Chapter 68: The Fractured Body
When Li Yan returned to the courtyard gate, two young men were already waiting there. They were the servant disciples who had arrived ahead of him. Both had higher cultivation levels than Li Yan, and while Wei Chongran was still giving instructions, they had already made their way over.
The two greeted Li Yan respectfully. After he opened the courtyard gate, they quickly carried in a set of stone table and stools. Without storage pouches, they had no choice but to physically carry them up the mountain and fly over together.
For two cultivators at about the fifth level of the Qi Condensation stage, this was no trouble at all.
Once they had swiftly arranged the stone table and stools, they looked to Li Yan with a questioning gaze. One of them, dressed in yellow, cautiously asked:
"Junior Uncle, do you need us to tidy up anything else?"
Li Yan smiled and waved them off, sending them back. He had no intention of making them clean up, he just wanted to solve the pressing problem of his cultivation as soon as possible.
With a flick of his sleeve, the courtyard gate closed again. Li Yan quickly made his way into the cultivation room, shut the door, and sat cross-legged.
The next moment, his divine sense entered his sea of consciousness, where three glowing violet dots floated, these were the jade slips containing the records and insights on cultivating the "Fractured Poison Body."
There was no formal cultivation method or incantation for the Fractured Poison Body, only experience and insights left behind by those who had succeeded, for later generations to reference.
The three jade slips came from Little Bamboo Peak, Old Lord Peak, and Spirit Insect Peak, respectively. The peaks where the three predecessors had once resided. These violet jade slips were not available in exchange for spirit stones; only those who met the requirements and were approved by the sect's upper echelon could access them.
Ordinarily, even Wei Chongran's position would only allow access to the one from Little Bamboo Peak. But since the sect master had already issued orders that all resources related to the Fractured Poison Body be made available to Li Yan, he had been able to retrieve them all without issue.
The sect had not immediately given Li Yan these jade slips because of the body's peculiar nature.
Those three elders had warned: if one studied these notes before successfully cultivating the poison body, they might find clues to help achieve success. But once one had already formed it, unless they encountered specific problems, referencing others' experiences might lead to the wrong path instead.
Even among Fractured Poison Bodies, no two were the same, some details would vary, and blindly following another's path could backfire.
But who would have expected someone like Li Yan, a complete novice with no foundation in cultivation?
Most cultivators began training from a young age, gradually accumulating knowledge and experience from everything they saw and heard. Li Yan had none of this.
Wei Chongran thought it over and decided it was better to let him consult the records now rather than fumble around blindly. At least it might help him avoid unnecessary detours.
As for the possibility that it could mislead Li Yan? Wei Chongran wasn't concerned. Who could prove that the insights from others were truly incompatible with Li Yan's path? Such things couldn't be verified anyway.
This mindset fit perfectly with Wei Chongran's personality, he lived by the principle of adapting to circumstances: use what you have, contemplate when you don't.
Li Yan slowly opened one of the glowing violet dots, and his consciousness dove in to read. His thoughts soon followed.
Two days and one night later, when Li Yan finally opened his eyes, a trace of realization had appeared in them.
The jade slips contained a tremendous amount of information, details about daily cultivation experiences, personal insights, and observations throughout the cultivation process.
Li Yan couldn't digest it all at once. He focused on analyzing and understanding the parts he could comprehend for now. The rest, he forced himself to memorize, intending to study them in detail later.
Even so, the amount of information was so great that even his enhanced cultivator memory left him dizzy and overwhelmed.
Though the slips didn't directly answer his biggest question, Li Yan was able to make some judgments about his current physical state based on their contents.
In particular, there was a passage from the elder of Spirit Insect Peak that caught his attention:
"At Qi Condensation, the fractured body splits into ten; at Foundation Establishment, ten split into a hundred; at Core Formation, a hundred split into a thousand; at Nascent Soul, a thousand into ten thousand. With every breath in and out, the body fragments further."
Li Yan surmised this was describing the state of the Fractured Poison Body. What drew his focus, however, was the last line, something about breathing. To him, this likely didn't refer to ordinary respiration, but to the process of spiritual inhalation and exhalation, cultivator breathwork.
The other two jade slips didn't contain similar descriptions, he wasn't sure whether the authors had left it out or if their cases differed entirely.
Li Yan sank into deep thought. After a while, he closed his eyes again and began performing breathwork using the Guishui True Scripture, not for real cultivation this time, but to test whether his theory held.
He sat perfectly still, like an old monk in meditation. After half an hour, his body trembled slightly, and a conflicted expression appeared on his face.
Earlier, as he circulated his spiritual energy slowly through his meridians, he had used his divine sense to carefully observe its path.
At first, the energy flowed from his dantian without issue. But after traveling some distance, it began to subtly diminish.
This loss was almost imperceptible, anyone not actively looking would have missed it entirely.
This was due to Li Yan's low cultivation level, making his self-control over his own energy far less refined. For a true master, their grasp of internal spiritual power would be as fine as silk, even the slightest fluctuation within their body would be instantly detected.
After one full circulation, the energy did not become more refined or potent, as it typically would, it had actually diminished ever so slightly.
Li Yan was alarmed. He didn't understand why this loss was happening.
He repeated the process again, this time with the energy moving even more slowly and his divine sense heightened to its fullest extent, watching each inch of its progress.
He wanted to know exactly how the energy was being lost.
At last, his meticulous observation paid off. He discovered that as the energy passed through certain meridian junctions, a trace of it would inexplicably vanis, as if those spots were leaky.
Li Yan zoomed in on these meridian nodes. Eventually, he discovered something unusual: twelve key points in his meridian system showed subtle abnormalities.
At a glance, these points looked normal. But under repeated scrutiny with his divine sense, he found each one bore a faint, nearly invisible crack.
These cracks were hidden when the muscles and meridians flexed and moved, blending perfectly with the body. Only when spiritual energy passed through, causing internal expansion, would the cracks briefly widen and reveal themselves.
That was when a thread of energy would leak and dissipate into his flesh and blood.
Upon recalling that line again, "At Qi Condensation, the fractured body splits into ten... Nascent Soul, into ten thousand; with every breath, the body fragments," Li Yan finally understood.
His body had been divided internally at these twelve key meridian points, causing his spiritual energy to leak.
His body had been split into twelve parts.
Now that the cause had been found, the question was, how to resolve it?
Li Yan once again turned to the records left by the three senior ancestors. He sat reading for more than half a day, but this time, he was left disappointed.
There was no mention of a cultivation method for the Fractured Poison Body. That was because this wasn't a true technique with fixed methods; it was a special physique, one that evolved along with the cultivator's advancement.
As time passed in his continuous trials and exploration, three more days went by. Li Yan had begun to feel despondent. He simply couldn't find a solution. One after another, he discarded every possibility he had thought of.
By now, he was nearly convinced that his path of cultivation had been completely cut off. It was as if the heavens had played a cruel joke on him, bestowing two great fortunes upon him, only for them to turn into the ultimate punchline.
Yet, he remained unwilling to give up. He had never even aspired to cultivation in the first place, just a mortal hoping to live a quiet life with his loved ones. After enduring countless hardships and finally deciding to step onto the path of immortality, it seemed fate had already brought it to a premature end. How could he accept that?
He tried once more to work from the Gui Water Scripture, hoping to find a breakthrough. But no matter how he adjusted the flow of his spiritual energy, no matter how painstakingly he analyzed every sentence and word of the scripture, as soon as he circulated his power, it would still leak away at those twelve nodes.
At this point, Li Yan was utterly exhausted, eyes bloodshot, looking like a lone and helpless wolf on the vast steppe.
He let out a long sigh, realizing he couldn't continue this way. He simply collapsed onto the floor of the cultivation room and fell into a restless sleep. If he couldn't find a solution after a few more days of research upon waking, then he would just have to go and speak to that chubby master of his.
Hopefully, for the sake of their teacher-disciple bond, the man would be willing to send him back to the mortal world.
As for the Gui Water Scripture, he had decided he would never speak of it. Though his own cultivation path had been severed, he couldn't allow that to invalidate Dong Fuyi's life-saving grace. At most, he would just burn more incense in the future and pray that Dong Fuyi, in whatever perilous place he now resided, would find a more suitable heir.
And so, Li Yan drifted into sleep amidst these chaotic, spiraling thoughts. Yet even in slumber, his mind was bombarded by fragments of the Gui Water Scripture and the three jade slips' contents.
He didn't know how long he had slept when suddenly, still in a half-dreaming daze, Li Yan sat up. His eyes were still bleary, but there was a trace of excitement on his face.
This sleep had not been a peaceful one. As the saying goes, "What troubles the mind by day haunts the dreams by night." In his dream, his mind had been preoccupied with the Fractured Poison Body. There, he suddenly recalled a passage from one of the jade slips, one that made him abruptly sit upright.
"During the Qi Condensation stage, the Fractured Poison Body splits the inner body into roughly ten parts. Each part follows its own method of cultivation, nourishing and growing, eventually developing into distinct forms of poison.
"Though initially difficult to control, these poisons pose no harm to the cultivator's body. They must be slowly understood and mastered until they can be used freely.
"As one's cultivation improves, the poisoned body splits further into smaller, independent toxins. At a certain point, the cultivator may even recombine two or more toxic fragments into a new, unknown venom, with effects so bizarre and deadly they defy logic and imagination."
This passage had originally been a summary by one of the predecessors, explaining the offensive uses of the Fractured Poison Body and how to manipulate it. It also explained why Li Yan had gotten two completely different results when he previously used the Raincloud Technique.
That was because the energy he released wasn't just pure spiritual energy, it was spiritual energy infused with toxic properties from his shattered body. And since he hadn't yet mastered the Fractured Poison Body, the results varied.
Li Yan had understood that back then, but he had been too focused on solving his inability to cultivate to consider it more deeply.
Now, this passage had resurfaced in his chaotic dreams, along with countless other fragments of information. But this time, it struck him like a bolt of lightning in the darkness, illuminating his entire dreamscape. He immediately awoke.
"During the Qi Condensation stage, the body splits into around ten fragments. Each fragment follows its own method of cultivation… each its own method… its own method…"
Li Yan muttered the words over and over.
"Twelve fragments in my body, those aren't cracks. They're incomplete separations…
If a cultivator can recombine two or more fragments into a new poison, then each fragment must already be independent…
Shattered, yes, fractured! I understand now. Only by breaking can it be considered shattered. Without being broken, how can it be called 'fractured'?
My body isn't truly shattered, it's an incomplete Fractured Poison Body… an unfinished toxic constitution…"
Sitting on the floor, half-delirious and half-enlightened, Li Yan continued to mutter to himself. But his eyes were growing brighter and brighter.
(Chapter End)