Ultimate Villain's Return as a Doctor in the Cultivation World-Chapter 131 - Doubtful of the Herbs

The words stayed exactly where he’d put them.

’I am a dual cultivator.’

The formation light hummed. The herbs exhaled. The waterfall’s percussion came through the cave walls as a constant low note beneath everything else, and Wei Lingyue and Chen Yun sat with the statement for approximately four seconds before they both spoke at once.

"What the hell," Chen Yun said.

"What the hell," Wei Lingyue said.

They looked at each other. The specific expression of two women who have just discovered an unexpected point of agreement.

Cang said nothing.

Chen Yun turned back to him. "What the ’hell’ are you talking about," she said, with the precision of someone who wants the sentence completed properly this time.

"Dual cultivation," he said. "The practice of—"

"I know what it is," she said. "I’m asking what it has to do with a qi compatibility mechanism and a synchronized safety trigger and the Heavenly Demon and everything else you just—" She stopped herself. Reorganized. Her jaw was doing the thing it did when she was containing a response that was larger than the available containment space. "You spent twenty minutes explaining the future and reincarnation and the Heavenly Demon’s Seven Seeds and then you ended with ’I am a dual cultivator.’ As if those were two points in the same argument."

"They are," he said.

"They are not."

"They are," he said again, with the same flat certainty. "The corruption takes hold in a spiritual void. Dual cultivation fills the void. The two points are directly connected." A pause. "I can walk you through the logic again if the first pass didn’t—"

"I followed the logic," she said. "Following the logic is not the same as accepting it."

Wei Lingyue had been very quiet through this exchange, in the particular way of a woman who was processing the components of an argument before she engaged with any of them. "You said you are gathering women," she said.

"Yes."

"Specifically the seven who will eventually kill the Heavenly Demon."

"Yes."

"And by ’gathering’ you mean—"

"Yes," he said.

The silence.

"You are," Wei Lingyue said, with the precise, measured intonation of someone building a sentence very carefully so that the structure holds its own weight, "a twenty-four year old Core Formation Mid Stage cultivator who has arrived in a sealed treasure chamber with two women and is explaining that the path forward requires—intimate cultivation practice. With you. As the practitioner."

"Yes," he said.

"And you expect us to believe this."

"I expect you to examine the evidence and make your own determination," he said. "I have never told you what to believe. I’ve told you what I know and what I am and what I intend." He looked at her. "The believing is yours."

Wei Lingyue was looking at him with the grey eyes that missed nothing.

Then she looked at Chen Yun.

Then she looked at her hands.

Then she looked back at him with the expression of someone who is about to say something that is going to sound more diplomatic than it actually is. "You are twenty-four years old," she said.

"Yes."

"I am a hundred and seventeen," she said. "I began cultivation at age six. I have been in Core Formation for nineteen years. I reached Foundation Establishment at forty-one, which was considered extraordinarily fast by every senior practitioner in my sect."

"I know," he said.

"You are younger than my ’shoes,’" she said.

Chen Yun made a sound. Not a laugh. The involuntary exhalation that arrives when a statement is so accurate that the body responds before the mind gets to issue a memo about composure.

"My shoes," Wei Lingyue repeated, with the calm emphasis of a woman who means it, "are older than you."

"Probably," Cang said.

"You are asking me to—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. The grey eyes went to the ceiling, the walls, the crown on the dais, any surface that was not his face for a moment, before returning. "And this is the first time you are framing this as—what? Cultivation medicine? Historical intervention? A—"

"A necessary arrangement," he said. "With mutual benefit."

"Mutual benefit," she said.

"Your cultivation advances. Your resistance to the Heavenly Demon’s corruption is built. The mechanism’s construct becomes manageable." He paused. "You get to leave this chamber with the crown."

Chen Yun stood.

Not dramatically—she stood the way she did everything, with the clean economy of someone whose body was a tool and who did not waste it on unnecessary expression. She walked four steps to the left toward the passage mouth, demon sword at her back, and stood there facing the wall with her hands loose at her sides.

The statement of a woman who is removing herself from a conversation before she says something that cannot be taken back.

Cang watched her walk.

The wet travel robes had dried partially during the hours in the outer cave and were now at the particular stage of damp that made dark fabric cling to the body with the full, heavy testimony of everything beneath it. The curve of her from the back—the line of her waist, the width of her hips below it, the way the wet cloth had mapped itself precisely to the rounded weight of her and was not releasing that information—was visible to anyone with functioning eyes.

He looked.

He looked for three seconds, in the unhurried way of a man conducting an assessment that is also not an assessment.

The demon sword’s sealed array pulsed once.

’Even the sword agrees,’ he thought.

Chen Yun turned at the wall. She had felt the look—Core Formation Late Stage cultivators had the peripheral awareness that made it impossible not to feel a directed gaze from three feet away—and her dark eyes came to him with the flat expression of someone who was going to address this and then put it away.

"No," she said.

"I didn’t say anything," he said.

"Your eyes said something," she said. "No."

"I was—"

"You were looking at my hips," she said. "And my answer is no. Not because of—" She stopped. Reorganized again. "The mechanism’s construct is at minimum Nascent Soul output. You are Core Formation Mid Stage. ’I’ am Core Formation Late Stage. I am stronger than you." She said this with the factual directness of someone stating a calculation and not the context-dependent implication of someone who has thought about it longer than necessary. "If anyone is providing cultivation transfer in this chamber, it would go the other direction. I would give my qi to you. Which I am not going to do, and which also doesn’t solve the construct problem, because you are still Core Formation Mid Stage and the construct is still Nascent Soul minimum and the arithmetic does not—"

"The arithmetic changes during dual cultivation," Cang said.

She stopped.

"The qi transfer is bidirectional," he said. "But the cultivation ceiling accessible during the practice expands to the combined maximum of both participants." He looked at his hands. "I have dragon essence at Nascent Soul grade integrated passively. Combined with Core Formation Late Stage—"

"You’re saying the practice would put both our cultivations above the threshold simultaneously," she said.

"For the duration of the construct engagement, yes."

Chen Yun stared at him.

"You’re also," she said, "claiming that the herbs you mentioned would accelerate the process."