Sky Pride

Tian’s awareness spread through the battlefield. He catalogued the living and the dead, then sorted the dying quickly and the dying slow. The mortals didn’t have organized triage. That wouldn’t do. For that matter, neither did the cultivators. They really were mercenaries, and not hired as a unit either. He would have to take charge.

“Liren? I’ll count on you to guard my back and keep people in order.”

“Always.” She fixed her hat and pulled her robes straight. She didn’t bother putting away her spear.

Tian cupped his hands to his mouth. “ATTENTION! I AM A MEDIC. BRING THOSE WHO ARE WOUNDED AND CANNOT STABILIZE THEMSELVES TO ME FOR TRIAGE. THOSE WHO HAVE MEDICINE, USE YOUR OWN MEDICINE FIRST. REMAIN CALM, OBEY YOUR OFFICERS, AND DON’T BE SLOW!”

He let his qi billow, covering the caravan. His words would be obeyed.

Liren was hard at work, cutting lines into the trampled grass. Wards were marked with cloth, most urgent here, somewhat urgent, too far gone to save, those who didn’t need saving at all. His awareness flickered over the cultivators. They all had wounds. Only two needed urgent help, the rest would keep.

“You and you! Drag those two over to me!”

“Yes, Senior!”

Stab wounds, bleeding, lingering vital energy keeping the wounds from healing. Arteries hacked open, organs sliced. Infection setting in fast. Oh yes. It was like he never left. He had been so much younger then, though it was only yesterday he knelt on the red sands and buried his hands in a brother’s guts, trying to push them back inside where they belonged.

His delicate fingers flicked out, sending carefully targeted clumps of medicinal powder where they were needed. Clean water washed wounds, while qi pressure stopped the flow of blood. Needle and thread bound together what was cut, and the demon pulling art ripped away the sickness. It took moments. It was not gentle. But the cultivator was stable, and he was free to turn his attention to the rest of the critically wounded.

“Ancestors, he barely flicked his fingers-”

“I’m healed. I’m… I’m healed. I’m not going to die.”

“Old Rou, Old Rou! Stay down you old fool, you will rip open your stitches.”

“You don’t understand, I’m not going to die.”

“You will if you don’t stay down!”

Tian ignored the chatter. The mortals were in worse shape, and dying faster. He needed to delegate.

“You, you and you! And you too! Sort ‘em out, don’t just pile them up. Sister Hong, tell them where to put people. Bring him to me for now.” He pointed to a soldier with an arrow in his neck who managed, against all seeming justice, to not die.

Time stopped being measured in minutes, if it ever had been. It was measured in heartbeats. In breaths and drops of blood. Measured in stitches per second, and speed of infection versus medicinal tolerance. There was only one patient. The one in front of him. It’s just that the patent’s wounds changed as soon as he had them patched up.

“Lord Immortal has treated all the critically wounded. The rest will heal on their own, no need to trouble yourself further.” He recognized the voice, distantly, but it wasn’t important. He was still in the triage place.

“The hell I have! You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you! Get your asses over here! You stopped the bleeding, but what about the infection? Front and center. NOW! The rest of you, start sorting out the broken bones. See how the limbs are swelling? You think those can’t turn gangrenous? Get them sorted!”

Tian had been practicing pushing vital energy into his voice since he first visited Burning Flag City. The effect at the Heavenly Realm was magnified. The soldiers and teamsters moved as though they were injected with chicken blood.

Some time later, the same familiar voice returned. “Lord Immortal has already displayed boundless compassion. It is shameful, but could we impose on you to treat one more? We managed to capture one of the shamans alive. We want to make sure he lives long enough to be interrogated.”

Tian paused. He had healed heretics, once. He knew exactly what would happen to them- torture, then execution. He didn’t imagine the fate of the shaman would be any better. Did it make a difference if they were essentially rebels, as opposed to heretics?

He found that it did. Healing the heretics had made him sick. Knowing he was assisting torture made him sick. He wasn’t in the sect anymore. Not fourteen, not feeling pressured by his seniors and sense of duty. Maybe people would die because they failed to gather some crucial piece of information, but he didn’t really believe it. He had been an earthly realm cultivator not so long ago, and he didn’t know a single damn thing worth knowing about the war in the Redstone Wastes. Strategically, anyway. He didn’t imagine the shaman knew more than he did. Most of all though, he didn’t want to assist torture. Simple as that.

“No.”

Silence gathered. He felt more than saw the man bow silently and retreat. He kept his hands moving, setting the broken leg of the soldier in front of him. The soldier was biting hard on a leather strap, the whites of his eyes showing as he hyperventilated. His leg had been broken in three places, one a crushing wound that compacted the bone inward. Repairing them was not quick, nor easy, nor painless. Tian was doing a lot of mechanical manipulation, and his rough acupuncture wasn’t doing much to ease the soldier’s condition.

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It went on until it stopped. Everyone was as healed as they were going to get without time and rest. The battlefield was cleaned up. To Tian’s quiet surprise, prisoners were taken, and not killed on the spot. For some reason, he had assumed they would be. He stood, stretching his back. Once again, there was no satisfying crunch or click. It just felt nice. That would be enough.

“Heavenly Immortal, on behalf of all us brothers, thank you for your lifesaving grace.”

Tian looked down. There was a soldier on one knee in front of him, his fist clasped, the white plume on his helmet stained with dust and blood. A commander, and not one who stood at the rear giving orders. A true battlefield general.

“Duty needs neither excuse nor thanks, though I appreciate it. And I consider it my duty. Please rise.”

“My thanks again. We expected to be attacked, of course, but we thought our contingency plan for the appearance of a Grand Shaman would be enough. Were it not for your intervention, I fear the battle would be lost.”

And with it, Burning Flag City in all likelihood. Tian smiled slightly. “We were here to see an old friend anyhow. Might as well make ourselves useful. Speaking of, Liren-”

“He stopped by earlier.” Her voice had gone a bit odd. Tian looked over at her, seeing her gazing at a rather heroic looking youth. For some reason, that bothered Tian. “And I found who we are looking for.”

“No! That easy?” Tian blinked.

She snorted. “Finding him was the easy part. It’s the making him safe that’s going to be hard.”

That had been the second part of what Merciless had said, wasn’t it? Which meant managing his irritation would be a little more difficult.

The commander of the White Horse Fellows followed Tian’s gaze. He clearly wanted to ask something, but stayed silent. Tian snorted and said, “Ask.”

“The immortals were looking for Imperial Inquisitor Hanshen?”

“No, or not for his own sake. We were looking for the boy. What can you tell me about him?”

“His name is Han Zicheng, from Bluestone City. Inquisitor Henshen has taken him as a student and as his sword carrying attendant. I know little else about him, Lord Immortal. He is famously silent. He practices martial arts, and has acquitted himself well in several battles along the journey, including this one.”

Tian nodded. “Hates liars?”

“I regret that I do not know the answer, Lord Immortal.”

Tian cupped his fist, bowed slightly, and said “We just need a word with Hanshen. Please, see to your troops. There was nothing worth mentioning between here and the city as we flew over, but that was then.”

They found Censor Hanshen, now Imperial Inquisitor Hanshen, or colloquially, King of Hell Hanshen, sitting in his black carriage with a book. The paper binding the cover was worn shiny, the faded letters of the title dimmed to grey from vivid black.

“I don’t believe I have read The Rituals of Zhou, Censor. Worth reading?”

The Censor smiled, a startling expression on his severe face. He looked paler than Tian remembered. But then, Hanshen had been traveling under the sun a great deal when he traveled with them. It seemed he spent most of his time in the coach, these days.

“It is a little difficult to read, if you don’t understand the context. Some of the terms are a bit arcane. But I would say it is one of the most worthwhile books anyone could read. You can hardly understand ethics without it. Congratulations, Heavenly Immortal. There wasn’t a good moment to say so earlier, and I must say I didn’t expect to see you again. At least, not in this life.”

The Censor’s voice was still high pitched, still with that effortless elegance that comes from a lifetime of careful etiquette. Tian smiled, both at hearing the familiar voice and how carefully the Censor was picking his words.

“We aren’t being listened to, right now. I would know if our “reliable allies” from the Radiant Dawn were listening in, and they aren’t strong enough to read your mind. It is good to see you again, Censor.”

“And you. Congratulations to you and Immortal Hong both. But what brings you here? I was sure you were on the Mountain when it was sealed.”

“I was. Do you know your attendant’s background?”

“Better than he does, I suspect. It seems there was something extra in the Count of Jin’s ancestry that didn’t make the official records.”

“No! He’s Little Treasure’s brother?”

“Half brother. Unofficially acknowledged, due to his being born on the wrong side of the bedroom door.”

“What does it matter what side of the door he was born on? And how can something be acknowledged unofficially?” Tian gave Censor Hanshen a worried look.

“I’d forgotten your aversion to idioms. He’s a bastard. The Count grew fond of a maid before he assumed his title, and she wasn’t suitable for even a concubinage. Certainly not before a proper wife had been wed and an heir produced. He didn’t treat her harshly, and looked after the boy even after she died. So he has ‘acknowledged’ the parentage, but not officially. The boy isn’t in the Jin family record. I believe they met for the first time not long after you and I met.”

“His mother died.” Tian stretched the words out carefully. He had read those histories, after all, and inconvenient maids and their children rarely had happy endings.

“One of several thousand deaths during a cholera outbreak, I’m afraid. Little Han was terribly sick, but managed to survive. I have wondered if that was the reason he is mute, though the doctors tell me they are almost certainly unrelated. His father arranged his adoption with the widow of a guardsman. By all accounts, he loves her as his mother, and she treated him as her born son.”

“He’s mute?”

“According to him, he always has been. I take it there is more to his background than even I expected?”

“Yes. His… ultimate great grandfather is still alive on the mountain. High up on the mountain. Higher than the Monastery, in fact.”

The already pale Hanshen managed to get a few shades paler. “Ah. I didn’t know there was anything higher than that.”

“From your perspective, they might as well not exist. The same could be said for almost every cultivator in the kingdom, in fact. Their main function, as far as the kingdom is concerned, is to sit up on the mountain and do nothing, deterring other, equally powerful, people from doing something. Your attendant has activated some trace of his ancestral bloodline, and his grandfather found out. We are here to make him safe from Heavenly Realm immortals, at least for a little while.”

“How can any mortal be made safe from Heavenly Realm immortals?” Hanshen spread his hands helplessly.

“If yet more immortals interfere.” Tian smiled, happily finding both a good solution to his problem and the opportunity to vent his irritation. “As well as through your very favorite thing. Education.”