1969 Practical Tests

When given the opportunity, the other man rose to the task before Alex could. "I'll check!" he said and walked toward the young man.

"Why did you come here today?" he asked the young man.

"I've been feeling dizzy for a month now, and no matter how much I cultivate or eat heating pills, it doesn't go away."

"Oh, how strong is the dizziness?" the man asked.

"Mild. It's not enough to cause me any distress but just enough to let me know it's there."

"Hmm, let me see if there is any problem inside your body."

They took his wrist and spent a decent amount of time checking the young man's problems through that. He let go in the end and frowned a little.

"When did you break through to the Immortal realm?" the man asked.

"Not long ago. It's been a decade or so," the young man answered.

"And have you made any changes to your cultivation technique?" he asked.

The young man's eyes widened slightly. "I have," he said. "I recently got a new one from my sect. Why?"

"I believe it is impacting your body in a negative way. You will either have to stop using it or let the dizziness linger until you can get used to it."

The man then stood up and turned toward the old woman. "I am done."

The old woman nodded and walked up to the man, checking his body.

"Your meridians are being overworked during your cultivation, especially the ones that deliver Qi to your head. You are feeling dizzy because of that. Change to a different cultivation technique, or find other ways to improve your meridian's strength. If you haven't gone through Mortal Cleansing, I will suggest buying a Divine Devil fruit if you can."

The young man's eyes glowed with hope. "Thank you so much, senior."

The woman gave the young man a talisman with some detailed explanations and let him go.

They then waited, and another person came in. This time, it was a woman who was clearly poisoned. It seemed mild enough that she wouldn't die, but she seemed to be in a lot of pain still.

"You are going ne—"

"Vile Blackthorn poison," Alex answered.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "You recognize the poison's effect without checking?" she asked.

"I have learned a lot about poisons a lot recently, and that is indeed the Vile Blackthorn poison."

Alex could tell it just by the symptoms the woman was showing. Red eyes, dark circles around them, dry lips, slightly purple earlobes, and goosebumps around the chest were telltale signs of the poison.

Still, he did the due diligence and walked up to the woman to check her body. He checked through it all and the answer came back the same.

"Have you come into contact with the poison within the last 3 days?" Alex asked the woman.

The woman had only barely sat down after being tested when she got to thinking. "I was pricked by something in the forest to the south about 5 days ago. I took some antidote pills which lessened the symptoms but they've returned again. They just can't be healed."

"While Vile Blackthorn's poison is not immediately life-threatening, it makes up by being incredibly difficult to heal. You need to take the Shadow Quelling antidote pill."

The woman fell into some thought. "Where can I find it?" she asked.

"You'll find it in any alchemist's shop. They aren't very expensive either," the old woman answered. "Please give me your hand."

The woman did as asked and the old woman checked through her pulses. After a while, she did determine that it was indeed Vile Blackthorn's poison that had done this to her.

"Do as we've told you and you'll be fine." She wrote down something in a talisman and gave it to the woman.

"Thank you," the woman said and left.

Once she was gone, the old woman turned back around to Alex. "You nearly got your points deducted for not testing her. Never jump to conclusions."

"I wouldn't, senior," Alex answered.

The old woman nodded. "You're next." She told the other man.

6 more individuals came by and got tested by the two of them. They were both quite good at recognizing problems and symptoms and also at giving out ways to heal them.

After the 6 people, the old woman took them away.

For a moment, Alex thought they were done with the tests, but the old woman took them to a large room with many beds filled with people all around them.

Alex could feel the Death Aura concentrating in the room, like a thick smoke fogging up the entire room. He looked around, noticing many people who were close to dying.

They were old and thus could not be saved. Many of them weren't strong cultivators either, and that made their deaths that much harder to evade.

The old woman took them to one of the many beds where a young girl was lying on the bed with her eyes closed, clearly in a coma.

The girl was no older than 16 and had a weak True realm cultivation base.

"Patient is a girl of age 23, True King 8th realm. She failed her attempt to break through to the True Emperor Realm and instead regressed an entire realm and fell into a coma. What should be done to her?" the old woman asked and turned toward Alex. "You answer first."

Alex stepped toward the girl and looked at her. He took her wrist and began checking through her body.

"Her meridians are wounded and some muscles are impacted as well. The best thing to do will be to let her consume some healing pill and let time do the rest."

"And you?" she asked the other man. "Do you think something else should be done?"

"No, he said what I would do too," the man said. "She will just need some time."

"Good," the old woman said. "Onward to the next one."

The next one was a patient of unknown age in the True realm as well, medicinally put in a coma as some sort of parasite was eating at his bone marrow. All normal pills and medicines that could be used to pull the parasite out were not working and as such they were working on it.

"What do we do?" the old woman asked the other man.

"That parasite loves to feast on blood, so we should feed it more blood until it can't consume any more and then flush it out. Or we can use something that causes the man to stop producing blood and force the parasite to leave on its own."

"That is what is being done at the moment. He's being put in a coma so he can continue living without producing blood," the old woman said. "What about you? Do you agree with the method?"

Alex looked at the man and then at the woman. "Why not just kill the parasite directly?" he asked.

"The parasite is too far deep. You can't hurt the parasite without hurting the person," the old woman said.

"Then hurt him," Alex said, not understanding what was so difficult about this all. "Just cut off his leg and the parasite will be gone along with it."