Checkup: 1

Inside one of the best medical rooms in the entire mortal side of the southern border. Doctor Su Shou was having a lively time. There would be moments where she groaned and others where she moaned.

Standing there with his shirt off and disgust on his face, Xie Ling thought to himself, "We haven't even done anything. How does a woman even get this kinky?"

As Su Shou was carefully inspecting his every muscle, his refined jawline, and his magnificent eyes, she noticed the disgust on his face before letting out a sadistic grin, "Truly your beauty is second to none in all of southern border."

To calm herself down, she took a seat while light-headedly stating, "Let's get started with this... mind checkup thing."

Rolling his eyes, Xie Ling took out a notepad and started questioning her on her daily life, her actions, her habits, and her interest, all the while slowly pervading her mind with his will. Slowly twisting and turning her aspirations, like churning butter.

"My daily life mostly consists of occasionally cutting things open, and finding out ways to make them truly pop. Shine, so to speak," she stated with her hand pointing at him, before continuing, "My habits and interests follow the same principle."

She snapped her fingers, and in came two beauties, "These two are prime examples."

She moved her hand glancingly past the first one stating, "This one I found in some random street corner, barely any meat on her bones. If I hadn't come when I did, she would likely be dead or worse some plaything for an ugly man."

Moving her hand to the second one, gently stroking the beauties long black silk-like hair. She commented, "This hair is the successful experimentation of years of hard work, each and every strand is imbued with a special type of sap that comes from the Violent Water Lily plant. A dangerous plant which peaks at rank-4 strength while also living in clusters, as such it's only something rank-5 gu masters such as myself are willing to procure."

Her hand then gripped tightly on a single strange of hair before slamming down onto the ground, bringing the girl's face along with it, the single strand still strongly rooted in the scalp, "As you can see her hair is practically on the brink of becoming a rank-5 material from all the years of it being infused with the plant's sap.

Xie Ling paused his note-taking, to inquire, "Could this method work on Gu?"

Raising an eyebrow to ponder, Su Shou mumbled, "Gu? Well, I've never bothered to try as there's a reason refinement path and healing methods stay completely separate."

Xie Ling leaned forward, "And that reason being?"

She tapped her hand on the girl's cheeks while having one of her Gu worms heal her face, "Well I was never a book smart, so forgive my lack of knowledge on this subject, but as far as I know, while everything is resistant to tampering, the difference with Gu is simply their core design is for an already complicated ability. If one were to tamper with such things, its already complicated structure would react violently, causing self-destruction from the inside out."

She paused to think a bit more, before adding, "The only type of people that ever dare to make Gu that can work outside of their designated purpose, would be those rotten charlatans that make Fake Gu."

Turning her attention back to Xie Ling, she posed her own question, "Well, now that we're done with that, I would like to ask you a question."

Xie Ling nodded his head while giving a wide smile, "What's your question?"

"Lately I've been stuck in a rut, unable to come up with any ideas, and the harder I try the less I can think." She expressed with a questioning look.

Looking to the sky with narrowed eyes, Xie Ling internally pondered, "People can only go full out for only so long, their brains need breaks. By taking breaks you give the mind its much needed time to reset. it's not about willpower, it's about how long your brain can actually stay in a working state. The brain recalibrates by going into Delta State, in other words, a deep sleep, which is different from stressful sleep. Then while slowly waking up you can easily enter Alpha State, which improves creativity, along with the improved Theta State, known for being the state where you can get flashes of inspiration. However, that state is mostly achieved by accident when a person relaxes. and in reverse, there exists the Gamma State, something said to be mainly achievable by monks."

Su Shou was starting to get confused by Xie Ling's long pause when suddenly he brought his head back down while answering, "It sounds to me like you haven't been having proper sleep lately, while this could be from your body lacking certain vitamins, I highly doubt that would be the case for you. As such I recommend you set a tight schedule for when you go to sleep and for how long. This should give you back your creativity that you've lost."

As if realization hit her, Su Shou remembered all the long nights she's been having lately, nothing seemed to work, she would try and try again, but her mind wouldn't come up with anything, and due to her strong will she just kept trying to force her mind to work, but apparently that was having the opposite effect as intended.

Upon noticing Su Shou's moment of deep thought, Xie Ling without making any noise, turned around and walked out.