The Innkeeper

Three days passed before the representative for the academy finally arrived. The war did not cease for even a moment, but fortunately, the humans were left alone during this time. The rep had a long meeting with Ptolemy wherein he conducted a detailed interview of everything that had happened so far, as well as the reason for summoning him.

Once he learnt about the Spirit well, he picked up Ptolemy to guide him, and directly flew over the forest until they reached the tunnel. The original tunnel that Lex had discovered had collapsed, but it was not a problem for the rep to dig it up once again. Not bothering with any of the creatures in his path, he zipped through the tunnels as he followed the marker Barry had placed down by the well.

When he reached the well, he checked the authenticity of the well, and then sealed it using a special talisman. No one would be able to access the well until the seal was removed, which was easier said than done. Naturally, any Gu or monster or beast that protested against the seal met with a swift end.

The details such as figuring out the size of the well, how it would be used, who would be allocated the rights to harvest the water all were someone else's responsibility - he was just there to verify the report to the academy.

He would not help the expedition too much, as this was also a kind of graduation test for these students, nor would he interfere with the Trelops war, as that was not his job. In the future, should Goli refuse to compromise and insist on keeping the spirit well, then someone else would be sent to deal with him. The matter would be handled in a way that best served human interests.

But, while he did not interfere, the timing of the war was too coincidental, so it required further investigation. The representative was not exactly 'polite' with his investigation, either. With his superior cultivation, it was not a problem at all finding the Trelops' real bodies, not the leaf-humanoid form or snake form the Trelops liked to show the world.

He did not bother sharing the result of his investigation with Ptolemy, but considering the fact that the war continued as it had previously, there must not have been any big issues. It was time for him to return, and he was supposed to bring all the seriously injured members of the expedition as well, as they were no longer fit to continue.

But one of the doctors stopped him. To be more specific, the doctor that had been looking after Lex.

"I have to report some special circumstances relating to the patient," the doctor said with a lot of hesitation in his voice.

"What's the matter?" the rep asked without dismissing the doctor. Normally, it was unlikely for something like a patient's condition to be relevant to someone like him, but he trusted the competence and professionalism of the academy students.

"The patient in question is at the Qi training level, and suffered severe burns and blunt force trauma from being smashed into a pool of lava by a collapsing wall. Furthermore, his body's condition was worsened during escape, where he carried an incapacitated student back to the camp. Under normal circumstances, with injuries like these, we would not expect full recovery, ever, and partial recovery would take well up to a year at least - if he managed to live that long at all. However, not only is the patient's recovery the fastest I've ever seen, there are a few factors that don't strictly adhere to common medical logic with the patient."

"Show me," the rep said, reserving his final judgment until the report was complete.

The doctor led the red into a medical tent where Lex was being treated separately from all the other patients. His body was floating three feet in the air over a white marble platform on the ground, and various tubes were connected to his body.

He had been kept sedated this entire time, as the doctors expected Lex would go into shock if he saw the actual situation of his body. With all the char, dirt and grime cleaned from his body, you could now see that he looked more like a diagram for the human cardiovascular system than a living person. This was because he had nearly no skin left and was wrapped in a white gauze that was mostly see-through. Where his skeleton was exposed, visible cracks ran through the bone.

The rep was not a squeamish man, but even he was surprised by what he saw.

"You say he's recovering the fastest? What was he like before this?"

"Much, much worse," the doctor replied gravely. "A lot of the meat on his body was cooked, rocks and dirt had stabbed through his organs and he had completely drained all his Qi. I honestly have no idea how he was even able to run from the tunnel all the way back to the camp. A normal man would have died a million times over just from the exertion from breathing, let alone carrying someone else."

Silence once again filled the tent for a moment, before the doctor continued.

"But, that's not why I brought you here. I was the first to notice the patient's peculiarities, and so I ordered that I alone would take care of this patient to keep the matter from getting out. Let me show you the first peculiarity," the doctor said before turning Lex around.

Since Lex's body was floating in the air, turning him around was easy, but the moment his back was exposed it became evident what the issue was. Just because his back hadn't been directly exposed to the lava didn't mean it suffered no burns. But, while his back carried various degrees of injuries, there was a patch of skin on his back completely unblemished - except for a tattoo of a Lotus on it.

"Not only did his skin around the tattoo not suffer any burns," the doctor said, his eyes stuck on Lex's back, "but even his spine directly below the tattoo remained completely unharmed. I suspect this played a major role in him being able to come back to the camp on his own two feet."

The rep, now truly curious, scanned Lex's back, and his body, thoroughly. But the system was able to hide itself even from Ballom, this rep was no obstacle. The Lotus, on the other hand, did not even try to hide - its existence was on a completely different realm compared to the rep. Let alone the Lotus, the rep could not even sense the various energies the Lotus was always absorbing to feed itself.

"What else?" the rep asked, when he was unable to find anything out of the ordinary in Lex's body.

"This next bit is truly remarkable. Like I told you, the patient is recovering faster than I've seen anyone recover, and that was no exaggeration. You see all these tubes connected to him? Only one of them carries any medicine, the rest are all nutrition solutions. This is because any medicine we give him, no matter what kind, is thousands of times more effective on him than it should be, and is actively recovering his body so fast, if we don't feed him with these nutrition solutions, he will literally starve to death.

"I have a theory about why this is so, but I can't think of a way to prove the theory yet. You see, when we administer medicine, any medicine, not all of it is being used. If we're really lucky, mabe a few percent of the medicine will be absorbed and properly work as intended while the rest never makes it to the targeted area, or is even excreted from the body as waste. Yet, based on my study of the patient, I believe that regardless of what kind of medicine we administer, it is being used up to 100% of its capacity!"

The doctor had excitement and fervor in his eyes, but this was much less impressive to the rep than the back tattoo. While the truth of the matter was that the Lotus was using any and all ingredients absorbed by Lex to best help him recover, going even beyond the 100% theoretical efficiency of the medicine, the rep had a completely different understanding of the situation.

"This is a gap in your knowledge," the rep patiently explained to the doctor. "You've focused your study on general medicine, and so have a limited understanding of the various cultivation techniques. Your patient is clearly a body cultivator, there is nothing unusual about him having elevated recovery and absorption. Was there anything else you meant to report?"

The doctor naturally understood the advantages of body cultivation, and knew this went beyond that, but could not argue with the rep.

"The final thing is about the patient's cultivation. Considering the state of his body, I thought it would collapse, but if not, the best should have been him being able to keep his cultivation. However, based on his absorption rate of Qi, and the state of his body, I estimate that by the time he recovers completely, he will have reached the peak of Qi training. I and many others from the camp can verify that he was not at that level at the time he entered the tunnels."

"Alright," the rep replied impassively, giving nothing of his thoughts away. "If that's everything, I'll be taking him back to the academy now."

With has tasks completed, the academy representative returned, flying out of the forest and over the ongoing war. While he was flying though, he started to write a letter from his personal terminal to Vernan - the crazy man responsible for Lex's insane tests.

'I think I found an interesting one for you,' he wrote, not knowing that Vernan had long been paying attention to Lex.