Feeding the Tiger with One's Own Body

Li Tui practically crawled back to the West Wing.

The wounds on his left shoulder and right leg burned like fire; every step felt as if countless insects were burrowing into his bones. When he pushed open the door to his room, the horizon was just beginning to glow with a crab-shell green hue.

The room was dark, and he didn't light a lamp. He slid down against the back of the door, his breathing ragged and heavy.

He raised a hand to touch his left shoulder, feeling a wet, sticky mess. Pus mixed with blackened scabs, and a foul, fishy stench assaulted his nose. The pant leg of his right side was soaked through with filth, sticking tightly to his skin.

He tore open his robe and lowered his head to look in the faint light from the window. The skin around the wounds had turned a grayish-white, with spiderweb-like dark red veins spreading slowly along the edges.

Jundu.

This poison was insidious, eroding flesh while devouring the body from within.

He fished out the Jinchuang Powder from his robes, pulled the stopper, and dumped the entire contents onto the wounds. The moment the powder touched the pus, it hissed and emitted white smoke, immediately turning a filthy green before falling away in clumps.

It was useless.

Li Tui threw away the empty bottle, leaned his back against the icy door panel, and closed his eyes.

The internal energy in his body was in chaos. He had forced his cultivation to escape just now, and his dantian was now empty; the remaining energy darted about like startled fish. What was worse, that cold, poisonous force was following the minute pathways of his wounds, devouring the Qingling and Fengshi acupoints he had worked so hard to open.

He couldn't wait.

He struggled to his feet and stumbled to the edge of the bed, sitting down cross-legged. With his palms facing the sky, he forced himself to calm his mind.

His consciousness sank into his body.

Darkness. Then, pinpricks of light. The remaining internal energy in his meridians was thin and scattered. He guided his intent to gather the points of light like a closing net, forming a thin stream that he slowly directed toward the wound on his left shoulder.

The moment his internal energy touched the poison, it was like pouring cold water into boiling oil.

"Ugh!"

Li Tui let out a muffled groan, the veins on his forehead bulging. The two forces tore at each other beneath his skin; the poison bit into his internal energy like a maggot attached to bone, even surging back along the energy flow to invade him. He gritted his teeth and pushed more internal energy to wrap around it, layer by layer, like building a dam against a flood, temporarily isolating the gray, necrotic area.

The same was true for his right leg.

Half an incense stick later, he was soaked in cold sweat, his face deathly pale. The dark red veins spreading from the wounds finally stalled, trapped by the thin but tenacious cage of his internal energy.

But this was only a stopgap measure.

His internal energy was being consumed every second, while the poison was slowly seeping through. Within three days, this barrier would be completely corroded.

Li Tui opened his eyes, his vision bloodshot. He reached into his robes and pulled out a coarse cloth pouch.

He unfolded the cloth, revealing a dark red tumor.

He stared at the object, his fingertips unconsciously stroking its surface. It felt warm and soft, pulsing slightly, like a sleeping, malevolent heart.

The light outside the window grew brighter, and the sound of servants sweeping could be heard in the distance. The Zhao Mansion was slowly waking up.

Yet he sat in this dim room, holding a lifeline in his hand—and a death warrant.

He swallowed the taste of blood in his throat. The cold, stinging pain in his left shoulder reminded him every moment that he had no time to hesitate.

Li Tui tore open his robe to expose the necrotic wound on his left shoulder. The dark red veins were faintly writhing beneath the skin like living creatures.

He pressed the tumor against the wound with his right hand.

The moment they made contact.

The twisted patterns on the surface of the tumor gave a violent shudder!

Immediately after, an extremely subtle suction came from the point of contact. It wasn't the tumor transmitting something; rather, it was the opposite—like an infant nursing, it began to draw something out from the flesh and blood of his wound.

Li Tui's back tensed.

He could clearly feel that deep within the numb flesh around the wound, something was being extracted, thread by thread. It wasn't pain; it was a sense of hollowness, as if his bone marrow were being hollowed out.

But at the same time, the spiderweb-like dark red veins were fading at a speed visible to the naked eye!

It was working!

Li Tui closed his eyes and let the suction continue. He could feel the cold, poisonous force at his left shoulder being "sucked" away by the tumor bit by bit. Wherever the poison passed, his own blood, essence, and even the faint vitality within his meridian walls were being swept away along with it.

It was as if he were feeding a greedy young beast with his own living flesh.

The same happened with his right leg.

A quarter of an hour later, Li Tui let go and collapsed onto the bed, lacking even the strength to breathe.

At the wounds on his left shoulder and right leg, the dark red veins had mostly faded, the pus had turned clear, and although the flesh still looked ghastly, the cold, erosive sensation had truly dissipated.

He slowly raised his hand to look at the tumor in his palm.

The dark red surface now glowed with a faint, warm luster, as if it were satisfied after a full meal. Its pulsing rhythm was deep and steady; holding it against his skin, he could feel something inside it growing and strengthening.

It was more "alive" than before.

Li Tui curled his lips, though there was no warmth in the expression.

Using his own vitality to feed this evil thing, borrowing its greedy instinct to clear the Jundu—it was no different from feeding a tiger with one's own body.

He propped himself up and closed his eyes to look inward.

The situation inside his body was even more bizarre than he had anticipated.

The Qingling and Fengshi acupoints, previously eroded by the Jundu and then sealed by his internal energy, were now free of poison, and the meridians around the acupoints had become strangely "clear."

It was not the fragility of damage, but rather a "clearance" as if it had been violently scoured and stretched open. It felt like a dried-up riverbed crushed by a flash flood, where the gravel and silt had been washed away, leaving only the smooth, hard bedrock behind.

When his true energy flowed through these two points, there was no stagnation at all; the speed was nearly twice as fast as it had been before the injury!

And it wasn't just those two points.

Li Tui focused his mind to observe closely and discovered that even the collateral meridians, which had previously been severely blocked and remained unopened, were now showing signs of loosening. It was like a rusted door hinge that had been slammed a few times; though it hadn't opened, a breeze was already slipping through the crack.

Under the greedy suction of the tumor, his progress in Tongmai had been forcibly pushed forward by a significant margin.

But the price was also crystal clear.

Li Tui could feel a hollowness seeping from the depths of his bone marrow. It wasn't just fatigue; it was the "emptiness" that comes after one's life force has been drained. It was like a tree with intact bark and green leaves, but whose heart had been hollowed out by woodworms.

He looked down at his open palm.

The hand was still the same hand, skin and flesh wrapped around bone, the knuckles thickened from years of labor. But the moment he clenched his fist and his tendons tightened, he could detect a distinct "softness."

It wasn't that his strength had diminished; it was that the "foundation" of this body had grown thin.

It was like a wall that looked the same on the outside, while the bricks and stones inside had been hollowed out.

The sun outside the window climbed higher, casting warm yellow spots of light through the paper onto the back of his hand.

From afar came the impatient call of Zhao Yuanchong, interspersed with the soft, delicate responses of a maidservant. The play of a new day was about to begin.

Li Tui inhaled slowly, then exhaled just as slowly.

He propped himself up, wiped his face with cold tea, and changed into a clean set of coarse cloth garments. Facing the shimmering reflection in the water basin in the corner, he wiped away the last trace of abnormality from his face, reapplying his mask of respect and docility.

When he pushed open the door, the morning light spilled all over him.

He squinted, straightened his back, and walked toward the main house. His pace was steady, as if the life-or-death struggle at the bottom of the well and the feeding of the poison-clearing beast this morning were the actions of someone else entirely.

Yet, as he walked, the presence of the tumor hidden against his chest grew increasingly distinct.

With every heartbeat, it faintly overlapped with that slow, powerful pulsation.

His left hand curled unconsciously inside his sleeve.

Li Tui recalled the withered, thin face of the old man at the bottom of the well.

At the time, he had been on the verge of death and only focused on escaping, so he hadn't had the chance to dwell on the details. Now that he was calm, he replayed every action of that old thing in his mind.

If that old thing had truly wanted to kill him, given the narrow confines of the well and the methods of a Qi Refining cultivator, he would have had no chance of survival.

Yet, the other party had deliberately held back.

And the Jundu was insidious, rotting flesh and ruining meridians, yet it didn't kill him immediately; it stopped exactly at the critical point where he could temporarily seal it with true energy, but could not hold out for more than a few days.

It forced him into a dead end, leaving him no choice but to touch the only tumor on his body that might resolve the situation.

And it just so happened that the tumor could indeed neutralize this poison.

Li Tui's pace remained normal, and the mask of respect and docility on his face did not shift in the slightest, but his heart grew colder by the second.

How could there be so many coincidences?

From the moment that old thing appeared, he probably never intended to kill him immediately.

The standoff at the bottom of the well, the affliction of the Jundu, letting him escape—every step had been calculated. He was being forced to use his own body to nurture that sinister tumor.

Was he waiting to harvest it once it was fattened up?

Li Tui's left hand inside his sleeve lightly scraped against the texture of the coarse cloth, his eyes growing colder still.

Whether it was feeding a tiger or raising a Gu, so be it.

He had swallowed the bait, and he had accepted the hook.

But he would like to see, in the end, once this tiger was fully grown, whose throat it would tear out.