Alex watched Hannah grow weaker as she lost even the last of her Qi. She looked considerably older all of a sudden, even more so in her body than her face. Long Huan grabbed her hand and wrote something into it.
Hannah instinctively moved her hand but stopped. No Qi could come out, so she couldn't talk to him at all. She gestured that she was fine, but it barely came across. At least there was one-way communication.
That was better than nothing.
Alex was about to move toward the next pill he had to make when he stopped and considered something. Should he give her a healing pill?
His instinct told him to do it. Eating a healing pill had healed Hannah the other day, even if it was just for a few seconds. She would most likely want that from time to time, but there was another problem with that.
Since it was a healing pill, it could in some ways deal with the poison they had just fed her. The same was the problem with the Nullifying pill, although that was only meant to work for very recent pills.
No, he could not feed her any good pill now. Hannah had to remain that way until he could heal her. "I will have to heal her fast," he spoke in a soft mutter. "You can heal her?" Zhan Luoyang asked. "Do you have any idea how to do that?"
Alex thought for a moment and shook his head. "Not as of yet," he said. "I don't even know if I can make a pill that could help her. If I do, the pill would have to do multiple things at once."
"But a pill with that broad properties won't be very good at treating a poison when compared to a pill created entirely for the purpose of fighting the poison alone," Zhan Luoyang said.
Alex nodded. "I know," he said. "That is my problem in the first place. I do not know more about the poison. I have a vague idea of how it works, but not much. I'm only a Level 7 poison master at best, so I will have to make a pill that deals with just the poison somehow. Make it so potent that it will deal with any poison that harms one's soul."
"Hmm," Zhan Luoyang gave the words some thought. "But then how will you make it work? You mentioned that she can't have her Dantian open, but both the poison and her hurt soul are inside her Dantian. You can't eat two pills at once, but you need the pill to open her dantian too."
Alex sighed. "You're right, there's that too," he said.
"What?" Long Huan seemed surprised. "You fed her a pill to block her Dantian, knowing it would be a problem?" He seemed somewhat angry at the possible implication.
"Yes," Alex said. "But that had to be done. If I knew how to heal her from the start, this wouldn't be necessary. But as it stands, I have to get rid of any possibilities that she could harm herself accidentally while we try to make the antidote."
Zhan Luoyang nodded. "He's correct," she told Long Huan. "Don't worry, that was the right thing to do. But that still doesn't help with the issue that is created. If you cannot open up her Dantian, how are you going to heal her?"
"I've thought about it for a while now," Alex said. "And I think the best possible course of action we can do here is not for me to make a pill."
"What?" Long Huan asked.
"I would very much like to try and make a pill to help her, but I don't know if I'm capable of that. I do not want to be overconfident just because I'm good at making pills. I know my faults too, and I know I'm not very good when it comes to making new pills, specially ones that are meant to be specific. At least, I can't do it without some external aid."
It had been nearly 18 years since Alex had tried to make the Wood Spiritual Root Enhancing pill and was still nowhere close to being able to make it. Unlike the Water and Earth pills, he was working with nothing to jump off of and thus had difficulties progressing far.
"I don't want to spend years trying to make an antidote pill for Sister when I might have other, possibly better, ways to treat her," Alex said.
"What? There are better ways?" Long Huan asked. "What ways?"
"Instead of trying to make a new healing pill," Alex spoke. "We just ask someone to give us one."
"Ask someone? Who?" Zhan Luoyang asked.
"The Immortals," Alex said. "We can ask the Immortals to lend us a pill if they have one."
"Immortals?" Zhan Luoyang gasped. "You don't mean the Phoenix, do you?"
"I do mean her, but I don't think she can help," Alex said softly. "I'll have to take her to the other ones."
"The Tiger is dead, so the Tortoise? You know where he is?" Zhan Luoyang asked curiously.
"Yes," Alex said. "I've met him before."
"Woah!" the woman was very much so surprised.
Alex couldn't help but find her expression quite amusing.
"And this Dantian issue. Will it no longer be a problem if we go to the Tortoise?" Long Huan asked.
Alex didn't correct them by saying that they weren't going to the Tortoise. They were first going to check if Scarlet could help them. If not, they would check if Bai Jingshen had some pills to help them.
If not, they would finally go to the Central Continent to find Senior Yang. He would most likely want to help someone with the Nine Revolutions Celestial Body.
If not, Alex would still be trying to make a pill for her the entire time, so nothing would have been lost.
Long Huan did bring up a good question about the Dantian. That was quite a great problem in the end.
Taking two pills back to back was very dangerous for a body simply because of the chance of the two energies interacting with each other and producing results that could be harmful to one.
However, if Alex took time between feeding the two pills, enough Qi would flow out of her Dantian and the poison would take effect.
He had to somehow make it so that Hannah would take the two pills at different instances, but have their effects take place just one after another with very little time spent in between.
He gave the problem some thought and nodded to himself.
"We should be able to feed her two pills at the same time without causing any side effects," Alex said out loud. "We won't have to worry about the Dantian issue if we do that."
"We can do that?" Zhan Luoyang asked. "How?"
"I say we, but the truth is none of us can do that," Alex said. "We'll have to go to someone to get her aid in this."
"Get to someone?" Long Huan frowned. "Can we trust this person to not give us up to my Father?" Alex chuckled at the question. "Of course she won't," he said. "What mother would do that to her child? Anyway, you should be prepared. We're going to meet your Mother-in-law."
