Beauty and the Bodyguard

Yaowang’s Analysis

“Of course not…” Uncle Zhu smiled bitterly, “If it were me, I’d rather die than lose all of my strength! Only us practitioners can understand just how much it takes- we can only accumulate our strength bit by bit! It would be worse than death if we were to be stripped of it and reverted into a regular person! We’d never let go of our strength even if we had only a sliver of hope to hang on to!”

“That’s right!” Yaowang nodded, “So, unless Lin Yi’s lost his mind, there’s no way he’d let go of that strength. That, or he had absolutely no other choice than to do so.”

“What if he really did have no choice?” Cihua frowned, “Right, could it possibly be that he had already recovered his strength?”

“Recovered his strength…” Yaowang and Uncle Zhu both uttered a cold breath- what Cihua was suggesting was simply too outlandish! It wasn’t an impossibility, but it was simply too implausible.

“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?” Cihua asked, confused at the exaggerated expressions on their faces.

“What you’re suggesting is indeed possible!” Yaowang said, “But that would only exist under perfect circumstances! Number one, if he were to be in an isolated area with pure and thick qi, it would not be impossible for him to make a full recovery in one day. After all, as long as there was enough pure energy for him to absorb, it’d only be natural for him to be able to heal himself. But, of course, I don’t even know if such a place exists on Earth right now. At the very least, I haven’t heard of it.”

“That does sound like something from a drama, it doesn’t feel like it would exist…” Cihua shook his head, “Other than that?”

“Other than that, there’s a second way, and that is for another master to surge his own energy into LinYi’s body. This can also help him receive a fast recovery as well! But the method is flawed- firstly, the master needs to be from the same practice, since different practioners from different sects train in different ways. They have different qi, so forcing it would only kill the person they were trying to heal! While this method does indeed save the person’s life, it just wasn’t beneficial for the master as he was giving out his energy that he had spent so long accumulating. It’d result in a downgrade in his own strength, and would even lower himself into a different power class! I think that even a brother or father wouldn’t dare use a method like this! The higher you climb, the harder it is to progress, and so to save a mystic’s life, the healer must at least be an earth class. Giving out all that energy could push him down into the mystic class, and there would even be an ordeal waiting for him if he wanted to get back up to the earth class. It’s unlikely that anyone would do something like that,” Yaowang said.

“I see!” Cihua nodded. “In that case, Lin Yi really must have lost his strength? Or is there really no other way for Lin Yi to heal himself? I heard from Pengzhan and picked up on some things- Lin Yi shouldn’t be from any sect, and he’s alone, meaning he had no one to save him, and no special medicine or pills. He’d be waiting for his death if he hadn’t already let go of his power!”

“We can’t say for sure…” Yaowang shook his head, “Anyway, this really is a very odd situation.”

“That’s right! That Chu Pengzhan, what an annoyance he is- I’ve been prodding for ages and he has never let anything slip!” Cihua said angrily.

“Alright, let’s stop talking about Lin Yi- what’s the point? It doesn’t matter if he has recovered his fighting strength or not, I’m going against him regardless!” Master Bing was getting impatient. “As long as he doesn’t have a big shot backing him, it’s fine. I’ll make sure he dies in front of me! This Chu Pengzhan, too- from what I’ve heard, he’s also been standing up for Lin Yi, right? I didn’t plan on doing anything to him, but if he’s not looking at the situation and helping out, then we’ll just have to deal with him along with Lin Yi!”

“Of course!” Cihua nodded in response, “Mister Yao, Uncle Zhu, how should we deal with Lin Yi?”

“Brother Zhu’s situation requires something like a year- so whatever our plan is, it shouldn’t involve him,” Yaowang said, “However, even after Brother Zhu recovers, I still wouldn’t recommend confronting Lin Yi directly!”

“Oh? Yaowang, aren’t you a mystic as well? You’re not scared of Lin Yi, are you? You two could just go at him at the same time, there’s no way you’d lose,” Qibing asked.

“Master Bing, it’s true I’m a mystic, but… I’m a bit of a unique case!” Yaowang said bitterly. “I do have the strength of a mystic, but only through medicine. It’s different from the practitioners who trained through taking in qi of the natural world. Plus, my field is a support type, focused on saving lives, not taking them!”

“I see!” Master Bing nodded, a little troubled. “If so, how are we supposed to fight him? Can we really not do anything to him even after he became a regular person?”

“That’s not true- we’re not sure if he really had lost his abilities! What if he had some sort of ancient miracle pill with him, and he’d eaten the pill to substitute for half a year’s worth of rest, instantly recovering his strength?” Yaowang shook his head.

“Something like that exists?!” Qibing’s eyes were wide open.

“It’s a big world, there’s no telling what exists!” Yaowang said. “It sounds like nonsense, but I did see similar pills in ancient records, called Great Recoverer Pill and Lesser Recoverer Pill! The great pill instantly heals the injured person back to their peak strength, and the lesser one heightens the recovery speed. Consuming the lesser one doesn’t give you back your fighting strength however, and you’ll have to slowly get it back. Of course, these miracle pills are just legends, and we don’t know if they even exist… But what if Lin Yi did have one? Then we’d just be in a very terrible position if we butted heads with him directly.”

“True, true,” Cihua nodded.

“Fuck, can we really not do anything?!” Qibing was quite pissed off at Yaowang’s analysis- what the hell was all this?

“Maybe we could make a move on Chu Pengzhan first?” Cihua’s eyes lit up all of a sudden. “Since the situation with Lin Yi is quite complex, we could just target Chu Pengzhan first. By doing this we could also test the waters with how much strength Lin Yi has right now. If he really has recovered, he would jump out for sure, and if not, it’s because he hasn’t!”

“Right!” Qibing got excited at the suggestion, “That’s right, we could target Chu Pengzhan first! That’s that then, now we should discuss how we should go about this.”

“Master Bing, now that we’re on the topic of the business world, Brother Zhu and I will keep out of the discussion, since we’re not well-versed in the field…” Yaowang shook his head. Different paths branch into completely different places- he couldn’t just throw out unfounded suggestions at Master Bing while being completely unqualified.