special one, or was Ruan Su?
Thinking of this, Qin Yi felt a pang of nostalgia for Qin Ke.
If that adopted little brother were still here, he'd have one more sample to dissect and analyze.
Gloomy clouds pressed down upon the heavens, mountain winds carrying the piercing chill of late autumn.
The slightly damp sensation made Qin Yi glance up at the sky. It looked like rain would fall tonight.
When his gaze descended and locked onto Ruan Su once more, Qin Yi gradually noticed something amiss.
Aside from a tiny fraction at the very beginning that was absorbed by Ruan Su, the blue spiritual essence being siphoned over wasn't entering her body at all—it was stagnating on the surface of her skin.
Within a few breaths, Qin Yi's vision showed Ruan Su's surroundings becoming blurred and hazy from the accumulating spiritual essence.
Certain thoughts flashed through his mind, and Qin Yi immediately set down the sauce brush, walking toward her motionless form on the other side of the grill:
"Sis, stop for now."
"...Huh?"
Though Ruan Su couldn't move while cultivating, her five senses apparently remained intact, and she showed no signs of qi deviation from being disturbed. She looked at the boy with confusion:
"Wh...at's...wrong?"
Qin Yi rapidly scanned the blue spiritual essence around her, choosing not to touch her. Standing half a meter away, he spoke quickly:
"Do you feel any discomfort?"
Ruan Su blinked, lowering her gaze to look at her own body. But having been interrupted and forced out of the cultivation vision, she could no longer observe the spiritual essence:
"N...o..."
As she spoke, the exposed half of her delicate, pretty face showed a hint of excitement. A beat late, she broke into a joyful smile:
"Little Yi, I...can...cultivate now."
"..."
Qin Yi remained silent, still observing.
The siphoning of spiritual essence around her had halted, yet the blue spiritual essence clinging to Ruan Su's body surface showed no sign of dispersing. And he didn't believe it would dissipate naturally.
Before long,
a sudden change occurred.
Amidst the resplendent blue light surrounding Ruan Su, Qin Yi spotted wisps of vivid crimson.
Ruan Su was still smiling, but blood suddenly began seeping from her seven orifices.
Eyes, ears, nose, mouth.
Blood trickled out in thin streams, rapidly reaching some critical threshold...
"Cough...ah...ha...cough..."
Ruan Su's slender, willowy frame began trembling violently. A large gush of blood surged up from her mouth, and her thin body collapsed directly to the ground, curling into a small ball from the pain.
The Tiger Leg continued roasting over the campfire, grease dripping into the flames with a sizzling crackle. The young woman's vivid, scalding blood sprayed onto the grayish-brown earth at Qin Yi's feet, releasing faint wisps of steam in the deep autumn chill.
Blood continued seeping from the young woman's seven orifices, dripping down her pale chin and quickly staining her clothes crimson. Her pitch-black pupils trembled slightly as she struggled to lift her gaze, following the boy's legs upward through her blood-tinged vision, her voice trembling:
"Li...Little Yi...I...I..."
"..."
No response.
Qin Yi looked down at this scene calmly. The mountain wind blew strands of hair across his eyes, veiling them, his gaze utterly unwavered.
His conjecture had been validated.
The risks of cultivation...
When he'd let Ruan Su cultivate before, something similar had happened—her cultivation technique clashing with her constitution, causing internal injuries and vomiting blood. But that had only been vomiting blood, nowhere near this severe.
The pool of blood spread silently. Ruan Su trembled on the ground in agony. Just before their gazes could meet, she suddenly lowered her eyes.
She...she didn't dare look...at Little Yi's expression.
Her blood-stained lips parted slightly. Instinctively, she wanted to tell Little Yi she was fine, that it was just like before, she'd merely vomited some blood. But her gradually blurring vision caught the words in her throat...
Seeing the young woman lose consciousness, Qin Yi slowly crouched down beside her, still not immediately touching Ruan Su's body.
In the past, he wouldn't have understood. But now, with the cultivation vision at his disposal, Qin Yi grasped the full picture almost instantly.
Clearly, the young woman's current injuries were caused by the spiritual essence that couldn't be absorbed.
Her siphoning efficiency was too high, while her body's upper limit for storing and converting spiritual essence was too low. Yet the siphoned essence kept flooding in without stop, causing her to simply... explode.
The young woman lay collapsed on the ground. Even unconscious, her curled-up, delicate form still trembled slightly from the pain.
It seemed this was different from those internal cultivation techniques before. If he did nothing now, Ruan Su would probably die here just like those Calamity Seeds from before.
And the only way to save her was for him to absorb the spiritual essence clinging to the young woman's body surface.
Qin Yi stared at the blue spiritual essence on her skin, rapidly analyzing the pros and cons.
He couldn't be certain whether his own body could contain such a vast amount of spiritual essence. His brain disease had already improved, so Ruan Su's importance had plummeted.
Moreover, judging by her spiritual essence storage capacity, Ruan Su's cultivation talent was truly abysmal—one could even say she had no talent at all.
She'd reached her body's storage limit in half a breath.
She had the ability to gather spiritual energy, but no body capable of converting it.
And given the rate of her physical enhancement, she would never reach the level of that Burly Man in Black Armor or the scholar-robed swordsman from his memories. Not to mention, there was no telling whether even stronger people existed in this world.
So, was it worth risking his life for her?
His heart continued pumping steadily, his breathing completely even. As these thoughts ran through his mind, his hand unconsciously brushed against the young woman's blood-stained cheek.
Huh?
Qin Yi's cold gaze shifted to his own palm.
His body had moved faster than his mind. That happened often with Ruan Su, but this was the first time it had happened to him.
He tried to analyze this absurd occurrence with rationality.
Was it because his subconscious believed Ruan Su's worth justified risking his life?
Or was it that,
like Ruan Su, his instincts had overridden his brain and directly filtered out certain information he'd been neglecting?
No time for deep contemplation.
At the focus of Qin Yi's ink-black pupils, the blue spiritual essence clinging to the young woman's body surface seemed to have finally found an outlet. Like a dam bursting, it surged along his palm and spread through his entire body...