Story 8 - Tribulation Trepidations (15 ?)

Story 8 - Tribulation Trepidations (15 ?)

I scowled at the teen. “It’s not like that mission at all.”

The flabbergasted expression on his face was priceless.

“Listen up, junior, we just watched a pinnacle stage 5 beast beat up a low stage 3 ascendant white tiger. During the crab mission, we saw two stage 5 krakens kill each other.”

He glared.

I raised a finger before he could interrupt. “We also didn’t embarrass ourselves so badly afterwards that we all agreed to never speak of this mission again.” I crossed my arms and grinned. “This is obviously different.”

“I can’t believe you said that when it’s become disproportionately dangerous again! This is exactly like the previous two missions!”

I tossed him a bottle full of pills I specifically created for sword cultivators to replenish their energy. He grabbed it and scowled.

“Are you trying to tell me to eat this and shut up?”

“Your intelligence is why I like to keep you around, Little Clear Eyes Mad Tongue.”

He scoffed. “Whatever mission you go on next time, don’t expect me to tag along.” He put a pill in his mouth. His eyes widened as he likely realized that his Great Martial Aunt had good shit. He cleared his throat. “Unless it’s extremely profitable!”



I smirked. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He huffed and started to meditate.

I downed a cup of spiritual water and used a half dozen spirit stones to refill my own energy within minutes. Now it was time to contact the kid. The low-realm telepathic technique I used worked well only when the person was close by and I knew where they were. This meant that I’d have to use a secret sound transmission to talk.

“Little Spring, are you safe?”

No response. Even after several minutes of waiting.

Not giving up, I kept trying, repeating the same message. Still no response, even after a quarter hour.

I ground my teeth.

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Maybe I could use a more powerful version of the secret sound transmission? One that could even wake the half-dead. There would be some minor backlash since I’d be using a Foundation Establishment technique at Qi Condensation, but if I could get in contact with that stupid Spring of the Universe, it would be worth it.

I should have taught it to Mad Tongue and had him use it before he started to cultivate. Well, whatever. He might have taken too long to learn it.

“Wake your ass up!” A sour feeling spread through my chest. A trickle of blood dripped down from my lips and I wiped it with a handkerchief. This much was nothing.

“Sis—?” His whispered reply sounded like gravel.

I fucking knew he was still alive.

Now that I’d woken him up, I could switch to a regular sound transmission that wouldn’t hurt my body. “Where are you?”

“Everything hurts...” His voice trailed off as if he would pass out any second.

Fuck. I shouldn't have wasted all that time arguing with Mad Tongue.

“Don’t you dare go back to sleep! Are you in a private enough place to enter your space?”

“Think so?”

“Then move to the treatment room.”

“Hard.”

How injured was he?

“You do it anyway!”



I leaned back and called, “Spirit of the Space!”

The golden dragon traveled through the wall, then worriedly made figure eights above Little Spring’s head.

“Hey, store this residual energy somewhere.”

His eyes narrowed, and he glared down at the kid’s injuries. “If you can bring it out of his body, I could just eat it.”

“Can you throw it back up again?”

The golden dragon huffed out an annoyed breath. “Or I could put it in the deep storage.”

That was more like it. “Let’s do that.”

“Okay, junior brother. How are you feeling?”

“Can’t feel most of my body. It hurts some, but I can think now.”

This kid looked really miserable. “Regardless of the pain, I need you to work with me. We’re going to remove this residual energy from the most dangerous areas first, starting with your heart.”

I sent a glare to the dragon. “As soon as you sense it outside his body, send it into storage. I don’t want to risk it suddenly returning to cause more damage.”

“Hmph, I would never harm my master.”

Since I couldn’t use the cleaning technique on Little Spring in this state, I used a clean handkerchief to wipe the blood off his face. “It will be difficult with your numbed senses, but you need to work with your spiritual energy. Rotate it the opposite of mine but move it in the same direction.”

I showed him what I talked about by rotating the strand I sent into his body like a little drill and moving it toward part of the foreign energy. Because Little Spring and I cultivated mirror techniques, I could send my energy into his body and easily keep it separate from his.

The kid copied and reversed the drill. Sweat beaded on his forehead and I wiped it away. There, a few weak-looking strands of the dense energy surrounded and pressed down on his heart. Frankly, the fact that this kid was still alive was a miracle. If we hadn’t finished our body cultivation meals, he would be dead right now.

I tried to drill it in the middle of the strand, thinking that moving it from its center of mass would be easiest. Unfortunately, while this moved it, it was very slow, and was inefficient. I had us spread out along the string until we came to the third lines. The strand advanced much easier if we pushed it from there. It was almost like Little Spring’s energy was positive, mine was negative, and the foreign particle was a magnet getting repelled by our energies.

A minute or two later, we had the first one out of his body.

The dragon moved its small claws, capturing the string and sending it away.

Fuck, this was taking forever, and I didn’t know how fast Clear Eyes would finish his meditation and check the tent. Well, we knew what worked. We just needed to get it finished sooner. Since removing one strand at a time would take an eternity, I sent more tendrils of Qi into his torso.

“Sister Lin?”

Once again, I wiped his forehead. “I know you’re exhausted, but I need to get this done. The faster we take this energy out of your body, the faster I can heal your injuries.”

He mumbled something but complied. We pushed a dozen parts at a time. I watched Little Spring to see if he had trouble keeping up, but he followed my lead perfectly. Meanwhile, the dragon caused the strings to vanish the moment they left, relieving us of a burden.

As soon as we finished that batch, the kid cleared his throat. “Are you angry with me?”

“Concentrate on the task.” I grimaced as I continued throwing out more strands of energy. “I’m not upset with you. But I regret taking you with me. You shouldn’t have to go through this at your age.”

“The world isn’t safe. I’d rather face danger with you than remain secure and protected in the sect.”

This fucking crazy-ass protagonist. How could he go through something like this and still say that? Was I not teaching him, right?

“I need to train you how to take better care of yourself during a crisis.”



“Some things I can only learn by experiencing them.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. But was it necessary to go through these things when he was only nine?

“Focus. I’m going to add more tendrils.”

“More?!”

“Less talking, more pushing.”