After her initial confusion and disappointment that the solution to the puzzle lock of the Spring and Autumn Palace wasn't related to a story of heartbroken lovers, I was able to explain my solution to the ice cultivator. We quickly realised there was another problem.

"Wait a minute, if we need to activate all four of the inscriptions in order, don't we need two more people?" she asked, tilting her head to one side.

"Huh, I didn't think of that. You might be right, but also you could be wrong. Let's just give it a go and see what happens," I replied.

It was possible that after solving one of the puzzles it would remain that way, meaning we wouldn't need one person for each lock. Only time would tell.

"Which way was the carving you said looked the saddest?" I asked. That one should represent winter, being the tree in its most 'dead' state. It was where we needed to begin.

Her face scrunched up when she realised she had to leave the pretty carving behind. "This way," she said with a sigh, pointing to the right.

We walked around the walls of the palace until we reached the carving. It actually took almost a full three minutes to do so, demonstrating just how enormous the palace was.

True to her word, the carving did look rather depressing. It showed a tree with withered branches and a gnarled trunk, possessing a canopy entirely devoid of leaves.

I heard her sigh as she stared at the image. She looked like a wife whose husband had gone to war, wondering about his fate. It was rather cute.

I reached out, placing my palm against the carving. As she said she'd done, I sent a strand of my qi outwards and into the carving, beginning at the roots of the tree.

I felt it accepting my qi. The roots lit up a little, sparkling a gentle green that resembled my medicinal qi. However, an instant later the light faded as my qi vanished into the walls.

"That's odd. It's as if the walls are consuming the qi," I muttered out loud.

"Yep! That's exactly how it felt when I tried," the girl said with a nod. Suddenly she went as straight as a rod and she gasped. "Since we are working together on a problem and getting to know each other, does that mean we're friends now?"

What the hell? I was seriously concerned about how this girl's mind worked. She was too naive and her train of thought seemed to be more like an erratic whirlwind. However, it was a harmless question so I gave it the best response possible.

"Sure, why not. You seem like a decent person. We can be friends if it makes you happy," I said with a shrug.

What I hadn't expected was the sudden shift in her behaviour after my answer. Her face went through a rollercoaster of emotions, from surprise, to happiness, to confusion, and then finally she started to cry.

"Finally, I did it," she whispered, pumping a fist in the air in victory. "I thought I would never accomplish grandfather's mission. No one wanted to be my friend, no matter how hard I tried. They all seemed scared of me after I showed them my techniques. There was that one guy who…"

I stared at the girl as she rambled on while sniffling and wiping her tears occasionally. "Hey, as your friend I'd say focusing on the task at hand might take your mind off things," I said. Surely I wasn't her first friend ever? Everyone made a couple as kids, even the most anti-social people…

"Good idea. What do you think we should do? You said you had a solution, but so far you've just done the same things I did," she said, standing up straight.

"Relax, I only wanted to see what happened when I used my qi. I do have an idea. I think four seasons might have been the wrong line of thinking though. Follow me," I said, walking further around the city walls to the next carving.

This one should represent spring. The tree had a flowery canopy, but it wasn't as thick as the summer carving. Given the name of the palace, I had one final idea to try.

"I need you to go to the next one along. On my signal, send a pulse of your qi inside the carving to activate it," I told the woman.

"But we already know that won't work. And how will I see your signal from so far away?"

"Good point…" I sighed. I wished I had one of those communication jades that Councillor Gao had used. They would have come in handy. I would make sure to never head out without one in future.

"How about this? We'll go halfway between the carvings, then walk at the same pace towards each of them. That way we should reach them at the same time and we can activate them simultaneously," I suggested.

"Woah, that's really smart! You're a genius," she said with wide eyes. "Why are we activating them at the same time, though?"

"Well the two carvings I tried were the winter and summer trees, right? Neither of them worked. You said you tried all four, but got the same result. That means it's impossible that activating one carving at a time is the solution. Given that it's called the Spring and Autumn Palace, I figure that activating the spring and autumn trees together should open it," I explained, feeling satisfied that my smarts were being recognised for once.

"Woah, you got all that from looking at the sad trees? Neat. Let's do it. We should hurry up before more people come in and catch up to us, I don't like sharing my treasure," she said with a smirk.

Perhaps this girl did have a mischievous streak, after all. "What about me?" I asked with a nervous smile.

"Don't worry, you're my friend now. Friends share treasure, right? You can keep ten percent of what we find," she said while patting my shoulder.

I had to restrain the guffaw that wanted to come out at that. Ten percent? What a generous overlord she was. And that was the friend cut—what did her enemies get? Eternal torture?

Suddenly her innocent facade became a lot scarier. This is why socialising your kids is important. Power without emotional connection was a deadly weapon.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Putting her strange personality aside, we walked between the carvings to carry out my plan. We had our backs to one another at the midpoint.

"Alright, one step every tenth of a second. Don't deviate from that pace. As soon as you reach the carving activate it from the roots upwards," I said once we were ready.

"Okay, let's go!" she replied enthusiastically, taking her first step.

I cursed her lack of timing, but took my own step so as not to fall out of rhythm. I would have to hope she was able to maintain the pace.

It took longer than before to reach the carving given the slightly slower walking pace I was maintaining, but as soon as I did I reached down to the roots and started to send my qi inside. They lit up with a faint green light.

I held my breath as I continued to send my qi inside, hoping that this plan would work. Mostly because I didn't have any other ideas, so if it failed we would be stuck back at square one.

"Thank the heavens," I thought out loud as the light continued to spread through the roots and then up into the trunk. Within a few seconds the entire carving was shining brightly.

Then without warning the world around me shifted. The next moment I found myself standing in a corridor floored with golden tiles and with walls of whitest jade.

What the hell? I looked around, finding that it seemed to stretch on for infinity in front and behind me. There was no sign of the ice cultivator, either.

I had never asked her name. That wasn't very good of me as her first friend. I would have to rectify the error if I met her again.

For now I had to figure out how to get out of this corridor. For a few minutes I walked forwards. No matter how far I travelled, the distance to the end remained the same—infinite.

Realising that I would never get out this way, I resorted to my original cheat. Once more I took the artifact out of my spatial bag.

The resonance had become even stronger now that I was inside the Spring and Autumn Palace. Following the pulses of spiritual energy it emitted, I was annoyed to realised they only travelled along the lengths of the corridor.

No chance of scamming my way through this trial, then. With a sigh I returned it to my spatial bag and then sat down on the gilded floor to think this through.

It was either an illusion or a distortion of space. If I was still in the outside world I would suspect the former, but this was certainly the doing of a supreme existence. True spatial distortion was a possibility.

However, that would be the worst case scenario. I had no idea how to deal with such an issue. Thus, I first went through my methods to deal with illusions.

Actually I had realised quite early on that illusions weren't much of an obstacle to me. The reason was due to my Fivefold Medicine Forge Physique. The medicinal energy it produced automatically cleared my mind of unwanted intruders, which most illusions were.

Even more complex techniques which manipulated my qi along with my mind weren't completely impossible to deal with. It simply took a little more time.

In a meditative position, I focused on breathing in the surrounding spiritual energy and allowing the medicinal energy produced in my lungs and dantian to work its way through my body. As it passed through my head I felt a blockage, which was soon shattered.

Opening my eyes, I saw that the corridor behind me had vanished, replaced by a solid wall that was so close it almost touched my knee. Unfortunately, the path ahead still stretched endlessly into the distance.

I grew frustrated when no matter how many times I cycled medicinal qi through my body there were no more illusions to dispel. However, I felt a sense of uneasiness underlying my thoughts.

Given that I wasn't much closer to escaping my predicament, I decided to use my time more productively. I had only two organs left to refine in order to complete the first layer of my physique.

I had collected a plethora of potent natural treasures from the plains and I planned to use a few of them to advance my physique. I had plenty of them after all, there was no harm in using them for this rather than alchemy.

The first treasure was a thick root the colour of sand, resembling a ginseng. The spiritual energy contained within was dense, possibly enough to advance my liver towards completion.

I tossed it into my mouth, finding it hard to chew. I could've tried to prepare it better, but processing natural treasures using the wrong methods was more likely to damage the energy within than improve it.

Eating it raw was uncomfortable, but the effects were powerful. The energy spread outwards the moment it entered my body. The root tried to exert its own effects on my body, but it found itself caught in the grip of the Fivefold Medicine Forge Physique.

The stomach broke it down to its base form, pure spiritual energy. The energy was mostly absorbed by my liver, rapidly refining itself with the huge influx.

I realised my speculation had missed the mark by a long way. I hadn't noticed before, because the increase was rather minimal, but I would need much more energy to refine the liver than the previous organs.

The amount had increased each time from the lungs, to the stomach, and then the heart, but it hadn't been by much. The increase this time was larger, making me wonder if the effect of a refined liver would be more potent than the others or if it was simply a consequence of progressing further.

Even once all of the energy from the root had been consumed, my liver had only reached about thirty-five percent towards being completely refined. That was fine, I had plenty of natural treasures to spare.

I felt like a vegan as I devoured one plant after another. However, unlike the questionable benefits of that diet, this one was making a definite impact on my body.

In the end I had to consume four treasures before my liver reached complete refinement. Furthermore it had taken what felt like an entire day. It seemed there was a limit to how often I could devour a treasure, with my body needing time to recover between each one.

The metallic chime of an organ reaching full refinement broke me out of my trance. My brow was covered in a thin layer of sweat, but I had a satisfied expression on my face. I'd done it.

Now I only needed to work out what the purpose of the liver was in the system of my physique. Each organ had an ability that worked on its own, but as I'd refined more organs I realised they could also work in tandem, becoming a system greater than the sum of its parts.

Remembering my medical knowledge, I thought about what function the liver normally had in a human body. It might give me a starting point to figure out a refined liver's functions.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as it sounded. Even a 'regular' liver had almost five hundred various functions, from filtering blood, metabolizing nutrients, storing energy, and even detoxification.

I doubted it would be the last one, since my refined stomach already seemed to do that. Besides, those few were only the beginning. There were too many to list them all.

Before continuing I needed a short break. Cultivating was hard work, even though you did most of it in a relaxed meditative position.

I inhaled deeply, allowing the spiritual energy around me to enter my lungs and dantian. It was converted into medicinal qi. Most of it settled in my dantian, but I noticed a few strands went towards my liver.

They were absorbed by the newly refined organ, which looked like a lump of brown metal, and disappeared. I inspected it more closely, discovering that a tiny corner of it now sparkled with green light.

After a few more cycles of absorbing spiritual energy, almost a quarter of my liver now sparkled with bright green light. It seemed I had discovered its first function—qi storage.

I wondered what the use of another energy storage was, given that I already had my dantian and even my stomach, but I was sure it had an important purpose. So far every part of my Fivefold Medicine Forge Physique had improved my abilities by leaps and bounds.

In future I would no doubt discover any more functions it possessed or what the use of the qi storage was. However, now that I had recovered enough it was time to continue cultivating.

I still had one more organ left to refine, after all. Once I achieved the fifth refined organ, I would have completed the entire first layer of the Fivefold Medicine Forge Physique. I couldn't wait to see what effects it would have.

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