Present Day
Doctor Li pressed two fingers firmly against Wang Fang's wrist, unleashing a thread of his spiritual sense. He carefully tracked it through the boy's blood vessels, searching for the root cause of the sudden collapse.
His pathways are entirely blocked, Doctor Li thought, his brow furrowing as he pushed deeper. The blockages are what make his physical body so weak and fragile. But wait...
As his spiritual sense navigated the meridians, he unexpectedly encountered a trace of raw energy hovering right where the boy's underdeveloped dantian resided.
Qi? Was he trying to cultivate? And by using a method he shouldn't have even touched?
Doctor Li's mind went entirely silent for a fraction of a second. Even if the boy had attempted to force a breakthrough, it didn't fully explain the severe volatility of his condition. What could possibly make his body this fragile, the doctor whispered into the silence of his own mind, when there is only a mere fragment of Qi in his dantian?
Determined to find answers, Doctor Li prepared his spiritual sense to shift course and explore the boy's Sea of Consciousness.
Before he could begin, the heavy doors of the medical chamber burst open. Wang Yun and Madam Xinyi rushed inside.
The moment she saw her son, Madam Xinyi threw herself toward the bedside. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she cried out, "Wang Fang! My child!"
Turning her head sharply to the left, she looked at Doctor Li with frantic, pleading eyes. "Doctor, what is wrong with my son? He was perfectly fine earlier today! What happened to him?"
"He was trying to cultivate with a body that simply cannot support it," Doctor Li explained gently, clearing his throat to maintain his professional composure. "Clan Leader Wang, Madam Xinyi, please try to remain calm. For all these years, young Wang Fang's physical form has been exceptionally weak..."
"Yes, we are well aware of that," Wang Yun interrupted, his voice tight with suppressed emotion. "That is precisely why I strictly forbade him from ever practicing cultivation."
"Indeed. Yet, we have never been able to identify the true, underlying cause of this frailty," Doctor Li continued. He suddenly went quiet, stopping mid-sentence, but the intense look in his eyes spoke volumes.
Wang Yun caught the silent implication instantly. He stepped forward, his Core Formation pressure slightly rippling the air around him. "Speak, Doctor Li. Is it a hidden poison, a structural meridian fracture, or an inherited bloodline curse? We will authorize any diagnostic method necessary."
"No, we do not need to resort to extremes," Doctor Li replied. "All I need to use is my spiritual sense. However, I will not probe through his forehead directly. I must guide it upward through his pulse."
"What?!" Madam Xinyi gasped. "Why avoid his forehead?"
"Because I detected active Qi residing within his dantian," Doctor Li revealed. "Two years ago, when he was first brought to me, I tested him thoroughly. At that time, his body was completely empty, entirely unable to retain a single drop of Qi. But today, I discovered that it isn't a lack of talent stopping him. Something else entirely is actively causing catastrophic damage to his physical form."
Madam Xinyi reeled back in shock.
Doctor Li stepped closer to the Clan Leader, clasping his hands together in a respectful salute. "Clan Leader... your son's inherent talent is unlike anything I have ever witnessed in all my centuries of medicine. The problem is not that he lacks the gifts to cultivate. The tragedy is that his mortal body cannot withstand the sheer weight of it. That is why I must examine him logically, tracing his pathways from the veins, through the meridians, and straight into the dantian."
Wang Yun stared at the doctor for a long moment before nodding firmly. "You have my permission. Do what you must."
Doctor Li stepped up to Wang Fang's unconscious form. Grasping the boy's wrist, he focused his mind and injected a concentrated strand of his own spiritual sense into Fang's body.
The energy thread entered the veins first, flowing like a silken ribbon through every intricate blood vessel before transitioning into the primary meridians. It drifted with extreme caution along the spiritual pathways, meticulously scanning for any hidden blockages, underlying injuries, or genetic abnormalities.
Initially, as the strand approached the boundaries of the boy's dantian, everything seemed entirely normal. But just as Doctor Li prepared to press further, his spiritual sense collided with an ominous, swirling pool of golden-obsidian energy.
The doctor's expression instantly turned solemn. What awaited him in the depths of the boy's lower abdomen was a force far beyond anything he had ever anticipated.
What is this dense, otherworldly Qi? Doctor Li thought, a cold sweat breaking out across his neck. It feels completely primordial... almost underworldly. It feels as though if I take even one step closer, it will violently crush my consciousness.
He hesitated, realizing this was merely a tiny, isolated fragment of energy. Yet the staggering pressure radiating from it was absolute. Doctor Li narrowed his eyes, his medical pride and stubbornness refusing to let him back down.
A mere stray strand of Qi... I refuse to believe it can completely block a Foundation Establishment master.
Steadying his uneven breathing, he carefully pushed another, thicker strand of his spiritual sense toward the swirling golden-obsidian vortex.
The exact millisecond his energy came within an inch of the pool—
BOOM!
An apocalyptic, suffocating pressure erupted without warning inside the boy's anatomy. It felt as though an ancient, supreme deity slumbering since the dawn of time had suddenly opened its eyes and glared directly into Doctor Li's soul.
The doctor's pupils dilated in sheer horror. Before he could even think of pulling his energy back, the golden-obsidian Qi released a single, effortless ripple.
Crack!
His invasive spiritual sense was instantly shattered into microscopic pieces.
"Kh—!"
Doctor Li buckled over, coughing violently.
Pfft!
A heavy mouthful of fresh, bright red blood sprayed across the floorboards. His body staggered backward under the immense internal backlash, yet his fingers remained miraculously locked around Wang Fang's wrist, refusing to break the connection.
"Doctor Li!" Madam Xinyi cried out, stepping forward to intervene, but Wang Yun immediately extended his arm, stopping her in her tracks.
The Clan Leader's eyes were narrowed into razor-thin slits. "Don't interrupt him. He's in the middle of a breakthrough analysis."
Doctor Li wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his tattered sleeve, his chest heaving as his breathing grew ragged. Cold sweat dripped continuously from his forehead, soaking his collar.
Impossible... It obliterated my spiritual sense with nothing more than a passive ripple... What kind of god-like Qi is sleeping inside this child's dantian?
For a terrifying moment, a deep, primal fear gripped his heart. Yet, his burning desire for answers quickly burned the terror away.
"No..." he muttered through gritted teeth. "I must know the truth."
Ignoring the excruciating agony flaring through his soul from the mental backlash, Doctor Li condensed a brand-new, highly focused strand of spiritual sense. This time, he completely avoided the volatile golden-obsidian pool in the dantian. Instead of approaching the lower abdomen, he carefully guided the thread upward through Wang Fang's side-meridians, following the natural, ascending flow of the spiritual pathways directly toward the crown of the head—the gateway to the Sea of Consciousness.
The deeper his energy advanced, the quieter and more unnerving the inner landscape became.
His spiritual sense navigated through countless invisible, winding pathways before finally breaching the final mental barrier. The moment Doctor Li's consciousness stepped into Wang Fang's Sea of Consciousness, he was struck entirely dumb with terror.
What... what in the heavens is this place?!
Wang Fang's Sea of Consciousness was boundless. It stretched out so infinitely vast that it looked capable of swallowing an entire continent whole. At the absolute center of this endless, shimmering spiritual ocean floated a solitary, massive landmass. There were no grand mountain ranges, no rolling valleys—just an endless, perfectly flat, serene plain.
And standing directly in the middle of that plain was a single, towering tree.
The tree gleamed with a cosmic, terrifying light, its bark and leaves shifting like polished golden-white obsidian. It radiated a quiet, ancient, and utterly devastating pressure. Doctor Li had never seen or read about such an entity in any medical compendium, but the exact moment his spiritual sense cast its gaze upon the roots of the tree, absolute disaster struck.
CRACK!
The passive pressure emanating from the golden-white tree didn't just repel his spiritual sense—it crushed it into absolute nothingness.
The resulting mental backlash surged backward through Wang Fang's meridians and slammed into Doctor Li's body like a physical tidal wave. The cultivation base he had painstakingly built across centuries, forging his way into the respected Foundation Establishment stage, shattered like brittle glass in a fraction of a second. The ethereal pillars of his power crumbled, violently throwing him out of the ranks of cultivators and back into the realm of ordinary mortals.
"Puah!"
Doctor Li violently sprayed a fountain of thick, black blood into the air. His meridians were torn to shreds, and his very dantian cracked wide open. Centuries of hard work, meditation, and power... gone in the blink of an eye.
"Doctor Li!" Madam Xinyi screamed, rushing to his side.
Wang Yun's stoic expression shattered for the first time in years. Moving with terrifying Core Formation speed, he stepped forward and caught the elderly doctor before his limp body could crash onto the floor. Wang Yun immediately pressed two fingers against the doctor's wrist to evaluate the damage.
The Clan Leader's eyes widened in profound horror. "His cultivation... it's completely gone."
As Doctor Li lay paralyzed in pain, his eyes tightly shut, a single, horrifying thought echoed through his fading consciousness: Just one glance... a single glance, and I am permanently crippled.
Slowly, Doctor Li forced his bloodshot, trembling eyes open. A look of pure, unadulterated terror—unlike anything he had ever experienced in his entire life—filled his gaze. His lips quivered violently.
Using the absolute last ounce of his remaining mortal strength, he reached up and desperately clutched the fabric of Wang Yun's crimson sleeve.
"Clan... Leader..." the doctor wheezed, his voice a raspy, dying whisper.
"Never..."
"...never allow anyone..."
"...to look into the Young Master's Sea of Consciousness..."
"That place..." Doctor Li choked out, his chest seizing one final time. "...is completely forbidden."
The lingering light faded from his eyes as his hand lost all strength, dropping limply to his side. His head fell back as he slipped into a deep, vegetative unconsciousness