Life-and-Death Sight Technique

As the command was issued with a thought, Xie An felt a massive amount of qi and blood being frantically drained away. Dizziness, nausea, and the urge to vomit followed close behind.

He glanced at the qi and blood value on the panel. It had actually fallen to 0.2.

"Activating a talent consumes this much qi, blood, and computational power?"

But thinking about it, he could understand.

Activating a talent was essentially a roundabout form of transplanting one.

After using it several times, Xie An had discovered a fact: Ten Thousand Questions possessed a certain degree of intelligence. When his qi and blood were drained to the point of threatening his life, Ten Thousand Questions would automatically stop operating.

This counted as an automatic form of protection the system provided for its host.

Even so, passing out every time was hardly a solution.

Later, he would have to add a command to Ten Thousand Questions that predicted qi and blood consumption.

[Talent activated]

[Spirit Sight: Qi-Gazing]

"Qi-Gazing? Could it be similar to the ability Uncle Shui mentioned, sensing the Vital Breath inside others?"

Xie An wanted to immediately test the effects of Qi-Gazing, but he had consumed far too much qi and blood. The nausea and dizziness were severe; even forcing his eyelids open felt exceptionally difficult.

He needed to replenish his qi and blood as soon as possible.

There were only two ways to replenish qi and blood: sleep and rest, or nourishing food.

The former was slow. The latter was fast.

"Qiu Lan, bring me two bowls of ginseng hen soup!"

Xie An called out toward the door.

"Right away. I'll have the cooks in the kitchen start simmering it." Qiu Lan answered from outside, then ran off at a trot.

Xie An leaned wearily against the headboard. Waiting for the ginseng chicken soup to be cooked felt painfully slow.

Killing the chicken, preparing it, simmering it... it could not be ready in less than two hours.

Then he suddenly heard Zhou Ji practicing his saber in the courtyard. Xie An called outside, "Zhou Ji, come in. I need to speak with you."

Zhou Ji quickly entered the room. Seeing Xie An weakly leaning against the bedhead, he could not help but be startled. "What instructions do you have, Young Master?"

Suppressing his fatigue, Xie An said, "When martial artists are injured or overly exhausted, are there any medicines that can quickly replenish their strength and qi and blood?"

When he had previously overdrawn his qi and blood, he had only thought of nourishing himself with ginseng and old hen soup.

That was merely a habit of thought carried over from his previous life.

This was a martial world. There had to be pills specifically meant to nourish qi and blood.

Sure enough...

Zhou Ji said, "Ordinary poor martial artists can only eat more meat, then sleep and rest. They naturally recover after half a day or a day. Those with ample family wealth can take Essence Qi Pills, which quickly replenish qi and blood. Whenever my father traveled as an escort in the past, he would grit his teeth and spend a sum of money to keep a few Essence Qi Pills on him. If he encountered vicious bandits midway, they could prolong the battle."

Xie An nodded. "Our Xie Residence should have Essence Qi Pills, right?"

Zhou Ji said, "The Xie Residence has vast wealth and great influence, so naturally we do. When the guards overexert themselves in training or attempt to break through a stage, they often spend money to buy a few. It raises the chances of successfully breaking through."

Xie An said, "Go to the estate treasury and collect a pouch of Vital Blood Pills for me."

"Yes." Zhou Ji turned and left.

Before long, he returned with a pouch of Vital Blood Pills.

Xie An took the pouch and opened it. Inside were ten black pills the size of thumbs, round and plump, giving off a medicinal fragrance that refreshed the heart and spleen, along with a faint smell of blood.

Xie An took one out and directly stuffed it into his mouth.

Gulp!

As the pill slid into his stomach and dissolved, it generated a current of heat that flowed into his limbs and bones.

His weary limbs, muscles, and bones recovered at a speed visible to the naked eye.

In merely dozens of breaths, Xie An felt that most of his qi and blood had recovered. Every sensation of weakness and spasms vanished.

The qi and blood value displayed on the panel had returned to its full 1.4.

Truly impressive!

I should have done this long ago.

Fully restored, Xie An took out two Vital Blood Pills and tossed them to Zhou Ji. "I see you tirelessly practicing your saber day and night. Take these as a reward, so you don't deplete your qi and blood and harm your body. Practice with me later."

"Thank you for the reward, Young Master!"

Zhou Ji happily took the pills and left the room.

Zhou Ji was a martial arts fanatic. Recently, he had been trying to break through the Four Barriers and enter Organ Tempering, but every time he trained bitterly through the night, he felt his qi and blood failing to keep up. With these Vital Blood Pills, his chances of breaking through would undoubtedly improve greatly.

After Zhou Ji left, Xie An got up and moved his limbs around.

Then, with a thought, he activated Qi-Gazing.

The scene before his eyes... had changed!

He could see a wisp of transparent "qi" permeating the wooden table, but it was heavy with deathly stillness and did not move at all.

The floor tiles, ceiling, and lamp... all had wisps of transparent qi, yet none of them moved.

Xie An pushed open the window and looked at the plants in the courtyard.

The grass also had a wisp of qi, rising upward.

The large tree also had a wisp of qi, rising upward.

But they moved very slowly.

When he looked at Zhou Ji practicing his saber in the courtyard, he suddenly saw a current of rising "qi" surging from Zhou Ji's body. It was like the steaming heat beside a fire, twisting one's line of sight.

The qi on Zhou Ji's body was clearly denser and more active than that of the plants.

After comparing them, Xie An finally gained a preliminary understanding of Qi-Gazing:

"All things possess qi. The qi of dead objects is unmoving dead qi, while the qi of living things is rising Vital Breath! And the density of that qi may represent lethality!"

To further verify his deduction, Xie An went into the courtyard and crouched beneath the pomelo tree, watching an ant.

It possessed an extremely tiny wisp of qi, but it was indeed rising.

Crunch.

Xie An crushed the ant beneath his foot.

The rising qi immediately stopped.

As expected...

This Qi-Gazing should be the ability to sense Vital Breath that only Dark Force experts possessed.

Dark Force experts could only sense it vaguely, while he could see it directly.

This Spirit Sight, this Qi-Gazing, truly was extraordinary.

"With this Qi-Gazing, I'll be able to distinguish the living from the dead like Uncle Shui in the future. I can even roughly judge how lethal a person is. That gives me a reference before I make a move. What a truly fine talent!"

This ability was not to be underestimated.

In this world filled with folk customs, ghosts, and strange affairs, the ability of Qi-Gazing was an exceedingly precious Life-and-Death Sight Technique!

If time returned to the entrance of Li Family Village at noon today, Xie An would have recognized at a glance that Li Yunfeng was dead.

This undoubtedly made Xie An feel that he had gained a tiny bit more power to protect himself in this chaotic age.

Xie An suddenly thought of something and immediately returned to his room to look into the mirror.

He activated Qi-Gazing.

Thankfully...

The reflection of himself in the mirror also possessed a current of qi. Though it was not as vast and majestic as Zhou Ji's, it was indeed curling upward.

It seemed he was alive and had not been possessed by some ghostly entity.

A gratified smile appeared at the corner of Xie An's mouth.

Although he was not entirely sure where talents came from, one thing was certain: as long as he touched something possessing a distinctive ability, he might be able to identify its talent. Once activated, he could use that talent.

The process was the same as identifying martial arts → transplanting martial arts.

It was simply that talents were too mysterious to be written on paper as directly as martial arts.

As for what a talent was... Xie An simply understood it as an innate extraordinary ability.

This Ten Thousand Questions large model could not only transplant martial arts, but even transplant talents. It was absurdly powerful!

Hmm?

As Xie An continued looking, he suddenly discovered that amid his rising current of qi, there was actually a wisp of qi sinking downward.

Sinking qi?

He had never seen that before.

What did it mean?