Chapter 49: Soul and Flesh, Twin Formidable Hands

After a moment.

“……”

Looking at Meng Qi, who was fast asleep on the bed, Xia Ye narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Killing someone in a dream… truly a remarkable ability.”

“I wonder, could she have some connection to that old hag?” he couldn’t help thinking.

He remembered that over sixty years ago, within the Quanxing, there was a certain “Old Woman Liu,” whose innate ability was to connect with people by creating special “nameplates,” allowing her to enter others' dreams and “send messages through dreams.”

“Well, it is indeed a possibility…”

As a practitioner of medicine, Xia Ye had conducted some research into “genetic inheritance of abilities,” and had even exchanged insights on this topic with the Nine Grand Physicians, giving him a fair understanding of the subject.

He was well aware that if a person's ancestors were practitioners—whether innate or acquired—their descendants were very likely to be practitioners as well, with a certain probability of inheriting some of their ancestors' ability traits and becoming innate practitioners.

The most obvious example was the two brothers, Xu San and Xu Si from North China. Their father, Xu Xiang, was an acquired practitioner who practiced “Reversing the Eight Directions”—a technique fundamentally based on “controlling magnetic fields.”

By their generation, Xu San had inherited some traits of “Reversing the Eight Directions” and awakened the innate ability of “psychokinesis”...

Although Xu Si kept a low profile, it was revealed in the mobile game personally supervised by the author of *The Outcast* that his ability was similarly related to “telekinesis,” and he might even be able to instantly refine other people's magical artifacts, much like the “Divine Mechanism Murky Refining.”

However, Xia Ye had never met that “Old Woman Liu,” so he couldn't be certain. Regardless, since such a wondrous ability had appeared right before his eyes, there was no way he would let it go...

“Perhaps this ability will come in handy very soon...”

Thinking this, a smile appeared on his face. In the next instant, a flash of light gleamed in his eyes, and his right hand pressed down on Meng Qi’s forehead, infusing true qi to quickly extract it.

Hoo—

Before long, as wisps of true qi were drawn back into his palm, a faint brilliance condensed. Xia Ye raised his hand, pinching a ball of qi between his fingers.

“Not bad, worth studying.”

Observing it closely for a moment, he fetched a jade bottle, placed the qi inside, sealed it with a label, and stored it away carefully to be dealt with after finishing his current task.

Following that, Xia Ye focused all his attention on Meng Qi, observing the destructive force within her body. He had to analyze this entity thoroughly before he could prescribe a proper cure.

With a shift in his gaze and the operation of his “Insight” technique, he immediately concentrated his mind to lock onto the rampaging force. Delicate tendrils began to decompose before his eyes, allowing him to gradually discern its true nature.

“So that’s how it is...”

Murmuring softly, Xia Ye narrowed his eyes. Fragmented, shattered, and extremely distorted images began to surface in the depths of his vision, interspersed with countless human figures.

Upon careful perception, he could sense that the thoughts, cognitions, experiences, and fantasies of countless people were intertwined, resembling a complex “thought aggregate” filled with death, negativity, despair, and violence!

“Is this the price of entering dreams...”

Seeing this, Xia Ye muttered softly.

“Because a ‘dream’ is inherently a collection of a person’s thoughts and soul, everything within it is difficult for outsiders to understand. This stems from the ‘cognitive disparity’ of every independent individual.”

“Under such circumstances, entering someone else's dream is equivalent to entering a world completely incomprehensible to oneself. Any slight difference will be infinitely magnified within the dream; this is the purest and most lonely ‘self’ of every person.”

After a brief analysis, he understood the sensation Meng Qi experienced after “entering dreams,” and he also comprehended the specific source of this wondrous power—how could one walk through a thousand blossoms without a single petal sticking to one's clothes?

Normally, a person's dream is harmless, even if an external force intrudes. However, Meng Qi's ability materializes the “power of dreams,” allowing it to directly affect the soul, which in turn acts upon the physical body!

“Not to mention the world of practitioners, even the world of ordinary people has long since experimented with ‘consciousness affecting the physical body,’ proving the strong correlation between ‘consciousness’ and ‘the physical body.’ This must be the principle behind this ‘dream-entering’ innate ability...”

Xia Ye continued his analysis.

He remembered an experiment conducted abroad:

A death row inmate was blindfolded and strapped to a bed, with various instruments attached to his body to detect body temperature, blood pressure, electrocardiogram, and brainwaves. Then, a judge was brought to the bedside to announce the execution of the death sentence.

At that moment, the inmate was informed that he would be executed by exsanguination. At the judge's command, a prepared assistant stepped forward, made a small scratch on the inmate's wrist with a small piece of wood, and then turned on a pre-set faucet, letting water drip into a bronze basin beneath the bed, producing a “drip-drop” sound.

Following the fast-to-slow rhythm of the dripping water, the inmate developed an intense sense of terror. According to his later description, he could genuinely feel his blood draining away bit by bit...

Meanwhile, various detection instruments faithfully recorded the inmate's weight changes and bodily data, confirming that he indeed exhibited typical symptoms of “blood loss” until he finally lapsed into unconsciousness due to “excessive blood loss.”

In Xia Ye's view, this was much like the strong correlation between “essence” and “life” in the eyes of practitioners. A person's soul and physical body are naturally one Yin and one Yang—you are in me and I am in you. Unless under extremely special circumstances, they cannot be separated.

This was also why, generally speaking, the “dual cultivation of essence and life” was always much stronger than mere “external physical training” or “spiritual cultivation.” The two naturally complement each other, and only through simultaneous development could one hope to reach “perfection” and be sufficiently equipped to handle any problem in cultivation!

At this thought...

“Since the essence of this power is the ‘power of the soul,’ then things become much simpler...” Xia Ye smiled slightly. Having clarified the “root of the disease,” he lifted his foot and walked toward the medicine cabinet.

Opening the cabinet and unlocking its hidden compartment, he quickly retrieved a jade bottle labeled “Lyu Family Blood,” pointed to extract a minuscule amount of mystical element from it, and infused it into his right hand. A blue light instantly emerged from his palm.

This was the “Twin Encapsulating Hand” rooted deep within the bloodline of the Lyu family, one of the Eight Wonders. It possessed the ability to knead and reshape a person's physical body and soul as easily as playing with clay, hailed in the Jianghu as the “pinnacle of medical arts”!

As for whether this “pinnacle” was true, Xia Ye didn't have the leisure to verify it. He only knew that abilities were meant to be used, and when needed, they should be used. With that thought, he closed the medicine cabinet and strode back to the hospital bed...

Whoosh—

In an instant, the room was flooded with blue light, and the treatment commenced.