Once we returned to the alchemy shop Jiang, Jai, and Jai’s assistant, who I learned was named Luna, started trying to think of ways to kill the parasite without killing the people. As I knew nothing about alchemy, I simply gathered the tea from Jiang and the Ambassador and started making cultures of the parasites. I didn’t need to make good tea, so I simply heated up some old training cauldrons full of level three spirit water and threw in roughly the correct amount of leaves, a bit from each of the three varieties. As the water heated up I pulled out the alchemy path jade and copied the basic qi gathering array from it, drawing it on the ground in talisman paint. Once the tea was hot enough I extinguished the flame and put the cauldrons on the arrays, then activated them.
Noticing that the parasites would take too long to grow if we did things this way, I made a simple qi cloud gathering array on a talisman leather and threw it into the cauldrons as well, burning the symbols into it rather than using paints that might dissolve in the water. That should slowly infuse qi into the water in the pot and would hopefully keep the qi level high enough that it qualified as level three spirit water.
Once I was done I returned to the front of the store where the three of them were still debating the relative merits of the various methods. Jai wanted to use a poison that was lethal to most lifeforms, but combine it with something to limit the effects in humans. Luna wanted to make a better anti-parasite drug, as none that they had made so far could kill them off completely, or possibly mix multiple drugs to deal with the ones that resisted the initial drug. Jiang wanted to look into mundane ingredients which we knew wouldn’t hurt humans, testing them to see if any of them had any effect on the parasites. It was possible that they were weak to some ingredient that wasn’t used in alchemy, as it wasn’t a spirit plant or animal part.
As they couldn’t agree on a course of action, I stepped in. “Why not try all three, then shift to the one that shows the most promise after your preliminary tests have been finished?” I asked. “It seems like most of your problem is that you don’t know how viable different methods might be, only how dangerous they could be. Jiang’s is probably the safest, but we don’t know how likely it is to work. The other two ideas might work eventually, but we don’t know how long that will take. So before you use up all of the ingredients on one of those two, you should see how viable those ideas are.”
They talked about my idea for a few seconds, then agreed to do things that way. “How will we know if they work, though?” asked Jai. “That pot of tea isn’t enough for more than ten tests.”
I nodded. “I’ve started culturing the creatures in four old cauldrons I found in the back. They didn’t seem to have strict conditions for hatching, at most requiring spirit water and proper heat, so they should have hatched properly. I doubt the conditions are ideal, but short of human trials I doubt we can give them ideal conditions.”
The three nodded. “In that case, each of us should take a cauldron, and we can split the fourth one when we start to run out.” said Jai.
“Actually, I had an idea for treating them that is a bit unconventional, so I would like to use the last pot.”
“But you aren’t an alchemist.” said Jai. “How would you figure out a cure?”
“I might not be an alchemist,” I said, “But I am a talisman crafter, and know many techniques from many elements. I plan on trying different types of qi. I doubt they have a weakness to any of the main five elements, but what if they have a gold qi weakness, or a gem qi weakness, or a copper qi weakness? Those aren’t things that would normally be tested for. It’s also possible that I can find a refinement method that will kill them without making the host any worse off and maybe even better off.”
“You think treasure caterpillars might be their natural enemies?” asked Luna.
“It’s just an example, but maybe. There are many unconventional types of spirit beasts and refinement out there, so there’s probably a technique or spirit beast solution out there, I just don’t know what it might be yet.”
Jai shrugged. “It’s possible they have a natural enemy. Who knows, maybe there is a creature with a natural defense against them that we don’t know about. His experiments might reveal such a thing.” The others agreed, and the four of us got started on our ideas.
I pulled out two pieces of note paper. On the top of the first one I wrote “Techniques” and on the top of the second I wrote “Talismans”. Techniques I might be able to teach someone would go on the technique sheet. Some of those techniques might prove too difficult, however, so I had the Talisman sheet for such cases. As long as I understood and could properly use the technique I could theoretically make a talisman that used it. This would let people bypass the need to learn complex techniques.
First came the Technique sheet. Number one was simple, “lower your cultivation”. If they couldn’t survive in a level two body, then anyone could simply lower their cultivation to level two, and the parasites would all starve to death. Assuming that the guards managed to find all of the sources within the city, one would only need to do so once. This could take a day or more to do, however, and as Jai mentioned, strong individuals might not want to risk doing so, but it was the only means they currently had to purge the parasites from the body. I put the local equivalent of a plus sign beside this one. We knew it would work, and the flaws were largely social, not medical or scientific.
Number two was a bit of a stretch, using a technique for something outside its intended purpose. I wrote “Swarm Contract”. If I could form such a contract with the parasites within me, then I might be able to at least partially control them. While it is unlikely that I could starve them to death, as long as they didn’t interfere with my cultivation or lower my qi reserves by too much, it wouldn’t matter if I was infected. Eventually I might even be able to turn them into symbiotic creatures rather than parasites, and gain some benefit from them. The risks with doing this were fairly serious, however. First, I risked infecting others. While that might be a useful thing for demonic cultivators, as it would work as a slow acting stealth attack, to most people it was a major problem. The second issue was that I might miss some of them, meaning that some of them would remain behind outside of my control. Multiple generations would be needed to guarantee that I got all of the ones within me, and by that time there might be so many of them within me that I couldn’t purge them. If I could find something that would make them want to leave me, I could make them think that was a risk and trick them into fleeing, but if I knew of such a substance I could just use it to kill them or drive them away. All of that meant that this wasn’t a practical means of purging the parasites. I put a minus beside this one, as it had too many serious flaws to be practically developed.
Number three was “Flawed Dual Cultivation”. Everyone that dual cultivated knew that if you put your qi into another person wrongly, or put it in too fast, it could damage the person’s meridians and possibly kill them. Could this be used with the parasites? At first, it didn’t seem like it could be. They were absorbing level five levels of qi even as newly hatched eggs, so high qi densities likely couldn’t effect them. The fact that it wasn’t their qi also wasn’t an issue, meaning that they likely had a natural means of turning the incoming qi into neutral qi or qi which was aligned with them, allowing them to instantly absorb it. One would have to make that function fail in order to damage them in that manner, which would mean having a good understanding of how the absorption functioned. While I could probably study it and develop such a technique to overcome their natural methods, it would take too long to discover the technique. I put a question mark beside this one, as I might come back to it later.
Fourth, I wrote “refined immune system.” Theoretically one could refine their immune system to the point where it would fight the parasite, but this wasn’t a standard parasite. While most parasites fed on your body or its nutrients, these fed on your qi. Humans didn’t require qi to exist, however, so the immune system didn’t evolve to protect the qi supply by treating it as a nutrient. Any nutrients the parasites require actually came from the waste products of the cells, which is why they could continue to survive in the toxins I purged during Rebirth. These two facts made the parasites almost invisible to the immune system, to the point that it didn’t naturally fight them. In order to refine a system, one generally needed to find a flaw that they wanted to correct or some starting point for the change. With the immune system not being able to find an issue to correct, however, any refinement of the immune system would be far more complex, like someone that was born blind learning to grow an optic nerve. It was possible, but quite complex. This also got question mark.
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The next idea would be even more complex, so I wrote it as number one on the talisman sheet. “Isolate within qi depletion zones.” This would essentially turn the tissue around the parasites into level two flesh, and would starve them. This overcame most of the weaknesses of the first technique, in that one could remain at a high cultivation level but still defeat them. It had a few flaws, though. The first flaw was that it was just as slow as the first technique. The second was that it required one to know where all of the parasites were, which would mean that you needed to find them. If you missed one, you would become reinfected. It also required a huge amount of mental effort to pull off. As a result of this last flaw, it needed to be a talisman, not a technique, as most people would lack the patience and mental strength to use it, and therefore would miss some of the parasites or fail to seal one properly. This made a reusable talisman, which could do the same thing identically hundreds of times in a row, the best way to do this. Because the core technique, blocking qi with a barrier, was a level one technique at most, even a level two talisman paper could be used to make them. I put a plus beside this one, as it would be complicated to make, but might actually work.
After that I ran out of good ideas. While I told the others I was going to try to see if various spirit animals might be able to defeat them, that would also take a long time, so I would be coming back to it after we had a way to slow the parasite’s progress.
I decided to try the talisman option first. I disconnected my soul sea from my meridians, or more accurately blocked them from exchanging qi with me, so that they wouldn’t refill me with qi. I then found one of the two millimeter parasites and put a barrier around it, one which would only block qi from entering it. I did this several more times to make sure that I understood the technique, then ended my meditation and pulled out a piece of level two talisman paper. I quickly drew a circle on it to represent the barrier and a squiggly line inside the circle to represent the parasite. I then infused the technique into the paper, tracing over my lines. After adding the recharge circle to the back of the talisman, I started using it. It found all of the ones I was aware of, plus a few I had missed.
I couldn’t be sure that it had found all of them, however, so I would need to wait and see if any more hatched or grew up. I briefly considered absorbing tribulation lightning to speed up the growth of any others so that they could be more easily detected, but realized that the pulse of qi might break some of the barriers.
I made a second one which was more complex, searching the body for any area with impeded qi flow, and putting a barrier around it, but when I used it the few new barriers seemed to be around minor flaws which I had manged to overlook last night, not actual parasites. Still, I left them up, just in case they weren’t false positives, and got up to show my talisman to the ladies. The barriers should only have enough qi inside of it to last for a few days, and would disrupt any attempt to advance one’s cultivation during that time, but it was at least a usable product at this point.
I returned to the front of the store and showed them my talismans. “I think I have a partial solution.” I said. “It should slow the progress of the parasites by killing any that are mature enough to reproduce, so they can’t lay more eggs inside of you. It will take at least days to work, however.” I explained how it worked and gave the two talismans to Jai so that she could test them, as she was the only one of the three that was infected, Jiang being level one and Luna being level two.
After activating each talisman several times and isolating most of her parasites, Jai nodded. “Not a perfect solution, but at least I can restore my qi supply now and not lose it to the parasites. I should at least be able to make four or five batches of level four pills between recharges now.”
“Weren’t you going to test animals and spirit beasts, though?” asked Luna. “That was what you told us your plan was.”
I nodded. “That was my initial idea, but I realized that it would take days or weeks to get any results, as the parasites should grow in them at comparable rates to humans, so I wanted to slow the disease’s spread first. Once I’m done here I’ll set up the equipment I’ll need to test various treatments, then go and see if I can buy blood samples from level three and above spirit beasts. I can then put the tea in a dish, add a few drops of blood, and come back a few hours later to see if the parasite’s growth slowed, improved, or if they might have died from it. If I find that one of the spirit beasts has something in its blood that naturally kills the parasites, then maybe one of you ladies can isolate it and we can give it to humans.”
The three nodded. “That could work, but the supply of level three and above spirit beasts in the city is limited. Most of them are also citizens, which will make getting their blood difficult and expensive. But it isn’t a bad plan.”
After a few seconds of silence I spoke up again. “So, did any of you have any success?” All three of them nodded, but Jiang was the first to speak up.
“I looked over the tests the guards ran on the tea from next door. None of the mint teas, and some of the other herbal teas, didn’t have the parasites in them. The guards assumed that the manager simply didn’t infect those types of tea for some reason. I thought that the parasites might be weak to mint, however, and added several different mint leaves to several different samples. The parasites died in some of the samples. The problem is that, at the amounts of mint oil that was in the resulting tea, humans would experience extreme nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and in some cases the stomach lining might start bleeding. I will need to do some more work to know if I can find a safe way to use this, but for now it’s a possible solution.”
Jai spoke up next. “I think the blue-green ganoderma you sold me might also be a solution. I added a dilute amount to some of the infected tea, and the parasites died violently. At the densities needed, however, only level fives can easily resist the toxin. Level fours like me might be able to resist it with the aid of pills, but level threes, the most common people to be infected, will almost certainly die from it. I’ve asked all of the other alchemist shops in the city to look for level three blue-green ganoderma, in case it can also be used, as it would let me treat level threes, but none of them had any in stock, so I can’t test that idea.”
After they discussed the issue for a minute Luna spoke up. “Well, my solution also shows some progress. While the adults are highly resistant to most anti-parasite drugs, the eggs and young ones aren’t very resistant. I have found several drugs that will kill most of the young ones, leaving only the adults. If I can get some combination of drugs to kill one hundred percent of the young ones and eggs, then it can be combined with the normal Rebirth treatment, which only purges the adults and more mature ones, and together they can remove all of the parasites from a person.”
Physician Ye had sent us one thousand stones as funding for our research, but because all of us showed promising preliminary results we couldn’t decide who should get the funding to continue their research. In the end we decided to split it, and each of us took two hundred and fifty stones as a research grant.
I bought fifty more sheets of level two talisman leather at one stone each, and made another fifty talismans, twenty five of each type, as I wasn’t sure if the second type was finding actual parasites or just cutting off cultivation flaws from the body. These would be distributed to fifty infected people to test their effectiveness.
I then went to the spirit beast merchant. He only had three level three spirit beasts, all three of them being slaves. There was apparently a law here which freed all innocent spirit beasts when they reached level three, but many people tried to find a way around it by framing late and peak level two spirit beasts for criminal acts, or otherwise blocking their advancement. Acts prior to their advancement rarely were considered criminal however, as they didn’t really know what they were doing, so that rarely succeeded. Discrimination against spirit beasts, however, was quite common, and while the government couldn’t legally treat spirit beasts as inferior, under orders of the king, it was common for them to be given the harshest work, the worst pay, and to be treated the worst when buying things or looking for a house. I was allowed to take a vial of blood from all three of the slaves, paying them one stone each for the samples. I then went to a section of the city where various spirit beasts lived, a run down area that hadn’t seen proper maintenance in decades.
Knowing that I would need some help if I wanted them to talk with me, I bought a few note jades from a book store I passed and transferred the telepathy technique to one of them, as well as some notes on how to improve the basic technique. I then asked Xiao to use both that jade and the language jade, so that he could speak the local language telepathically, rather that communicating in concepts the way Shu Gongzhu had when we first met.
