Directly handling the poison turned out to be more trouble than Alex had expected. He had known the poison was strong enough to cause his sister to fall to such a fate, but he hadn't expected to have something similar happen to him at all.
When he finally did touch the poison, albeit with his spiritual sense, he found pain flaring in his senses, as if acid itself flowed in his veins. His pain was momentarily intense, stopping only when Alex let go of it.
He frowned slightly, falling into thought to see what he could do. To see what options he had.
'I have to take out some of the poison for sure,' he said to himself. 'But it will have to be a smaller portion than before. I can't afford to bring out too much.'
His body may have been able to completely burn all of that poison, but his spiritual sense had no such ability. Even then, it as better to just take a bit of it out to check if his body could handle it.
Alex put his spiritual sense to work and started pulling on a very small portion of the poison.
He started pulling it out. The poison separated from the mass, easily being pulled apart. There was no difficulty there, so he continued pulling it out.
As he did, he felt his sister tremble and soon screams followed. He wanted to see what was going on, but the poison was already making its way out of the dantian. He couldn't stop now.
'Hold on, sister,' he thought, and continued, pulling the poison more and more. The trembling and screaming continued for a good minute before it finally stopped. Alex brought out the poison, keeping it wrapped around his spiritual sense.
He couldn't just drag it out like he could his own spiritual sense. The poison was matter and thus needed to follow a path. The only path he could take was through the meridians.
Alex very carefully pulled the poison through his sister's meridians. Last he had heard, the meridians were mostly destroyed as well and had to be healed to regrow. He couldn't afford to break it again.
He was slow and meticulous, but small grunts escaped his sister's mouth from time to time as she was pained. Alex could understand why she was in pain as well. The size of the poison, including spiritual sense was quite large and was for that reason causing her meridians to have to inflate far beyond their normal sizes.
Not to mention these were the meridians of a woman who hadn't cultivated even a bit for the past 50 years. She was getting hurt. This was bad.
Meridians met with blood vessels in many parts of the body, so Alex could move the poison into her bloodstream, in which case the danger of what he was doing would immediately increase tenfold.
He had to be even more careful now.
The poison made its way through her stomach, finding its way to a blood vessel, then went into a channel that flowed toward the feet.
Alex didn't dare send the poison toward the upper half of her body. There were too many important organs there to take that risk.
He could already start to feel the strain on his mind by now. Not only was he doing something that required a lot of focus and Intent, but he was doing it with a poison that was continuously hurting him as he pulled it down to her left thigh.
Alex made a small gesture with his fingers and a cut appeared on Hannah's thigh, one that was thin enough that he would barely notice it for the next day or two. As blood spewed out of the cut, so did a small mass of black poison that Alex had dragged out.
Without waiting, he took the poison into his hand and sent it into his body.
There were 2 tests he needed to perform.
The first test was simple. He needed to see if his body was capable of handling the poison or not.
The 2nd test was to see if a regular antidote pill of his could remove the poison from one's body. Both tests were important, and Alex had to think for a moment as to which one he wanted to do first.
Both would destroy the poison, so it most likely didn't matter which path he took. The poison that was now in his blood suddenly lost all protection around it and attacked Alex's body.
Alex's body fought back. Yang Qi came out of nowhere and destroyed the poison to his surprise. He had expected the poison to fight back a little, but it had been destroyed so easily.
Had that been his body? Or had that been just because the poison was in a small amount? Either way, it probably didn't matter.
The 2nd prince was looking at Alex and had noticed his spiritual sense no longer doing anything. "Any results?" the man asked.
"Hmm?" Alex looked up. "Oh, right. I would say there is some success. I have at least figured out where the poison is and why she is being affected. But curing it is still distant."
The 2nd prince was surprised. "You found the poison?" he asked. "Sister Luoyang couldn't do that, and she tried for over a dozen years now."
"I had some luck, I suppose," Ning said. Had she not known to check the Dantian?
"So, what's happening next? Will you try to find the cure?" the 2nd prince asked.
"Yes," Alex said. "But I need to repeat what I did earlier. Please let her know that the pain won't be any less than before. In fact, it might get stronger.
The 2nd prince quickly wrote Alex's words as soon as Alex was inside again. His spiritual sense went toward the poison and started drawing out a slightly larger portion.
The pain Hannah felt this time was stronger than before. She cried and screamed again as Alex pulled the poison through her meridians and blood vessels, before pulling it out of the bloody gash on her thigh.
He took the poison into his own body and took a deep breath to force his body to not heal the poison when he let go of the protection again. Once he thought he was ready, he did so.
The poison remained in his meridians for a bit, trying to damage him, but Alex's Undying body healed all wounds even as the poison tried to hurt him. It moved through his body and slowly made its way to his Dantian.
When it entered the Dantian, that was when the prison showed its true power.
Instantly, Alex crumbled onto the floor. That had been so strong and so intense. His body was fine for the most part, but his Nascent Soul was attacked by the poison when it entered the Dantian1.
The spirit in his body was in pain. He was in pain. The wounds hadn't reflected as they would have for a Saint Transformation realm cultivator, but the spirit was still hurt, and Alex was forcing himself to keep his body from destroying it.
He needed to keep it safe.
The 2nd prince was about to speak when he saw Alex in pain, but Alex stopped him with a hand. With his other hand, he pulled out all 3 different types of pill before eating them one by one to see which would remove the poison.
The closest thing had been the antidote pill, but even it had failed despite having over 6 pill veins to it.
"I don't have anything that can heal the poison right now," Alex said, his face returning to normal.
"Huh? Are you sure?" the young man asked.
Alex nodded. "I took a small part to myself to figure out if I could heal with those pills I ate," he informed the 2nd prince. "It turns out that it doesn't. I need to make a pill from scratch."
The 2nd prince's hope dwindled a bit at those words. "Can you make a pill for it from scratch?" he asked.
"I can only say that I'll try my hardest," Alex said. There was nothing more to promise.
He sealed the poison in his body again and let it remain in a corner of his Dantian for now. He should've destroyed it, but while bringing out the poison from Hannah's Dantian, he noticed that her Dantian and meridians were taking damage by him forcefully pulling out what should've been kept inside.
He had done it two times, and he had used separate routes each time to bring it all to the thigh. As a result, 2 of her 8 possible pathways had been damaged. Considering intersections between the meridians, he wasn't going to take any risk of damaging her body.
On top of that, with his plan to shut down her dantian completely, he had to save this portion of the poison to figure out how to deal with the problem.
"Lady Luoyang, can you come inside for a moment?" Alex called out loud, and a moment later, Zhan Luoyang walked in. Her eyes moved around the three, searching for hints of what they could've done there.
"Any good news?" she asked. The Crown Prince followed behind her, curious about everything as well.
"Maybe," Ales answered the woman. "But for now, I must ask. Do you have any pills or pill recipes that can close off one's dantian?"
"Closing one's Dantian?" the woman frowned. "I don't think I have one—"
"I have a recipe for a pill like that," the Crown Prince spoke up. "But such a pill is considered more poison than healing? Is that alright?"
Alex sighed in relief. He wouldn't need to spend time creating a new pill.
"I need it to stop my sister's situation from getting worse."
