BXBX NOVEL Chapter 89: The problem and its problematic solution
And when I saw the look on her face…
'I'm in trouble, aren't I?'
"Tim, there's a lot of things that I'm willing to accept. There are a lot of ways in which our relationship doesn't fit the norms of this day and age. But while this makes me turn a blind eye to quite a lot of things…"
Claire bit down her lips and lowered her head before taking a deep breath and looking back up again as she locked her stare right on my eyes.
"But I don't want to see you in such a state ever again," Claire stated while staring right into my eyes. "Can you promise me you will never end up like you did just now?"
Claire's face looked as serious as it could get. Her eyes didn't waver in the slightest, showcasing just how determined she was to get this promise out of my mouth.
But in all honesty, it wasn't something that I could guarantee, so how could I make a promise over something that wasn't fully within my power?
"I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm able to make that kind of a promise," I said while shaking my head all the while trying to cope with my mounting exhaustion. "As in, it's not like I don't want to make this promise, but…"
I hesitated for a second, only to decide to just be honest and open about my reasoning.
"But I don't want to make a promise that I'm not sure it's within my ability to keep up. That's why, instead, I can promise you I will do my best to never let myself end up like I did today."
Claire bit down on her lips again… but ended up holding her protest back.
"That… I can accept," she muttered while lowering her eyes. She then sat back down on her heels and leaned back a bit. "But then…" she mumbled while still keeping her eyes down on the floor…
Claire shook her head before raising her chin and looking straight into my eyes again.
"But then, isn't your next prerogative to figure out why…" she started, only to suddenly stop her sentence in its middle while locking her eyes on my neck.
"Actually, let me check something out," she requested, only to raise her hand up to her face, bite down on the side of her hand hard enough to cut her skin open before moving forth…
And doing the one thing that she had already trained me to interpret in the one and only way.
Claire didn't even stand up as she moved forth on her knees and mounted my lap only to lean over my neck and open her mouth before biting down on my skin just hard enough to cut my skin open.
Then, however, instead of sucking on the wound like some sort of a vampire, she leaned back before pressing her wounded hand against my wounded neck and then closing her eyes.
For a moment, I could vaguely feel her spiritual presence ransack through my insides as if she was trying to possess me, only for the whole thing to come to an end before I could even figure out what she was trying to achieve.
"Just like I thought…" Claire muttered only to jump up to her feet and grab my face between her hands. "You just stay here for a moment and do your best to stay awake, okay?" she requested only to let go of my face and then leave the workshop running before even giving me the chance to respond.
"Judging by what she just did…" I thought, quickly running down the list of possible reasons behind Claire's strange behavior…
Only to arrive at what should be the most obvious conclusion possible.
'Is it because I ran out of my spiritual energy?' I thought, daring not to voice this thought out. But now that I brought my own attention to it… This seemed like much more than just a possibility.
'But wouldn't that mean that by growing stronger… I've actually shot myself in the foot?'
If this assumption was correct, then I ended up so tired because now that my cultivation grew, it took a lot more energy to fill my body full of it. An now that I worked in this massive workshop with hardly any Qi in the air as opposed to my tiny room where Qi was so dense it actually made the air as thick as some sort of a slurry…
"But wouldn't that mean…"
I bit down on my lips before I even had the chance to voice out my sudden guess. All because when this guess formed in my mind, I've nigh instantly realized just how overwhelmingly massive this theory of mine was.
Or rather, how it would mean that instead of being just a blessed crafter, I would be…
"I'm back!" Claire called out as soon as she ran back to the workshop with two familiar items in her hand.
The prototype of the QI condensation device that I sold to her all those days ago and then the finished and actually nicely-looking device that I sold during our negotiations with her father.
Neither of those two devices had to be turned on as they were designed to just work their magic in the background for as long as the materials it was made with wouldn't deteriorate and degrade to the point they would lose their qualities.
And as soon as Claire brought those two devices over and pretty much pressed them against my chest…
It was a weird feeling, but despite the pressure she added to my chest, it suddenly felt as if I could breathe properly again. As if the air I was breathing for the entire day was so thin I could hardly catch any oxygen in it.
I took a deep breath, savoring every tiniest bit of the air that suddenly grew thick with the now condensed Qi, only to feel my exhaustion suddenly recede like a wave of filth washed away by a jet of pressurized water.
"Haaaa…." I heaved a long sigh as my body now properly relaxed as opposed to just shutting down in a desperate bid to preserve whatever spiritual energy was left in it.
It was just a single breath, way too little to fully avert the side-effects of overexerting myself… but all in all, it was better than nothing.
"How is it?" Claire asked, raising her concerned eyes and locking them on my face as she waited with anticipation for my answer.
"Better…" I admitted before heaving a short sigh only to then greedily take another breath of the Qi-rich air, "Much better."
"Haaaah…" This time it was Claire's turn to breathe out a sigh of relief. "That's good to hear…" she muttered only to then energetically shake her head and reach out for my shoulders again as she, once again, looked straight into my ears. "So now that we know what the issue is, how do you plan to solve it?"
Claire's question was as hard… as did it serve as something to jolt my memory and bring back the one idea that I deemed interesting but potentially too dangerous to just craft like that.
"Actually, I do have an idea…" I muttered before averting my eyes, not really sure whether bringing such a game-changing device to life wouldn't be akin to inviting disaster to my life, even if it could pretty much solve the problem we currently faced. "The thing is, if there are things that we can sell and then there are things that sell we cannot, the thing I'm thinking about right now…"
I hesitated to even bring the details of this idea up as if merely speaking about it would be akin to printing myself a ticket to the stake on which I would soon burn.
"Just say it, there's no use dancing around the topic," Claire chastised me a little while the anxiety in her eyes gave way to the familiar spark of curiosity.
"The thing I'm thinking about right now could possibly be the spark of the second iteration of the war to end all wars."