Feng Lan's skin gained a slightly grey tone, his eyes became bloodshot as more and more blood was coughed up. His body writhed in pain, like something was eviscerating the inside of him. He pushed himself up on a quickly weakening arm, grinding his teeth as he reached for a small glass bottle that was sitting on the bedside table. Feng Jinyi swiftly grabbed it, opening it to find small leaves wrapped into balls, Feng Lan reached for it and she grabbed one, putting it in his mouth. He chewed for a moment before spitting out the leaf, his agony quickly disappeared, his cough also seemed to subside as he took a moment to catch his breath.
He looked up to Feng Jingyi and said "that herp contained a powder which numbs pain, but it only lasts for a few minutes at most, so we have to act quickly." He paused for a moment swallowing a gulp of dry saliva before continuing, "that powder should have been fully absorbed into me by now, I would make something to help me with this, but I dont have the time, so I need you to punch me in the stomach."
Feng Jingyi took a moment to understand what he had asked and was about to protest out of instinct, he had asked her to do far too many outlandishly stupid things and by now she was used to turning down his requests. All of her inhibition's disappeared once she saw the fear in his eyes. Feng Lan was clearly terrified as he knew that his life was hanging on a very thin rope.
Feng Jingyi dealt a swift strike to his stomach, a brown liquid spewed forth from Feng Lan, shooting out both his nose and mouth, it covered the bed sheet, emitting a foul stench but the smell didn't seem to bother Feng Lan as he got down on all fours and studied the bile.
"Before you ask, yes that was necessary, I cant just stick my hand down my throat if I want to puke, no gag reflex." he continued to look through his own bile as he talked until he saw something, quickly plucking it out of the off colour fluid he shook it a few times to clean it before slicing it open with his finger nail.
"Damn" was all he said before resting against the back of the bed. Feng Jingyi asked "what is it?" he held up a piece of slimy pink meat, it had three long jelly like fins symmetrically going down it. "although some would think this just looks like a chewed up piece of snail, it is in fact a demonic seal fin parasite, and quite a large one at that, at least 3 years old, it was probably the cause for most of my symptoms," He sighed.
"Remember back, three years ago when I fought off that stampede of spirit beasts, I guess at some point during that time, this thing slipped in through a wound, it sits on the outside of the stomach, its three heads consume the food you eat, your blood and your spiritual energy, its probably consumed enough spiritual energy to become a 100-year old spirit beast. the only way to kill it is to kill me. It really us a devious creature, its body contains a powerful toxin that has been slowly leaking into me, every movement I make, every breath I take, all of them apply a subtle pressure to the parasite, squeezing's more and more of its toxin into me. that also makes it invincible, because if its attacked it will rapidly release its poison into me, its special three headed characteristic also made the medicine you fed me incredibly deadly. the crushed crystal will aggravate the head attached to my blood stream, it will likely detach, causing internal bleeding, although that medicine also provides a resistance to about ninety percent of the poison being pumped into me, the last ten percent is a toxin which will damage my brain, shutting down most bodily function within eight hours as well as a spiritual poison which will rapidly eat away at my cultivation base, luckily its only 100 years old so doesn't have access to its more deadly poisons, but even still, Jingyi, that punch you did to my stomach, it probably caused a lethal dose of poison to be shot into me. Even if you did attempt to remove it, its fangs are lodged into both my stomach and my spirit sea, so my cultivation will disappear, which at this point is the least of my concern, and my stomach acid will leak inside me which could cause irreversible damage if not handled correctly." He sighed and said with both sorrow and acceptance, "Yeah, I'm screwed."
Everyone was left shocked after his long statement, they were left speechless after the overload of information. "But how did you know you even have this... parasite?" Feng Jingyi cautiously voiced her concern, Feng Lan gave a brief explanation, "the medicine should have worked fine, its not called the immortal heart medicine for nothing, but when I took it I felt a small prick near my stomach, I would have ignored it if not just a few moments later I was coughing up large amounts of blood, at that point I had a suspicion, I was a bit too preoccupied with the agony I was feeling, so I went to grab a pain nullifier, after that I narrowed it down to about 3 things, the first was to test for a different type of parasite, located in the same area" he made a gesture, jabbing his thumb towards his abdomen. "Turns out I had forgotten one, I guess subconsciously I had just hoped that by not taking it into account I would reduce my chance of having it, but here I am, infected by one of the most dangerous parasites on the continent. I probably wouldn't have discovered it if it didn't regularly lose parts of its body and store them in the hosts stomach to decompose.)
"There has to be something I can do" Feng Jingyi said with a voice full of worry. she had began pacing around the room, biting on her right thumbs nail. "Unless you wanted to take the chance of cutting the demonic seal parasite out of me then cutting open my neck and sucking the poison out of it without me losing too much blood, then I don't think there is."
Feng Jingyi's head swiveled to look at him, "your telling me there's a way to save you? Why didn't you say so sooner?" Feng Lan sighed before stating in a slightly annoyed voice, "because I would bleed out in less than ten seconds, if we take in consideration the blood I coughed up, less than 7, nobody survives having their neck cut."
"But we have to try!" She was becoming erratic, the lack of sleep severely hampering her logical reasoning. "Neither of us have spirit ring abilities which will help in this situation! And its too late to call in a doctor, I'm done, Jingyi, its the end of the line for me, give up." As soon as he finished his sentence, Feng Lan received a hard slap to his face, he gingerly lifted his hand to feel where he was hit, a look of shock on his face.
Slowly, he lifted his head to look at his wife, her teeth were clenched with anger but her eyes showed the true sadness she felt seeing his depressing state. "I have been with you for 7 YEARS! And I get that you understand and can handle yourself and that you don't need my help a lot of the time, but this one time, PLEASE, JUST LISTEN, I know that you think everything is over, BUT I DONT CARE IF FATE ITSELF WANTS YOU DEAD, I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO SAVE YOU, so please... please don't give up"
Feng Lan was left stunned, he waited for a moment, his thoughts were all over the place, he had already made peace with death, he was ready, but now, after hearing Feng Jingyi sincere request, every fiber of his being was yelling at him to stay alive. "ARRRG!" He yelled out in frustration, banging his hand on the bed, he felt so conflicted on what to do he could no longer hold it in.
A few moments passed and he suddenly stilled, he hung his head and tears began dripping onto his lap. Feng Lan raised his left hand and punched himself, the pain bringing him back to his senses as he raised his head, tears filled his eyes and a lump formed in his throat as he asked, "please... don't let me die."
...
Just outside the room, Feng Hao and Feng Long were listening, the couple hadn't even noticed that their kids were outside the open door and heard everything that happened, although it was more Feng Hao listening, Feng Long had lost track of the conversation and was leaning up against the wall, slowly dozing off.
Feng Hao was worried for his father, he had spent the last few minutes going over how things would work out in his mind, and things weren't looking good, getting a surgery from an untrained and halfway delirious person was not a good idea. he was wondering if he could help in some way when he remembered a skill which had helped him many times during the short period he had it, fate planning, but he would save that for when his father was getting the 'surgery' Feng Hao was more interested in the second skill of fate planning, fate strings.
Fate strings were much more useful for understanding a situation, but the skill wasn't able to change fate like its parent skill, in exchange for that it was far less taxing only taking a point of stamina every 15 seconds or so.
Feng Hao looked in through the door, using his purple demon eyes to get a better look at the situation, then he used the fate strings skill and saw numerous blue and green threads from. Feng Hao suddenly became a lot less confident about improving the situation as hundreds of threads were wrapped around his fathers body, they covered his neck, arms, legs and pretty much everything else too.
There was a lot of fate surrounding his father, and all of it was leading to an unfortunate, and far too early death.