Chapter 232: Chapter 338: The Status of Jiang Ling_1
A large bamboo garden outside the corner city of Tianjiang.
This is a newly expanded greening area in Tianjiang, with very few people around. Even if occasionally two or three people passed by, they were merely driving on the almost deserted highway, and no one would stay for long.
Of course, this did not exclude young couples who liked to seek thrills in the wilderness.
"Cough cough cough…"
Fang Ren arrived at the rendezvous five minutes early. Just as he had stepped deep into the bamboo forest, he heard a woman's coughing.
He began to walk towards the source of the sound.
On the other side, a woman dressed in a red dress was walking towards him from within the bamboo forest, and the woman was the leader of the Nightfall Organization, Jiang Ling.
Her face was pale, her lips dry, and her originally noble and elegant cheeks also showed a slight struggle. Around her body, a scorching aura continuously radiated, wilting the bamboo leaves wherever she passed.
Fang Ren currently could not see colors and could only see her frail appearance.
Fang Ren immediately went to meet her, glanced at Jiang Ling's condition, then frowned and said, "This doesn't seem like a problem with your realm."
Having spent so much time with Qianye, he had learned a lot about cultivation and could make a rough judgment about Jiang Ling's current state.
Leaning against a bamboo behind her, Jiang Ling slowly sat down on the ground and spoke with a weak voice, "Mr. Fang is truly exceptional in alchemy, able to make a rough diagnosis at a glance."
"It feels like you are suffering from deviation due to practicing some cultivation technique." Fang Ren didn't plan to ask too much first, crouching down and saying, "Give me your hand."
Jiang Ling lifted her hand, and Fang Ren caught it. At that moment, he felt a pain in his hands as if they were burned by fire.
Then True Qi surged within Fang Ren's body, protecting his palms, and he quickly examined Jiang Ling's body with his Divine Sense.
After probing, Fang Ren's already furrowed forehead deepened further as he said, "You... how could you have Void beast energy inside your body?"
In the process of his examination, he found that besides True Qi in Jiang Ling's Dantian, there was another breath constantly colliding with her True Qi. This caused her True Qi to run amok and wildly flood her meridians.
And this breath was very familiar to Fang Ren, identical to the one from the Void beast that had attacked the academy back then.
Jiang Ling withdrew her hand from Fang Ren's and said with a bitter smile, "Is there any hope for me?"
"There is hope, but your realm might plummet," Fang Ren said.
Jiang Ling bitterly smiled again, "I thought I could seize this opportunity to break through the peak of the Xuanyang realm, but it seems I was too impatient..."
"What happened to you?" Fang Ren asked.
"After the day we destroyed the large laboratory in Linglong Bay, although we didn't get the secrets we wanted, we obtained a lot of useful information from the lab. These documents were all about theories combining the power of the Void beasts with cultivators. If a cultivator could harness the energy of a Void beast, they would become exceptionally powerful.
But clearly, the experiments in Indra Sky to achieve this integration had never been fully successful. Since that day of the battle, I've become very anxious, because our organization has been exposed. The Central Area will soon send stronger practitioners to eradicate us, so I was only thinking about how to break through my realm faster."
Jiang Ling continued, "But my realm is too high now, it's as difficult as ascending to heaven with just one breakthrough. This only adds to my impatience, and I've started to set my sights on the materials from the Indra Sky organization. The fact proved that I was too arrogant.
I thought their theories were indeed effective, and that my own realm was strong enough not to be too affected by the Void, so I decided to do a small experiment on myself. However, the result of that experiment is right before your eyes."
After hearing this, Fang Ren couldn't help but think she was being reckless. Although the Central Area was indeed likely to dispatch troops soon to eradicate Nightfall, a breakthrough in realm wasn't something one could force in haste.
Moreover, those research results from the Indra Sky had never been successful even once, and Jiang Ling had actually dared to try it on herself.
"So you're saying that you used their special method to directly absorb the energy of a Void beast into your body?" asked Fang Ren.
"Exactly, it was just the energy from a fifth-order Void beast. I thought it would be weak, but it turned out I was too naive. When I first absorbed the energy, I really did gain a lot, feeling my realm rise rapidly, and my body didn't feel any discomfort.
But just when I was on the verge of a breakthrough, the Void Energy that I had absorbed perfectly into my Dantian separated from my True Qi, causing me serious injury," said Jiang Ling.
"You're a leader, after all. What were you thinking?"
Fang Ren sighed, took a small iron box out of his Space Ring, which contained his usual Silver Needles and medicinal materials, and continued, "The reason I said your realm might plummet is that I'm going to help you draw all your energy into a segment of your meridians, then you'll have to personally destroy that segment, meaning the meridian will burst and disappear.
From then on, the circulation of your True Qi will be obstructed, and it will take a long time to get used to it."
"Destroy a segment of my meridians?" Jiang Ling frowned. "How much will my realm fall?"
"I don't know exactly, it largely depends on your own capabilities, but at the very least, you'll fall by one major realm," sighed Fang Ren.
For Jiang Ling, a major fall in realm was a big deal since he was now part of Nightfall. A decline in Nightfall's combat strength would significantly affect many things for him in the future.
"That means...I'll become a practitioner at the midterm phase of the Yingyue Realm?" Jiang Ling was completely bewildered.
As a leader of Nightfall, if her realm fell to the midterm phase of the Yingyue Realm, how could she protect the people in her organization? If the Central Area's troops attacked, just about any general could wipe out their entire organization.
Fang Ren was also helpless about this. If Qianye were awake, perhaps there would be a way, but now the only Spirit Form he could use was the Gray Giant Tree, and even the red aura on the tree used for recovery was gone.
"Let me treat you," he offered.
Fang Ren took out a Silver Needle from the box, and the gray aura on his body began to surge violently. As the aura gathered at the tip of the needle, Bai Qi had said that his True Qi could suppress all the True Qi currently possessed by humans. So, as long as he infused his own True Qi into Jiang Ling's meridians, everything should be manageable.
"Mr. Fang, maybe you shouldn't treat me," suddenly spoke Jiang Ling.
"What do you mean?" Fang Ren was taken aback.
"I want to give it a shot myself to see if I can break through," Jiang Ling said. "After all, if I survive, I will still be killed by the Central Area; I might as well go all out. Maybe I can protect everyone in the organization."
Fang Ren was stunned. "Hey, this is very dangerous. The Void Energy is already pushing out of your body. If you keep this up, your flesh will rot, and eventually, your meridians will shatter."
"No matter."
Saying this, Jiang Ling suddenly sat down cross-legged, her True Qi circulating rapidly, the intense pain contorting her facial expression.
"Stop, stop, stop."
Fang Ren hurriedly called for a halt and said, "If you're determined to break through, then wait until I stabilize the energy in your body. If you fail, at least I can still save your life."