Chapter 53: The Divine Medicine

"The results are far, far better than expected."

Su Xinghe gazed with feverish excitement at the complex poison just extracted from a patient not far away, feeling an itch to take action.

At first, he had not been optimistic about Zhang Chengyi's mass internal energy transmission for all. Even if everyone possessed peerless internal strength, it could not alter the fate of having complex poison penetrate one's bones, leaving life and death to the heavens.

However, through the research conducted by him and Xue Muhua, they found that the Manggu Stalk-toad feeds on poison, causing other venomous creatures to flee in terror at the sight of it. Yet the blood poison within Duan Yu's body was not purely that of the Manggu Stalk-toad; it also contained other components, naturally forming a composite poison.

While the blood poison possessed the Manggu Stalk-toad's trait of feeding on venom, the presence of other toxins meant that the infected person's body would be devoured by the blood poison using the bloodstream as a medium. The ultimate manifestation was death by exhaustion and physical collapse, unlike the pure Manggu Stalk-toad venom which could melt a person into pus and blood.

Because it also inherited the drawback that the Manggu Stalk-toad's venom required contact with blood to take effect, combined with the process of continuous self-consumption, Duan Yu appeared entirely normal and did not directly poison anyone when interacting with others.

The trace amounts of venom he inadvertently left on others were quickly neutralized by their body's immune system; without breaking the skin, it mattered not at all.

After all, sweat originates from blood. If Duan Yu's blood poison were truly that invincible, simply sweating would kill an untold number of people, making him a walking poison container, and he himself would likely never have survived.

Ding Chunqiu had cleverly utilized the characteristics of the Manggu Stalk-toad's venom, disrupting the balance of the composite poison by blending in other toxins to achieve specific effects. His Life-Draining Skill inherently suppressed internal energy through toxins, and the poison employed in this technique circulated through the meridians and the five viscera and six bowels.

The unbalanced composite poison lost its self-consuming effect, yet it continued to devour bodily tissues contaminated with other toxins to strengthen itself. The resulting phenomenon was that the blood poison followed the path of the toxins used in the Life-Draining Skill, penetrating deeper into the meridians, acupoints, and internal organs, which explained why a green line could be seen when high-level internal energy was exerted.

The human body's natural defense mechanism was bypassed by the intricate and extensive network of meridians unique to humans, allowing the composite poison to take effect with such speed while circumventing the flaw of requiring blood contact. Body cells were eroded and destroyed; even though the exterior remained intact, the microscopic structures of the body had long been riddled with holes, with fever and weakness serving as the body's warning signs.

Unless a person could directly strip away their meridians, there was simply no way to detoxify it. Judging by this, even Ding Chunqiu himself was likely helpless against this composite poison.

Furthermore, once the victim died, the effect of the corpse-decay poison—which rapidly spreads through the blood of the corpse—would manifest, ultimately turning the riddled body into a bloated vessel of composite poison.

After completely "devouring" a human, the tiny speck of composite poison evolved into a far more virulent and concentrated form of complex poison. Because it was so concentrated, any flesh and blood that came into contact with it would dissolve instantly.

***

Yet this substance feared both light and heat.

The gloomy environment of the Mandisa Manor, filled with vegetation and shadows, allowed the poisoned corpses to be preserved for only a few more days; under normal circumstances, exposure to sunlight for a short while would render it ineffective.

However, these composite poisons could be diluted and stored in low-temperature environments to yield a greater supply of lethal composite poisons.

The conclusions above were derived partly from Jiumozhi and Duan Yu, and partly from the research of Su Xinghe and Xue Muhua.

Using the maidservants, servants, and cooks of the Mandisa Manor, Ding Chunqiu had cultivated vast quantities of concentrated composite poison and continuously poured it into the water sources used throughout Suzhou city. A small amount of the diluted composite poison produced no notable effects; the human meridians were slightly eroded and could self-heal, causing no real harm, and any sequelae would likely take a dozen or even decades to manifest.

However, he could not withstand the sheer volume of his daily poisoning. The ordinary citizens of Suzhou city inadvertently ingested it through their daily drinking water, and as it accumulated, it would take root by burrowing into the meridians starting from the stomach, eventually producing distinct symptoms of poisoning.

Naturally, his claim of poisoning the entire city was an exaggeration. Centered around the residence where he lived, people within a vast area were indeed deeply poisoned, turning into toxic corpses within three to five days. These individuals numbered in the tens of thousands, and some had already grown too weak, dying and turning into toxic corpses long ago.

Yet Suzhou City was home to a full hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of whom were entirely unaffected and would at most feel somewhat frail in the future, with no danger to their lives.

Some high-ranking officials and nobles drank no raw water and ate no raw food, and thus remained completely unharmed—after all, this composite poison feared heat.

The hardest-hit areas turned out to be the members of the Beggar Gang and a large number of lower-class commoners.

If left unchecked, it might indeed have spread like a plague. Yet its inability to withstand high temperatures and direct sunlight dictated that the composite poison could at most survive in the Jiangnan region until summer, after which it would end. The composite poison was too virulent; infected individuals could not run far, carriers died quickly, and the highly destructive nature of the concentrated poison precluded the existence of long-term carriers.

In Su Xinghe's view:

If the majority of Suzhou's residents were evacuated in time and the water sources were buried, no one would care how many lower-class people died; at most, it would warrant a single sentence in history books recording a great pestilence.

Yet his own Granduncle Zhang remained as reckless as ever, staging some sort of grand mass energy-transmission convention. After tearing down a section of buildings, he transmitted energy to hundreds of people simultaneously in an open space. Su Xinghe simply could not fathom where all that internal energy came from, but for now, it was best to ignore it.

***

According to the initial plan, the physical constitution of those who received the energy transmission would be elevated to a certain degree, and their recovery ability would be enhanced due to the presence of the Northern冥 (Brimming/North Dark) True Qi. Thus, they could at least drag out their lives for a few months to half a year. As long as they practiced body-tempering techniques during this period to continuously improve their physical constitution, they could live even longer.

As for what to do if the body-tempering techniques eventually depleted their cultivation entirely?

Granduncle Zhang expressed his willingness to accept the responsibility of acting as a human power bank.

Interestingly, the progress of the poisoned victims in body-tempering turned out to be far faster than that of ordinary people, and the fastest batch of individuals showed obvious changes in just a few days.

Su Xinghe examined and observed a child named Li A奴, who had progressed the fastest in body-tempering, and discovered the secret within.

First, the presence of the composite poison posed an extremely high threat to the body, greatly increasing the efficiency with which muscles, bones, and sinews absorbed and were reinforced by true qi.

Second, Li A奴 possessed exceptional innate talent and was extraordinarily diligent. Even without supervision, she practiced whenever she had free time and never slacked off, which led Su Xinghe to discover a crucial third point—

The composite poison rooted in the meridian system would become active at night, eroding countless tiny holes into the meridians, while during the day, due to the warmth, it would go dormant, slowing down the erosion rate and giving the body time to recover.

If one practiced body-tempering in the early morning before the meridians had healed, as the body moved and circulated true qi normally, wisps of true qi would be squeezed out through those tiny holes. Furthermore, because of the suppression exerted by the Life-Draining Skill components within the composite poison, the dissipation rate of the true qi entering the muscles, bones, and sinews was extremely slow.

He and Qiao Feng had been researching ways to maintain a state of body-tempering for extended periods just days ago. Now, the poisoned victims didn't even need to consider this; by practicing body-tempering for two hours every morning, the true qi squeezed out through the tiny holes would naturally remain stored within the muscles and bones for the entire day. The progress of body-tempering was simply flying.

Was this even a poison? It was practically a divine elixir for body-tempering.