Ling Qi took a moment to recollect himself before he continued with his testimony. Yang Qing being intimately familiar with the burden of guilt having gone through it himself, only too recently, could tell Ling Qi was still clothed in it, but he seemed much better than he was a few seconds ago.
The little interlude seemed to have done him some good for now. But much later, when it was just him and his thoughts, that was something else.
"They didn't mention, but when the tricolored white-eyed tortoise retaliated, Daoist Hua Ying and Daoist Wu Shen took the brunt of its attack while Daoist Xin who has the highest speed, tried to help me avoid what was left.
We still ended up getting caught in it.
The cover they provided was what gave me the chance to use my cultivation spell to try and contain the poison.
From the moment it launched its toxin toward us, I knew it wouldn't be something simple, but I didn't think it would be that bad. It was virulent, beyond anything I've ever seen.
While the Lunar Petal Wave isn't a universal bane against toxins, it is something the sect master, a few elders of the sect, myself, and some alchemists from the Summerfield Kingdom, took the time to refine.
We have continuously refined it over the years and have seen the effort bear fruit. The art forms a water wave with strong detoxifying properties against a good number of poisons including a few potent ones such as the ghost fog poison of the ghost blade mantis or the decaying poison of the decay-spike centipede.
If it can't detoxify the poison, it acts as a barrier that delays or encloses the poisonous substance giving enough time for an escape or counterattack.
When I launched it, I thought to myself that no matter how potent the poison of the tricolored white-eyed tortoise seemed, the Lunar Petal Wave could restrain it, even if for just a few minutes, providing room for Daoist Hua Ying and the rest to counterattack, or even flee if need be.
But it didn't last even a second against it. The poison seemed to have assimilated my art and used it as a medium to spread itself to a wider range.
My greatest achievement and confidence were decimated and used against me in but an instant.
But at least the art had an inadvertent effect on the poison when it mixed, which made the poison slightly heavier giving us a chance to dodge a few of the splashes, but not enough to escape unscathed.
The effects struck instantly with immobilization first, followed by rapid permeation, and then corruption and erosion of our blood and qi, which it used as a conduit to spread to the rest of our bodies.
I have never seen poison spread so fast. It felt almost sentient, especially with how it reacted to all the detoxification measures we used against it.
Anything we used, it seemed to retaliate aggressively, almost as if to warn us against trying anything.
None of the recipes or detoxifying natural materials we had on hand seemed to work on it. It was only when we were at the end of our ropes, did one of the supreme elders of the sect suggested something he had read on a scroll.
It was unverified and highly dangerous. The scroll was a traveling journal of some unknown herbologist. Neither their name nor rank was recorded on the scroll.
Said herbologist liked to tour places in search of exotic herbs, and that search led him to the Green Fog Region..."
Ling Qi paused as his mind seemed to float to that moment which elicited a wry smile from him.
"Only now do I realize, how desperate the situation was..." Ling Qi said with a slight shake of his head, a hint of fear evident on his face.
Wu Shen and the rest joined in, as they smiled fearfully themselves.
Yang Qing filled with curiosity about their reactions asked,
"The scroll...well...it wasn't exactly a normal one.." Ling Qi said with some slight hesitation born out of embarrassment which only served to draw in Yang Qing's curiosity.
"The scroll was more of the rumblings of someone who thought they were about to die than a standard discovery journal.
It looked like something had happened to the herbologist, and it prompted them to create the scroll. However, it seemed that whatever it was that they were suffering from seemed to affect their mind.
Instead of the scroll containing their legacy or something that one would want to entrust to others before they met their demise, theirs was different. The author was delirious, with thoughts all over the place.
One minute, he would be describing spiritual herb harvesting techniques, the next he would go into vivid details about how he loathed someone by the name of Li Yao who stole someone he liked, and how he would torment him as a ghost, then he would go back to talk about plants, and then jump over to describing whatever symptoms he had with his panic state showing up in the words.
The method used to try and slow down the spread of the tricolored white-eyed tortoise was obtained from those rumblings.
As the author was busy cursing his luck, he did write a few remedies he had thought up that may have worked against the poison that afflicted him, and one of those remedies was fighting a virulent poison with another virulent poison and balancing the reaction with a parasite, specifically a baneblood leech.
I'm surprised the supreme elders were crazy enough to try it considering how deadly the baneblood leech is or using poison to fight off the tricolored white-eyed tortoise's poison.
When I read that scroll, I still can't believe they went through with it. That author had even suggested kidnapping a taotie and forcing it to devour his poison as one of the remedies.
I can't believe they went through with some of his suggestions..but I am glad they did. The sect used the five flames poison to counteract the venom within our bodies and used the baneblood leech as the tether that prevented the two poisons from overrunning our bodies.
The method worked but not completely as the five flame poison and the baneblood leech were unable to completely contain the tricolored white-eyed tortoise's poison.
After six weeks, the five flame poison was drained and the baneblood leech had died. Another batch couldn't be created as it seemed like the poison had evolved, had they tried using the five flame poison or the baneblood leech again, we would have died instantly and in the most violent way possible.
Long Zemin's arrival was timely as we had nothing else to rely on. Despite being an alchemist organization ourselves, our circle of connection is rather small so we couldn't verify his background and could only judge him based on his abilities.
Since we couldn't verify his background and whether he was from the Ocean Refining Crucible Pavilion, the vice sect master thought the only way to measure the man, was through his abilities, so he used some covert means to test his understanding.
He used some of the discoveries they made with the poison to test him out and Long Zemin showed to have extensive knowledge of the matter, extensive enough to entrust our care to him..."
Ling Qi paused as he sighed, his eyes flashing with complex emotions.
"He did heal us and singlehandedly managed to do something our entire sect couldn't. As alchemists ourselves, we intimately understand how wonderous his abilities are, seeing how he handled the venom.
This was why in addition to the resources we agreed to give him, our Moon Essence Cauldron Sect added 30 unique recipes we researched ourselves and a botanical report of the spiritual herbs around the Deer Mountain Range that we have come across since we came here.
We did it not to even repay him for saving our lives but as respect and recognition of his abilities..."
"Ling ..You?" Xin Zephyr asked with a stupefied look. She wasn't the only one as Hua Ying and Wu Shen showed looks of surprise too.
Clearly, they had no idea of the trade the Moon Essence Cauldron Sect had made. What they gave was no different than giving away their legacy art as it the recipes and botanical report were something born out of their blood, sweat, tears, and lives.
They were surprised the Moon Essence Cauldron Sect would hand it over to a stranger, a stranger who conned them at that.