Sky Pride

Tian and Hong didn’t wait around for a demonstration of what the waiters were going to do with their pig butchering knives. Hong slapped the blades out of their hands, unfortunately breaking quite a few of the hands in the process. Once they were all herded together and restrained, the immortals conferred. It was agreed that the waiters were enchanted, because they weren’t animated corpses or controlled by gu, or puppets.

“What a strange array. Technically an illusion array, I think, but one aimed at manipulating emotions working with the erhu. It limited our ability to sense their immortal breath until we were right on top of them too. I wonder where he got it?” Tian muttered.

“Search me. He doesn’t look like one of the Five Elements Courtyard people. Presumably heretics have their own array makers. We’ll figure it out. Right now, we need to fix these waiters.” Hong said.

“Mmm. I’ve never seen someone enchanted before. I’m quite eager to learn how to cure them.” Tian nodded at Hong. “Go on.”

She stared back at him.

He made a little encouraging gesture. She spread her hands and gave him a look he could feel through her veil.

“You are the doctor-in-training. I thought you knew how to cure it.”

“Me? How would I know? You have that pointy stick array breaking technique. Just poke them.”

“You can shut down qi around you by gibbering at the air. Why can’t you just shout in their ear for a bit?”

“Because if it disrupted all qi everywhere, I would explode? As would everything around me?” Tian thought he sounded very patient.

Their productive conversation was interrupted by the sound of someone being violently sick, and the soft sobs of a child. Tian and Hong turned around. Censor Henshen was rubbing Little Treasure’s back and trying to comfort him with Daoist Lan. The remaining survivors were looking around the charnel house restaurant. Not all could keep their composure.

“Hey, Brother?” Hong softly asked. Tian didn’t need to hear the rest of the words. Their footprints were clear on the floor. Like tidy stamps showing where they went, dipped in blood.

“We sneer at the cold hearts in the Monastery, and then we go right ahead and ignore the mortals too. I’ll meditate on it.” Tian sighed and started rushing around the room, pulling out bandages and such herbs as could be used for mortal medicine. It wasn’t much, but he was slowly stocking up. He found himself tying a lot of tourniquets very, very quickly.

“Censor Henshen, Little Treasure, how are the two of you doing? Any feeling of lightheadedness? A strong urge to sleep?”

“Yes to both.” The Censor’s voice was higher pitched than his usual high voice, and quite sharp. He caught himself and added. “Thank you for your concern, Immortal Tian.”

“I’m. I’m okay. Thank you, Immortal Tian. Are you and Immortal Hong okay?” Treasure tried to sound composed with a snotty face and runny eyes. Tian didn’t look away from the tourniquet he was tying. The man would have to learn to live without an arm, but with a bit of luck, he would live.

“We are okay. It’s unpleasant to hear, but you get used to these sorts of scenes as you walk the road to immortality. Not that it doesn’t leave a mark on you. It does. But you learn to deal with it. You see a nightmare. I just see a mess, and people that need my help.” Tian kept his voice calm. “Speaking of, Daoist Lan, have you entered the Medicine Formulating Halls yet? Or, dare I hope, the Hospital?”

“Yes. To both. Damn me for a fool and a coward, yes to both. Sorry, little boy. Stay with this nice man. Aunty Lan needs to go to work now.”

Tian heard the crisp sound of two hands slapping a face, and hurried footsteps. “Usual triage. far left is-”

“No need to explain, Fellow Daoist. With your permission, I will lead from here.”

“Please.” Tian nodded. He was a firm believer in not overestimating oneself, and while she might not be a fighter, Daoist Lan had half a century of medical training more than he did.

There weren’t many living wounded. The array worked as a counterpoint to the music being played by the blind cultivator. Yang qi was excited in the diners. Anger flushed the blood and flesh with vigor. The qi was then drained away. Running down the gutters into whatever lay below. The ones who fainted were lucky, in a way. They didn’t get cut up by their fellow diners. The ones who did often lacked the strength to keep their hearts beating.

Daoist Lan and Tian neatly split the work- she got people stable, he kept them alive long enough for her to stabilize them. It worked better than Tian hoped. This was entirely due to Daoist Lan, and his speedy hand with a tourniquet.

Daoist Lan had more than adequate medicine for mortals. She was lightning quick tying off spurting veins and arteries with specially treated thread. She even knew how to use long tweezers to reach inside the muscle, pull out the severed arteries to where she could work on them, and then tie them off. Tian watched her as carefully as he could manage. Every move she made was worth more than a sack of spirit crystals to him.

One of the casually awful things Tian had learned working at the hospital was that blood vessels could contract when cut, making them impossible to reach. Blood shooting out of a mass of muscle, tendon, facia, with no way to stop it other than a tourniquet or the most brutal of emergency surgery… always horrible to see, even if you had seen it before. He had seen doctors fish out the arteries with tweezers before. None did it as fast as Daoist Lan. Tian learned a lot watching her. He had learned an awful lot, observing doctors, but her deft hands were a revelation.

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“Not for nothing are the doctors of the Bamboo Medicine Hut revered. My thanks, Daoist Lan.” Tian bowed to the doctor after the last patient was stabilized.

“For what? You two figured out what was happening and broke the spell. That’s what saved us. Damn me for a fool! Damn me for a fool and a coward! I was so bound up in the thought of what those vile men intended, so tied up with the fact that I, that, I, I… didn’t even hesitate. I didn’t even hesitate, it was like all the times I practiced and I didn’t even think about it I just stabbed and it went right in, went right in, it’s not supposed to go in like that, the skull is there to protect the brain, it’s not supposed to go in like that-”

“Sister Liren, please!”

“En. Daoist Lan. RETURN.”

They managed to get the doctor settled down eventually, and encouraged her to talk. Daoist Lan roamed the Broadsky Kingdom, offering her services to mortals and immortals alike, for whatever they could spare or nothing at all. In this way, she said, she cultivated both her skills and her heart. Her living expenses were covered by missions from the Bamboo Medicine Hut.

She was coming back from a caravan escort mission. Part of the arrangement had been that she provided healing for the caravaneers and their mortal families, all of which had gone quite well. Until it hadn’t, and the chief guard fell out with the caravan master, resulting in the whole shipment being stranded in a village upriver. She was making her way down to Bluestone City to beg the Ancient Crane Monastery to send someone over to collect the shipment and deliver it the rest of the way.

She had reasonably high hopes. Quite a few of the ingredients were for medicines intended for the Monastery. It was just bad luck that she was in the inn tonight. Worse luck that she ran into three fellows she had met over the years in unfriendly circumstances. She hadn’t panicked, though. She had trained.

One of the consequences of Tian and Hong’s demonstration with Elder Feng was that the disciples of the Bamboo Medicine Hut understood just how utterly incapable they were of anything resembling actual fighting. So they talked to their guards, who were understandably kind about their employer’s deficiencies, and suggested a simple remedy.

Don’t learn how to fight. It’s a full time job, and they aren’t suited for it. Learn how to run, and learn one attack. Just one. One thing that you can do instantly, without thinking, in any circumstances. Practice it obsessively. Doctor Lan chose a simple sword thrust. It worked. And now she had to live with that fact.

Tian and Hong gave her what comfort they could, and reminded her that she had a hospital full of people who had been exactly where she was now. They would listen and not despise her when she talked.

“I thought I recognized the two of you. I wasn’t there when you visited, but the descriptions matched. Word got around in a big hurry. I got at least five letters mentioning you.” She half laughed.

Once they had their party settled as well as they could manage, Liren nudged Tian. “We still haven’t found the kids. And that blood is going somewhere.”

“Mmm. Let’s finish clearing the building, then. With our luck, anything nasty in the basement will have run off and we’ll have to chase it down.” Tian muttered.

“Oh, what unusual optimism! I was thinking it was eagerly waiting for us down there, all covered in tentacles and venom.” Hong looked as wry as only someone who had killed demons could.

“I’m optimistic. I’m very optimistic! What nonsense are you talking about now?” The two stood and started exploring the room, then the rest of the inn. Not minding the way the mortals, and one very bemused immortal, watched the pair bicker like the fifteen year old kids that they were. Trailing bloody footprints as they went.

The entrance to the basement wasn’t hidden. There was a stout wooden door, sealed with iron bands and a heavy lock. Etchings in the metal suggested it had been protected by the array that covered the dining room. Since that was now destroyed, the rest of the door was trivial to remove. Hong grabbed a metal strap and ripped out the whole doorframe.

“Oh, gross.” She wrinkled her nose. Tian couldn’t smell anything other than stone. “It’s yin qi.”

“What’s wrong with yin qi?”

“Stick your head in and see for yourself.”

Tian did.

“Oh, gross.”

“Right? It’s like someone turned farts and sadness into a tar and now we are breathing it in as it soaks into our hair.” Liren pulled out the light array from her storage ring and activated it. There were oil lamps ready to be lit next to the stairs, but neither of them cared to trust them.

The stairs were made of wood, with the posts set on, or in, stone. The walls were rough, unfinished, clearly a natural cave that the inn had been built over. The light bounced off the gray rough walls, fading as the stairs went deeper and twisted from side to side.

“A dragon cave.” Liren muttered.

“Dragon? You think a dragon lives here?”

“No, but that’s what my sisters call it. Narrow and twisty and made from limestone. I don’t know if this is limestone though.”

“Mmm.”

They could hear noises coming from below. Thudding and tapping, clacking and chimes. Their steps were light, but very steady.

As they got deeper, they started finding large stone jars set in the wall. Each was sealed and the mouth covered with bright red cloth. A little label hung around each jar with a name and a date of creation.

Tian cracked one open. “Wine. Strong wine. Smells like a pile of cucumbers got smashed into a barnyard at high speed.”

“You just have no appreciation for wine.” Hong sniffed.

“Oh, and you do?”

“No, but that’s no reason not to judge you for your ignorance.”

Tian ignored Liren with a senior’s dignity and benevolence, silently swearing to take revenge at the first opportunity.

“There is a heap of small jars on that little landing there, and a big ladle. You think they just portion it out when people order it?” He asked.

“Yep.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Pipes descended from the ceiling, dripping red and black and stinking to high heaven. The blood flowed into a vast open vat, heated gently by an array carved into the floor, and fueled by spirit stones. Two tall kids stirred the vat periodically, tossing fistfulls of powders in, dumping shining grains of steamed rice in, keeping the process going. Around them, around the vat, were the village children, or what remained of them.

Their eyes were hollow, their limbs bone thin. They banged on little drums and shook rattles and tapped chimes, making a steady, cheerful music for their endless dance. Their feet were bloody.

“Sister Liren…”

“Do I dare? They might die on the spot!” Her voice was soft, almost scared.

“They will die for certain if they don’t wake from the enchantment. Your call is filled with fire and yang qi. You are exactly who they need, right now.” Tian’s voice was equally soft.

Tian read the tag hanging from the enormous jars stowed at the bottom of the cave. Five of them, each taller than Hong. “Tribute Wine For The True Emperor.” Whatever twist of revulsion pointed them here from the river terminated at these five jars.

“Come back!”

Something broke. Some thread snapped with a twang. And this time, the light that filled the room was pure gold.