176 Chapter 174 - Dark Whisper Venomous Binding

As Ao Wen dove deeper into the manual she found it to be a treasure trove of knowledge that was very different from anything she'd studied in the Sacred Flame Celestial Temple, though some elements touched on things that aligned with the teachings of the Jun Clan. 

The first section of the manual focused on the practice of alchemy. While Ao Wen had been raised in the tradition that there were no alchemists who weren't also physicians, there were other specialties within alchemy that had their own rules and renown. This manual had been developed by a terrifyingly talented Poison Master and the concoctions and concoction methods provided by the manual could achieve countless devastating results. "A predator matches his poison to his prey," the manual posited. The early poisons focused on understanding a person's general nature from their bloodline to their cultivation and targeted the weaknesses that were common based on broad categories. It considered people with the bloodlines of bears and gorillas to be similar in that both resulted in a large muscular physique and then offered solutions of over-empowering such physiques to the point of collapse or instead targeting the nerves as such beasts rarely had great sensitivity to detect subtle poisons. 

As the guide progressed, poison formulas began to read like some of her mother's cookbooks. Add one ingredient and double the amount of another to better align the base poison with a specific type of target, or remove one ingredient and replace it with another to completely shift the result. It was like reading a recipe for spiced beef that said 'you can use pork instead, but if you do, add ginger.' The only difference was that these substitutions resulted in a dizzying array of very difficult to treat toxins. 

The second section of the manual opened paths of Mystic cultivation that Qi Yue would have called Witchcraft more than Sorcery. Sorcery largely concerned itself with manipulation of the elements and the elemental nature of a person. Ao Wen's Flame Wind Fan Dance was a classic example of Sorcery. Qi Yue's cultivation of Desire, however, fell more in line with Witchcraft, the manipulation of hidden elements, emotional states and complex concepts. 

"Darkness, Predator and Dominance," Ao Wen said as she looked over the words associated with the techniques in the second part of the manual. Cong Houzi managed to cultivate two words, Saintess and Dragon, both of which were powerful and complex concepts that she'd grown into. According to Qi Yue, their teacher had begun cultivating 'Healer' before expanding the word to 'Saintess.' Ao Wen cultivated the word 'Fire' in all its myriad forms. To explore this part of the manual, she'd need to add one of the other words. 

"This part is the most dangerous, and the most insidious," she realized. Choosing a word wasn't a casual thing. Each word represented a core component of her identity. She didn't just cultivate Fire, she WAS fire. She was searing passion and gentle comforting light, she was a raging inferno and a nurturing cookfire. Many pieces of her identity could be expressed as types of flame or their component elements. 

The dangerous part of this was that none of these words felt unreachable to her. Her Earth Dragon bloodline craved Dominance. She found herself most intune with the earth dragon when she used her physical might to overwhelm and dominate her opponents. It added a forceful element on top of her Obsidian Night Scorpion Saber Art that transformed it in a number of ways. 

At the same time, she'd come to Lantern City to study Darkness and Night. Her brush with the Dark Weaver Spider had shown her a version of Darkness that was cold, lonely, and bleak as the void, but the voice that had reached out to her suggested there was just as much complexity in Darkness as there was in Fire. She'd originally intended to delve exclusively into Martial applications of Darkness, but with the opportunity before her, should she consider adding Darkness as her second word? 

Of the three words, Predator felt the most disturbing. There was a ruthlessness to the way the book approached the concept of being a predator that once again aligned with some of the teachings of the Jun clan but went so far beyond them as to become unnerving. Ultimately, while it had the potential to unlock even greater power when combined with her saber art, Ao Wen firmly put Predator out of her mind, not because she was incapable of achieving success but because she was afraid of what she'd become if she did. 

The third and final section of the manual was where it truly showed its rarity. Blending a scholar's understanding of alchemy and poison with witchcraft to create terrifying curses and poisons that affected the soul as well as the body. It reminded her of the corrosive, wasting sickness that affected Kui Chong and clearly such methods had inspired the authors of this manual. 

The book went far beyond what she'd seen affecting the poor Brawler. A dog eared page held a technique that she suspected was the one afflicting Lord White's lover. 'Dark Cocoon', a paralytic poison that binds the body and the soul into a sleep from which they couldn't awake. Much like a spider might envelop their prey in webbing to be consumed later, 'Dark Cocoon' trapped and preserved the victim in a form of stasis until they were released. The insidious part of the Cocoon, however, was that any attempt to slice through the binding would pull the would-be rescuer into the Dark Cocoon along with the victim. The paralytic venom could be purged from the body fairly easily but the sticky threads wrapping their soul would adhere to anyone who dared touch it and drag them in. Just like some insects could secrete a fluid to dissolve their own webbing, it required yet another technique from the manual to release the victim from the cocoon. 

"The worst part of it is that these techniques are incredibly advanced," Ao Wen said, reading over the methods involved in each of them. "I'd have to start at the beginning of the manual and work my way forward until I reached the third section. At a minimum, I'd need to be a middle-stage Novice and a middle-stage Wanderer to pull this off. It would take at least six months to make that much progress and that's if I can survive the ritual with the venom and I can add a word to my mysticism."

For several minutes, she sat staring at the manual, absorbing and processing what she'd read over the past several hours. "It's not impossible, but it's not safe either," she concluded. "I need to talk to Xi and the others."