THE SMILING PROUD WANDERER by Jin Yong

Energy Streams Part 3

Linghu Chong felt as if numerous blades had cut through his Yin-Tang, Jin-Lv, and the rest of the acupuncture points, one after another with unbearable pain. Soon the pain became so severe that he couldn't even tell from which acupuncture point the pain came from. He tried to howl with his mouth wide open, yet not a single sound came out. Right at that moment, a stream of hot energy forced its way into his pressure points in the Foot-To-Spleen Tai-Yin Channel and started to flow inside him like a wild tide. Soon, another stream of hot energy emerged through the pressure points in the Hand-To-Heart Shao-Yang Channel. The two streams of energy clashed and splattered each other wildly. Not long after, three more streams of hot energy forced their way in from different pressure points in different channels.

Linghu Chong's heart was filled with anger and frustration, and his body, in the meantime, experienced unprecedented and unbearable pain and suffering. In the last couple of days when Peach Valley's Six Fairies meddled with healing him on a wild goose chase, he had been in a coma and had no idea about it. But at the current moment, he was conscious, yet had no means to stop the Peach Valley's Six Fairies from running wild. He could feel the six streams of hot energy forcing their way through his body at random, and his liver, gallbladder, kidney, lung, heart, spleen, stomach, intestine, bladder, pericardium, the three visceral cavities, and all other vital organs had become playgrounds and battlefield for the six brothers' energy streams. Linghu Chong was furious. He yelled out loud inwardly,

"If I am lucky enough to survive this time, I'll chop you six pigs into ten thousand pieces."

Deep inside his heart, he knew that Peach Valley's Six Fairies all had good intents, and trying to heal him using inner energy would exhaust a good amount of their own inner energy. They would only have done this to friends with exceptional relationship. But at the very moment, he felt almost as if he was boiled, fried, and roasted alive. The suffering was so severe and so unbearable that if he had been able to speak, he would have spilled out the most venomous curses possible in human language.

Even while each of the six Fairies worked on healing Linghu Chong's internal wound using his own method, they never stopped arguing against each other. They had no idea that they had really made a huge mess with the passages and channels in Linghu Chong's body and made it a lot worse. Linghu Chong had been practicing Huashan School's high-grade Qi-Gong techniques since he was young. Even though his achievement of inner energy wasn't at a high level, because it was a kind of orthodox inner energy practice, he had a very solid foundation. And fortunately because of the solid foundation, he was able to linger on in a steadily worsening condition and didn't simply give it all up at the very beginning through the many days of healing, or should it be called torturing, from the six Fairies' meddling around.

Peach Valley's Six Fairies worked with their energy streams for a long while, but they could all tell that Linghu Chong's heart beat had become weaker and weaker and his breathing took longer and longer. It seemed that he could stop breathing and pass away any second now. They couldn't help but feel worried.

"I don't want to do this anymore. If I keep going and get him killed, he's gonna turn into a ghost in limbo that will keep haunting me and scaring the hell out of me!" Fruit Fairy announced as he pulled his palm away from Linghu Chong's acupuncture point.

Root Fairy yelled angrily, "If this lad kicks the bucket, he'll definitely blame you first. And once he turned into a ghost stuck in limbo, he'll always haunt you and only you."

In terror, Fruit Fairy let out a scream and jumped out of the window.

Trunk Fairy, Branch Fairy, and the rest Fairies pulled their hands back one after another. Some knitted their eyebrows together and wrinkled their noses while others shook their heads back and forth – none had any idea of what to do next.