Chapter 119: Discovered Parasite
Clayne sat cross-legged near the center of the fourth floor, allowing the surrounding silence to settle over the abandoned school. The crimson mist had long since dispersed, Scytherion had gone outside to continue gathering crystal cores, and the only sounds that remained were the distant echoes of mutated creatures somewhere beyond the campus walls.
He slowly placed another parasitic crystal between his palms before closing his eyes once more. The spiritual energy within the crystal steadily flowed into his meridians, circulating according to the cultivation method he had obtained from the rogue cultivators inside the Tiny World.
Every circulation refined the energy further, every refinement strengthened his cultivation, and every completed cycle brought him closer to stabilizing the Third Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm.
At first, everything appeared completely normal.
The spiritual energy flowed smoothly through his twelve primary meridians before branching into the countless smaller channels throughout his body.
His dantian steadily absorbed the refined essence, his flesh became slightly stronger with every completed circulation, and even his spiritual sea appeared calmer than before. If someone observed him from the outside, they would have concluded that his cultivation was proceeding perfectly.
Yet...
Clayne slowly knitted his brows.
Something...
Felt wrong.
It was not obvious.
In fact, the strange sensation was so faint that he almost dismissed it as nothing more than fatigue from fighting too many mutated beasts throughout the day. He patiently continued circulating his spiritual energy, convincing himself that the uncomfortable feeling would eventually disappear on its own.
Instead...
The feeling became clearer.
It was subtle.
Almost impossible to notice.
Every time another stream of spiritual energy entered his dantian, a tiny portion seemed to vanish before it could completely settle.
Not much.
Only an amount so insignificant that almost every cultivator would have ignored it.
Clayne, however, had spent hours absorbing the memories of independent cultivators inside the Tiny World. Those memories did not merely contain cultivation techniques. They also carried years of experience, countless near-death encounters, failed breakthroughs, hidden dangers, and every imaginable method by which cultivators had been harmed or deceived.
Because of those memories...
His instincts immediately became alert.
He slowly stopped circulating his cultivation technique.
The spiritual energy inside his body gradually became still.
He quietly opened his eyes.
"...No."
He muttered softly.
"...That wasn’t natural."
Instead of resuming cultivation, Clayne closed his eyes again and deliberately reduced his breathing until even his heartbeat slowed. Rather than refining spiritual energy, he focused entirely upon observing its movement. Minute after minute passed without the slightest impatience. He patiently examined every meridian, every acupoint, and every pathway through which his cultivation circulated.
Nothing.
Everything appeared perfectly ordinary.
His meridians remained healthy.
His dantian showed no cracks.
His spiritual sea remained tranquil.
Even the newly condensed Qi surrounding his cultivation foundation displayed no abnormalities.
Clayne refused to believe it.
The memories belonging to those rogue cultivators repeatedly surfaced within his mind.
One had unknowingly cultivated beside a poisonous spiritual vein.
Another had been cursed by an ancient artifact.
A third discovered too late that an invisible parasite had lived inside his body for decades.
Each story shared one lesson.
If something felt wrong...
Never ignore it.
Clayne inhaled deeply before beginning another cultivation cycle.
This time, he intentionally slowed everything.
Instead of allowing spiritual energy to flow naturally, he guided every strand with complete precision. Every movement became deliberate. Every circulation received his undivided attention.
The crystal continued releasing spiritual energy.
His cultivation method refined it.
The energy entered his meridians.
It approached his dantian.
Then...
Clayne felt it.
A tiny pull.
So faint that it resembled the gentle tug of a spider’s thread brushing against his spiritual sense.
His eyes immediately snapped open.
"There..."
He whispered.
"I definitely felt something."
His expression gradually became serious.
He resumed cultivating again.
The tug returned.
Not once.
Not twice.
But every single time spiritual energy reached a particular region within his body.
This time, instead of resisting, Clayne deliberately allowed the mysterious force to continue drawing upon his cultivation.
The pull became slightly stronger.
Tiny.
Patient.
Almost intelligent.
Rather than stealing recklessly, it appeared content with taking only the smallest amount possible.
Enough to avoid detection.
Clayne slowly smiled.
"So..."
"...you’ve been hiding."
Without warning, he redirected every strand of spiritual energy inside his body.
Instead of allowing it to circulate normally, he suddenly flooded the suspicious region from every possible direction.
The invisible force reacted instantly.
It moved.
Clayne’s smile disappeared.
"It moved..."
His spiritual sense immediately pursued the fleeing presence.
The thing darted through one meridian before slipping into another with astonishing speed. It avoided every place where Clayne concentrated his spiritual awareness, almost as though it understood it had finally been discovered.
Clayne’s expression gradually darkened.
"It really is alive."
The chase continued inside his own body.
The strange presence abandoned one pathway after another, weaving through his meridians with remarkable familiarity. Several times Clayne believed he had cornered it, only for the mysterious thing to suddenly slip away through another hidden route he had never previously noticed.
His breathing gradually became heavier.
Sweat formed across his forehead.
Not because the pursuit exhausted him...
But because the realization slowly settled into his mind.
Something had been living inside his body all this time.
Something capable of stealing his cultivation.
Something intelligent enough to avoid his awareness.
The tiny presence suddenly changed direction once more.
It rushed toward another meridian.
Clayne immediately cut off every escape route using streams of condensed spiritual energy, forcing the creature into an increasingly narrow section of his body’s internal pathways.
The invisible thing hesitated.
Then attempted one final escape.
Clayne anticipated it.
His spiritual sense surged forward like a closing net.
For the first time...
He clearly sensed it.
A tiny living presence.
Small.
Elusive.
Yet unmistakably real.
The corners of Clayne’s mouth slowly lifted into a cold smile.
"...Found you."
Clayne did not make a move.
The instant he discovered the tiny living presence hiding within his meridians, every instinct urged him to seize it immediately and tear it out by force. His hand even twitched slightly as spiritual energy instinctively gathered toward the place where he had cornered the mysterious existence.
The urge lasted only a heartbeat before he forcibly suppressed it.
Cultivators who survived for centuries rarely acted on their first impulse, especially when facing something they did not completely understand. The memories he had inherited from numerous rogue cultivators repeatedly reminded him that caution often separated the living from the dead. More than one powerful cultivator had destroyed his own cultivation by attempting to force unknown parasites or curses out of his body without first understanding what they truly were.
He slowly dispersed the spiritual energy surrounding the tiny creature.
Instead of attacking...
He simply watched.
The little presence immediately became cautious.
It remained perfectly still for several breaths, almost as though it were testing whether Clayne had truly discovered it or whether its exposure had merely been accidental. Only after sensing no further hostility did it cautiously begin moving again, creeping through one meridian after another with unbelievable patience.
Clayne quietly followed every movement using only the smallest thread of spiritual sense.
He refused to alert it again.
The parasite’s movements fascinated him.
It never traveled recklessly.
Every path it chose appeared carefully calculated. Whenever his spiritual sense drifted too close, the tiny creature immediately altered its route, weaving through hidden branches of his meridians that even he had not realized existed before today. It displayed no signs of panic, no unnecessary movements, and no wasted effort. Everything it did suggested countless years of experience hiding inside a living body.
Minutes quietly passed.
Clayne continued observing.
The parasite eventually reached a location close to his dantian before pausing once more.
Only then did it begin its true work.
Rather than biting into his flesh or attacking his cultivation foundation, the tiny creature simply waited until another cycle of spiritual energy naturally completed. The moment the refined Qi settled inside his body, the parasite gently gathered an incredibly small portion of something almost invisible before quickly retreating again.
It did not consume greedily.
It did not damage his meridians.
It merely collected.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Clayne narrowed his eyes.
"What exactly..."
"...are you taking?"
He deliberately circulated more spiritual energy, pretending nothing had changed.
The parasite faithfully repeated the same process.
Every completed circulation produced an almost imperceptible residue that remained within his meridians for only an instant before the parasite quietly harvested it.
Clayne observed even more carefully.
Another cultivation cycle.
Another collection.
Another retreat.
By now he had memorized every movement.
Every habit.
Every route.
He slowly began comparing those observations with the countless memories belonging to the rogue cultivators whose experiences now rested within his mind. Hundreds of possibilities rapidly surfaced before being dismissed one after another.
Poison parasite.
No.
Soul parasite.
No.
Blood-devouring insect.
No.
Qi leech.
Not quite.
Nothing matched perfectly.
The strange creature seemed to belong to none of the known parasites preserved within those memories.
His brows gradually knitted together.
"The thing itself..."
He quietly muttered.
"...is almost impossible to detect."
The realization made him even more cautious.
Without the unusual sensitivity he had developed after absorbing numerous memories, he doubted he would ever have noticed its existence. Even now, the parasite continuously concealed itself so thoroughly that whenever he looked away for only a moment, its presence almost vanished entirely from his perception.
He carefully evaluated the risks.
"If I forcibly remove it..."
His spiritual sense briefly brushed against the creature again.
"...it is deeply integrated with my meridians."
He slowly exhaled.
"I’m only at the Initial Stage of the Qi Condensation Realm."
"My cultivation isn’t high enough to guarantee that I won’t damage myself while extracting it."
The conclusion disappointed him.
He had found the enemy.
Yet he could not simply destroy it.
Clayne remained silent for several moments before resuming his observations.
The parasite completed another collection.
Then another.
This time, however...
Clayne noticed something different.
The spiritual residue it gathered felt strangely familiar.
He carefully examined the remnants left behind after each cultivation cycle.
His eyes slowly widened.
"...Interesting."
The residue contained impurities naturally produced during cultivation.
They were tiny fragments of unstable Qi that his cultivation technique had not completely refined. Left alone, those traces would eventually be expelled from his body over time.
The parasite...
Was collecting them.
Not his refined cultivation.
Not the core of his spiritual energy.
Not his cultivation foundation.
It carefully harvested only those faint remnants.
Yet...
Clayne could clearly sense that after collecting enough of them, the parasite somehow transmitted what it had gathered somewhere far beyond his perception by absorbing them and condensing them as an egg and then letting them fly away.
His expression slowly changed.
"So..."
He whispered quietly.
"You aren’t eating just them."
"You..."
"...are also delivering them."
He could not determine where.
Nor could he identify who stood at the other end of that invisible connection.
But one thing became increasingly certain.
The parasite was not acting for itself.
It served someone else.
A slow smile gradually spread across Clayne’s face.
Unlike his earlier expressions, this smile carried an unmistakable trace of mischief.
"If you’re determined to carry things away from me..."
He chuckled softly.
"...then perhaps I should stop thinking about getting rid of you immediately."
His fingers lightly tapped against his knee while countless ideas rapidly formed inside his mind.
"If I understand what you accept..."
"...then perhaps..."
His smile widened ever so slightly.
"...I can decide what you deliver."
Clayne slowly closed his eyes once more.
His expression became almost playful.
"Let’s give you something."