The human body or any living body, for that matter, was an odd thing. Often times, the parameters that controlled it were far too variable for one to understand.
To comprehend what [Death Acupoint] could do, an illustration of a mortal could be used.
In the world of mortals, it was very possible to complete the same action every day without injury, but suddenly harm yourself in a random moment due to factors even you couldn’t understand. If you were said mortal, it is very likely that you would have no idea what happened, nor would you be able to pick out what had changed during this time versus all the other times you had completed the same action.
If one lifted a heavy weight, you might be confident in doing the same thing day after day without worry. Until one day, for some inexplicable reason, you tore your muscle off of the bone.
If one was fond of gymnastics or explosive movement, you might be very used to completing said movement until one day, for some inexplicable reason, you broke a bone doing the very thing you had been doing for years already.
This sort of spontaneous injury wasn’t as rare as one might think. If a mortal completed the same actions for long enough, the likelihood that one day some random factor might cause you terrible injury was almost inevitable. This was the reality of the world.
Immortals were more able to control such factors. Compared to mortals, Immortals had a level of understanding toward their own bodies that reached down to the cellular level.
But, even if that made these spontaneous injuries more rare… It didn’t completely remove the possibility of this happening…
To a layman, all of this really did seem spontaneous, it seemed as though these random events couldn’t be controlled and could only be dealt with as they came. However… this was only to those who didn’t wield the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils.
[Death Acupoint] was yet another evolution of Ryu’s senses. It allowed him to see regions where these so-called ‘spontaneous’ injuries would occur. The most basic explanation of the ability was that it allowed Ryu to fight with nature’s randomness on his side.
There were countless variables, each just as random as the last, that came together to form the world we all knew now. [Death Acupoint] was able to read this randomness, predict it, and make use of it.
When brought to its extreme, [Death Acupoint] could cause a single kick to the leg to force an enemy’s heart to stop, or a simple exchange of fists to cause one’s brain to shut down, or even a subtle shift in the air’s qi to result in cultivation deviation.
This was why it was called [Death Acupoint]. A single precise strike or action, a movement that would be benign under any other circumstance and at any other time, could cause one’s death.
The fearsomeness of [Death Acupoint] was clear. It was as though Ryu was fighting with the luck of the world on his side. It was almost like the reverse of [Intuition], but not only could it be used continuously, rather than finding good luck for Ryu, it was able to find all the accumulated bad luck of his enemies.
Still, one might wonder then why Ryu was using it now. He was trying to save Ailsa, not kill her.
But that was also simple. As easily as [Death Acupoint] could be used to see through the accumulated bad karma of an enemy, it could be used to avoid these points as well whether it be on Ryu himself or on his Life Partner turned wife.
Ryu had never undone a seal like this before. He believed that it would be similar to undoing a formation, but he had no way to be certain. Without the expertise, he could only use his eyes to see what would harm Ailsa and do the opposite. Only in this way could he guarantee that he wouldn’t harm her life.
Without regard for the benefits the remaining Primordial Yin would gain him, Ryu began to feed it through Ailsa’s body, slowly eating away at the seal bit by bit.
The meridian pathways of a human were already long and complex. Ryu had expected a high race like the Faeries to have an even more complicated network, but the truth was surprising and also very good for Ryu’s goals.
Ailsa only seemed to have a fraction of the meridian pathways humans had. It seemed that more complex didn’t always mean more powerful. Sometimes, the simplest evolutionary quirks were the most powerful.
That said, Ryu could see that what Ailsa lacked in intricate networks, was more than made up for by the structure of the meridians themselves. They were thick and shimmered with an almost translucent light. As Ryu began to chip away at the seal that covered it all in a fog, a beautiful display was slowly laid out before him.
Ryu’s breathing hitched, his hands coming to an abrupt stop. At that moment, Ailsa breathing hurried as well, but soon calmed under Ryu’s own pause.
Reflected in Ryu’s eye, a swirling black hole of death lay in his path. Compared to the other Death Acupoints he had seen, this one was exceptionally large. It meant that no amount of subtlety would allow him past this region.
Taking the hint, Ryu delicately retracted his energy and began to chip away from another location.
What shocked him this time, though, was that rather than a shimmering, crystal-like meridian pathway being revealed like it had from the other location, this part sparkled like black diamond, exuding a somewhat sinister light.
Ryu was stunned. All the meridians he could think of were almost all completely uniform in appearance. He couldn’t think of any meridians like this that looked like one thing from one angle, but like something completely different from another.
For example, Ryu’s own meridians looked like a woven and thin black silk coursing through his body. Even after he awakened to the true nature of his meridians, the only change was a slight dark gold hue, but that wasn’t the product of his meridians themselves, but rather the Chaos Qi within them.
Ryu’s own experience didn’t stop at his own meridians either. He had even extended the research of his parents’ Spiritual Foundations to their meridians as well and he was very familiar with them.
The more Ryu unfurled, the deeper his shock became. He was certain that Ailsa might not even be aware of the true state of her meridians if she had had this seal from birth.
It was only after Ryu had been forced to stop and restart from another location several times that he finally understood.
The network of a Faeries’ meridians were even simpler than he had initially thought.
This may sound like a ridiculous thing to say until one understood what Ryu meant…
Ailsa didn’t have a single set of meridians. She had two.
There was a rare talent one could be born with that doubled one’s meridians. Ryu had been well aware of that this mutation was a possibility, but he had been so unfamiliar with the structure of a Faerie’s body that he hadn’t noticed until he cross referenced Ailsa’s memories with his own.
This mutation, though, came with good and bad.
The good was that one could store more energy and be far more explosive. In addition, one could use high level techniques before reaching the appropriate cultivation level.
One had to remember that with the opening of every Pulse and Vessel came the unlocking of hundreds of nodes. Qi Realm techniques derived their strength from forming formations with these nodes to cause strong results.
A person with this mutation would always have double the nodes of a person at their cultivation level.
Beyond this, one could even separate one’s meridians to cast the same technique at the same time, thus doubling its strength. Or, one could cast two different techniques and do the impossible.
With this, though, came the bad.
It took double the time to cultivate and it was far more difficult to avoid qi deviation with such a set of meridians. In addition, the mutation didn’t make one’s meridians special, so if you happened to be born with a low grade of meridians for one or both sets, you would be screwed.
One’s cultivation speed with this mutation would always be decided by the weaker set of meridians. It didn’t matter if you had one Ancestral Grade set if the other was Common Grade.
This was an especially bad fate for Faeries.
Remembering his adopted sister, Nuri, Ryu knew that half Faeries couldn’t progress in human cultivation techniques at all. In fact, if they tried to, they would only appear to be severely untalented and waste their years to become what amounted to basically being mortals.
Faeries needed specially calibrated cultivation techniques for their individual talents. Even a slight deviation would result in their talent being wasted.
Ailsa was definitely aware that she had this meridian mutation. Yet, due to the seal, she had no idea what special attributes her meridians had and assumed she had normal, untalented, Common Grade meridians.
It was no wonder her cultivation speed was so slow. In fact, it was an outright miracle she had ever made it so far!
But that begged the question. Just what were Ailsa’s twin set of meridians?
Ryu continued to chip away.