Alex gave Godslayer's words some thought to see if it could truly be possible that this world was once an immortal world as well.
The evidence he had provided certainly made it a possibility, now he just needed to find a reason why it no longer was. If it was once an immortal world, where had the Immortal Qi gone?
Two possibilities quickly came to Alex.
He was reminded of the situation of the Crimson Empire where barely anyone could reach the Saint realm, and that was all because almost all of the Saint rank spirit veins had been stolen away from there.
It could be a similar situation that the Immortal rank or even higher spirit veins there were, were all in fact stolen from this realm.
There was also the other possibility that instead of being stolen away, they had simply degraded into nothing.
One thing he knew for certain from senior Yang was the Qi did not replenish in any world naturally. The only way to do so was for whatever consumed the Qi to give it back into the world.
If that was the case, then it was possible that most of the Immortals that used Immortal Qi to cultivate simply left this world, or their corpses were taken away. What remained wasn't enough to form into Immortal spirit veins and slowly only Saint rank spirit veins remained.
Alex knew that it had to be a long time ago that this happened. He knew for a fact that when the 7th Undying God came to this world in her dying state, this was already a world where the peak was the Saint realm, and anyone who reached above that had to leave.
He quickly told Godslayer what he thought and how it could truly be possible.
"There might even have been a Divine rank spirit vein, although that is less likely," Godslayer said. "That divine realm cultivator over in the Eastern Continent might have just been hiding from heaven."
"Also, given that this place initially belonged to the Demons, it could be that the humans looted away what they could from this place, leaving it as barren as it is. Although, we will never be able to tell whether that is true or not."
Alex nodded after hearing that. "To think this place was an Immortal realm too," he whispered.
"Do you feel angry?" Godslayer asked. "Like you want to take back what was stolen from this world?"
"Should I?" Alex asked. "My ancestors aren't even from this world. Hell, they only came here 600 years ago. There are youngsters out here older than that. I don't think I even get a right to be angry if I'm honest."
"I suppose," Godslayer said. "Alright, we got distracted. Tell me about that transplant now. How does one do that? Can you really steal someone else's spiritual roots?"
"Yes, but it's a horrible process that I don't think I can go through. At least, I will have to be mentally prepared myself if I ever wanted to perform it myself," Alex said.
"You don't need the other spiritual roots, right?" Godslayer asked.
"No," Alex said. "But I can think of many that could use it."
"Alright, hurry up and tell me the process."
Alex did.
The process for the transplant was truly something only a madman could devise. It included preparing two humans for the procedure. One would be the donor, and the other the recipient.
Because the thing being transplanted were spiritual roots, one had to open up the donor entirely. They were fed a pill to stop their nerves from feeling anything and another pill to keep their internal organs working nonstop.
Then, they would cut them open.
Starting with the skin, the entire front half of the donor's skip was cut open carefully to not cut off any nerves, blood vessels, or meridians as much as possible.
Then, little by little, their muscles were picked away from their body. Once again one made sure not to cut away any nerves, blood vessels, or meridians.
Once the muscles were done with, the bones would be pried out from the donor's body. Then, anything else from all over the body that wasn't necessary for the donor to survive for just a few more hours was removed.
That included almost all organs in the human body. The only things that were still left were the brain, heart, lung, and the dantian.
Then, it was the recipient's turn to be worked on. The recipient too needed to have their skin removed, and a bit of their muscles cut out. More than that however wasn't needed.
Then, one would take cut off as much of the donor's spiritual roots as they were confident of transferring into the recipient, starting from the Dantian at the base and working through the rest of the meridians that came with the spiritual roots, including the blood vessels that were partly meridians.
Because there were millions of meridians, it was considered impossible. So, one usually chose to start with as few as possible. As for the rest, one simply hoped it would grow back normally once inside the other person's body.
The more spiritual root was planted into the recipient's body, the more chance there was of that spiritual root functioning properly. It could also function if placed improperly, but in those cases, the most readily available techniques would not work as the person wouldn't have the meridians in the order mentioned in those books.
Overall, it was a terrible method of transferring meridians from one person to another, a genuinely evil piece of knowledge that the sect leader of the Frosted Glacier sect was trying to use to empower his sect.
"That goddamn man," Alex said softly. "There is even a chance of the Spiritual root rejecting the new host, killing them if one isn't careful, but he simply didn't care. He experimented with his sect members to see how far one could go."
"What about the children? Why were they safe?" Godslayer asked.
"He needed adults. The kids' bodies hadn't finished developing entirely," Alex answered. "Had he operated on them, he would've gotten weaker spiritual roots. To be honest, he probably wanted them to reach the Meridian tempering realm as well."
A half-a-minute-long silence lingered between the two before Godslayer finally asked the question that the both of them were thinking about.
"So… are you going to use it?" he asked. "There are many people that can use it, aren't there?"
Alex didn't answer immediately.
"I know, both morally and ethically, it is the wrong thing to do. However, I do want to do it, partly for my own curiosity, and partly for others," Alex said. "I will have to give it a long thought and talk to others about it though. I can't rush into it headfirst like that idiot did."
"Right, be responsible with it," Godslayer said.
"I have to be," Alex said with a bit of a chuckle. "I was the one who forced him to unearth this problem anyway."
"You forced him?" Godslayer asked with a confused voice.
"Well, my pill did. Last year when I came up with the pill that turned one's normal spiritual root into Water Spiritual root, he kindled his wish to get more spiritual roots, which is why he pulled out the book that was in their treasury this entire time."
