61 Betting It All On The Absurd

Elizabeth's eyes snapped open as she once more felt the totality of her Inner Strength return. She glanced over at Jane's current state and gave out a sigh of relief. Even after all the time she spent recovering, Jane's Dantian hadn't continued that much further into its impending implosion. Naturally, this meant that she wouldn't have to trouble herself that much more.

Thus, Elizabeth drew a familiar Taiji symbol on Jane's exposed torso with her needles. Even as Elizabeth placed needle after needle into Jane's various acupoints, she felt that her movements were too slow, this being the case even if in reality anyone watching her would stand wide-eyed and mouth agape by virtue of her speed.All it took was a quick 3 or so seconds and by then all of Elizabeth's needles were prepped and ready to receive energy.

However… As Elizabeth began the mending process, it immediately became apparent that Jane's end was about to be realized! "Fuck!" Elizabeth cursed, hateful that the crystallization in Jane's Dantian expanded at a rate just barely faster than her speed of restoration. All she could do now was just delay the inevitable, as Jane's Dantian did as her technique originally intended!

It was a shame as this would have been a moment Jane herself had been eagerly anticipating. Little did she know that when her breakthrough to ascend past the Soldier Stage came, so too would she breathe her last breath…

But! Elizabeth wasn't about to give just because the conventional method of treating Jane lost its value. Rather, she would continue on with the unorthodox, using what she knew from the path of medicine as well as her newfound knowledge of Jane's cultivation technique to figure something out.

Elizabeth squinted her eyes in half guilt for the horrific damage she was about to instill on Jane's unconscious body as she started stimulating Jane's energy along a somewhat jagged and loose alternative energy cycling route she had thought up. If Jane were up and about, there was no telling how painful a state she'd be in as Elizabeth drove her energy through the burnt and torn up remains of her meridians and acupoints. Alas, now that the option to heal Jane by healing her Dantian directly was invalid, this was the second best method Elizabeth could think of.

Unfortunately, even with a new path laid out before her, Elizabeth wasn't having an easy time treating Jane as she now had to work extra hard to drive foreign energy all whilst healing Jane's Dantian on the side.

She thought up the path of where she'd be driving Jane's energy based on more reasonable release points where the cold could leave Jane's body at the extremities of her body. Avoiding the center of her body as well as her head, startling cold and heavy bursts of energy could be felt gushing out of Jane's hands and feet. To a certain extent, the frigid coldness could be visibly detected by the normal naked eye as it interacted with the relatively tame temperature of Elizabeth's room and phased into a hazy mist.

For a while, this second best method worked plenty fine… Gradually, with less coldness invading Jane's Dantian, Elizabeth was managing to slowly undo the crystallization process. Alas, Elizabeth wasn't the type of expert that could instantly reverse engineer a cultivation method and improve upon it at a moment's notice… Her attempt though valiant in intent lacked the experience and knowledge required to work seamlessly as even though her work was going just as planned, Jane's energy having not a bit of trouble cycling through the pathway she concocted, after a bit of time, the shortcomings of Elizabeth's shallow foresight began manifesting…

Unfortunately, for fear of causing new mistakes in the cultivation method's energy pathways, Elizabeth hadn't changed the cycling route of the energy she'd be driving too drastically. Now that various acupoints and meridians on Jane's body were starting to freeze over once more, she realized that her "mistake" was discovered too late for her to mend over. If only she had introduced more release points placed within Yang Governing Medians into the pathway, perhaps, the cold energy would have been warded off long enough for the crystallization process to completely vanish and therein guarantee Jane's Dantian safety.

Now normally, Elizabeth would just enter a fit of cursing and continue on with whatever else there was for her to get through. But at the moment there were only two more options she could adopt. She could either prioritize Jane's life over everything else and directly move to remove the imploding Dantian from Jane's body, turning her into a cripple as a direct consequence. Or… She could take a "small" risk to her personal safety and attempt to continue preserving Jane's martial ability. Only, the second option, if failed, wouldn't just harm Elizabeth, it would almost entirely guarantee that Jane died.

Elizabeth looked at the haggard and destitute state she had put Jane's body in and with that familiar glint of madness taking over her, she threw caution to the wind as option one became void. Elizabeth thought there wouldn't be a reason for Jane to live if she came out of the operation without a Dantian to continue cultivation anyway.

If she did go through with option one and Jane's life was preserved, she would only live for a couple more years as the side effects of galvanizing Qi to surpass the Soldier Stage would lay waste to her mortal body without a Dantian to support her lifespan. In those few extra years, Jane would lead a life worse than death as she would be utterly untreatable through Elizabeth Acupoint skill, thereby rendering her unable to recover from the burnt and torn meridians, acupoints, and muscles Elizabeth had destroyed while saving her. Nevermind acupuncture, neither modernized western medicine nor traditional eastern medicine would cure Jane if she left today without a Dantian to support her...

Thus, Elizabeth moved at her fastest pace to quickly recover and reinsert her needles, only this time, after taking off her own shirt, half the needles were placed on her own body. With the Yin half of the trademark taiji symbol defined on her body and the Yang side on Jane's, one final needle became the transfer point for what would later be recognized an absurdist accomplishment never to be beaten; ever…

Elizabeth took Jane's hand and without hesitation impaled that final needle before she slammed her own hand to mirror Jane's position. It was scary watching the moment her hand was pierced, as even though Elizabeth knew and felt absolutely no pain as she had impaled an acupoint, she still flinched and winced as if in pain.

Elizabeth then started to continue driving the cold energy in Jane's body, only this time, she only passed the cold energy through additional release points along Jane's Yang Governing Meridians; a move that would usually be considered suicidal. She then brought "balance" to Jane's system by having the cold energy continue cycling out of her body altogether and enter her own energy pathways and meridians, to inevitably be flushed out through her own release points as well.

'Shit...' Elizabeth didn't even have the strength to voice out a curse as she had her hands full, now engaged in pseudo-cultivation for two as well as in the midst of performing a complicated Dantian operation. Time passed at a breakneck pace as Elizabeth fully engaged in restoring Jane to a regular state. Even with Timeworn Eyes working to slow down the rate she perceived time, she found it amazing how long she managed to continue with this endeavor.

The final obstacle that lay in her path now was her own stamina as Elizabeth, even with all the crazy methods currently working to restore Jane, just barely beat out the corruption rate of Jane's imploding Dantian. Yet, even after minutes passed, Elizabeth somehow managed to continue the process.

At around the quarter-hour mark, the corruption of Jane's Dantian had been restored to the point where Elizabeth could spare a few instances to check her status. The result being a startling discovery... Elizabeth's Inner Strength wasn't even draining. It was actually increasing as she took in more and more of Jane's ice energy! A couple minutes of constant absorption elevated her capacity for storing Inner Strength to a resounding 727 units, and that even though a grand majority of the energy was needlessly wasted through the release points Elizabeth established.

Not one to turn this into a wasted opportunity, Elizabeth changed her plans, as she chose to forgo utilizing the release points to keep in more of the cold energy for her own Dantian to absorb. Naturally, she wouldn't do this if she couldn't guarantee her safety, and as someone much more aware of the dangers such actions brought unto herself, Elizabeth knew when and if she needed to stop and continue with the "safe" method that had been working fine up until now.

In the end however, it seemed like her worries were unfounded as her Dantian was as stable as a mountain. Literally no amount of energy she bombarded her Dantian with even made a dent as that greedy little dot hiding away in metaphysical space just below her navel devoured all the energy Elizabeth threw at it without a hint of disturbance.

It actually scared Elizabeth as she had only slowly started to shift towards lessening the number of release points on her body. When she decreased the number all the way down to zero and still no signs of wrongdoing became apparent, questions of how and where the energy she absorbed went crossed her mind. But, by then all her focus had to be directed towards wholeheartedly driving what was now HER energy as the full scope of an ascending Soldier Stage cultivator was just below the limits of what she could handle.

After discovering that zero release point absorption on her end wouldn't even scratch her Dantian's stability, Elizabeth continued on with her insanity and started to slowly reduce the number of release points on Jane's Yang Governing Meridians as well. Luckily, by the time her own meridians and acupoints were beginning to be affected by the overwhelmingly powerful streams of cold pressure, Jane's Dantian was just about finished with its restoration.

At around one hour into Jane's operation, Elizabeth finished reversing the impending implosion Jane's Dantian was about to undergo. Ten minutes later, the meridians and acupoints that were once more frozen from Elizabeth's treatment were cleared once more and with Elizabeth now starting to feel a bit of danger from all the cold she accumulated, she started to reintroduce that energy to Jane's system, now processing it through the viable cycling route she used when transferring energy from Jane's body to her own. Miraculously, Elizabeth inverted the situation as now both Jane and herself had directly benefited from what would have been a calamity.