Chapter 58: Chapter 58 - The Hardware Failure and the Accidental Healthcare Provider

Su Bai clutched his bleeding abdomen as he tore through the sky on his flying sword.

He had successfully escaped, but the toll was immense. The Falling Leaf Substitution was a success but because he was not yet proficient in it, executing the spatial shift under the crushing pressure of a Golden Core aura had demanded absolute mental focus.

It wasn’t something he could reliably spam in a fight yet, but it had done its job. It got him out of the boardroom alive.

He glanced down at his shoulder. His Moon-Shadow Cloak was tattered and scorched by the Dan Fire but thankfully, the core arrays woven into the fabric were still functioning.

Its aura suppression was one of the reasons Elder Han did not find him after the teleport. He was completely off the radar.

Su Bai flew aimlessly toward the north. He shivered as his adrenaline began to crash.

’My risk assessment was completely flawed,’ Su Bai sighed internally, coughing up a small splatter of blood. ’I need much better equipment and a massive system upgrade before I ever sit at a table with upper management again.’

His physical body ached all over, but the most critical issue was his Dantian. The sword of Dan Fire had caused a structural breach. His precious, hard-earned liquid Qi was steadily venting out of his wound into the atmosphere like a punctured gas tank.

He was experiencing a catastrophic system failure.

Su Bai forcefully stabilized his flying sword and accessed his system storage. He grabbed one of his recent sign-in rewards.

[Withered Weeds Ash]

[Description: A toxic environmental hazard. If absorbed, it coats the meridians and causes the Spirit Root to temporarily lose all ability to absorb ambient Qi.]

Su Bai didn’t hesitate for a single second. He ripped the pouch open and shoved a handful of the dry ash directly into his mouth, swallowing it dry.

Almost immediately, the Reversal Body activated.

The moment the ash hit his stomach, its properties violently inverted. Instead of clogging his meridians, the ash scoured them clean. His Sapling Root surged, temporarily buffed into a hyper-absorbent state.

The effect was instantaneous and miraculous. The liquid Qi that had been venting out of his damaged Dantian suddenly stopped. The flow reversed, forcefully pulling the leaked energy back into his body like a vacuum.

His internal Qi reserves began to rapidly regenerate, forming a dense, pressurized seal over the crack in his foundation.

’A perfect software hotfix,’ Su Bai noted as he let out a ragged breath.

However, fixing the software didn’t repair the hardware.

The Withered Weeds Ash stabilized his Qi, but it did absolutely nothing for his massive physical blood loss. His body ached terribly, and the edges of his vision were beginning to blur with encroaching darkness.

He didn’t know exactly where he was, but the environment below was rapidly changing. The barren, grayish-brown wasteland had given way to a freezing, snow-covered mountain range.

Su Bai’s vision swam. He couldn’t maintain his altitude any longer.

He sent a mental command to his sword, then initiated a crash landing into a thick snowdrift. He tumbled off the blade.

He gasped as the freezing snow shocked his burning wounds. He was definitely far enough north to be out of the Righteous Bureau’s immediate jurisdiction, but he was entirely exposed to the elements.

With trembling hands, he pulled a few strips of clean cloth from his inventory and clumsily wrapped them around his abdomen. It was a crude, desperate patch job.

Because of the extreme blood loss and the nature of his Reversal Body, Su Bai’s face was now morbidly, horrifyingly pale. He looked less like a living cultivator and more like a beautifully preserved corpse.

His consciousness was failing him. He pushed his Spiritual Sense outward one last time and scanned the immediate vicinity for a safe zone.

About a hundred yards away, hidden behind a cluster of frosted pine trees, he detected a hollowed-out cavern.

Su Bai forced himself to his feet. He stumbled through the knee-deep snow. His breathing was shallow and erratic. Every step felt like he was dragging lead weights.

Soon, he reached the entrance of the cave. He placed a bloody hand against the cold stone wall to steady himself.

’Just need to set up a basic defensive array...’ he thought.

But his physical body had reached its absolute limit. Before he could even step fully inside, his eyes rolled back.

Su Bai collapsed. His upper body landed inside the dark cave, while his legs remained buried in the freezing snow outside.

Total system shutdown.

...

Deep inside the cavern, a pair of sharp, dark eyes snapped open.

Footsteps echoed softly against the stone. A young woman with long, messy dark hair and pale skin stepped out from the shadows. She wore simple, slightly frayed robes that radiated a faint, undeniable trace of Demonic Qi.

She stared down at the unmoving figure of Su Bai with a strange, calculating glint in her eyes.

"A man just delivered himself directly to my doorstep?" she muttered. Her voice was a mix of suspicion and sheer disbelief. "I didn’t even have to go hunting for one. And judging by the lingering aura... he’s a cultivator. This is perfect."

She was a demonic cultivator. She was on the verge of Qi deviation. To survive, she needed to practice a highly unorthodox, forbidden Yin-Yang plucking technique.

She needed a "Human Cauldron." A male cultivator whose Yang energy she could harvest to stabilize her own life force.

She knelt beside Su Bai, fully intending to drag him inside and extract his energy. She treated him entirely as a biological product.

But when she grabbed his shoulder and rolled him onto his back, brushing the snow from his face, her hands suddenly stopped.

She stared.

Su Bai’s eyes were closed. His long lashes rested against his incredibly pale, jade-like skin. Despite the blood and the dirt, his features were sharp, refined, and entirely devoid of the ugly, desperate greed that usually marked demonic cultivators. He looked like a fallen, tragic immortal scholar.

The demonic woman was utterly speechless.

Thump-thump.

Her heart, which had been hardened by years of surviving in the cruel demonic underworld, suddenly pounded wildly in her chest. A fierce blush crept up her neck.

"This... this is the first time I’m going to try absorbing Yang energy from a man," she stammered to herself, suddenly feeling incredibly self-conscious. She brushed a stray lock of hair away from Su Bai’s forehead. "Every man I’ve met before were mostly ugly, sweaty brutes. But he is... he is so good-looking. This is not as bad as I thought it would be."

She looked at him with the sudden, undeniable gaze of a young maiden experiencing her first crush.

However, as she admired her newly acquired "product," she finally noticed the horrific state of his crude bandaging. Blood was seeping through the cloth, and his skin was icy to the touch.

If he bled to death, his Yang energy would dissipate entirely.

Her demonic instincts told her to immediately begin the Yang-Plucking before he died. But her newfound, flustered infatuation completely overrode her logic.

Instead of rushing to harvest him, the demonic woman carefully picked Su Bai up and carried him deeper into the cave, where a warm fire was crackling.

She acted with surprising tenderness. She carefully removed his tattered, blood-soaked outer robes. Fetching warm water from a basin, she gently washed the dirt and grime from his pale skin.

She removed his crude, terrible patch job, and expertly wrapped his torso in fresh, clean bandages.

She had inadvertently provided Su Bai with elite, personalized healthcare.

Seeing the properly bandaged, handsome man sleeping peacefully by the fire, the demonic woman nodded in absolute satisfaction.

She sat back on her heels. She stared at his resting face, and her blush returned in full force.

"Please don’t blame me," she whispered softly to the unconscious Su Bai, fidgeting with the hem of her robes. "I only want to live. You gave yourself to me, so it’s fate."

She took a deep breath.

"I promise I won’t be greedy," she reasoned with him. "I’ll only take what I need. I will leave enough Yang energy in your body to let you live. We can just consider it a... a medical fee for the bandages!"

Having perfectly justified the transaction in her own mind, she gently lifted Su Bai and laid him down on her soft, makeshift fur bed.

She stood by the edge of the bed, hesitating for a long moment. Her hands trembled slightly.

Finally, she made up her mind. She climbed onto the bed and carefully straddled the unconscious corporate slave.