Chapter 1208 — The Yin-Cold Qi

"Old man, never mind all that for now — I've called you about something urgent!" Wei Zhao cut him off outright. Feng Xiaoxiao's safety weighed on his mind; how could he possibly have time to shoot the breeze with the old man about such things?

"Something urgent? What is it? Has something gone wrong on your end?" The old man tensed, his tone shifting from its earlier laziness to something grave.

"There's a strange illness — you've seen it before, and you treated it. Back then there was nothing to be done for it, but is there a new way now?" Wei Zhao did not know how to put it to the old man. As things stood, he had no time to recount Feng Xiaoxiao's condition from beginning to end; and even if he tried, he could not explain it clearly — after all, his own understanding of her case was only piecemeal.

"What strange illness? What are you talking about?" Wei Zhao's words left Old Man Wei baffled; he had no idea what illness the boy meant.

"How about this — I'll hand the phone to Feng Tianlong and let him tell you." Every moment was precious now and could not be squandered, so for the sake of time Wei Zhao decided that Feng Tianlong should speak to the old man; it would surely come easier than his own fumbling account.

When Wei Zhao passed him the phone, Feng Tianlong blinked in mild surprise, but he took it and said, "Hello, this is Feng Tianlong..."

"Feng Tianlong... Feng Tianlong..." Old Man Wei murmured the name, and a flood of feeling rose in him; his thoughts poured forth like a tide, as though he had been carried back to the years of his prime. Those days, that friendship — irreplaceable.

"Hello? Might I ask who this is?" Feng Tianlong found it odd: the voice was somewhat familiar and yet somewhat strange, and the man merely repeated his name without speaking, which puzzled him greatly.

"Xiao Feng, this is Lin Dongfang." The old man sighed and said with feeling, "I never imagined Xiao Yi would be at your side..."

"Elder Lin, it really is you!" Feng Tianlong was instantly thrown into a state of excitement and elation. "Elder Lin, where are you? I heard you had gone into seclusion, and after that there was no more word of you or the captain..."

"Let's not talk of old times just yet; tell me about your business first. Susu has already passed on, hasn't she? Then... mm, could it be your daughter?" Lin Dongfang counted the years on his fingers and thought to himself how ruthless time was. In the blink of an eye nearly twenty years had gone by — which meant that Feng Tianlong's daughter, too, had reached the end of her life?

Having failed back then to find a cure for Feng Tianlong's wife, Lin Dongfang had felt deeply guilty. But her illness was no ordinary ailment — Old Man Wei had never laid eyes on its like, had never even heard of it.

So over all these years, though he had kept up his research, he had never found a solution. He remembered how he had sworn so confidently to Feng Tianlong's wife, Xiao Susu, that he would find a way to cure her daughter — and yet in a flash so many years had passed with not the slightest progress.

"Yes, it's my daughter, Feng Xiaoxiao. Xiao Yi is treating her now. Elder Lin, do you have a way?" Feng Tianlong had never expected to encounter Lin Dongfang at such a moment. If Lin Dongfang had a way, then perhaps things really might take a turn for the better.

"Here's what we'll do — put Xiao Yi on the line; I'll speak with him." Old Man Wei sighed. He could not bear to tell Feng Tianlong that he had no cure, so he could only ask him to hand the phone back to Wei Zhao.

"Of course, one moment please!" Feng Tianlong knew this was no time for reminiscing; saving Feng Xiaoxiao came first. So he handed the phone straight back to Wei Zhao and said, "Elder Lin wants you."

"Old man, how about it? Do you understand the illness now?" Wei Zhao asked urgently. "Is there a way to cure it?"

"No... or rather, not for the moment." Old Man Wei sighed. "As for this illness, I have consulted a great many ancient texts and visited a great many people, and to this day I have only a rough conjecture."

"Oh? What is it? Tell me!" Wei Zhao's heart sank when he heard the old man say there was none, but he still refused to give up hope; he wanted the old man to say more about Feng Xiaoxiao's illness, to see whether he might find some way to break it.

After all, he still had Jiao Yazi; once he discussed it with him, there was no telling — there might just be a solution.

"How shall I put it... Xiao Susu's illness closely resembles being poisoned by gu, though whether it truly is gu I cannot say — at any rate, it looks much the same." Old Man Wei said, "Back then I visited Xiao Susu's hometown and had Feng Tianlong obtain her clan genealogy through the Mysterious Investigation Bureau, and I discovered something!"

"Xiao Susu? What did you find?" Wei Zhao asked at once.

"Xiao Susu is Feng Tianlong's wife," Old Man Wei said. "Xiao Susu's ancestor must have been something like a high priest — a Dharma Protector of some sect. Her forebears for generations were all Protectors, but for some unknown reason her branch broke away from the original sect, or perhaps the sect itself perished; and so they lost their cultivation method, and lost the way to guide the yin-cold qi within their bodies. That is what brought about the present tragedy..."

"Yin-cold qi?" Wei Zhao had not expected so much story to lie behind it all, and could not help being astonished. "Then what should I do now? Old man, what do you mean by saying there is no cure for the moment? Does that mean she can still be cured?"

"Yes, yin-cold qi. This yin-cold qi grows weak when it meets the strong: given a suitable cultivation method and a fitting way of training, it will slowly be made to serve the cultivator, becoming an aid to his true qi and raising his own strength! That is to say, when the strong one is the master, the yin-cold qi is the assistant; but in Feng Tianlong's wife and daughter — and in the generations before them — the yin-cold qi was master and they were the assistants! So naturally their bodies would run into trouble." Old Man Wei explained, "This yin-cold qi is much like the gu poison in Ergoudan's body: it devours the nourishment within the body! And as one grows older, the yin-cold qi grows too, until at twenty it reaches full formation; then the body's nourishment reaches the critical threshold of being devoured, and there is no possibility left but for the yin-cold qi to swallow up the body's vitality."

"This..." Wei Zhao was visibly moved as he listened. So this was Feng Xiaoxiao's condition — no wonder that whenever he touched her hand, it had always felt so cold and icy...

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