Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1120: A Thread of Hope

Xiao Longnu looked at him with genuine bewilderment. “Can’t you use your inner Qi to force the poison out yourself?”

She had been poisoned herself just now, and expelled it through her own internal circulation. Song Qingshu’s cultivation far exceeded hers — she could not understand why this should be so difficult for him.

With the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison now partially suppressed, and his inner Qi still intact, surely he ought to be able to drive the poison out.

Song Qingshu smiled bitterly. “The Heavenly Devil Flower earned its name from the Heavenly Demon — its toxicity is unlike anything ordinary. I am no longer in immediate danger of death, but the poison has wound itself through my meridians, sealing them. I can feel my inner Qi scattered through my four limbs and every aperture of my body — yet because the toxin has penetrated so deeply into the meridians themselves, my true qi cannot complete its cycle.” He paused. “In other words, I have a full reservoir of power and no means of drawing on it.”

That was not entirely accurate — he had attempted it several times just now, and once in ten tries he had managed to stir a fragment of true qi, but it vanished almost as soon as it appeared, like a flame in wind. It was nowhere near sufficient to drive out poison. Worse, if his true qi flared and collapsed suddenly, the poison could be driven deeper into his organs. He had worked so hard to reach this fragile equilibrium inside himself. He was not about to gamble it away.

The thought that he had become something like Duan Yu — his martial arts unreliable, flickering in and out — gave him a headache. If anything, he was worse off than Duan Yu. The Six Meridians Divine Sword might have refused to manifest with any consistency, but when it did work, it truly worked. For Song Qingshu now, being able to use his martial arts at all was the exception, and even those rare moments passed in the blink of an eye.

Xiao Longnu listened to the full explanation, then said: “If you cannot purge the poison yourself, can someone else help you do it?”

“Still no.” He had already turned over every possibility in his mind. “The Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison has embedded itself throughout my meridians and vital organs. If someone applies external force to drive it out and misjudges by even the slightest degree, every meridian in my body will be destroyed. The death would be agonising.”

His situation was, in truth, rather like Zhang Wuji’s in childhood, after the Xuanming Divine Palm drove its cold poison into his heart meridian — so fragile that even Zhang Sanfeng, with all his unparalleled cultivation, could do nothing from the outside. The heart meridians are impossibly delicate; the faintest intrusion of external force could kill on the spot. Zhang Wuji had ultimately been saved only by training in the Nine Yang Scripture and dissolving the poison through his own power.

Song Qingshu’s predicament was, if anything, worse. The Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison had invaded every acupoint in his body, blocking the pathways of his true qi entirely — he could not even access what was within him, let alone cultivate new techniques to counter the toxin, as Zhang Wuji had done.

“Then what can be done?” As one option after another was ruled out, Xiao Longnu found she had begun to worry for him in spite of herself.

“I don’t know.” Song Qingshu gave a tired smile, wondering whether it was worth making the journey to Physician Wang’s Manor — whether the Poison King and Cheng Lingsu might offer some answer. But medicine had its limits, and with the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison so thoroughly entwined with his meridians and organs, even the Poison King was likely beyond his depth.

“All things in this world follow the principle of mutual generation and restraint,” Xiao Longnu said, seeing his despondence. She spoke with quiet conviction. “Extraordinary as this Heavenly Devil Flower may be, I believe there must exist something in this world that counters it. Don’t lose heart so completely.”

Song Qingshu felt a sudden brightening in his mind.

Because he knew the original tale so thoroughly, hearing the name Heavenly Devil Flower had plunged him into despair from the very beginning — the original text stated plainly that there was no antidote. But now, in this moment, something shifted.

The ten thousand paths of the great Tao still leave one thread of hope. The original text said there was no antidote — but it did not say there was no method. And those were not the same thing.

A single character’s difference, and the meaning turned entirely.

In the original Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain, the Jade Silkworm Poison poison combined with Crane-Crown Red and Peacock Bile created a compound that the Divine Scripture of the Physician King explicitly declared incurable — and the text warned its disciples never to use all three poisons together. Murong Jingyue, himself a disciple of the Physician King, had exhausted the whole of his knowledge and still could not save himself. Beside him stood Shi Wanzhen, the “poisonous Divine Hawk,” a brother-disciple of the Poison King — equally helpless, able only to watch as Murong Jingyue moved toward death.

And yet — when Hu Fei accidentally fell victim to the same poison, and even the reader had given up hope, Cheng Lingsu sacrificed her own life to save him. No antidote exists — but a method of salvation does.

The distinction crystallised. Song Qingshu felt the fog lift from him all at once.

He had performed composure beautifully — and beneath it he had been, in truth, more despairing than anyone. Because he knew the Heavenly Devil Flower too well. But now he saw it differently. Even if no antidote existed, a method to neutralise its toxicity must exist somewhere in this world. The realisation remade him from the inside, and his whole bearing — his energy, his alertness, his spirit — was transformed.

“Little martial sister,” Song Qingshu said suddenly, “do you have your Jade Bee Needles with you? Give me a few.”

“I do — but what do you want them for?” Xiao Longnu drew out three Jade Bee Needles and held them out with a puzzled look.

Song Qingshu took them without explanation and drove them directly into his own body.

“What are you doing?!” Xiao Longnu’s voice rose in alarm. Had the poison reached his mind? Had he gone mad?

Her Jade Bee Needles were not as immediately lethal as her senior martial sister Li Mochou’s Frozen Soul Silver Needles, but their toxicity was severe — enough to leave a victim suspended in a waking agony, unable to live or die in peace. In the original tale, the Quanzhen sect’s Taoists at Chongyang Palace — insufferable as most of them were — were undeniably men of hard spirit. Yet a dose of Jade Bee Venom had the Seven Masters of Quanzhen abandoning every shred of dignity to beg Xiao Longnu for the antidote.

Song Qingshu, however, let out a sound of surprised delight. Noticing Xiao Longnu’s astonished gaze, he explained at once: “Don’t worry, little martial sister. The Jade Bee Needle didn’t hurt at all — if anything, there’s a faint sensation of relief. The Jade Bee Venom must counter the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin.”

The idea had come to him while he was turning over the question of what might oppose the Heavenly Devil Flower. He had looked up and caught the clear loveliness of Xiao Longnu’s face — and in that instant, a thought had struck him: in the original tale, Zhou Botong had been poisoned by the Five-Coloured Snow Spider, and was ultimately cured by fighting poison with poison — using Jade Bee Venom. 

So he had asked Xiao Longnu for the needles as an experiment. If they caused only pain, the Jade Bee Venom had no effect on the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin. If they brought relief — it worked.

“Ah — Zhou Botong was cured the same way, through the Jade Bees.” Xiao Longnu’s face lit with recognition; she had arrived at the same thought.

Song Qingshu felt a rising excitement he could barely contain. “Three needles aren’t nearly enough. Can you summon the jade bees here?”