Taking the Immortal Herb and Bearing the Consequences

After checking the Compendium of a Hundred Herbs again and again, Gan Lin finally decided to take the Ice and Fire Joined-Spike Grass.

Since none of these Immortal Herbs had appeared in the original story, Gan Lin had to be exceptionally cautious when taking one.

After all, most Immortal Herbs came with deadly poison. If he took one rashly, something could easily go wrong.

There was nothing wrong with being careful. This time, Gan Lin had also taken ample precautions.

Not only had he prepared all kinds of antidote pills in advance, following the formulas in the Record of a Hundred Herbs, but he had also asked Dugu Bo to stand guard over him.

That should have left nothing to chance.

"Xiaolin, why not let this old man be the first to take it?" Ever since Gan Lin had proposed being the first to test the medicine, Dugu Bo had raised the matter with him nine times.

Though they would be taking different herbs, Gan Lin's purpose was to verify whether the Compendium of a Hundred Herbs was correct.

If there was no problem with the Ice and Fire Joined-Spike Grass, then the others were most likely fine as well.

"Grandpa, I've already explained. You really aren't suited for it," Gan Lin said helplessly.

"First, you're the Poison Douluo. How many years has your body been steeped in poison? Most Immortal Herbs have potent properties, and they're especially likely to react with foreign energies. If I take it, at worst, ice and fire will clash in my body. But if you take it and its potency stirs up those traces of old poison suppressed in your dantian, you won't be testing medicine, Grandpa. You'll be poisoning yourself."

Dugu Bo opened his mouth, but had no answer.

The words were blunt, but the reasoning was sound. To outsiders, his body was immune to all poisons, but he knew that the balance within him had been nurtured by poison over many years. Disturb one part, and the whole would be affected.

"Second," Gan Lin said, raising a second finger, "your Soul Power is too high. So high that it would obscure the herb's properties."

"What do you mean?" Dugu Yan asked, utterly bewildered as she listened nearby.

"He means," Dugu Bo answered for Gan Lin, his brows knotting together, "that he wants a 'clean' test subject."

Gan Lin nodded. "Exactly. I'm only level fifteen now. My meridians are clean, my foundation is pure, and I have no other energy in me apart from my Soul Rings. If I take it, whether it's ice or fire, poison or nourishment, my body will tell me without missing a thing. But if you take your herb, your Soul Power will automatically suppress its medicinal power. When that happens, who can tell whether the herb was three parts poison to begin with, or whether you suppressed it down to three parts? Testing medicine is all about finding the 'truth,' and your cultivation is precisely what would obscure it."

"Besides," Gan Lin said, looking down at the faint cyan-gold sheen on his palm, "I have the Juvenile Jade. It's still enough to protect my heart meridian. If something really goes wrong, I can withstand far more than an ordinary level-fifteen can. If it were anyone else, I wouldn't dare take it myself either."

Dugu Bo fell silent.

He knew every point the boy had made was right. And precisely because every point was right, he was even more worried.

"But this is your first time, after all..."

"Grandpa."

Gan Lin suddenly raised his head. There was not the slightest trace of retreat in his eyes; instead, they held a calm beyond his years.

"I picked this herb myself. I looked through the Record of a Hundred Herbs myself, and I prepared the formulas myself. Whether to take it today and when to take it were my decisions too."

He spoke each word distinctly. "I made the choice, so I should bear the cost myself."

"If I let you test it for me first, Grandpa, and it works, the credit goes to this opportunity of mine. If it goes wrong, your old bones are the ones that get hurt. Where in the world is there such a bargain?" Gan Lin smiled, a touch of youthful stubbornness in that smile. "I learned in my first lesson on medicinal principles that every medicine is three parts poison. The person who dares use those 'three parts poison' to gamble on the 'seven parts efficacy' has to be the one who takes it. Otherwise, how could I ever have the face to use the Record of a Hundred Herbs to save people?"

Dugu Yan's eyes reddened at once. She wanted to say something, but a look from Dugu Bo stopped her.

Dugu Bo stared at Gan Lin for a long time.

So long that the halo around the Immortal Herb floating in midair, its icy blue and crimson hues flowing into one another, completed another cycle.

"...I'll stand guard," Dugu Bo finally said, his voice a little hoarse. "If anything happens, I'll stake this old poison of mine to drag you back from death. But one thing—if you can't hold on, shout. Do you hear me? Don't be like those stubborn fools and endure it to the bitter end."

"I hear you." Gan Lin nodded firmly.

Dugu Bo swept his sleeve, and a layer of pale purple poison barrier spread out of thin air, enclosing an area several yards across like a quiet chamber. He sat down cross-legged, hands on his knees, and the Poison Douluo's presence settled. He held his lifelong cultivation taut like a net, ready to cast it out and rescue Gan Lin at any moment.

Gan Lin took a deep breath and reached out to take the Ice and Fire Joined-Spike Grass.

At first it was ice in his hand, as cold as a chunk of unmeltable ice from a frigid pool, freezing his fingertips numb. A moment later, the chill receded, and his palm burned as though he were holding a piece of red-hot charcoal. Ice and fire alternated as they climbed the lines of his palm. Gan Lin gritted his teeth and held on.

The herb was strangely shaped. A single spike was divided into two colors: frost gathered on the left, while flames burned on the right. Yet at the boundary, the two had fused together in a way that defied belief, like a scar where cold and warmth had been split apart and then forcibly stitched back together.

"Success or failure, one mouthful." Gan Lin set the rule for himself in a low voice.

He put the whole herb in his mouth and swallowed it.

It had no taste.

The first breath was empty. So empty that Gan Lin thought he had chewed on a piece of withered grass.

On the second breath, heaven and earth turned upside down.

A blast of extreme cold erupted from his dantian and surged backward through his meridians toward his heart. His blood seemed to freeze into ice crystals in an instant; every inch it flowed brought a knife-edged pain through his blood vessels. Before he could exhale that breath of white vapor, the other half struck back with a roar of searing heat, burning from his back through his limbs. It felt as though several lines of fire had been buried beneath his skin, so hot that smoke rose from the gaps between his bones.

Cold and heat each occupied half his body. Neither would yield, and neither would die down.

The ice wanted to freeze him into a stone statue; the fire wanted to burn him into a handful of ash.

And his level-fifteen body was precisely the battlefield where the two forces collided.

"Urgh-"

Gan Lin gave a muffled groan, his knees buckled, and he fell to the ground. His skin alternated between bluish purple and crimson at a speed visible to the naked eye. A wisp of white vapor rose from one shoulder, while a wisp of black smoke curled up from the other.

"Steady your heart meridian!" Dugu Bo shouted. The purple poison barrier tightened sharply, protecting his final line of defense.

"Don't... suppress it for me..." Gan Lin forced the words through clenched teeth, his voice shaking terribly. "If you suppress it... I won't be able to test... its true properties..."

He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, trading that sharp pain for a measure of clarity.

Pain.

It hurt so much that darkness swam before his eyes.

As ice and fire collided, the cyan-gold light within him suddenly shone.

The Juvenile Jade settled down like a thin layer of rock, coating the inner walls of his meridians, which were nearly being torn apart. It did not dispel that force; it merely added another layer of padding, keeping that "wall" from crashing down.