"Take off your clothes?" Xu Yuan asked subconsciously.
Ran Qingmo's expression remained without a ripple, and she said softly,
"My injury is severe, and my control over Origin Qi has decreased significantly. If you keep your clothes on, it might hurt you."
Hearing the woman before him say this without any pretense, Xu Yuan directly took off his luxurious robe.
It was the first time he took off his clothes, and under the faint light of the Luminous Pearls on the stone walls, Xu Yuan realized his body was incredibly thin.
With a height of over one meter and eighty centimeters, his weight was probably not even one hundred and ten jin, so thin that his rib bones were visibly clear.
The years of indulgence in wine and women had completely hollowed out his body.
Xu Yuan shifted his gaze and looked at Ran Qingmo with a calm expression, asking,
"Should I take off my underpants, too?"
"...."
Ran Qingmo looked up at him, her cold gaze quietly fixated on him.
Okay, it seems not necessary.
Xu Yuan sat cross-legged opposite Ran Qingmo, just about to speak.
"Lie down." She commanded softly.
Xu Yuan silently adjusted his position and lay flat in front of the woman.
Ran Qingmo raised a slender jade finger, and a faint blue light appeared at her fingertip:
"My Origin Qi will enter your body."
Xu Yuan glanced sideways,
"Won't there be any problems?"
He remembered Ran Qingmo saying that if her Origin Qi entered his body, it would directly tear apart his narrow entrance.
"....."
Ran Qingmo was already getting used to this "Origin Qi novice" asking her these idiotic questions about cultivation.
After a pause, she shook her head to explain,
"The Origin Qi will only be on the surface, it won't enter your meridians."
Xu Yuan nodded, signaling her to continue.
In the dim cave, the woman's slender fingers moved slightly, and the blue light at her fingertips instantly scattered into hundreds of points like fireflies, gently falling on various areas on the surface of Xu Yuan's body.
The touch was somewhat cool.
And the next moment,
these light spots plunged into his body straight through his skin like mud oxen into the sea.
In an instant,
Xu Yuan's vision was filled with a view of his body as if it were an X-ray illustration.
The light spots connected into patches, and the clear meridians and acupuncture points were vividly presented before his eyes.
Soon, Xu Yuan felt his body gradually numbing as these light spots entered.
But this numbness also came with waves of tingling; her Origin Qi was chilly and comfortable.
"Ah~"
Ran Qingmo's gaze swept over.
Xu Yuan shut up.
Ran Qingmo withdrew her gaze, saying clearly,
"I will first teach you to recognize acupuncture points."
"Acupuncture points?"
"Acupuncture points are important junctions between the meridians," she explained.
"Oh, okay." Xu Yuan nodded.
"It might be a bit painful next."
With that, Ran Qingmo extended a slender finger and gently tapped a spot on Xu Yuan's neck.
Her fingertips were not warm; on the contrary, they were somewhat cool.
"This is the Gathering Origin point."
As soon as her words fell, a piercing pain surged through the pleasant tingling sensation with her fingertip's touch.
The pain on the right side of his neck made Xu Yuan's body tremble uncontrollably.
However, this pain was barely tolerable.
And Ran Qingmo's finger kept moving, tapping at a rate of once every five seconds on Xu Yuan's prone body.
With each tap, Ran Qingmo would name a corresponding acupuncture point, and a stab of pain would emerge from somewhere beneath the skin where her fingertip had touched...
Time quietly ticked away.....
Two quarters of an hour later,
hundreds of human acupuncture points had been touched.
Ran Qingmo slowly withdrew her hand, looked at Xu Yuan, and said clearly,
"Do you remember all that?"
Xu Yuan opened his eyes.
He met her gaze for a second, opened his mouth, and said,
"Ah?"
She couldn't possibly think he would remember it all in one go, could she?
"....." Ran Qingmo didn't speak again but silently stretched out her finger and continued to point lightly:
"This is the Origin Acupoint...."
"...."
"...."
He had no idea how much time had passed, and he didn't know how many times the lesson on identifying acupoints had been repeated. It could have been a morning or it could have been an afternoon.
Once again, Ran Qingmo withdrew her hand and looked at the man lying flat in front of her:
"This time, have you remembered?"
Xu Yuan closed his eyes and carefully felt for a while the remnants of the Origin Qi that Ran Qingmo had left inside him, and he nodded slightly:
"I've got it more or less."
"More or less?"
"Seventy to eighty percent."
"....."
Ran Qingmo looked at him with a strange expression, her eyes filled with incomprehension.
So slow...
She didn't understand why the man before her was so slow.
"...."
Xu Yuan more or less understood the meaning behind Big Ice Lump's gaze and opened his mouth to explain.
In his previous life, as someone considered a prodigy in the eyes of others, he thought that the speed at which he memorized these acupoints was already quite fast.
But in the end, Xu Yuan swallowed back the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
Compared to her, perhaps his past life's "prodigy" was really just an ordinary person.
He remembered that at this point in the plot, the black-clad woman before him was apparently only seventeen years old.
And at seventeen, she had already cultivated to the Great Grandmaster Realm, just one step shy of reaching the Primordial Origin Qi.
The gap between people really is bigger than between humans and dogs.
Ran Qingmo said nothing more, just silently raised her finger and said:
"Let's continue."
"Mmm."
Xu Yuan nodded, refocusing his attention.
Time ticked by again.....
Unable to see the sky in the cave dwelling, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed.
Another session came to an end,
and Xu Yuan felt like his whole body was almost turning into the same ghastly blue of Ran Qingmo's Origin Qi.
At this point, Ran Qingmo also spoke up:
"If we continue like this, your body will be harmed."
"......"
Xu Yuan slowly opened his eyes and, after a moment's hesitation, nodded in agreement with Ran Qingmo's suggestion.
Although Ran Qingmo's Qi was gentle, it was still an external force, and its prolonged entry into his body would inevitably be a burden.
At this moment, he was starting to feel a touch of nausea and dizziness.
Moreover, the prolonged concentration had caused an unprecedented fatigue in his body.
The willpower of a person is indeed very important, but when faced with the limits of physical ability, even the strongest will cannot make a difference.
After a day's lessons were over,
Ran Qingmo didn't rest but continued to sit cross-legged to recuperate and heal.
Meanwhile, Xu Yuan climbed onto the only jade bed in the cave dwelling, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, his consciousness sank into deep sleep.
In his dreams,
the scenes of her teaching him to identify acupoints continued....
...
...
Ran Qingmo seemed to need no rest.
When Xu Yuan was awake, she taught him the fundamentals of cultivation.
When Xu Yuan rested, she silently sat in a corner to meditate and heal.
There was no food inside the cave dwelling, but the pool of water seemed to be formed from some sort of treasure from heaven and earth, providing Xu Yuan with a day's worth of energy with just a sip.
Life here seemed timeless, the days passing by one after another.
And during these days, where he had no concept of day or night, Xu Yuan gradually mastered the abstruse and difficult knowledge of cultivation.....