"Anytime now," Alex alerted his aunt as the pill he had just fed Hannah started activating inside of her body.
Hannah convulsed a little and let out a slow grunt while doing her best to stop herself from moving.
Liz's attention was almost entirely on the dantian, focusing all her will to stop both the poison and Qi from escaping Hannah's body. She could not focus on the energy that was flowing through Hannah's body and had to instead rely on Alex's words to know when it was the right time to stop doing what she was doing.
Alex watched Hannah's body slowly take in the energy, heal what was wrong, cure what had been diseased. Hannah's body was already showing incredible changes in just the first few seconds of taking the pill.
Her white hair was slowly gaining back its color, her face was losing its wrinkles as well. Alex could see all the changes and became hopeful, but kept his attention on the energy of the pill and followed it through Hannah's meridians.
With Hannah's just expanded meridians, the energy moved swiftly, passing through all nooks and crannies of her body, making its way down to the dantian.
He patiently followed it, knowing that his aunt struggling more and more, and watched the energy arrive upon the dantian.
"It's almost here," Alex said watching the energy go closer and closer to the dantian, waiting for it to enter.
"NOW!"
Liz stopped using her Dao just as the healing energy made its way into the dantian. By the time she pulled her senses out of the dantian, the energy had already gone in.
Now, all she could do was watch and hope that the pill did its—
"NO!" Alex's panicked scream startled her.
"Wha-what?" Liz cried out.
Alex felt terror run through him. He did not know what to do with the current situation that he had not thought of before.
Liz had been slowing down time in Hannah's dantian, and that had kept the Qi inside at bay from leaking out. However, the moment time flowed back at a normal rate, the Qi inside Hannah's dantian gushed out.
And while doing so, it swept away the energy that was making its way into Hannah's dantian as well.
While Hannah would have been capable of reversing that instantly as soon as she got control of her Qi again, that would be too late as the poison would destroy her spirit.
Alex did not know what to do at all. No, he had to do something, and there was no time to think at all.
Instantly, he used what his instinct told him was the best thing he could use. He instantly used the Dao of Space to separate the space inside Hannah's dantian such that only her spirit was caught in it.
Doing so effectively made it so that Hannah's body no longer had a spirit or a soul, so she simply fell unconscious. At the same time, the poison leaked out of Hannah's dantian as well and started attacking everything it could find.
Alex felt his head burn as though someone was dripping acid directly into his brain, the corrosive poison dissolving all that was in his head. Using a dao at such a small scale, and having himself be attacked by the poison at the same time was not something Alex could handle at the same time.
He cried out in pain, unable to even explain what was happening.
Liz didn't know what had gone wrong, only that something had. Had the pill not worked? Was it defective? Or had some other problem come up?
The pill was provided to them by an Immortal alchemist, so Liz had no doubt that it could work. So, she believed that something else must have happened for the pill to not work.
Should she slow down time again? If so, should she do it around Hannah's dantian again?
Suddenly, she felt Hannah's cultivation base grow back again and her aura return. Qi had escaped just as they had expected and it was truly rushing back.
'Qi rushing out…'
It only took an instant for Liz to guess what the problem was.
'Shit!'
Liz made a split-second decision to do something that would hopefully work. She placed her left hand on her daughter's chest, next to her heart, and then the other one on her dantian.
Then, she employed a single Dao on all of Hannah.
Dao of Temporal Acceleration.
Time sped up for Hannah, all of her body moving at twice the rate as before. Her blood pumped faster and the Qi in her body moved around quickly.
If what she thought had indeed happened, then having her daughter's Qi circulate quickly would return the medicinal energy back to her dantian.
Just as she hoped, it indeed seemed to work. Hannah's body showed a change that was very much suggestive of what she had thought. Her half-healed body instantly showed improvements and went on to be entirely healed.
Liz slowly took away her arms, breathing heavily as she did. Using two temporal dao back to back was difficult even for her. She took long deep breaths and watched her daughter's body return to normal.
Hannah's hair was now completely black and her fair skin had no wrinkle. Her body seemed somewhat scrawny and pale, but that was something that could be dealt with easily.
'What about the poison?' Liz wondered. 'Is it all gone?'
Should she check? She had been warned not to try and sense the poison as it was dangerous. "Alex, is she healed?" she asked and turned toward Alex, only to see his forehead full of thick veins and sweat, with his eyes all bloodshot.
Alex could feel the pain of the poison attacking his mind, but even then he hid his sister's soul in a fold in space. It was only when the poison stopped attacking him that Alex realized that the poison was no more.
He looked through her entire body and found no trace of any poison at all. The pill had done its job.
Liz was about to call out to Alex when he relaxed and spoke back on his own.
"She's… healed," he said and finally stopped. He took long, deep breaths and felt relief flow all through him. He had saved Hannah's soul from being attacked.
The instant he let go of the Dao, Hannah's soul returned to the Dantian.
Alex continued keeping his senses on her body and saw the changes inside of her dantian as the soul started growing. The soul first grew to be the side of the entire dantian as seemed as though it would soon be too cramped for it.
However, the soul simply phased through the dantian and grew outside of it until it was about a third the size of the entire body where it stopped.
Alex frowned when he noticed that. It wasn't supposed to stop right here. However, his thoughts quickly strayed away when Hannah opened her eyes and her body moved.
She slowly got back up, but before she could even be all the way up, Liz instantly took her into a hug.
Hannah tried to speak, and for the first time in a long time, she could form words again.
"Mother?"