Chapter 109 — Cultivate Any Further and You'll Blow Yourself Up [Begging for Guaranteed Monthly Tickets, First Bonus Update]

Wei Zhao had naturally not taken those brats from before seriously. True, his current identity was nothing more than that of a high school student, but the sight of them only reminded him of Zhong Yongliang and Zou Ruoming back at school — childish beyond belief.

"Hey, when we get back, I'll have Uncle Qing fix you up with a driver's license and buy you a car. From now on, when we go out, you do the driving, all right?" Gu Mengyao glanced at Wei Zhao in the rearview mirror.

"..." Wei Zhao was sitting with his eyes shut, sunk in thought, and had not been listening closely. He assumed she was talking to Shen Yushu.

Getting no answer, Gu Mengyao grew irritated. "Hey, I'm talking to you."

"Hmm? Me?" Only then did Wei Zhao snap back to himself. "You called me, Young Miss?"

"Of course it's you. Who else would I be calling, Xiaoshu?" Gu Mengyao was driving and had no attention to spare for glaring at him.

"Oh, if you were to call me uncle, I'd be glad to answer too." Wei Zhao said with a wicked grin, watching her.

"Huh?" Gu Mengyao was startled, then caught his meaning — and in her annoyance she stomped hard on the brake.

"Ah—!" Shen Yushu hadn't been prepared at all and nearly slammed into the windshield. "Sister Yaoyao, what are you doing?"

"Uh... sorry..." Gu Mengyao looked at Wei Zhao, who sat there without a scratch on him, and ground her teeth in fury. She had meant to jolt him with a sudden stop, yet Wei Zhao was perfectly fine — it was Shen Yushu who had nearly been hurt.

"Wei Zhao." Gu Mengyao turned and glared at him. "When I spoke to you earlier, did you hear me or not?"

"Spoke about what?" He truly had not caught what she said; at the time he had assumed she was talking to Shen Yushu, so he had not listened carefully.

"Nothing..." Gu Mengyao had no patience left to waste words on him. My dad hired you, she thought. If I tell you to drive, you drive. I don't need to consult you about it.

"Oh." Wei Zhao thought nothing of it either, taking it for a young lady throwing one of her tantrums.

Back at the villa, Gu Mengyao stormed upstairs with Shen Yushu in tow, seething. She found Wei Zhao thoroughly detestable: Dad's hired hand or not, he went about with that flippant, slouching air of his...

Wei Zhao, naturally, thought nothing of it. A young lady was bound to have a temper; that was only normal. If she were too sweet to him instead, that would be the real trouble.

That day, once he had washed up, Wei Zhao could not wait to fall into his dreams. He meant to question Elder Jiao properly about this matter of energy — that energy could save lives was something he had only just learned.

He had always assumed the energy within his body worked only for himself; it had never once occurred to him that it might help others.

"You've come?" Elder Jiao was as he had been the day before, standing quietly in the virtual space of the jade pendant.

"Elder Jiao." The sight of him stirred Wei Zhao to excitement. "Elder Jiao, what exactly is the energy inside my body? How is it that it can help other people?"

"Everything in this world needs energy to live; only the means of taking it in differ. Humans and animals eat, drawing energy from food; plants draw water and nutrients from the soil as their energy... You are different — you can draw energy from nature itself..." Jiao Yazi explained. "The energy you take in is a little more complex than what the body converts, but its nature is much the same. If it works for you, it naturally works for others as well. The only difference is that you can convert it and they cannot. They can merely absorb, through you as their vessel, the energy you have already converted..."

"So the energy in my body can be passed to other people at any time?" Wei Zhao grew excited at this. If that were so, then others need not cultivate at all — they could reach the very same end simply by absorbing the energy from his body.

"That, of course, is impossible." Elder Jiao's words dashed cold water over him. "At least, having studied the first level of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art, I have found it impossible. Whether the later levels might allow it, I cannot say — I have never seen the specific cultivation formulas, so I cannot speak to them."

"Then what happened today..." Wei Zhao's disappointment was instant.

"As for what happened today, I have already said it: the old man could absorb the energy you released into him only because, in that moment, his own body's energy was no longer enough to sustain the normal working of his heart. Only under those special circumstances could the energy within you be used by him." Elder Jiao said. "In ordinary circumstances, a normal person's own energy already suffices to keep every organ of the body at work; they have no need of your energy. My explanation may not be very clear, for these formulas and arts were left behind by the Grand Master-Uncle, and I myself understand only a fraction of them."

Complicated as Elder Jiao's words were, Wei Zhao still grasped his meaning: for ordinary people under normal conditions, his energy was of no use at all. Only in an emergency would it take effect.

"So the energy works on ordinary people only after something has gone wrong in some part of their body?" Wei Zhao asked.

"You could say so. But that effect merely keeps them functioning; to restore those damaged organs is out of the question." Jiao Yazi said. "That is what I meant today: you can save his life, but curing him is impossible..."

"As for curing, I do have other means. With traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and herbal decoctions, he could be nursed back, slowly." This time Wei Zhao was not so disappointed. To manage emergency aid at all was already remarkable; keep the man alive first, and other methods could be found in time.

Besides, he and that old man were strangers to one another, and there was no reason to volunteer follow-up treatment. To be too eager would only make others suspect he had an ulterior motive.

Having gotten the answer he wanted, Wei Zhao calmed himself and prepared to resume his cultivation — yet he had barely entered the state when Elder Jiao cut him off.

"What are you trying to do, Lin boy?" Elder Jiao demanded with a frown.

"Cultivating, of course." Wei Zhao looked at him, baffled. Could he not tell what he was doing?

"You do not have the mind formula for the second level — what is there for you to cultivate? Do you not know that too much energy in the body, with no proper formula to guide it, can make you explode and die?" Elder Jiao glared at Wei Zhao with a look that plainly said, are you an idiot?

"Uh..." Wei Zhao's heart lurched. He had never known such a thing was possible. Thank goodness he had made contact with Elder Jiao this early; otherwise, if by some twist of fate he had broken through the first level out in the world, and then kept cultivating, it was hard to say whether he might not truly have blown himself to death.

"But... today, when I saved that old man, didn't I waste some energy?" Wei Zhao asked awkwardly. "Shouldn't I make it up?"

"One night's sleep and you will replenish it yourself. No need to cultivate." Jiao Yazi rolled his eyes, speechless. The boy truly knew nothing at all — a complete greenhorn.

For the fastest updates and pop-up-free reading, please.