Pandora Unchained B1C29 - Mysterious Markings

Four dams simultaneously burst open inside Sorin’s body, almost doubling the speed of mana circulation. The four extraordinary meridians Sorin had opened before his cultivation was crippled were instantly restored.

Strictly speaking, these meridians didn’t occupy any individual acupoints. Instead, they were new circulation paths between existing points. As a result, they were called vessels, and served to store and circulate mana, among other functions.

The four pathways were respectively called the Yin Link Vessel, the Yang Link Vessel, the Yin Heel Vessel, and the Yang Heel Vessel. The yin and yang heel vessels governed the legs and would increase Sorin’s explosive speed by nearly twofold. It was a useless ability for a physician, but for an adventurer, it was crucial. Thanks to these unblocked vessels, his movement speed might even exceed Lawrence’s if he didn’t use techniques.

The yin and yang link vessels were much more subtle in their application. They didn’t directly improve Sorin’s mana flow, but instead allowed his mana, spiritual strength, and physical strength join together and harmonize. This ability had been his bread and butter back when he was a physician and would now allow him to apply his abnormally high spiritual strength in battle.

Sorin spent the next few hours acclimatizing himself to his new condition. His roiling blood calmed down, and the mana circulating in his body changed over several times. Soon enough, all the weaker mana in his body was forced out to make room for denser mana, which he stored in his thick blood and his cells.

He’d just broken through two middle blood thickening realms in quick succession, yet his foundation was just as stable as ever. This was because his body had originally reached the 10th level of blood thickening. Yet thanks to the Ten Thousand Poison Cannon, the degree of transformation his body experienced in the blood thickening realm was much greater. Whether it be in strength, speed, regeneration, or mana abilities, he was superior in every way to his past self.

It was only once his body calmed down that Sorin took stock of his current cultivation. He formed spheres of mana that he manipulated with his fingers and much larger mana needles than before. Previously, he’d needed a physical medium like a crystal needle to force his poisonous mana into a usable needle. But now, he would be able to throw out poison needles all day long, as long as he didn’t over-exert his mana.

After the mana manipulation tests came a thorough inspection of his body. His mana quality was much higher than it had been the last time he cultivated to this realm. Thanks to the corrosive nature of his mana, it flowed without restriction. As a result, he could inspect every inch of flesh in his body, including the various blood vessels in his internal organs.

Yin organs are clear and functional, thought Sorin, working his way through a mental list. Yang organs are clean and functional. Arm, leg, and torso blood vessels are unimpeded. Minor clots have been rectified. Neck and skull blood flow is unimpeded.

Normally, the process would stop here, but thanks to the increase in Sorin’s mana quality, he was able to see the surface of his bones, along with several ‘nodes’ that would become clearer as his cultivation increased. Sorin had no interest in these nodes, since they would only be useful in the bone forging realm, but as he quickly inspected them, he noticed something strange on the bone in his ribcage.

What the… Sorin’s spiritual senses fused with his mana and rubbed against the bone, ‘cleaning’ it in such a way that he could more clearly see it. And what he saw caused his jaw to drop. Is that… writing? He’d never seen anything so strange on a skeleton in his life. Golden lettering, metallic in appearance but completely fused with his bone matter, had appeared on his ribcage.

What’s more, the writing made sense to him. He’d seen the style before, inside the Kepler Clan’s Divine Medical Codex.

If Sorin could choose a single thing to have an abundance of, it was knowledge. Knowledge was the gift that kept on giving, and the resource that would never betray you or diminish in value. He therefore got straight to work and cleaned off his bones to expose the text in full.

Only his rib cage had been imprinted with golden lettering, but thanks to the dense information conveyance methods of the Kepler Clan, such a small amount of text was enough to deliver monstrous amounts of information.

At first, the information made no sense to Sorin. Most of it came in the form of numbers and included tables and category references. Yet Sorin soon realized that these weren’t just tables of numbers, but actual research data, codified and organized according to the Kepler Clan’s strict conventions.

Moreover, their originator was shocking. None other than the ancestor of the Kepler Clan, Sirius Abberjay Kepler, had compiled these tables. He had also included extensive notes as to their collection and contents.

Unfortunately, Sorin’s joy was short-lived, because he soon realized that this data had to come from somewhere. His gaze turned frosty as he realized that the taboo of all taboos for medical practitioners had been inscribed on his very bones. Human experiments, tens of thousands of them, had been required for their completion.

Sorin wanted to look away, but he unable to keep his eyes form the glowing text. And the more he read, the more horrified he became. So. The Kepler Clan’s top-secret meridian clearing method came from here,thought Sorin as he memorized the text. A method was inscribed for all twelve primary meridians and for 7 of the eight extraordinary meridians.

A memory came to Sorin unbidden. It was a memory filled with agonizing pain and medical reagents specially administered by his father as he lay strapped down on an operating table. Sorin had been born with 12 naturally unblocked primary meridians and 2 unblocked extraordinary meridians, but thanks to his father’s tender ‘care’, witnessed entirely by his lucid self, Sorin had been able to open two more.

One reason Sorin hadn’t broken through to the bone forging realm all those years before was because he’d been waiting for his father to open more of his hidden meridians. Unfortunately, his father’s death had upset these plans, and his own cultivation had been destroyed in the aftermath.

Unblocking the twelve main meridians isn’t difficult using these methods, thought Sorin. But the twelve extraordinary meridians all require a special concoction. The primary ingredient is difficult to find and must be used in all 7 concoctions.

Another thing that shocked Sorin was that these clearly weren’t medicinal concoctions. They were all violent poisons that would kill a cultivator with the slightest mistake in their application. And the worst part yet, he knew exactly how many had died to deliver these results: 23,506.

He wanted to throw these results away. He wanted them gone. Yet try as he might, he couldn’t put them out of head. Like much of the medical practices developed over the years, these things built upon atrocities were not inherently evil. It was the methods that were awful, and that Sorin could never in good conscience partake in.

Sirius Abberjay Kepler’s research was built on a mountain of corpses, and yet the Kepler Clan never disseminated it to the public,thought Sorin. In that case, it falls to me to rectify this mistake. I’ll get to the bottom of these experiments and exactly why they were engraved on my bones. If the Kepler Clan is destroyed as a result, so be it.

So many people had died to develop a potential unlock method that the Kepler Clan had then locked down so they could wield oversized influence over the medical association and all the noble families that relied on it.

Having made his decision, Sorin turned his attention back to the unblocking methods. Many of the ingredients he saw were things that had gone extinct following the Cataclysmic Emergence of the Eight Evils and the demise of the gods of Mount Olympus.

But the main ingredient still existed. He’d seen it in the Divine Medical Codex and the Ten Thousand Poison Cannon. It so uncommon, and could actually be found in Bloodwood Forest, if one was lucky to find it.

Manabreak Poison, thought Sorin.  A product of the Primal Manabreak Lotus. A poison that, if ingested or injected into a blood thickening cultivator’s body, would make its way into their mana sea and cripple their cultivation. Ironically, it was this same poison that had crippled his cultivation following the death of his parents.

Manabreak poison was also a one-star poison and was technically compatible with the Ten Thousand Poison Cannon. If he could channel its properties, it might be possible to unlock another 3 of his extraordinary meridians. He might even be able to do the same for others.

Noticing that the number seven was mentioned once again, Sorin looked for any references on unblocking the eighth. But all that he found was a note at the end of the text. The eighth extraordinary meridian was apparently impossible to unblock. The exact reasons for why this was were unknown. According to Sirius Abberjay Kepler, research into the ‘divine lock’ restricting human potential had been forbidden by the now-dead gods.

It was several hours later that Sorin finally calmed down. Dawn arrived in the Bloodwood Outpost, and with the familiar change in humidity that accompanied the rising sun came a knock on the door and a jingling of keys.

“You can come in,” said Sorin, picking himself off the ground. “Everything is clean and in good order. I…” his voice trailed off as he saw that the laboratory was a mess of chewed up and broken glassware.

“Great,” said Henry, opening the door. “And here I was afraid you’d lost track of the time.” His eyes bulged when he saw the carnage in the lab. “This is what you call clean and in good order?”

Sorin cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you’ll need the whole 100 gold damage deposit to fix this, would you?”

“Out!” shouted a red-faced Henry. “Get out! You’re banned! Never step foot in this guild again!”