Chapter 1398 — Sudden Attack
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yuxuan, meanwhile, seized the time to cultivate, and Elder Rain did the same. Only Wei Zhao took out his flashlight and began reading the medical notes with relish, turning to the passages concerning the Fuxi Nine Needles.
Acupuncture is a most wondrous science, yet with the passage of time much of the important material on it had been lost, and the Fuxi Nine Needles had become a thing of legend.
What surprised Wei Zhao was that this set of Fuxi Nine Needles had been given to Zhang Lifeng by a friend—not something he had stumbled upon by chance. Yet after extensive research and verification, Zhang Lifeng had all but confirmed that this was indeed the legendary set of divine needles, capable of raising the dead and growing flesh upon bare bone.
Even knowing this, however, Zhang Lifeng could not use them. The Fuxi Nine Needles were fashioned from a most peculiar material, but peculiar as it was, Zhang Lifeng had found nothing miraculous in it; used for acupuncture, they behaved no differently from ordinary silver needles, with no particularly special effect.
After several trials, Zhang Lifeng put the silver needles back into their box and stored them away. This legendary set of divine needles had nothing extraordinary about it at all, which left him deeply disappointed.
Later, however, through an accidental stroke of fate, Zhang Lifeng heard a legend concerning the Fuxi Nine Needles: they had to be used in concert with a special set of internal-energy techniques. Without that inner art to complement them, the Fuxi Nine Needles were no different from common silver needles.
Wei Zhao was well aware that certain acupuncture techniques required the use of true qi—his own included. It was a secret art handed down in the old man's family; only it demanded relatively little true qi in support, and no separate internal-energy art—ordinary true qi would serve. The crucial skill lay in the needling technique itself.
The Fuxi Nine Needles, by contrast, plainly placed their essence in the companion internal-energy art. To hold a treasure in hand and have no use for it—this disappointed Zhang Lifeng, and he could do nothing but treat it as a collector's piece and put it away on a high shelf.
That was also why Wei Zhao had seen the Fuxi Nine Needles in the display room. If they had truly been an item Zhang Lifeng carried on his person, he would likely have placed them in the last "bedchamber," or in the main burial chamber to be interred with him, rather than leaving them on a display cabinet like a mere ornament.
From this, too, one could see that although Zhang Lifeng valued the Fuxi Nine Needles, he did not much care for them.
If Zhang Lifeng could not use them, then Wei Zhao certainly could not either. Still, keeping the thing at his side, who knew when it might prove useful; Wei Zhao now understood that lesson deeply from experience.
Take that Myriad-Year Springwood Box, for instance. At the time, Wei Zhao had never meant it for any purpose; it was mere curiosity that had led him, with Feng Xiaoxiao's help, to bid on it—and now, unexpectedly, it had become the very thing that saved Feng Xiaoxiao's life. Life is indeed full of coincidences and chances. When Feng Xiaoxiao helped him secure that box, she surely never imagined what it would one day be used for.