Alex mulled for just a second before deciding on what he was going to do. He grabbed hold of the girl’s head and tilted it a little to pour some water into her mouth.
The water remained in her open mouth, refusing to go in. Her throat was entirely closed, so if they tried to do anything else, she might end up swallowing the water into her lungs.
That would cause another issue entirely.
Alex had to use his Qi in this case. He reached for the tiny bit of Qi within him and used it to create a path for the water to go into the girl’s stomach. Once she swallowed the water, Alex poured some more and made her swallow that too.
However, when he tried to do it the third time, the Qi dissipated entirely, disappearing from her body.
Alex quickly took back the bowl and looked in confusion. ‘What? That’s so soon. How did the Qi disappear so quickly?’
For an Immortal Qi, it couldn’t have become unusable so easily when it was clearly being used for such a simple purpose. In a regular place, this could have continued for minutes without showing any sign of failing. And yet, just three seconds after being used, it had failed.
‘Damn it!’ Alex thought. Hell was a truly frustrating place.
Alex put the bowl aside and cursed his empty dantian before looking at the girl again. She was still sweating profusely, so whatever he had fed her would be used up in a matter of minutes.
‘Dehydration is just a symptom,’ Alex thought. ‘I need to find the cause.’
Alex wanted to check what it was that was doing this, so he placed his palm on her wrist and used his spiritual sense to check the inside of her body.
Alex’s first theory was that this was some sort of parasite. Since they ate so much meat, there could be a parasite that they consumed from time to time, draining them from the inside and killing them.
It could be the curse they could not cure.
However, Alex didn’t find any parasites at all. In fact, he didn’t find anything else either. There were no major changes to her body as far as he could tell.
‘I need more Qi so I can help her.’
Alex considered other possibilities, but even as he thought of those, he knew the girl needed to drink more water. He needed to make her drink it somehow.
‘I don’t have any blood aura either. I could have used that to create a pipe to her stomach.’
Alex even wondered if he should quickly go to the ocean so he could gather a few more beast cores and use those. However, even if he were to kill ten beasts, it would only help him enough to feed the girl enough water to last perhaps twenty minutes.
And since time was of the essence, he wasn’t sure if he should do that or not.
‘I don’t have Qi or blood aura. If only I had something else other than my spiritual energy, then I could…’
Alex paused. He realized that he still did have spiritual energy. Spiritual energy by itself didn’t matter much at the moment except to scan the girl’s body. But it allowed for something else entirely that Alex hadn’t thought about.
Intent.
‘Can I do it?’ Alex thought.
There was no time to consider it. He would have to test it in practice.
“Can you help me? I need to feed her more water,” Alex told the chief, who quickly got to the other side and held his daughter’s head up.
Alex poured enough water to fill her mouth and slowly raised her neck so the water flowed in. At the same time, he concentrated entirely on closing the windpipe and opening the esophagus in her body with just his mind.
With intent alone, he was going to make it happen.
If intent allowed a person to change the laws of nature, something as simple as moving objects around should be of no issue at all.
Alex heavily underestimated the intent required to make such things happen without using his Qi, but it did work. As he focused, the water slid down her throat, going into her stomach.
Alex quickly poured more and more water while continuously using his intent to keep her throat open. Once she drank the bowl full of water, Alex finally let go, letting her body naturally exhale air before inhaling some more.
Alex fell to the ground in a daze, feeling a sense of fatigue hit him like never before. Moving objects with just his mind was far more difficult than he had imagined.
But he had done it.
‘They were right,’ Alex thought. ‘Intent triumphs all in the end.’
“What did you do?” the chief asked. “Will she be healed if she drinks some water?”
“No,” Alex replied quickly. “She is still dying.”
“Then…”
“But I have now given myself enough time to continue looking at her. If we keep feeding her water, she will continue to live, giving us more time to figure out what is wrong with her.”
The chief’s shoulders slumped at those words. “So you don’t know what is wrong with her?” he asked.
“No, I’m afraid I do not,” Alex said. “But I will find out.”
He had to find out.
‘What could have happened though?’ he wondered. ‘What could cause her to become bedridden?’
The contrast to the other day when he first met her and now was far too different. He could never have imagined that girl losing all of her chirpiness in this way.
‘No, wait,’ Alex suddenly thought, recalling the dinner the other night. ‘She wasn’t so high-spirited then either.’
Alex was certain that was because she was tired. But what if she wasn’t? What if her lack of energy during dinner was another symptom of this curse?
‘But that would mean…’
His mind raced through the events until he found a possible answer.
“Tara!” he shouted suddenly. “Come in here right now.”