Tara heard Alex’s shout and quickly rushed in.
“What’s wrong? Why did you call for me?”
“Did you cultivate last night?” Alex asked the young man.
Tara felt confused by the line of questioning. “Cultivate? Uhh… yeah, I did. But only for a few hours. Not for long.”
Alex immediately got up and walked up to the man, placing his palm on his stomach, feeling the power of his cultivation base. He hadn’t broken through.
“How was it? How quickly were you cultivating?” he asked.
“What is going on?” the chief asked, confused by the way the two were talking. None of it made any sense to him at all, as the meaning of some of those words did not match the context in which they were being used.
“Why are you asking me that?” Tara asked, unsure how any of that mattered to him at all.
“Just answer me. Depending on your answer, I may know what is wrong with Mili,” Alex said.
Tara stiffened. “Oh, uhh… what was the question?”
“Your speed of cultivation. Was there any change last night compared to when you cultivated during the day?” Alex asked.
The young man shook his head. “I didn’t find any difference. Why?”
Alex heard Tara’s words and let out a soft sigh. He quickly turned around and went back to Mili, checking her body once again. Only this time, he tried his best to search for one specific thing.
As Alex’s spiritual sense went into her body, he realized just how much worse his spiritual sense was at that moment. He hadn’t realized it outright, but now that he was searching for something specific, he realized that the suppression of all of his senses extended to even his spiritual sense.
He did not sense elements as clearly as he should have been able to.
However, now that he focused on only finding a certain element, he had a much better chance. Once he searched through Mili’s body, he brought his senses back and sensed the surrounding environment.
“I see,” Alex said. “So this is the curse.”
The chief’s eyes widened at that moment. “Did you notice something?” he asked, quite curious and extremely hopeful.
“I did,” Alex said. “It’s…”
He searched for a word in their language that matched it, but there was none. So he had to use the word he was used to.
“It’s Yang.”
“Yang?” the chief asked. “What’s a Yang?”
The old woman gasped. “The essence of a Sunheart,” she said, her eyes widening. “What does that have to do with the curse?”
“A what?” the chief asked with a confused look.
Alex turned toward the old woman in surprise. The word ‘Sunheart’ had been in his language, and yet he had never heard of it at all. “What’s a Sunheart?”
“You do not know?” she asked. “Then how do you know my granddaughter’s situation has anything to do with it?”
“Her situation has to do with the abundance of Yang energy in the surroundings,” Alex said as much, but looking around, it was clear that none of these people understood much at all.
Sighing, he began explaining the basics of elements and what Yang and Yin were.
Considering the girl’s lethargy yesterday, the only thing Alex could connect its cause to was the very hot day. He hadn’t sensed it back then, but the heat had to be caused by a great imbalance of Yang and Yin.
Since a person naturally absorbed energy, Alex came to the conclusion that she must have absorbed a great deal of Yang the other day.
However, even if something like that had happened, a person would lose it all during the night so long as they were present around Yin energy.
However, after talking to Tara, Alex had come to realize that last night had lacked the necessary amount of Yin as well. The Starry Sky Qi Absorption technique that he had taught Tara would increase in speed so long as a person was around Yin-aligned Qi.
Considering that he did not, in fact, speed up in cultivation at all, Alex was certain that last night had lacked Yin.
So, a Yang imbalance in the body was what led to this curse.
A woman’s body almost always had a Yin affinity. Changing that by giving her a surplus of Yang and not treating her quickly was most certainly a way to kill her.
And not a single one of these people could even do anything for her at all since they had no source of Yin to give to her.
As Alex explained the difference between Yin and Yang and why it was important for the two to usually be in balance, he realized something.
“A man has never been cursed, have they?” Alex asked.
“No, never,” the chief answered.
Alex nodded. That was an impossibility. Even if most men did have a Yang-affinity body, there would be some who would have a Yin affinity. Those people would most definitely be cursed too since the hot day from yesterday was quite common.
However, not a single man had died from Yang overload at all—not because they didn’t suffer from it, but because they cured it.
‘They got the Yin they needed,’ Alex thought and immediately knew how.
“The ocean,” Alex said suddenly. “All men go into the ocean to hunt for fish. How often do women go to the ocean?”
“It’s the man’s job to hunt fish and provide food for their family. A woman should have no reason to go to the ocean,” the chief said.
“And that’s why they are cursed,” Alex said. “The one major source of Yin around them is denied to them because of your culture.”
The chief frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that it’s likely that we can heal your daughter,” Alex said. “All we will have to do is take her to the depths of the ocean and keep her there for a while.”
“Huh?” everyone shouted in surprise at once.
“But… the storm,” the chief cried out. “We can’t go to the ocean during the storm. We’ll drown.”