Chang Heng opened his eyes to a room he had never seen before. It was rich, to say the least, everything in it screaming how expensive it was; from the embroidered carpet, its variety of colours each letting off the barest hint of Qi, to the paintings on the walls, of a beauty he could lose himself in, the curtains of exquisite quality, their cream-yellow tint barely hiding the red light of a setting sun, and the furniture, made from some mysterious wood, elegant flowers and shapes carved into it.
The only eyesore was an old man in a corner. Despite his sitting position, his absurd height was made more than obvious, with a bald head of a weird, elongated shape, his skin covered in the darker spots typical of old age. His huge, tortuous hands were blackened with ink, holding a book, with one more opened on his lap. His eyes, sunken and dark, stared at it almost like prey.
He was Chang Ling, better known as Old Man Ling by the boy, his aura for once restrained.
Chang Heng tried to call to him, but the pain in his chest flared as he did, only letting him emit a cry mixed with a grunt.
The old man didn't react at all, but the door, after a clicking sound, opened. A woman walked in.
She was short and looked older than his mother, but her skin was unblemished by the world in its perfection, her small nose and stern eyes giving her the looks of a teacher, someone used to giving orders and judging. Her aura made it evident she was in the Second Awakening Stage, but he couldn't discern how far she was in it.
She came to his side- he just realised he was lying in a huge, soft bed- and started touching various parts of his body without saying a word.
“Where am I, what are you doing to- ugh- to me?”
She finally looked him in the eyes, hers getting even sterner, somehow.
“What are you doing to me, Doctor. Where am I, Doctor.”
He wanted to retort, but his mind went to the last person who tried to defy someone in a higher stage. It shut him up, even as he tried to force the image away from him.
When her hands got closer to his most aching wounds, he found the strength to speak again.
“What is going on, Doctor?”
She looked at him like he was an idiot.
“I'm checking your wounds. I'm here to heal you from some of them. Now, let your body accept my Qi. I need to examine them properly and distinguish which came to be during your fight or after.”
A moment later, he felt a slight pressure coming from her hands, despite her muscles not tensing at all. It wasn't his skin that felt it, but something else he couldn’t define with a word.
With ease, he let that pressure enter him. Obviously, he recognised it as the woman's Qi, but it felt far different from the heavy aura of the powerful Cultivators he had met, or the absurd empowerment of his cousin's sword. Despite her serious, slightly annoyed expression, it was gentle in its movements, calmly flowing through his body.
When it reached the hurting parts of his body, it inflicted no pain.
“Why are you healing only some of my wounds, Doctor?”
“Ask it to the City Lord. He paid me a special price for your case, even if I didn't ask him to.”
Silence came back in the room, Old Man Ling’s turning of pages the only sound to occasionally break it.
Eventually, the doctor left the room, only to come back a few minutes later, bringing with her a few wooden boxes.
She told him to stay silent and perfectly still for the incoming process, and he obeyed.
It started with acupuncture, sharp needles inserted in various parts of his body. Some, like the areas surrounding his fractures, he could make sense of, while others, such as his neck or legs, appeared almost decorative. He was left there, wondering about their effects, as she started another procedure entirely, extracting from the boxes an amount of instruments, herbs, animal parts and more that shouldn't have fit inside of them.
He wanted to ask, but his body had gone limp. At least, it was hurting much less.
She mumbled something about having already seen him once already, but he wasn’t sure he heard right.
The various materials were treated in a multitude of ways, some heated, some broken and fined into dust, some cut into small pieces, melted, mixed and more. Chang Heng’s sense of time slowly slipped from him as he looked at the complex process. He didn't understand any of it, but it was incredibly fascinating to watch her and to try and make sense of her actions.
In the end, she had produced a dark-brown tinture that released light, earthly smells.
She looked at him and inserted some more needles while removing others.
“For this next part, avoid Cultivating, moving Qi, Stamina or Vitality completely. If you do, you’ll get the wrong kind of attention from the Heavens.”
He wanted to ask why, but couldn’t. Someone else could and did, though: Old Man Ling.
His eyes were now filling with curiosity, as he stopped reading and started observing the process.
“Why? How will it affect your work?”
She looked at him with an amount of respect the boy hadn’t received earlier.
“I am the best doctor and healer of this city, but the healing arts here are… incomplete, unrefined, to say the least. So, to make it all smoother and more effective, we ask for the help of the Heavens, the Living Dao, the Truths…”
She began working with different herbs and materials, the process this time leaning more into the esoteric; some were burned with candles, the ashes mixed into a new paste, used to draw on the floor around him, or straight up on his body, while others were ground up into dust and tossed into the air.
As she did all this, she kept explaining to them.
“We gift part of the essence of the herbs by burning them in specific ways, or use what they leave us as a bridge, communicate in the unspoken language of mysticism… through these arts, we can have a conversation with the Heavens, and ask for their help. With my knowledge as an alchemist and a doctor, I rely on the innate elements that compose the living world, so that I can be helped in healing the living world. But this same process, if done by someone else, even with the exact same method, will have different results. There is a reason I call this an art.”
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“Where does Cultivating come in play in this process?” the old man doubted.
“To Cultivate is to twist what the Heavens gifted to us as humans. We don’t burn the same energies as mortals when we run, now we do when we heal, and we can use Qi to accomplish miracles that no man or woman is supposed to achieve. We were born humans in a way the Heavens intended, and forcefully changed it via Cultivation, making us more of their enemy as we grow apart from them, and steal the Qi that gives the world life to fuel these changes.
Some can be in their graces, sure, and different species change in different ways, but it is a truth that we are spitting in what they gifted us. While asking for help, we are making use of herbs and tools, but not our bodies for a reason; we attract their attention, but if we “taint” ourselves as they look, we won’t get their help, but either indifference, or their ire instead.”
Chang Ling jotted down something, as the boy could only listen in silence.
As time passed, the night came, and he fell asleep comfortably in the huge bed, despite the woman working on his body.
…
He woke up with hands shaking him.
They hid callouses behind a subtle layer of softness and carried themselves with restrained strength. Chang Heng, even in his daze, recognised them as his mother’s, Chang Li.
“Hen-Hen, wake up.” She whispered.
“What the… what is… going on, Mother?”
“We are going away, come on, get up.”
His mind was pulled away from any semblance of grogginess at her words.
“Away? Where, why?” as he asked her, he gently pushed her hands away.
Another voice came.
“We don’t know where yet, but this is the only chance we have.” It was his father’s, Chang Jun. “We didn’t have the time to prepare anything, so we’ll have to improvise. If it weren’t for the second half of the fights being postponed, we wouldn’t even have gotten the opportunity to get to you.”
“Come on, Hen-Hen, let’s go. There is only so much time before the Old Relic notices us here.”
“Or someone else that we aren’t in our rooms, and notifies the Patriarch. The proper thing to do, right now, is to move fast.”
His mother started tugging on his blankets, pulling them away, and he stood up in front of them, feeling small as always. Without time to think, he answered.
“Wait, stop… I… I don’t think I should be going.”
They froze, eyes wide.
“WHA- what are you talking about? Of course you should, why wouldn't you?!” his mother, Chang Li, whisper-shouted. His father gave a glance at the old man reading in the corner. He hadn’t moved an inch.
Chang Heng wanted to answer her, form a proper argument, explain himself, but all he had in himself was a chaotic mess of emotions and thoughts and worries. This was not a conversation he had expected to have. He forced himself to talk, forcefully putting the mess into words.
“I can't do this to you. You have finally reunited with your clan, and I've been just a weight for too long to drag this blessing away with me.” Guilt was the first to come out, as he spoke to his father.
“We don't need my clan, Son. We've been living well without them for longer than you can remember, going away again is not an issue.”
“But it is! I've seen your eyes whenever we had to leave our home. When our meals got a bit smaller, and a bit cheaper. I hate all that- all that you've had to lose because of me. But… you now have it back. And even more, more important… you can take care of Xia, give her the best education, let her have friends she won't be afraid of losing because she had to move away.”
In the first half, they were ready to retort. They'd sacrifice all that ten times more if it meant taking care of their son, seeing him grow strong and healthy and happy. As Xia was mentioned, they didn’t have a rebuttal ready, but they didn’t let it sway their minds.
“We'll find a way, Hen-Hen. These are not impossible problems to solve, and we will, so please-”
“I’m not going, Mother, Father. I… I need to do this.” A sliver of determination passed through.
“Son… we just don’t want to be separated from you. It’s been sixteen years of worrying about your health, of what your future would be, if we could do something, anything to make you have one… we won’t abandon you now for some comforts we have given away already more than once.”
“But… you’re not abandoning me. I’m finally following the path of a true Cultivator-”
“And look in what kind of dangers this has put you! You’ve had three, three people coming for your head in less than a day, and we’re supposed to let you walk on this “path”? This is just another worry for us!”
The more they spoke, the less they whispered, their voices slowly becoming louder.
“Mother! I put myself there, I chose to fight! What would be of my honour if I just ran away?”
The looks they had expressed more than clearly how much his honour mattered in front of his life, for them. It was just like that first day, when he had just awakened and had to speak to the Patriarch. But this time, he didn’t let them speak.
“And I have so much more to lose from stopping now. The rewards from the tournament will help me grow in my Cultivation, saving precious time, of which I barely have any. I will get a chance at joining one of the greatest forces in our whole kingdom, and all the resources that come with it. This is the greatest chance of my life… the only one! I finally have an opportunity to make something of my life, to not have to think of how few days I have left to live.”
“Son…” His father spoke with a gentle tone. “We don’t want to lose you. If one single thing goes wrong tomorrow, we will never see you again. We… I don’t know anything about this new world you live in. I can’t even imagine how much these things will improve your life. If you come with us, tonight, we can at least know for sure you will be with us… but if you don’t, this is all a mystery. Will you win enough? Will you come back from the Sacred Wave Sect, or even just their tests, or will your life end in the process? Will your last days be around the people who love you, or complete strangers looking only after what you can offer them?”
These words forced Chang Heng to pause. There was nothing he could say to convince them, he realised. But, as he said… this was his one and only opportunity. If he ran away, he wouldn’t get another. If he went hiding with them, he’d never get to expand his knowledge, satiate his curiosity; he’d never get to ask Xie Mo what their shared affliction was, if there was a way to treat it; he would prove to Chang Jian that his passion was pointless; he’d leave nothing behind for himself, if not the stain on their clan’s name and a hole in his family’s hearts.
He’d see them for one, maybe two more months, and be done with it.
It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t accept it.
He looked his parents in the eyes, trying to convey how deeply he wanted all of that.
“Mother Li. Father Lun. Please, don’t try to drag me away, to hide somewhere. I don’t want to spend the next month crying with you. I want to spend as much time as I can with you, see you get old, Xia grow. I want to see you smile with me. Please…”
He was out of words and looked down, his throat closed and teeth clenched. He didn’t know what he’d do if they didn’t accept it. Would he force himself to go with them, just to make them happy?
He looked up at them. His father, towering over him, had his usually composed expression traded for one of doubt. What he had said wasn’t enough to convince him. His mother, tall and soft, didn’t even try to hide how harsh her response was going to be.
Neither of them could accept his desire to stay. They smiled at him, more than enough love in it to convey what they thought.
“I am proud of you, Hen-Hen.”
“I am proud of you, Son.”
The couple said together. Their eyes met with a light giggle, as if they were once again kids meeting each other for the first time.
Chang Li and Chang Jun couldn’t accept the choices their son had made, believe them right. They were scared of the unknown fate that awaited him. Angry at his defiance, at his refusal to see their point. But they could still take a step back, respect their growing son. Support him.
The family hugged.
Chang Heng cried, but he wasn’t just sad.
