Tiga hari berlalu sebelum perwakilan akademi akhirnya tiba. Perang tidak berhenti selama ini, namun untungnya manusia dibiarkan bebas selama masa itu. Perwakilan itu menghadiri pertemuan panjang dengan Ptolemy dan melakukan wawancara mendetail tentang segala yang telah terjadi serta alasan memanggilnya.
Setelah memberi tahu tentang Spirit well, Ptolemy ditangani untuk membawanya langsung terbang melintasi hutan hingga tiba di teromas. Teromas semula yang ditemukan Lex telah runtuh, namun bukanlah masalah bagi perwakilan itu untuk menggemburkannya kembali. Tanpa meriasi salah satu makhluk di serunnya, ia berkendara melalui teromas sambil mengikuti tanda yang Barry tujukan kepada suah.
Saat sampai di suah, ia memeriksa keaslian suah itu, lalu menutupnya dengan satu jimat khas. Tidak ada satu pun yang akan dapat mengakses suah ini sampai penutup itu diangkat, yang mudah dikatakan tetapi tidak mudah ditekankan. Secara alami, setiap Gu atau monster atau beast yang menentang penutup itu akan mengalami hukuman yang singkat.
Detail seperti menilai ukuran suah, bagaimana cara menggunakannya, siapa yang berhak mengusahakan airnya—semua itu menjadi tanggung jawab orang lain. Ia hanya ada untuk memverifikasi laporan kepada akademi.
Ia tidak akan membantu eksplorasi terlalu mucha, karena hal ini juga merupakan sebuah ujian graduasi bagi para siswa itu, tidak akan mengganggu kerja bersenjata Trelops, karena itu bukan tugasnya. Di masa depan, jika Goli menolak untuk bergotong role dan menolak untuk mengembalikan suah itu, maka seseorang yang lain akan dikirim untuk menangani Goli itu. Masalah itu akan diselesaikan dengan cara yang paling khusus untuk kepentingan manusia.
Namun, meskipun tidak mengganggu, penempatan waktu perang terlalu kanwa untuk itu, sehingga memerintahkan penyelidikan lebih lanjutan. Perwakilannya tidak persis ‘sopan’ dalam penyelidikannya. Dengan kemampuan kultivasanya yang superior, tidak ada masalah baginya menemukan jasad sungguhan Trelops, bukan bentuk daun-hermafan maupun bentuk ular yang Trelops suka tunjukkan kepada dunia.
Ia tidak membagikan hasil penyelidikan itu ke Ptolemy, namun menganggap karena perang tetap berlanjut dengan cara yang sama sebelumnya, maka tidak ada masalah besar. Saatnya ia kembali, dan ia seharusnya membawa semua anggota eksplorasi yang serius cedera, karena mereka tidak lagi mampu melanjutkan.
Namun salah satu dokter menghentikannya. Secara lebih spesifik, dokter yang memerhatikan Lex.
"Saya harus melaporkan beberapa kondisi khusus terkait pasien," kata dokter itu dengan banyak ragu-ragu dalam suaranya.
"Apa yang terjadi?" tanya perwakilan itu tanpa mengabaikan dokter itu. Biasanya tidak mungkin untuk kondisi pasien menjadi relevan bagi seseorang sepertinya, namun ia mempercayai kompetensi dan profesionalisme para siswa akademi.
"Pasien yang dimaksud berada pada tingkat latihan Qi, dan mengalami luka membakar berat serta trauma pembabut karena diguncang ke dalam panggung lava oleh tembok yang runtuh. Lebih parah lagi, kondisi tubuhnya memburuk selama evakuasi, karena ia membawa seorang siswa yang tidak mampu kembali ke kamp. Di bawah normalnya, dengan cedera seperti ini, kita tidak akan mengharapkan pulihnya penuh, pernahpun, dan pemulihan parsial akan membutuhkan waktu paling tidak satu tahun—jika ia bahkan berhasil bertahan hidup selama itu.
Namun, bukan hanya itu. Pemulihan pasien adalah yang paling cepat yang pernah saya lihat, ada beberapa faktor yang tidak sepenuhnya sesuai dengan logika medis umum terhadap pasien itu."
"Tunjukkan," jawab perwakilan itu, menyimpan penilaian akhir sampai laporan lengkap selesai.
Dokter itu membawanya ke dalam tenda medis di mana Lex dirawat secara terpisah dari semua pasien lainnya. Tubuhnya mengapung tiga kaki empat di atas platform marmor putih di tanah, dan berbagai jarum terhubung ke tubuhnya.
Ia telah dikepankan selama seluruh waktu itu, karena dokter-dokter memperkirakan Lex akan masuk ke dalam kondisi shock bila melihat keadaan sebenarnya tubuhnya. Dengan semua char, lumpur, dan kotoran yang dichelap dari tubuhnya, kini terlihat bahwa dia lebih seperti diagram sistem kardiovaskular manusia daripada seorang hidup yang benar-benar ada. Ini karena hampir tidak ada pada kulit yang tersisa dan dililingi kain gau putih yang hampir dapat dilihat. Di mana tulang rangkanya terpapar, bebek retak yang terlihat melintasi tulang.
Perwakilan itu bukanlah pria yang mudah menyeram, namun bahkan dia terkejut atas apa yang dilihatnya.
"Kamu katakan dia pulih dengan terbaik? Bagaimana kondisinya sebelum ini?"
"Sangat, sangat lebih buruk," jawab dokter dengan nada serius. "Banyak daging pada tubuhnya yang telah dimasak, batu dan lumpur telah menembus pekerjaanannya, dan ia telah sepenuhnya membuang seluruh Qi nya. Aku jujur tidak punya bayangan bagaimana ia bahkan mampu berjalan kembali dari teromas hingga ke kamp. Pria biasa akan mati beribu kali sekali hanya dari usaha bernapas, jauh lebih mengorbankan membawa seorang yang lain."
Ketenangan kembali mengisi tenda itu sejenak, sebelum dokter melanjutkan pembicaranya.
"Tetapi, itu bukan sebab mengapa saya membawanya ke sini. Saya adalah yang pertama mendengar keanehan dari pasien, sehingga memerintahkan agar saya sendiri yang akan merawat pasien ini untuk menjaga isu tidak keluar. Izinkan saya menunjukkan keanehan pertama," kata dokter sebelum memutar Lut.
Karena tubuh Lex mengapung di udara, memutarnya adalah mudah, namun saat punggiannya terbuka tampak jelas masalahnya. Karena punggiannya tidak pernah langsung terpapar ke lava, tidak berarti tubuhnya tidak mengalami luka membakar. Namun, meskipun punggiannya mengandung berbagai tingkat cedera, ada bagian pada kulitnya yang tak terbintang kecuali sih tattoo Burung Luck-nya.
"Bukan saja kulit di sekitar tattoo tidak mengalami luka membakar," kata dokter, matanya menatap Lut dengan kedalamatan, "tetapi bahkan tulang belakangnya yang berada tepat di bawah tattoo tetap utuh sepenuhnya. Aku menduga hal ini memainkan peran besar dalam kebiasaan kembali ke kamp dengan kedua kakinya sendiri."
Perwakilan itu yang kini benar-benar penasaran, memindai seluruh punggian Lut, dan tubuhnya secara menyeluruh. Namun sistem dapat menyembunyikan diri bahkan dari Ballom, perwakilan itu bukanlah rintangan. Burung Luck, selain tidak bahkan mencoba menyembunyikan—ekisitanya berada pada realm yang sangat berbeda dibanding perwakilan itu. Let alone Burung Luck, perwakilan tidak dapat bahkan merasakan berbagai energi yang Burung Luck selalu takutkan untuk mengenyalnya diri sendiri.
"Apa yang lainnya?" tanya perwakilan, ketika ia tidak dapat menemukan apa-apa yang tidak biasa pada tubuh Lut.
"Hal terakhir adalah tentang kultivasi pasien. Mempertimbangkan keadaan tubuhnya, aku merasa akan runtuh, jika tidak, yang terbaik seharusnya menjaga kultivasinya. Namun, berdasarkan penyerapan Qi-nya, dan keadaan tubuhnya, aku memperkirakan bahwa ketika ia pulih sepenuhnya, ia akan setapak tingkat puncak latihan Qi. Saya dan banyak orang lain dari kamp dapat memverifikasi bahwa dia tidak berada pada tingkat itu saat masuk ke dalam teromas."
"Baiklah," jawab perwakilan itu dengan tenang, memberi tidak ada dari pikirannya. "Jika semuanya sudah selesai, maka saya akan membawanya kembali ke akademi sekarang."
Dengan tugas-tugas selesai, perwakilan akademi itu kembali, terbang keluar dari hutan dan menyeberangi perang yang sedang berlangsung. Saat ia terbang, ia mulai menulis sebuah surat pribadinya kepada Vernan—pria yang bertanggung jawab atas tes yang tidak masuk akal Lut.
"Saya pikir saya menemukan satu yang menarik untukmu," ia menulis, tidak sadar bahwa Vernan telah lama memperhatikan Lut.
271 Peculiarities
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.
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