Earlier inside the cabin.
Nox had just finished fishing out the thing she was looking for inside of Ming's wife. It had the translucent figure of the woman on the table. However, her phantasmal figure was cracked all over, while small chunks of her were missing here and there.
"What is that?"
"What! You never seen a nonenergy ghost old man? It's your wife's soul!" Nox said, as she activated the enchantments around the table where Ai's corpse was lying.
"Why does it look like that!"
"I'm assuming her soul was damaged as a result of her advancement failing! It might look bad, and it is, but I've seen worse!" She said as she began activating the enchantments walls, ceiling and floor.
"What are these enchantments for? Are they going to fix her soul?"
"No, the enchantments are there to stop her body from disintegrating while I fix her soul! You cultivators do some real insane shit you know that! Fusing your souls together with a core is one thing but completely merging it with the elements themselves. You know that's just one step off from becoming like the mud lady haunting the wife-beater's kid!" She said as she pulled out a bunch of canisters holding some glowing brown liquid.
"What are you going to do?"
"Well, since we are already here, I might as well explain the process before I have to really focus!" Nox said as she started drawing a magic circle with some blue chalk on the ground.
"Souls are basically made up of a bunch of tiny little shards without a set purpose or personality, called soul fragments. When a vessel capable of sustaining life is created, these soul fragments gather inside fusing into a soul, that will be imprinted with the memories, personality, emotions, basically all the stuff that makes you, 'you' are imprinted inside this soul. The soul functions mostly as a backup memory space with some influences on the subconscious, though it can also easily affect your mental state if it gets tampered with.
Anyways, cultivators like her who have reached the immortal stage seem to have undergone a metamorphosis where their entire genetic makeup is burned away and your soul directly fuses with an elemental body sculpted in its image. You also no longer have or need a core because of this, essentially you become like nascent soul ghosts, but without a core and exponentially more powerful. However, this also puts your souls at great risk as any harm done to the elemental body could affect the soul and vice versa, unlike with a flesh and blood body that is for the most part separate from the soul's state of being.
What I am going to do is fill in missing and cracked parts of her soul with blank soul shards that will adapt over time to the surrounding soul matter and if the gap in knowledge is not too large, she should regain whatever lost parts of her mind immediately, while the rest will probably return over time!
Once that is done, I need to fix the damaged body made from densely compact elemental energy, or qi as you guys call it. To do that I need to slowly merge her soul with her body while at the same time using highly concentrated liquid qi which I have stored inside those canisters. This is a very delicate process, so, any mistakes and her body will either turn to dust or detonate all the energy in her body at once. One such error can be caused by a sudden fluctuation in the natural energy flow in the environment, which is what the enchantments on this room are for. It stops elemental energy from flowing in or out of this space, to prevent any unexpected changes to the concentration of qi in the air!"
"What? I didn't quite follow all of that!"
"Basically, the reason why she's dying is because her soul is damaged. So, as long as I fix her soul and patch up her body, we should be good! The circle on the ground is to fix her soul. The enchantment on the room is there because sudden changes in the room's energy flow are dangerous, and the enchantment around her body is to slow the decay until I've finished repairing her soul, which I need to fix her body!"
"Okay! So, the reason we can't leave or enter is because it change the qi concentration in this room, right? Like an alchemist's alchemy furnace!"
Alchemy can have different meanings depending on which continent you are on, but for the cultivators of the martial continents, an alchemist is a person who specializes in creating and refining drugs and medicine that can have an effect on a cultivator. As cultivators can vary greatly depending on element, physique, cultivation methods, stage and realm, it can be difficult to create a medicine with an intended effect. To create such medicine often requires mixing volatile or energy rich material in a controlled and isolated environment, that is what an alchemy furnace is for. It helps prevent unwanted elements from mixing with the materials during the process of creating the drug they want.
"More or less! If that happens, I might not be able to patch her body up again after I finished repairing her soul! Okay that should do it!" Nox said as she finished drawing the circle.
"Okay, so I'm going to need to concentrate here so no more questions!" Nox said as she sat down cross legged with Ai's soul floating in front of her.
Soon, the blue chalk circle on the floor started glowing as small glittering sand corn became visible in the air. Nox began guiding the glittering dust in the air as her hands began moving in a fluid motion.
Just as some of the cracks in Ai's soul started to close, there was a sudden commotion outside. Wanting to know what was happening Ming walked up to the door and started shouting.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING OUT THERE?!" Ming screamed through the walls of the cabin
"Father?"
"PING?! IS THAT YOU?!" Ming shouted through the door.
"Shit! Old man, quickly! Distract him with a joke!" Nox blurted out, before quickly returning her focus to her own tasks.
"What? Why would-?"
"Wait, I'm coming in!" Ping shouted before Ming could finish responding to Nox's suggestion.
"NO! STOP! WHATEVER YOU DO! DO NOT OPEN THAT DOOR! YOUR MOTHER'S LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!"
"What?"
"That's what we have been trying to tell you!"
"No, Xing!"
"Their treating mother inside! If you open the door, you'll disrupt the treatment and she could die!"
"Are you talking about that whore? Have you lost your minds? She is going to kill mother with her medicine! I'm coming in!" Ping shouted as he tried to open the door.
"What the! It's stuck! Why won't the door ope-?"
*BANG*
"Good thing she insisted on locking the door after Xing and Ning left the room!" Ming muttered.
Sounds of shouting and fighting could be heard from outside the cabin as they tried to prevent Ping from entering the room.
"Tsk! Damn it all!" Nox muttered as she stood up.
"What's wrong?" Ming asked, in concern.
All the cracks and missing parts of Ai had been filled in, but Nox didn't sound so happy. She then proceeded to throw off her mask and chug all the canisters she had pulled out earlier without a word. Then, with a wave of her hand, the enchantments around Ai's crumbling body shattered along with her corpse, turning into dust.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Ming screamed.
"SAVING YOUR WIFE FROM YOUR KID! NOW SHUT UP AND DON'T LET ANYONE NEAR ME!" Nox shouted, before she spat out a blue fire aura that enveloped the dust in the air before being sucked back into her mouth.
She then proceeded to slurp up Ai's soul in a similar manner, before she sat down to meditate.
"What did you just-?"
Before Ming could process what had just happened, Nox's body was suddenly enveloped in 'the flames of control', which formed an egg-shaped barrier of fire around her. Cracks soon began to form on her skin, as thick, almost tangible brown waves of earth qi came shooting out of her every orifice, forming a bright, brown inner layer to the egg as it was pushed back by the 'flames of control. The aura and qi began having a shoving match, resulting in a pulsating motion as the qi would come in periodic bursts reaching the edge of the flames, only to be slowly pushed back to where it started before the next wave. Meanwhile Nox's body was starting to crack and crumble away as it couldn't take the torrents of energy crashing back and forth in and around her body. In mere moments after she started, all the skin on her face had been burned away revealing the muscle and bone underneath.
"No, way! Why would you go this far?" Ming muttered in disbelief as he recognized what Nox was doing.
*BANG*
Just then, the door to the cabin was knocked down. Ping had disregarded his father's order to not enter and knocked down the cabin door. It was only then that Ming finally realized why Nox had taken such a drastic measure, and it filled the elderly man with rage and regret.
"GET OUT HERE YO-!"
*BOOM*
Ming, an indigo stage nascent soul dragonewt, had flown into a rage and rushed out to grab his son, moving so fast he broke the sound barrier, only stopping once they smacked into the transparent barrier enveloping the mountain. The elderly man had pinned his oldest son up against the barrier as he shouted.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!" He screamed, tears dotting the corner of his bloodshot eyes.
However, Ping had already lost consciousness. He was already exhausted by the time he managed to push past the guards at the bottom of the mountain, not to mention the injuries he sustained from his sister's attacks. Being then slammed into the mountain barrier at supersonic speeds, was just too much for his body to handle and he was knocked out.
"ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?! Huh?"
However, Ming was so enraged he only noticed after he finished berating his unconscious son.
"You haven't listened to a single thing I've said, have you?" Ming muttered after calming down a bit.
*Chuckle*
Ming let out a depressed chuckle as his own words just reminded him of the joke's Nox was throwing at him earlier.
"A distraction, huh!" Ming muttered, as he looked up at the giant column of energy rising out of the cabin, piercing the barrier and punching a hole through the raining clouds above.