Tian was ready for a fight, and he still nearly missed the sword qi coming for his throat. His body slipped to the left, a long gash slicing along the side of his neck. First freezing cold, then burning. Only then did he see the sword cultivator’s stance, two fingers raised in front of his nose, and a flying sword swinging back around for another attack.
“Two people that don’t look quite how he expects, and he attacks on sight. Is he insane, or is the Heavenly Realm this crazy? He’s standing on one flying sword, and attacking with another. They might all just be crazy.”
Tian rushed forward, his footwork illusory, drifting like the moon over water. The rope dart came flying out of his sleeve. He might not have a Heavenly spell for it, but he could still throw it pretty damn hard, and that was something.
Not enough, as it happened.
The sword cultivator called his flying sword back, returning it to his hand spasm fast. A sharp chop saw the rope dart cut, the head flying away, the ruined rope falling on the ground. Tian felt a sudden pang of loss, then a rising alarm. He didn’t have a better backup weapon, beyond the Heavenly Swallows. If a hidden weapon was no longer hidden, it wasn’t much of a weapon either. Worse, the swordsman was waiting for them.
Liren wasn’t one for waiting. Her snake-head spear might not be suitable for the Heavenly Realm, but at least her spear arts were. A brilliant line of fire rose from the ground and smashed into the spearman. He blocked the incoming spear with a curse, his flying sword carrying him backwards through the air.
Tian narrowed his eyes. The swordsman had near perfect mobility in three directions using his flying sword. Presumably it used qi too, but equally presumably, it was a manageable amount. Certainly all the Heavenly Realm experts he had seen fought in the air. He actually couldn’t recall seeing one fight standing on the ground, ever. Combined with the smaller, attacking flying sword, and the swordsman had more power, more mobility, and more range.
That meant running away was impossible. He would try talking it out, but the man launched a lethal attack without warning. He had a short temper. Maybe Tian could use that?
“Such a gallant swordsman. Attacking from ambush, then running away. Afraid to get into melee, are you? Actually, is it still swordsmanship if you aren’t touching the sword and attacking from range with it?”
Tian’s voice was quite carrying.
“Ignorant fool!” The sword rose, faintly wreathed with a golden aura. Tian could see the swordsman was gathering his strength for a powerful blow.
“You aren’t a swordsman. You are just a rude, murderous scumbag who can only run away and throw big darts. Are you from a hidden weapon sect? Report your name, if you can bear the shame of it!”
Tian had learned a lot from Senior Voidcatcher. This wasn’t what he had expected to use first.
“I’ll kill you!” The golden sword came racing out once again. Tian raised his hands with a fluttering flourish of his sleeves, focusing on evading. Liren hauled back her spear, and launched it in a blaze of fire at the swordsman, using the moment of his attack to launch her own. The swordsman swore and dodged, not seeing the Heavenly Swallow darts that drilled into the back of his head.
The fluttering sleeves had been enough to conceal the almost invisible darts. The swordsman had been watching for them, but he missed them in his fury.
He didn’t miss Tian.
Tian had dodged, but the sword still managed to pierce his flank. The metal qi rampaged inside of him, shredding apart tissue and muscle. He could feel his intestines had been cut open. A bad wound. A damned bad wound.
“Finish him, sister!” The swordsman was swaying on his flying sword. He seemed to be pawing something on his chest, but his hand wasn’t working properly. Liren pulled a spare spear from her ring, and threw it with a grunt. The spear couldn’t handle the force of the throw, disintegrating in the air and slamming into the swordsman in a cloud of shrapnel and qi.
Tian felt the qi in the sword cut off. This was a mixed blessing. The metal qi stopped rampaging in him, but the suddenly heavy sword sliced downward, cutting open yet more of him.
He did his best to lay down carefully. The pain was incredible. He was keeping a tight grip on his emotions, but the urge to scream hammered at his throat. Crying seemed right. He resolved not to cry anyway. He focused on his breathing, trying to plan his next steps in staying alive.
There was a soft thud in the distance, a rush, and a considerably louder thud with underlying wet, crunchy notes.
“I think most people don’t know the sound of a head being crushed. I’m including all the mortals in that. I kind of wish I didn’t. Strip his body and grab his ring, Sis. If he has medicine, I’m going to need it.” Tian tried to distract himself from the pain, focusing on the smaller details and straining to keep his voice bland.
“Your neck!”
“More than a scratch, but it didn’t cut anything important. It will heal with a bandage and some cultivation.” He could feel Liren’s emotions in her words, all jagged and raw. His teachers had told him many times- everyone else might be panicking, but the doctor is calm and in charge. Right now he was the doctor. So he was calm and in charge. And if he wasn’t, he should fake it until he was.
He called back his darts with a thought. At this range, the Imperial Heavenly Swallows were no harder to control than his own hands. They really were very hard to spot, even with his senses. The swordsman might have blocked them, were the circumstances different. But they weren’t, and now he was dead, and Tian didn’t want to follow his example.
The sword wanted to slide around inside of him. He had to hold it steady while running the Hell Suppressing Sutra to control the sudden explosion of sepsis. “Infection” didn’t do it justice. He’d have to do some serious surgery. The good news was that he had practiced his stitching a lot. The bad news was that he had never tried to repair his own intestines while they were severed and inside his body. It didn’t seem like a great way to learn how to do internal surgery. Hopefully there was some kind of Heavenly miracle medicine in that ring.
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“Here. I don’t see anything that looks like medicine. Or at least, not the kind of medicine that might help you. What can I do to help?” Liren asked.
Tian closed his eyes, sighed, and reached out his hand for the ring. “Stand guard. Someone will be coming to investigate the scene soon enough. Did you stow his body?”
“Yes, and concealed the traces as best I could. Want me to pick you up and run somewhere more hidden?”
“Want? Yes. Should you? No.” Tian turned his attention to the ring. “At least this guy knows how to pack. I was worried there would be another Suneater situation. The medicine supply is better than you think.”
Forcing himself to keep the detached voice going helped. It gave him yet another thing to focus on beyond the pain. Besides, if it helped keep Liren calm, it was worth the effort.
Tian pulled out a small jar, and gave it another sniff. He scooped a yellowy glob onto his finger, examined it carefully, then gave it a very tentative taste. “Goldenrod wound paste. Specifically intended for healing wounds with a lot of metal qi in them. Decent quality, I think, but I don’t have anything to compare it to.”
“How do I apply it?” Liren had recovered her snake head spear, and was raking the skies with her glare.
“Just smear it over the wound and wrap in a light bandage. Unfortunately, it's for external use only. I’m still going to have to do surgery.” Tian did his best to make it sound like he had to wash the pan again, as a bit of tonight’s dinner burned onto the surface and was resisting cleaning.
Tian quickly cleaned off his darts. They weren’t really right for acupuncture, but they were the best he had at the moment. “Time to see what theoretically unsound but practically correct acupuncture is like.”
“Brother?!”
“Oh, I said that out loud. Whoops. I had been doing so well with the detached voice thing. Eyes up, Sis. I’m counting on you to keep me safe.”
The Heavenly Swallows darts weren’t right for acupuncture. Skinny as they were, they were still far too thick. Didn’t matter. He could control them with his mind, freeing up his hands to do other work. That made them excellent needles. He started sinking the needles into the acupoints that should paralyze the nerves in his stomach, numbing the pain.
He couldn’t hold back a short scream. They really were much too large for the job.
Panting, he focused his senses on his stomach. Impossible to rely on his eyesight for this, he needed to use his qi and elemental senses to find the damaged tissue.
What followed was two hours of slow, painful, exploration and surgery. His crude acupuncture worked on some organs in some places, but not others. Things got jostled, or pulled. Tian considered himself quite experienced on the subject of painful sensations, but even he soon ran out of properly descriptive words. There was some noise, but Tian had to ignore it. The organs were slippery, coated in blood, bile or even less pleasant substances, and twitched when you weren’t expecting them to.
He very nearly missed a bleed. That wasn’t a good moment. He had been dead certain it hadn’t been there when he last checked his stomach. A frantic examination found more tiny cuts and bleeds opening. Remnants of the metal qi, still trapped in his body, still trying to kill him. He had to pause the surgery to frantically pull them together with the Demon Pulling Art and grind them down with the Hell Suppressing sutra.
The whole surgery was like that- every time he felt things were getting under control, a new problem opened up. Problems had to be dealt with quickly and correctly, as there might not be a second chance to fix them.
“I just need to spread it on the wound, then lightly bandage it, right?” Liren sounded breathless. Tian had his eyes closed, his full attention on the wound. The detached, slightly irritable doctor voice came easy.
“Use less than you think, just a thin smear. You should be able to slide a finger under the bandage once it’s tied. But don’t put any on me now, I’m in the middle of surgery for heaven’s sake!”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Tian cracked an eye and glanced over at Liren. Her hat was in pieces. She had long gashes up and down her arms, but she had kept her core safe.
“There is a Heavenly Person backing the Earthly bandits up the river. She came to investigate the fight, see if there wasn’t an opportunity. Thankfully, she wasn’t much stronger than us, and wasn’t willing to trade flesh for flesh and bone for bones. I didn’t kill her, but I ran her off.” Liren grinned through her exhaustion.
“Good sister!”
“Don’t mind all that, she didn’t break any bones so I will heal quick enough. Focus on yourself.”
“Mmm.”
It was fiddly. Very damned fiddly. At one point, Tian nearly lost his grip on the suture needle and experienced a moment of utter horror imagining the needle roaming loose inside his stomach cavity. He was able to hang on with the very tips of his thumb and index finger, the needle trembling, eager to fall. Feeling the call of the void.
After far longer than Tian would have wished, he got everything stitched up. Maybe not stitched perfectly correctly, but nothing was bleeding or leaking or otherwise making things worse. He had powerful body cultivation arts. He could heal the rest with cultivation and time.
“Now the ointment, please.”
Liren rushed over and started gently wiping the paste over Tian’s wounds. He controlled his flinch. She needed encouragement. “You are doing just fine. Thin layer, then gently wrap with a bandage. It didn’t go all the way through, so you don’t have to worry about the back.
“How did it go?” Liren asked, looking as concerned as she sounded.
“In time, I will make a complete recovery. Not even that much time, thanks to all the body refinement. Did he have anything good in his storage ring? I stopped looking once I found the wound paste.”
“He had a lot of things, but what’s most important is this, I think.” She held up a token, a white jade tablet as wide as two of his fingers. Inlaid was an elegant picture of the sun rising, its rays stretching out and covering the length of the token.
“Ah. Proof of identity in his sect. Like our rings.”
“I think so. Remember someone mentioned the ‘Radiant Dawn’ sect or something at the tea house? Pretty sure he was one of them. And judging by the contents of his storage ring, they aren’t a heretical sect. I haven’t heard of them before, but he was here to kill heretics, clearly.”
“He might have just been saying that to cover up his evil intentions. He was roaming around killing people on sight. That doesn’t seem orthodox.”
Liren just shook her head. Tian sighed. His first act in the secular world as a Heavenly Person was banditry. Somehow, it seemed very appropriate. In retrospect, they could have avoided the whole thing by pulling on their uniform robes and displaying their sect insignia. He didn’t regret killing the man, though. He regretted the trouble they were doubtless now in, but not the killing.
He could forgive a lot. He did forgive a lot. He thought he was quite tolerant. He was a little sensitive about being called girly, but that was manageable. It was the hurt the swordsman caused Liren. That, Tian could not forgive.