Gale covered his ankle before he got more repulsion from his disciple. However, as he was doing that, Xiaolin stopped him, clutching his arm.
She hadn't covered her upper body, yet moved to stop him with her best effort. In the end, Gale let her as he covered the robes for her. Xiaolin had no sense of that, however, her centre of attention was the ankle with bulging black veins.
Exchanging no words, she drew her fingers over the bulging black veins, touching cautiously, unsure what could be the cause of this. She still wrinkled her nose as she scrutinised over the injury.
The metal anklet with runic writing on them did draw her attention, but she had more notion of the black veins.
"Is this painful?" she asked at last.
Gale clicked his tongue. "It had been," he said with a sigh, "now it's mostly numb."
"This is the burning smell, I noticed from the beginning," Xiaolin mumbled, fighting her natural repulsion towards Taint. "It's like. . . It's like. . . It is eating away your Qi, Master."
Gale blinked. That's a very specific guess. And the chance of it being the truth. Even with her natural affinity towards spirit energy and attributes, Xiaolin shouldn't be able to make such a guess.
Corruption or Taint, whatever you call it, eats away the fatebearer's Qi once it infected them. It was how they multiplied and damned the fatebearer for eternity.
"Master, why haven't you treated it yet?" Xiaolin asked, her expression incredulous as Gale was ready to hide the ankle with the clothes again.
"This is the treatment," he said.
"What? Really?" Xiaolin frowned as she stopped him from covering the ankle again. "This anklet? How does it work?"
"Well, it divided my Qi pool into two separate sources and sealed all the tainted Qi in the ankle, leaving the rest of the clean Qi to use." Gale thought for a second to add, "It's a very inefficient treatment, but the best we managed in time."
"Is there no other way to treat this?" Xiaolin asked with a frown.
"Probably is," he shrugged, "but not everyone can do it or even afford it from capable healers."3 Honestly, he wasn't even sure if there was any healer who could cure it though some unconventional means.
The conventional means had been purging everything from body and soul, and that was already too exhausting both for the healer and the patient. Body, Soul, Mind, all three suffered greatly though this convention means, and mistakes were just too often when dealing with all those three things together.
That was why the price of healing or even trying to heal Corruption was so extreme. Then there was the handful of capable healers who had some experience in dealing with corruption. Unless you give them a damn good price or favour, nobody would even lift an eyelid in your direction.
They had given him the same conventional way to remove the taint on the courtesy of his master and for his image. Well, the feat he had achieved deserved something like that for free.
Unfortunately, the reality was dimer than people think.
The conventional way was no way at all. Not for him, at the very least.
Supposedly, the healers would purge all the corruption of his system, but along with that, they would purge all his Qi as well. Meaning he would have to start from the beginning if the process succeeds.
Gale would have taken this chance if it were as easy as it sounded. It took him six years to get where he was currently at, it would have been even simpler in the second term. Unfortunately, things weren't as simple as that.
To purge all the corruption, they would have to remove the fate lock from his body and spirit as well. Then was a soul-wrenching process as it was, and nigh impossible to do it safely for most people.
Sadly, Gale wasn't most people. It was completely impossible for him to go on with the conventional means to remove the corruption.
Magically speaking, it was his fate lock, which was the problem. The void-lock would probably kill Gale and all the people in a few li radius if they forcefully try to remove it. It was no less than a nuclear weapon itself, unfortunately, a suicidal one.
This blasted void lock had saved his life multiple times, but this was completely outrageous.
Then there was Vale, their bond would break through if they attempted to remove the Guardian's Emblem. Gale wasn't sure about the consequences of that.
Unfortunately, as it was, removing his fate locks wasn't an option, which left him as he was now.
"Master, how did you get this?"
Gale still hadn't said what infected him. Well, considering her knowledge of the world, his disciple probably had no idea of the existence of Chaosfiends. Well, that's for the best. The longer she would live without knowing their existence, the better it would be.
"That's a long story," Gale said. "I'll tell you someday. I just wanted you to know about this. Counting you and Vale, only five more people know about this. So don't speak to anyone about this, not to your elder sister, grandma, or anyone else. I have enough problems as it was. Who knows what would happen if they got the idea that I'm weak?"
Xiaolin nodded seriously, understanding the immensity of the issue. Her master was never serious like this, so she needed to take this with extra care as well.
"Master, how does this affect you other than weakening you slowly?"
"Hmm," Gale thought for a second about what to let out of the bag now. Of course, he wouldn't want to give her a big scare. "I'm not particularly sure, but I think it makes me more violent and reckless at times. That could be my personality, though I have always been good at keeping a lid on them."
They conversed a bit on the topic as Gale proficiently changed the topic to the new training program he was planning for Xiaolin.
However, she would always drive back to the topic of his injury and wanted to know more about this.
She was convinced Gale wasn't looking for any way to cure it anymore. Or why else would he come to their little town with no attraction?
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