Chapter 30: The Man in Black Hood

An Cheng returned back to the main hall after locking the door right behind her. She had stopped a while on the hallway to turn back and look at the closed door and stared at it for a while in silence.

She did not know why Elder Lin would act this secretive just to do some acupuncture treatments but as a disciple she knew it better than anyone else to not let the curiosity get the best of her.

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Elder Lin had been gone out of the Sect for around two years before she finally returned a few days ago.

Even the residence had been closed off in her absence. So, it was An Cheng's first time inside the residence after a long time.

"The air inside this place is still the same." An Cheng muttered as she breathed in the air. It felt serene and peaceful inside this residence like how it did two years ago, despite this place literally being left empty.

She glanced around the empty hall and noticed ancient paintings and tapestries on the walls, all of which had accumulated the spiritual energy for hundreds and hundreds of years.

(Refer: ancient artifacts and paintings have abundance of spiritual energy in them. They age like wine! The older the better while same goes for resentment and evil energy too!)

"Pfftt…She is still collecting the paintings I see." An Cheng let out a jolly giggle as she recalled about the times when Elder Lin got in trouble for wasting too much of her precious spirit stones and gold bars just to buy whatever caught her eyes.

"I hope she did not get scammed this time around," An Cheng thought as she shrugged off her shoulder.

Since she had nothing better to do, An Cheng decided to cultivate and replenish herself with qi that she had lost due to the teleportation technique she used a while ago. She concluded, it was better than aimlessly waiting for them to be done.

She seated herself on the floor of the hall in a crossed leg position and closed her eyes. She quickly cleared her mind and soon, her breath evened out and she started to glow in a light green color.

Well, the floor did feel a little cold on her butt but she was already engrossed in her meditation to care about it.

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Meanwhile, inside the medicinal chamber, Elder Lin's hands trembled as she planted twelve silver needles on Le Fangling's body to pin point the exact location of the 12 meridians.

All of the silver needles were infused with healing natured qi which belonged to Elder Lin herself.

Her eyes once again shifted to the sleeping beauty and stayed there for a while on her peaceful face.

"What a peaceful young lady," Elder Lin inwardly commented and continued with her work.

In the dimly lit room, one could only occasionally hear the sound of the lid of containers opening and closing as she took out medicinal herbs.

She took out five beast corestones from her spatial ring, which glowed as soon as she placed them around Le Fangling.

"....."

'What in the world?!' Elder Lin looked at the glowing stones, surprised as she could clearly see the qi stored in those spiritual stones make a thread like path and disappear straight inside Le Fangling's dantian!

The five spirit stones she had placed around were medium grade beast core stones which belonged to powerful magical beasts form Mt. Tianyui.

That is to say, these beasts were exceptionally rare and their cultivation base was really high. So, even a medium grade spirit stone from those beast were equivalent to high grade spirit stone from beast that had cultivated for equal amount of time.

As for Elder Lin, who was in the 5th stage of Nascent Soul realm, this beast core stone meant nothing and was of low value to her.

But it was different if the person using the spirit stones was a mere beginner and at that one with a blocked meridians? It was purely suicidal.

Elder Lin did not understand how could anyone possibly absorb qi from the surrounding without even trying to cultivate but the fact that her meridians were blocked posed a serious threat to Le Finagling.

"This is bad!" She let out a worried and anxious groan.

She hurried to unblock the blocked meridians and although her fingers kept trembling she managed to quickly unblock, purify and nourish the meridians with her own spiritual essence.

She placed away the needles in a container of hot water and wiped her sweat from her forehead and stepped back three steps to observe the situation more properly.

"T-This is simply preposterous!" Elder Lin exclaimed as she had never seen something as unreasonable as this in her two hundred years of life span.

Instead of stopping, the stones glowed even more brightly and the surge of qi grew exponentially. All the thin threads of qi that was leaking from the stone merged into a single beam of spiritual energy and got absorbed in the body of Le Fangling who was still asleep.

Now that the only clog had been cleared off, her body was more than free to to what it wanted.

The body started to glow in a bright whitish blue color and it did not even stop after the spirit stones were complete sucked off of their spiritual energy.

Elder Lin felt something abysmal and took a step forward when her body also started to glow and she felt something being taken away from her.

Even her own spiritual energy that she had cultivated over the span of time was being absorbed in to the body of Le Fangling who unaware of all this was still sleeping.

As quick as she was in her feet and her body, Elder Lin swiftly took out five barrier talisman and created a fiver layered barrier around the bed where Le Fangling was.

It was a special type of talisman that was not for warding off evil but to isolate any particular from of energy, be it spiritual or resentful, is what the person who sold her the talisman had told.

Since she had bought these talisman from a strange man while she was out two years ago on a mission in the underground valley on the western continent, as it was one of her hobby to collect these kind of things, she was not sure about the effectiveness of the talisman that was drawn with ashes instead of normal inks.

It was an old man dressed in a black long hood that covered any traces of skin on his body. Even while she tried to see his cultivation, she could not figure out anything about him as his existences and should itself was a fleeting remnant of an old memory.

She had tried to search for him the following day but he has disappeared without any trace and no one, not even the local people around there knew about him.

She would have totally forgotten about him, if not for the incident in front of her right now.

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Elder Lin had used way too much qi at once while activating these weird talisman so she panted a little as she looked at the isolated space inside the chamber.

'It.. It actually works?' Elder Lin exclaimed astounded as she had already thought of plan B in case it did not work.

She had just kept them as a souvenir of her travel there but little did she know that they were going to come in handy today.

"But how did he know I am going to need it someday?" Elder Lin felt immensely troubled as she recalled the man saying she will thank him one day for these talismans.

The more she thought, the more she felt way too bizarre about this whole thing.

At the same time, inside the barrier, Le Fangling finally opened her eyes, her eyes giving a faint black glow in contrast to how her body was glowing currently.