Little Bing was too thin. She didn’t want to drink the water her mother offered her, even though her sunken eyes and yellowing skin said she needed it. The coughs were dry, ripping violence, shaking her body seizure hard. He didn’t need to touch her forehead or check her pulse to know that she was running a high fever. Much too high. Her mother put a cool cloth on her forehead, which was better than nothing. Throwing a thimble of water on a blazing house fire was better than nothing too, and about as useful.
Tian found a teacup next to the bed, and the teapot that had brewed the duckweed tea. He gave them a sniff. About what he expected. Water and wood qi, water dominant, cooling, yin. Correct, but insufficient. He could rip the disease out of the girl with the demon pulling art. A trivial effort, in fact, and he certainly would do so if necessary, but that wouldn’t help the next person. Finding a better treatment, one that mortals could use, would be much better.
He quickly sorted through the herbs and medicines he had on hand. He couldn’t use any of them; they were so potent, they would kill the girl rather than healing her. Nevertheless, they might provide a clue.
“Madam? This little daoist is surnamed Tian. I was sent by Doctor Jin. I have some medical training, and may be of some help. May I have your permission to treat your daughter?” It had been drilled in him endlessly. So long as the opportunity to ask existed, you did.
“Can you help, Priest Tian?”
“Just Student Tian or Daoist Scholar Tian, I do not preach. And yes, I believe I can. May I?”
She waved him over urgently. Tian reached out and took a thin wrist, gently pressing two fingers to the inside of it, lightly tapping and resting them against Little Bing’s feverish skin.
“Little Bing, right? Let me tell you what I am doing right now. I am reading your pulse. We all know you have a fever, but I am using this chance to see exactly what is going on inside of you, and what I should do to make it better.”
He was understating it more than a little bit. His qi had thoroughly scoured Little Bing’s body, seeing the damage the disease was causing in the lungs and the lymph glands. It was rather straightforward, in an unpleasant sort of way. There was no demonic taint to it, no trace of the supernatural lingered in her. It was just sickness, of a very mortal kind. Medicine that cooled the body and withheld fuel for the fires would help restore the body to balance and encourage recovery. Which was its own sort of problem.
Tian didn’t know what grew around here, but if people were resorting to making medicine from duckweed in the canals, the answer was probably “Not much of use.” Both mother and daughter looked thin, and were here because they couldn’t afford proper medical care. Even if there was appropriate food and medicine, if it cost more than nothing, they couldn’t afford it. Neither could most people, probably.
Food was often the best medicine. Many doctors prescribed specific meals and diets to treat diseases. Tian had been trained that way as well. How useless, in a city teetering on the edge of famine. How cruel to suggest food to cure a plague.
Doctor Jin had been exactly correct. The best thing they could do would be to find the source of the sickness and get rid of it. The next best thing would be to find ways to make the medicine more effective. Last of all would be to find ways to reduce symptoms.
Tian briefly considered what would appear least miraculous to the locals, and opted for acupuncture. Being a mountain ascetic was one thing. Announcing that immortals had descended to cure the plague was quite another. From what he heard, such things rarely turned out well for anyone, immortals included. His acupuncture was… basic… but so was this illness. He was just rebalancing her qi and harmonizing the flow of vital energy through her organs. It wouldn’t heal her, but it would stabilize her. Once she was stable, he could try and find a better solution than the Demon Pulling Art.
“Let me know if you feel any pain or discomfort.” Tian pulled out the needles he borrowed from Doctor Jin, and quickly checked them over. They appeared to be in adequate condition, but he was trained to a higher standard. A quick application of qi left them better than new. Little Bing’s acupoints were faint, with barely enough vital energy flowing through them to make them visible. It was enough.
The long silver needles were placed with exacting care. Tian had memorized the Venerable Earth’s Blessings’ book on acupuncture, skipping the sections on theory as instructed. He knew where the needles needed to be placed to reduce swelling and inflammation in the lymph nodes, and where they must go to reduce the yang qi in the lungs.
Tian felt a little shiver run up his back watching the flow of vital energy move through Little Bing. The pulses moved, hit his needles, then… moved differently. They were diverted, slowed, stopped in some places, while the vital energy flowed even more quickly in others. It was like watching the farmers irrigate their fields. They drew one gate open, and the water flowed in. Opened another, and it flowed away. Close two and open a third, the water turned ninety degrees and irrigated some other paddy. So long as the water could flow, it did. Human wisdom merely guided it. With enough preparation, with enough understanding, all it took was a feather-light touch.
“Baby?”
“Mom, I’m thirsty.”
“Here, just a sip. A little sip.”
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“More, Mom.”
“Okay, bigger sip.”
“More.”
“As much as you like, baby. As much as you like.” Little Bing’s mother held the cup for her daughter, taking aching care not to disturb any of the needles. Silent tears ran down her face and into her smiling mouth.
“Priest Tian, is she cured?”
“No. This is just suppressing the illness, giving her body a chance to heal itself. I’m going to give her some medicine, see how it does, then see what further steps should be taken.” Tian swiftly withdrew the needles, carefully cleaning them before putting them back in the thick cloth roll. “This is the duckweed you have prepared?”
“Yes, yes.”
“I have some mountain lettuce here, very cooling and yin. Just a little bit. A very little bit.” Tian tore off a fingernail sized piece of lettuce picked on the slopes of Ancient Crane Mountain. It was, by the standards of the low country, seething with vital energy. Too much was as bad as not enough. He hesitated a second, then tore the little piece in half, then in half again, and added the tiny piece to a mortar with the duckweed. It was carefully ground into a paste, then the paste was put into a teapot with ample water.
“Let this boil for the time it takes a stick of incense to burn. A full, rolling boil, big bubbles, not a simmer. Do you have enough charcoal?”
“Yes, thank you Priest. Bless you!”
“Thank me once she is cured. I am going to check on the other patients now. I will be back once I have done my rounds, however long that may take. I expect to be here all day, so don’t be alarmed. If there is a problem, yell and I will hear you.”
Tian gave Little Bing’s hand a gentle squeeze. “When I was a child, I was much sicker than you. I was sick for years and years. But look at me now! Did you know I can jump very high?” He arched an eyebrow at Little Bing. “It’s true. Really, really high. AND I am almost as good as a crane at catching frogs.”
Little Bing gave him a doubting look. “Almost as good?”
“I swear I don’t know how she does it, but when I go hunting frogs with Burning Heaven, she always gets the frogs before I can. I tell you, Little Bing, one time, there was a frog THIS BIG and I practically had my hand on it, practically had my hand on it and that sneaky bird still managed to grab it before me. Then ate it right in front of me, not even leaving me a leg! Now is that fair?”
Little Bing shook her head but didn’t look convinced.
“I’ll be back in a little while. We can discuss frog catching and other important matters then.”
Tian quickly learned two things. The first was that while everyone staying in the boarding house was deathly ill, not all of them had the plague. The second thing was that no force short of actual violence could persuade them to stop calling him Daoist Priest Tian. Strictly speaking, it was a correct way to address him. Equally strictly speaking, nobody he knew ever referred to themselves that way, so it was intensely awkward.
It didn’t cost anything to tolerate it, and it made the patients feel better, so he just went along with it. There didn’t seem to be any use in insisting.
Tian checked back in on Little Bing periodically, to observe the effects of the medicine. Unsurprisingly, her vital energy made a roaring recovery. Her organs were certainly in better balance, and the excess yang was sharply reduced. However, when he took her pulse, it was clear the effects were temporary. It would be an effective treatment if he could ensure she took the medicine regularly for a week or two with acupuncture as needed, but that was flatly impossible. The duckweed by itself couldn’t do the job, and acupuncture took a highly trained professional.
There were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of afflicted people, both inside the city and outside of it. He had a lot of lettuce, but not that much. There weren’t nearly enough doctors either.
Could moxibustion be a possible successful treatment option? Probably not, that was focused on warming acupoints and, so far as Tian knew, combating yin phase diseases. It really wasn’t something he knew much about.
He didn’t let the patients see him sigh. He didn’t know why he was so frustrated. He was not a qualified doctor, at least by the standards of people whose opinions he cared about. Why should a student think they could cure a plague when experienced doctors couldn’t? It would be shocking if he could.
He was content to be shocking. Being ordinary was unpleasant. Knowing you couldn’t fix the problem in front of you was unpleasant. He eventually wound up using the Demon Pulling Art to draw all the sickness to a spot near the skin (under the guise of acupuncture, to explain the sudden redness and swelling) then used a very precise application of qi to destroy it. He didn’t try to draw it into himself. He wasn’t at all sure how a mortal would tolerate that, and was very sure they didn’t have a meaningful amount of vital energy they could stand to lose.
The application of destructive qi was an extension of a few things he had tried over the years, but had its origins in Thunderous Palms. Those tiny vibrating threads of vital energy could leave the exterior of something intact, while destroying the interior. In theory, a Heavenly Realm palm art should be possible using those same principles but applying qi. He thought about it as he worked his way through the boarding house, giving everyone strict instructions to stay in bed even if they felt better.
“At least one full day of bed rest, you hear me? I shan’t be held responsible if you don’t listen and fall sick again. At most, you can get up enough to clean up the place.”
Little Third and his friends had turned up early and dutifully cleaned out the bedpans. They were then roped into learning the fundamental arts of pillow fluffing and blanket arranging, from which all orderly skills one day developed. Once he had finished his rounds for the day, he hauled the kids to the back of the boarding house.
“Okay, we can all agree being strong is awesome, right?”
There were a lot of nodding little faces.
“And eating good things is awesome. Especially if nobody knows about the secret good food except you.”
Even more nodding ensued, as well as some hopeful looks.
“Alright kids, I’m going to teach you some Mountain Ascetic tricks, and you are going to love them. These two legendary secret techniques, taught to me by a wandering ancient of unfathomable power, saved my life when I was a kid. Now I’m teaching them to you, and I hope you will one day pass them on to others. Got it? Good. Now, let’s learn the basic movements for the Sunnyvale Retirement Community for Active Senior Living Calesthenics, and once we’ve worked up an appetite, we can talk about my favorite exercise, Gourmet.”