Chapter 4: Demonic Qi and Pure Qi

'They took information from me. That is… worrying. Although I only answer the questions they ask me.' I noted.

'If they ask me something about my past… they'd probably think I was crazy.' I thought.

'Would they?'

***

"What do you suppose we do with him, hmm?" The mocking man said.

"Use him as a pill refiner." The androgynous man said monotonously.

"We should put him as a trainee and see his skills after." The deep-pitched woman added.

"And we should keep him here, hmm?" The mocking man said with another hmm at the end.

'Pill refiner? That's probably a role I shouldn't look forward to. On that note, passing out is something I also shouldn't look forward to.' I monologued.

"The Immortal Demon would be satisfied with an offering. Let's keep him here until the next gathering." The androgynous person said in a monotone voice.

"Hmm, who's gonna take on the task of forcing down the parasite? I'm a bit busy for the next few decades, so it's not gonna be me… Goodbye now." The mocking man said before vanishing by ringing a bell.

"Same." The androgynous male said before whooshing away via an unknown method.

"They always leave me with their leftover tasks... Why can't they do it themselves for once?" The deep-pitched woman grumbled out while flipping me upright as I was about to black out.

However, I still blacked out for a second until I felt a punch to my gut.

"Don't pass out just yet. I need to embed the pill next to your core and the parasite through your pupil. It will be a painless process… for me." She said before suddenly covering her hand in qi, which was a reddish hue for some reason, and then plunging the fist through my chest.

A burning sensation filled my chest for a split second before it became a dull pain next to the location of my core.

"Agh—" I grunted before she shut my mouth with her other hand. The increasing pressure in her hand threatened to crush my jaw.

"Don't make a single sound." She growled out.

The deep-pitched woman pulled her arm out of my chest. My chest area immediately closed up after she forced Qi with a reddish hue into the injury.

After that, she extended her finger. A single thin being wriggled out of her skin. A clump of hundreds of thin muscles formed what looked like a worm made of human skin.

She placed the finger with the parasite onto my eyelid. It wriggled on my eyelid until it burrowed through the skin, muscles, and finally, the pupil itself. It felt like a searing hot soldering iron was pushed into my eye.

I couldn't scream with her hand clamping my jaw shut. All the sounds I made were unintelligible grunts of pain.

I could feel it burrowing behind my eye and connecting to my brain through the nerves in my eye.

I blacked out.

***

'That was hell.' I said, internally, as soon as I woke up.

'Did I get abandoned again?' I thought, reminiscing about being let off my job.

A feeling of helplessness overcame me as I remembered what that woman did to me. I felt the same while thinking of the Heavenly Palace moving me here without my knowledge.

'How did they even do it? They probably used some artifact to transport me here.' I answered myself.

'Now's not the time to succumb… To never feel helpless again, I need to get stronger… much stronger.' I vowed.

'First, I need to figure out where I am and how to get out of here.' I started thinking.

I looked around. I was in a blackened-stone room.

I could somewhat feel the qi around me. And if I could feel it, it meant that the air must be fully saturated with qi. There were hundreds of pills in one corner of the room.

Techniques lined the side of the wall, which, looking closer, all had the same exact name with consecutive volumes.

'Demonic Pill Cultivation Vol. 1' was all the way to the left of the wall. 'Demonic Pill Cultivation Vol. 285-Revised-' was the last technique on the wall, resting on the very right side of the wall.

'If I start cultivating this… I'll probably doom myself. What should I do?' I thought while reading the first volume of the technique.

'There's no escape from here… Unless… no, that wouldn't work.'

'How durable is this room? They're probably watching me… They'd know what I'd be planning to do.'

I started to follow the technique's instructions. I immediately felt my strength growing exponentially. 'It's much faster than gathering it with that dull book's instructions… Well, I guess that should be expected.'

Instead of gathering bright and pure Qi, the technique required me to take in the reddish-hued Qi, called 'demonic Qi,' and force as much of it as I could into the pill's shell next to my core. The pill's shell would act as my second core as long as it stayed in my body.

'If I can cultivate both demonic and pure Qi… Would I become two times more powerful? Or would they try to take over one another and destroy my body? Could I separate them into different places?' I thought, trying to feel how the demonic Qi spread throughout my body.

I remembered the feeling of pure Qi spreading throughout my body. Back then, it spread out like veins. The demonic Qi spread differently; it coiled like springs around my muscles and bones instead.

'That explains why I feel much stronger currently. Demonic Qi enhances physical aspects much more than pure Qi; although, the trade-off is that it doesn't really enhance the spiritual aspect or enhance the spiritual roots.'

'Pure Qi expands the soul's power, whereas the demonic Qi keeps expanding the body's power, ignoring the soul.' I thought while gathering more demonic Qi and splitting off parts to turn into pure Qi.

'All I have to do is keep gathering. If I'm much stronger… It'd make what I need to do easier.' I concluded.