Will It Hurt?

Dugu Yan nodded. She also felt that her request had been somewhat abrupt. If merely taking a few looks could produce a method to purge the poison, then she and her grandfather, Dugu Bo, would not be in their current predicament.

She glanced at the surrounding crowd, then turned back to look at her teammates. Taking a few small steps forward, she bowed slightly and said politely, "Would Your Excellency be willing to move to a room upstairs and examine me? Even if you are unable to provide an effective solution afterward, that would be no matter. But if you can offer even a reasonable suggestion, I will certainly reward you handsomely."

As she spoke, she did not forget to introduce herself.

"My name is Dugu Yan. My friends all call me Yanzi, so you can call me that too."

I hadn't expected Dugu Yan to be so polite. It seemed the backlash from the deadly poison afflicting this grandfather and granddaughter was rather severe. Dugu Yan was, after all, the granddaughter of a Titled Douluo and naturally had her own pride. In Lin Manshan's view, aside from recognizing that he truly had some skill, the bigger reason for her respectful attitude was likely that the poison's backlash had tormented her terribly.

She truly did not want to let even the slightest hope slip away.

Ah, who hasn't had their back bent by reality? Lin Manshan sighed inwardly.

If I had a powerful backer, I wouldn't have to come to the Star Dou Great Forest alone to hunt Spirit Beasts, would I?

Nodding, Lin Manshan smiled. "You're too polite, Miss Yanzi. There's no need for a generous reward. I have nothing much to do anyway, and taking a look won't delay me for long. Also, my name is Lin Manshan. Just call me A'man."

Does this man not know who I am? I'm Dugu Bo's granddaughter. That represents the friendship of a Titled Douluo, yet he doesn't seem to care about a generous reward at all. Dugu Yan froze in surprise for a moment, then smiled brightly and stepped forward to lead the way. "Please!"

"A'man, I want to go too!" Shui Yue'er quickly raised her head, tugging at his arm as she interjected.

Lin Manshan turned to glance at Shui Yue'er and the Skywater Academy group before looking back at Dugu Yan. "Miss Yanzi, why don't we all go together? My diagnostic method is simple anyway. It doesn't involve anything private, so there's nothing others can't see."

"Alright!" Dugu Yan nodded, then turned to her own teammates. "Everyone, come along too."

Thus, the group streamed into a room on the second floor, dividing into two rows around the table with Lin Manshan and Dugu Yan in the middle.

"Miss Yanzi, please roll up your sleeve to your elbow, then place your arm flat on the table," Lin Manshan said solemnly. "The human body has five hollows, all places where qi and blood converge, and where the qi and blood in the meridians can easily become blocked. The cubital fossa is one of them. It happens to be located at the arm joint, a common place for toxins to accumulate in the human body. Starting from here makes it easy to assess deadly poison."

This man really does have genuine skill. Dugu Yan became even more convinced. Nodding, she rolled up her right sleeve and laid her arm flat on the table.

Lin Manshan took a bundle from Shui Yue'er's hands. Earlier, during their journey, he had already had the girl store the bundle in her Soul Tool.

After all, it was far easier than carrying it himself.

This... Seeing Lin Manshan take a coarse cloth bundle from Shui Yue'er, Dugu Yan's expression visibly shifted in surprise.

A'man doesn't have a Soul Tool himself? Isn't he traveling with the two girls from the Shui Family of Skywater Academy?

As she pondered this, Lin Manshan had already untied the bundle, pulled out a leather case, and spread it across the table.

The candlelight flickered in the room, and a row of long silver needles gleamed coldly.

Such thin, long needles? He isn't going to stick those into someone, is he? Everyone's scalps tingled unconsciously.

Looking at the row of silver steel needles before him, Lin Manshan felt no discomfort whatsoever. Instead, a trace of pride welled up in his heart. These were his proud creations from the past year, a new technique he had developed by combining Tang San's Hidden Weapon Techniques with his own knowledge.

Well, it was really just acupuncture!

Silver Needle Acupoint was something he had learned from Tang San over the past year or so. He did not know its specific name, so he had named it himself. It was not really a skill, but rather a training method for needle-type hidden weapons. The method was simple: carve a wooden dummy, mark acupoint names on it with a vermilion brush, then place it in an open area and fire needle-like hidden weapons at it from afar.

When he had seen the finished wooden dummy Tang San made, he had immediately thought of acupuncture. He had even mocked Tang San for carving such an ugly dummy.

As for why Tang San did this, the reason was easy enough to guess. It was nothing more than further practice in the accuracy and lethality of hidden weapons. Needle-type hidden weapons were so tiny that hitting a mung-bean-sized red dot from a distance was no easy task. Moreover, if one truly struck an acupoint in a single hit, it could indeed kill someone on the spot. After all, the human body was said to have fatal acupoints.

As for acupuncture, back in his previous life, during the era when social media feeds were flooded with product advertisements, he had seen posters introducing moxibustion, foot patches, and similar products. He had learned a little superficial information from them.

The human body's meridians were divided into channels and collaterals. Channels were thicker and followed fixed routes, with the Twelve Main Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians being commonly mentioned. Collaterals were thinner branches of the channels, crisscrossing throughout the body and linking all the body's organs, tissues, and acupoints together.

Acupoints, meanwhile, were mostly places with many blood vessels and collaterals. They were also known as places where qi and blood converged. Acupuncture stimulated acupoints to affect the entire body and achieve health-preserving effects.

Unfortunately, he had treated those posters as junk advertisements and never studied them seriously. After all, who would bother memorizing those messy, intricate meridian lines and all the densely packed tiny writing beside them? At most, one would read the large text below to get the general idea.

He regretted it deeply now!

The wooden dummy Tang San made had only acupoints marked on it, without any meridians. It was also ugly as sin, nowhere near as detailed as modern models. The only reason he had later managed to identify them was by comparing the meridian network diagram marked in the book Yu Xiaogang had previously given Tang San with the acupoint locations Tang San had marked on the dummy. Combined with his knowledge from his previous life that acupoints were where meridians and blood vessels converged, he used Soul Power to sense places with many blood vessels and sinews, or where they intersected, then compared them one by one until he found them.

Furthermore, through following the clues and exploring, he had already searched every place that might be an acupoint on the human body.

Aside from certain acupoints located in concealed areas whose proper names he did not know, he had basically figured out the rest. Perhaps Tang San had not marked the remaining ones because he felt they were difficult to attack.

Besides that, based on the neighboring and connecting relationships between acupoints, he believed he had already found all of the so-called Twelve Main Meridians and Eight Extraordinary Meridians. He simply did not know which was which, nor did he know how to open those blocked meridians.

He definitely did not dare to force them open recklessly.

There were hundreds of acupoints in the human body, and the meridians were incredibly complex. The risks were too great. At the very least, he could not casually experiment now. A single mistake might affect his future cultivation, and he was currently at the golden age for cultivation. Reckless experimentation could easily cause more harm than good.

Disordered meridians, reversed Soul Power, and cultivation deviation—those were not things the Blue Silver Emperor Right Leg Bone could heal.

That was also why he had chosen to keep following Tang San. The Mysterious Heaven Skill was undoubtedly a method he could directly draw from and learn.

Even if I can't obtain it by observing from outside, I've already thought of other methods. Now I only lack sufficient accumulated Soul Power, Lin Manshan thought to himself. Besides, I've gained quite a lot over the past year or so.

Silver Needle Acupoint was one such gain. To Tang San, it might merely have been a method for practicing hidden weapons. But to him, it had the marvelous use of healing and saving lives. At the very least, he had already figured out how to guide energy through silver needles, as well as how to test for and identify poisons.

As for more advanced applications, he had never studied acupuncture, did not understand them, and could not find anyone to experiment on.

What he knew now had all been tested by sticking needles into his own thigh.

Good thing I have the Blue Silver Emperor Right Leg Bone. Lin Manshan muttered inwardly as he drew a ten-centimeter silver needle from the leather case.

Watching the threadlike needle tip slowly approach her elbow, Dugu Yan's pupils visibly contracted, and she immediately shut her eyes.

What kind of diagnostic method is this? It's simply unheard of, she muttered fearfully to herself.

"Will it hurt?"

PS: I spent some time looking up information. O.O.