"The… Forbidden Fields?" Alex was a little surprised. "But… she can't do anything there, why did she go there?" he asked.
"She… we don't know," Zhou Mei said. "We only know that one day she suddenly contacted all the elders and said that they needed to go take a look in the forbidden fields."
Alex looked back at Ma Rong who was fully unconscious. The other girl was constantly turning the water around her to the ice to maintain her body temperature, but the heat she was giving off was too much. The ice kept on melting within seconds of each time it was forming.
The floor was nothing but a puddle at this point.
"So, are the other elders in trouble too? They went with her… right?" he asked.
"No, they are all fine. They just suffered from the suppression, that's all. Sect Leader, however, got ill at first, and then the longer she stayed there, the worse she got. In the end, she couldn't even return in time when she fell to the ground, unconscious."
"The other elders had to carry her back," Fan Ruogang said from the side.
Alex thought about his time in the fields. Not for one second had he felt anything uncomfortable about the situation, aside from the suppression of course.
"What did Grand Elder just say? Does he have any hints? Can we make some pills?" Alex asked.
"No, he has nothing. Master came and checked too, but he has nothing either," Fan Ruogang said.
Alex went through the different pieces of information hidden in his brain, but he couldn't find anything. "But master should have been fine the other times she went to the forbidden fields right? How come she's only getting into problems now?" Alex asked.
Both Zhou Mei and Fan Ruogang's eyes perked up as they thought of something that the grand elder had just told them.
"Oh, that's right. Apparently, Sect Leader has never gone to the Forbidden Fields before this," Zhou Mei said.
"Oh… never?" Alex was surprised by this piece of information.
"Yeah, never. She was always a model disciple, away from controversies, so she never had the reasons to go anywhere. After becoming Elder, and then Sect leader, she had fewer reasons to go as that was all done by the other elders," Zhou Mei said.
"That's good to know," he said. He stepped over the puddle as he walked towards Ma Rong. The other girls tried to advise against it, but he didn't listen.
As he went close, he felt something familiar, something— something was calling to him. He had to be very close to fell it.
'This… this feels like…' his eyes slowly went wide, "A Yang Jade!" he said out loud.
"What?" the girls got confused.
Alex hurried next to her, and he was sure that he was feeling the same feelings he got from the Yang Jades, albeit a little less powerful.
'Did master swallow yang jades on accident?' he wondered. He had shown what he could do to Ma Rong and now he was worried that it was his fault this was happening.
'No, don't think like that. First, see what you can do,' He thought to himself and stood next to Ma Rong. He could feel perpetual heat radiating off of Ma Rong.
It wasn't the heat of a normal fever or even that of any Fire element. This was the heat of Yang. His eyes went wide as he realized this.
'Master has yang energy inside her body?' he thought. He quickly grabbed her hands to see if he could feel anything.
"Ahh!" he suddenly left her hands and fell backward. Pain flared from his hands, so he brought it up to see that his hands were red as if he had touched something hot.
'But I'm a body cultivator; Normal heat shouldn't affect me. Also, my body eats Yang like it's nothing, so why did I get burned?' he wondered.
This time, he didn't go in blindly. He sent out his spiritual sense and felt the energy in the air— it really was Yang energy.
Before he could even think of doing something else, however, something happened that stopped him in his place. He got a notification.
<Sun God's Divine Yang Body is turning the yang energy to Yang Qi>
<Purifying the Yang Qi in your body>
The notification stopped there.
'That… that's the same notification I get when I eat a Yang Jade right? Only this time… I don't see any percentage,' he thought. 'So, master's body does have Yang energy in it.'
Thinking for just a moment, he realized what he needed to do. It would likely hurt him a lot, but if it saved his master, he would do it.
He quickly took out a cloth and started shoving the end of it into his mouth.
"What are you doing?"
The girls asked as they were really surprised by Alex's sudden actions. They were very hard to make sense of.
"Mingming, what are you doing?" Fan Ruogang asked.
Alex stopped and took out the cloth before answering. "I'm going to try and heal her. I can't say for sure it will work, but I might as well try," he said.
"You can heal her?" Zhou Mei's eyes widened a centimeter more than normal.
"No, it's not a guarantee," Alex said, "but I can try. It will hurt me a bit, and I might shout a lot, so I need this to keep my mouth shut."
He quickly shoved the cloth back into his mouth and walked up to Ma Rong. He was a little nervous and scared, as the pain he had just felt previously was very intense. Almost as intense as the first time he body cultivated.
He took a deep breath to deal with his nerves and caught her hand.
The moment he grabbed her hands, he interlocked it such that even with reflex, he couldn't leave it immediately. It didn't even take a moment for him to start screaming.
The screams were all muffled, but they were still loud enough to terrorize the girls around him. They backed away when they heard it.
Then, they saw the expression on his face, a face of pain beyond their wildest imagination. They were horrified at the thought of being so much in pain.
"Sh-Should we help him?" a girl asked. She looked at Alex's hands that had short yellow tendrils that were going up towards his arms. His hands that were touching Ma Rong were now charred.
"I-I will help him," another girl said. She couldn't seem to stand seeing someone so much in pain.
"No! He said he has away. Let's wait. I will help if nothing happens in a minute," Zhou Mei said. However, she too was nervous since she had never seen anyone in such pain before.
Fan Ruogang was starting to tear up on the side from seeing so much pain being expressed through Alex's face and screams.
Alex himself however was focusing on his pain the least. He let himself scream and emote as much as he could to relieve some of the pain, instead of withholding it. That should help him somewhat was what he believed.
He kept what little wit he could into feeling the power ripping away from his master's hands into his own. There was also the notification that was going off that he had to keep track of.
<Purifying the Yang Qi in your body>
<Purifying the Yang Qi in your body>
<Purifying the Yang Qi in your body>
.
.
.
It was the same notification over and over again, without a hint as to when it was going to stop. He kept on screaming for what felt like a long time when something changed.
<Congratulation, the Yang Qi in your body has been purified and condensed>
<Yang purity at 70%>
<Purifying the Yang Qi in your body>
.
.
.
His Yang purity reached 70% and condensed once more, meaning his Qi was a little thicker and denser than before. Most of the time when he would eat a Yang Jade, the Purity part was where it all ended, but right now, it kept ongoing.
There was more Yang energy in Ma Rong than a normal Yang jade.
He prepared himself for more screams, but suddenly, he felt nothing. He found himself on the ground, along with Zhou Mei who seemed to have pulled him away as well.
"Are you alright?"
Before he could even say anything, the worried faces of the girls were up close to his face. Seeing them, he didn't have the heart to scold them for taking him away.
He pulled his cloth out of his mouth and said, "I'm fine. Sigh, you should have let me be… argh." He looked down at his hands that had the whole surface charred to black. Without question, his hands were hurting quite a bit.
Fan Ruogang quickly brought out a healing pill and fed him. The sweet scent of the pill wafted up to his nose and he quickly swallowed it.
The energy released from his stomach as it passed throughout his body, looking for anything to heal. The yellow tendrils going up his arm reduced until they were not visible anymore.
His black charred hands that were unrecognizable were healed as the flakes of his skin fell onto the ground to reveal new skin underneath. They still looked very bad, but at least they were healed to the point where one could start to see the palm lines.
"What? That was a 40% harmony pill!" she was surprised. Alex got not a single Qi as all of the healing factors from the pill had gone to his hands. She rummaged to get another one, but Alex stopped her.
"Thanks, Fanfan, I should be able to continue it a little more," Alex said.
"What? No way! Look at how to hurt you got from that just now. We won't let y—"
"Senior sister!" one of the girls interrupted her.
Fan Ruogang turned around to see the girl who just called her pointed at something. They all twisted their heads to see what it was.
"Urghh…." Ma Rong grunted a little. "W-What's… going on? It hurts…" she said.
"Master!" Alex called out.
"Sect leader!" the girls called out as well.
They all got close to her but immediately stepped back due to the intense heat. Only Alex could stay there.
"Master are you alright?" he asked, but there was no response. However, just the fact that she talked back was enough of a change that he knew what he was doing was working.
"Let me try once more."
He immediately shoved the cloth into his mouth and started grabbing his master's hands once more.
Pain shot through his body as his hands started to get back to being worse. The yellow tendrils returned as the Yang energy in Ma Rong's body was pulled into Alex.
His hands started to char once more, but not at the same speed as the first time. Even the pain was quite manageable compared to the first time.
The notifications kept appearing, but he no longer believed he would reach the 80% mark.
"Ughh…" his master grunted. He too was grunting at this point as the pain wasn't strong enough to make him scream.
Ma Rong turned and slowly opened her eyes as she saw Alex's face.
"A… A… Am I dead?" she asked with a monotone voice.
"No master, You are okay. You are fine," Alex said, but he didn't let go of her hand. What little Yang energy remained was still being dragged onto him.
"Yu Ming?"
Her eyes went wide as shock filled her face. She was about to stand up to look at him, but just then, Alex fully took away the last bit of Yang energy in her body.
However, it did not stop there. Suddenly, he absorbed something else, something cold, something dark. He immediately felt a connection between his master and himself.
Ma Rong slumped back onto the bed and Alex immediately left her hand. However, he couldn't help but look at his arms as he thought…
"What was that?"
