Tian wasn’t a doctor. He was studying medicine and working alongside doctors, but he was always very clear in his own mind that he was an orderly. He was there to assist, not provide treatment for anything but the most basic of injuries. His work as a field medic was to keep people alive long enough for a real doctor to work on them, not cure what ails them. Get it confused, and people would die.
Hong was very nearly dead as it was. There was no one else who could help, and at the speed Heavenly People cultivators could move, they should have been here by now if they were coming at all. They weren’t here. So it was up to him. He knelt over the shallow basin and tried to tackle the most immediate and pressing problem- the thorns digging into Liren, rooting, spreading and growing in her. Consuming her.
He only had one tool to control the infestation- Thunderous Palms. But Thunderous Palms was never intended to be anything other than a killing art. The little vibrating tendrils of vital energy penetrated flesh and destroyed the organs underneath. Weakening it to target thorns that had gone barely a quarter inch deeper than the skin didn’t make it less damaging. It just confined the damage to the surface, the skin, blood vessels, and muscles.
The little vibrating threads did destroy the thorns, one small palm sized area at a time. He dug in as carefully as he could, trying to make sure he cleared out all the hair-sized roots that had shot out and spread inside of her. It had become a race- how fast could he go without missing something? Between the blood loss, infection, the poison left behind when the thorns were destroyed, and the remnant evil qi of the heavenly person cultivator, how much time could he afford to take? Because destroying the thorns didn’t do anything to manage the other problems.
Liren had flipped them over in the air, letting the thorns bury themselves into her back. It was a minor miracle none had penetrated her skull past the scalp. It was a very minor miracle. There were five thorns buried in her neck, two nestled in the gap between vertebrae. There were more lodged in her spine, her ribs, the soft unprotected stretch of lower back between the ribs and the hips… she had been stabbed from head to foot. Hundreds of needles.
He would have to flay her alive. She was already in shock, poisoned, infected…
Tian ripped away the remains of her robe, splashing the water around the tub as he did his best to see what he was contending with. Maybe he had missed something, maybe there was something under there…
There wasn’t. It was as bad as it looked. His ‘soup’ was probably helping, but it wasn’t nearly enough. She wasn’t soup-ing the way he had. His treatment had only bought him a few minutes. Liren was going to finish dying in just a minute or two more, and something awful would rise up in her body.
Tian would be too physically and mentally broken to do anything about it. He was already scrabbling around on the ground like a crippled insect, not even able to crawl, working on his belly and trying to ignore the pain and damage that was making him want to puke and cry and pass out. They were both going to die.
Or… not. He could leave the parasite nothing. He had enough vital energy to destroy Liren’s brain. She wasn’t conscious. She wouldn’t feel anything. Just… darkness, then Hell, then a bowl of Granny Meng’s soup to relieve her of any lingering ties to her past life. To forget her family, her pain, the brother she died for. She had earned merit. That should count for something. Her next life would be better.
He could destroy her body afterward, just in case. He had steel burning powder. He would be lavish with it, for his sister.
He could do that.
She would tell him to.
Time was ticking away. Each second saw the thorns spread their roots and the poison seeped deeper into her and the sickness spread and attacked her brain and heart and lungs and… everything. Everything was eating away at her.
He could be paralyzed and let it kill her. Just… wait. Just sit helplessly and wait. He would probably be strong enough to destroy her body after it collapsed. He already had his hands on her. Wouldn’t take much to destroy her with Thunderous Palms. He’d burn out his meridians in one brilliant burst, but he didn’t have the heart to care.
Her body was destroyed. Why wasn’t it pulling in the water? Why didn’t she cycle the elements and consume the thorns? Why couldn’t he do it for her? This should work. It should work!
And it wasn’t. He could feel the cold boring into his bones. Memories blinded him, trying to drag him away from the present crisis.
“I would have gone insane in the junkyard, Grandpa, if it wasn’t for your hugs. Everything hurt. Being alone hurt. I’d hug myself and bury myself under whatever soft things I could find, just to feel warm and touched and safe.”
I know. I remember. I remember every second of every minute of it.
“And people threw rocks at me. Just for living. Just for wanting, for one minute, to not be all alone. It got to the point where I never wanted anything to do with people. I hated humans.”
I remember that too.
“Liren… never actually threw rocks at me. She has been good to me. Better than good. The best kind of sister, I think.”
I think so too.
“She isn’t strong enough to beat this. If it was me, I have the right physique and the right arts. But she doesn’t.
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No, she does not. And is not. I am so sorry.
“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. All it means is that it has to be me not her doing the fighting, is all. All the blood and awful stuff and evil qi and everything… heck, even the healing. As long as it’s me doing it, everything will be okay. Better than okay, my body will feast on all that evil shit. This could be a great tonic for me. Yeah. This is going to be great.”
Zihao…
“I’m going to need your help, Grandpa. I’m sure there are all kinds of reasons why this can’t work, so please do everything you can to keep me alive while I do this.”
Grandson, what are you doing?
“It’s easy, easy, easy. I just need to wipe out enough thorns to cripple their growth for a bit, then connect my arteries to her veins, because blood circulates, and then my body can take over keeping her alive. Easy. So simple! Everyone should do this! It’s like making soup but on the inside. AND all the soup on the outside will be helping too! It makes complete sense.”
It will kill you. It would take an hour just to give you the outline of why bodies don’t work that way, and why that can’t work. Grandson, I like her too, but this will definitely kill you.
Tian laughed, the sound echoing off the dark walls of the cave. “It might. It really might. But my sister tried to die for me. The first living person who hugged me was Brother Fu, and it wasn’t that long until he was telling me to run away so he could face tribulation lightning alone. Liren didn’t run from the lighting. I remember very clearly. The second person who hugged me was Liren. I got hugged for the second time in my life, and it was by a sister who wanted to die for me. So maybe this will kill me. But maybe not. A lot of things have almost killed me. We have done some incredible things since Burning Flag City. I’m sure you have at least a little energy saved up. So please. Use it here. Because I’m doing this.”
Tian carefully, achingly carefully, ran his hand along Liren’s back, avoiding the spine but clearing out as much of the thorns as he could. Liren convulsed, her body wracked by toxins and losing far, far too much blood.
Tian threaded a needle, quick as only a cultivator could, and yanking one of Liren’s hands from the pond, he tied a tourniquet with a bit of her shredded robe. It was an awful, half assed thing. It would have to do.
Quit it with that tourniquet, leave her arm alone. Listen carefully and do exactly as I say. I can only use my energy on you, you understand? Only on you. Your body is not designed to do any of the things you want it to do right now. I know for damn certain you don’t know what blood typing is, so that’s fun. I’m going to be doing a lot of very, very complicated chemical things inside of you, so you have two jobs. You will do this… utter meatball surgical job exactly how I tell you, and then you cultivate. Run it as hard as you can. Advent of Spring and the Hell Suppressing Sutra both. Particularly the Sutra. I have some hopes there. Wouldn’t be the first miracle I’ve seen. But you have to do this exactly as I tell you. Exactly.
Your heart is about to feel weird. I’m synchronizing your heartbeats. Also expect to have lightheadedness, headaches and a whole bunch of other unpleasantness because the two of you have different blood pressures and she’s bleeding out, even before you start cutting open blood vessels.
Expect mood swings from massive hormone fluctuations. Your kidneys and liver are about to be tested well beyond their intended specs, so you can look forward to that special kind of pain. As are all your organs, in fact. Do not let up on Advent of Spring or the Hell Suppressing Sutra for even one second, you hear me? Not for even one second!
Now put down that chunk of metal, get a real knife out of your ring, and let’s do this insane thing.
Tian thought they would stitch together the veins in their arms. Grandpa insisted on the legs, on the basis that it is hard to sew up a slit wrist with the hand at the end of said wrist. Besides, the blood vessels were bigger, letting the toxins circulate faster. Tian wound up dragging himself half over Liren’s body. Not a whole lot of stretch in blood vessels. By the end, he was almost completely on top of her.
Tian had to rip away the tourniquets at the same moment. He was already lightheaded, but Advent of Spring was practically second nature by now, and the Hell Suppressing Sutra ran more or less on its own so he didn’t really worry too much until he heard Grandpa say
What the Hell is this?
And everything went white.
Tian was a good grandson, who mostly listened and did what he was told. His conscious mind might have been lost in a whirl of chemicals, hormones and pain, but he kept cycling Advent of Spring, drawing in qi in a constant stream. Just like Brother Fu had promised all those years ago- it wasn’t the fastest cultivation art, but it was very steady.
The poison and disease flowed into Tian, mixed in with Liren’s fiery blood. Advent of Spring didn’t much like it. The Hell Suppressing Sutra was another story. It thrived on corruption and yang qi in equal measure. Liren was providing immense amounts of both.
Tian couldn’t see it, but a brilliant electrochemical dance was taking place across his body. Glands he could barely identify excreted hormones and chemicals he couldn’t name. They were sent out to combat bacteria and viruses, to counteract poison, to clear away the toxic buildup of fragments of cursed thorns and roots. Nerve endings were protected, stimulated or stilled. Blood flow was slowed or redirected, making limbs swell and turn purple, or whither into a ghastly white.
Above the dancing chemicals was a hurricane of qi, crashing into the tidelands of life and death. The corrupting, parasitizing yin qi in the thorns was greedily gobbled up. The traces of Heavenly Person Qi, reduced to the merest remnant intent in the thorns, was a bit tougher to chew up, but the statue in Tian’s lower dantian welcomed the challenge. The more Tian suffered, the more vileness that was poured into him, the stronger his body would become. Slowly. Bit by bit. But inexorably.
Likewise, the fire aspected vital energy was broken down and scattered where it could do some good. Some of it went to the lantern in his heart, some warmed his rapidly cooling body, and still more was used to ignite the corrupted wood qi and let the purified remnants become nourishment for his own vital energy. All while his body was frantically creating new blood and destroying the “sick” blood it suddenly found itself contaminated with.
It was an insane show, thousands of adjustments and changes every minute, all to send clean, potent, wood-qi rich blood into Liren. All to fuel the fires of life within her. No mortal mind could have managed it. Grandpa Jun had shed his mortality a long time ago. Unlike the Ghost King Zhong, he was under no delusions of humanity. He was a truly ancient ghost, trapped in a bone ring, grafted to the base of Tian’s ring finger. Immaterial, touching this world only through his host. The limitations of fleshy senses and fleshy brains and their electrochemical confusion had long since been overcome. He could still be surprised, however.
I don’t suppose there is an awareness inside of you, is there?
The ancient spear floating within Liren’s heart dantian made no reply.