This pattern repeated itself many times and little by little the aura around young Shikatu -whose parents named in your honor- receded, by the time five years have passed he could spend time around mortals without trying to kill him.
ok, unironically,
how did this baby survive until the parents could bring him to the Emperor's presence?
Also did we give them a cultivator bodyguard? Because
damn, even with the slowly degrading of the negative aura, It's unreal that it would survive this long otherwise.
Of course, even with the aid of the wind and your supernatural mind swiftly picking up the practice of soul surgery, messing with the soul is a dangerous prospect and young Shikatu hasn't come out unscared form the experience.
It is your conclusion that he would not live beyond his fortieth birthday, an unfortunate side effect of the surgery.
You first thought to teach his to cultivate so he may enjoy the higher lifespan but when testing him for talent you discovered that Qi was still dead to him, no matter what you tried he never managed to sense or touch it.
Your second thought was further soul surgery but without the wind guiding your hand you didn't feel confidant enough in your new skill to succussed.
In the end you decided to do nothing, you have given forty years to a child that would not have seen ten and that was good enough.
With the operation declared a success you felt something change.
Not in you or in others but with the very world.
But for the life of you, you could not say what has changed only that something has.
Gain the soul surgery skill at incompetent. gain ???
6 years of weekly surgeries. That's an absurd time commitment from the GOD-EMPEROR in a normal situation.
Then again, we gained a lot. we "repayed" the wind (maybe? It seemed to WANT us to do this), we learned an incredibly valuable skill (and I wonder if this might help with the half-pillar third steps, or the Broken...) AND... we caused a "shift" in the world which we don't know.
Obviously it has to do with the very first soul-surgery ever happening on this planet (or, at least, in Keku history), but
why? Is this the GODS reacting? the demons? Nature itself?
Shame the kid has no cultivation potential... but I'm going to assume we'll keep him under observation and possibly retest him as he grows up, also to potentially offer follow-up surgery if we get better or gain insights that might help, if we get enough divine charges and the cost goes down enough it might be worth considering... and of course we might want to ask for his assistance in qi-interaction experiments.
For example, maybe we could learn to replicate his condition of qi-immunity with arrays, and use it to basically create anti-qi-technique-barriers, or locations in which qi just can't be used and so cultivators are weakened (cultivator-grade prisons?)
Or maybe we'll find a way to give similar properties to armor, or fortifications.
Who knows.
In the meantime I think the most immediate benefit of having Soul Surgery is that we might be able to apply this knowledge to the problem of the Broken and/or the half-third step.
