v4c53: Healing is a Journey

Shao Heng’s life in the Shrouded Mountain Sect had changed drastically since that fateful day when Sister Ri Zu had confronted him. When she had told him that he could once more become a cultivator if he was determined enough to fight.

He had agreed to do whatever she told him to, if it would let him regain his former strength.

Most of it were things that were self-explanatory. Physical exertion. Meditation. Routine checkups and Spiritual Herbs to assist in filling his empty Dantian.

Most were quite low in Qi, but that was to be expected. He could only process so much, and giving him anything that was of a higher quality would have been astronomically expensive and wasteful.

Other things? Other things were more… experimental.

Shao Heng thought he was no stranger to pain and hardship; for that was the life of a cultivator. Pain, hardship, and suffering was their lot in life. So when Sister Ri Zu had told him that his road to recovery would be most difficult and painful, he had believed her wholeheartedly. What else could it be, when he was brought so low?

And yet even though he had steeled himself… he had not been entirely prepared.

“Five more seconds,” Sister Ri Zu told him kindly, and Shao Heng latched onto the words. Just five more seconds. It felt like all of his organs were swelling at once and were about to burst as foreign Qi entered his system and pushed.

Hot tears gathered at the corners of his eyes and sweat flowed freely down his brow. A strangled whine escaped his grit teeth, and drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. Had he his original cultivation, he would have rendered Ri Zu’s hand to pulp with how hard he was squeezing it. His eyes were bloodshot, and it took all his willpower not to writhe like a fish on a hook.

Yet he endured. He endured for the five seconds that felt like an eternity. And then finally, blessedly, Ri Zu’s Qi retracted.

“Meridian dilation is done for today,” Ri Zu reported.

It took a further five minutes for him to be coherent enough to let go of Ri Zu’s hand.

Meridian dilation. A simple name for that… excruciating procedure. Sister Ri Zu had explained the process to him thoroughly.

It was to stop his meridians from collapsing and deteriorating back to what they would have been as a mortal. By using her own medicinal Qi, Sister Ri Zu was keeping those pathways open, to make his ability to gather and condense Qi easier—like he was still in the Profound Realm, rather than his current mortality.

And indeed, her hypothesis was correct. Compared to his memory of when he was an Initiate, it was easier to take in and process Qi. Shao Heng could feel his Dantian filling, and soon…. Soon, he would have enough Qi to once more ignite it and return to the Initiate’s Realm.

She had not thought that it would be this painful, initially, and nothing at all worked to dull the excruciating feeling of keeping his meridians open.

“Are you resolved to keep doing this procedure?” Ri Zu asked him as he finally sat up, his breathing slowly coming under his control.

“Yes. As long as you are willing to perform it,” he replied.

Shao Heng didn’t quit.

Sister Ri Zu nodded. “Then this Ri Zu requires five laps around the pavilion,” she informed him.

“Yes, Doctor,” Shao Heng agreed, and on shaking limbs rose to do his mandated training.

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And thus his treatment continued.

Some days things went well. He could feel his Dantian fill and inch closer to ignition.

Other days things went poorly, and in his meditations he lost Qi—the power slipping through his fingers and out of his Dantian.

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Being a mortal again was disorientating. He had been a cultivator for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be truly weak. On his runs around the pavilion he would misjudge, trip, and fall. Tiny scrapes and bruises hurt, and had to be carefully tended to lest they get infected.

Once he had even vomited onto Ri Zu’s skirt after he pushed himself too hard during his physical conditioning.

At first, he had been utterly ashamed of himself. Another was seeing his weakness. Ri Zu watched over every trip, every moment of weakness. She had even seen his tears. Every other cultivator would have looked at him like the worthless being he was. A shameful creature who was not in control of himself.

Yet Ri Zu did not.

She tolerated his fifth and indignity. She saw his wretched form every day. She saw his bitter struggles; she oversaw the days when he progressed not at all! And throughout every trial and tribulation she never once looked upon him with disgust or disdain. When he fell into the dirt, she watched over him until he rose again—and her pure, clear eyes looked upon him with encouragement.

“Why… why are you not disgusted?” he asked her.

“Who could be disgusted over a man trying his best?” she asked him in return. “Ri Zu has fallen flat on her face more times than she can count. It is not the fall that measures our character. It is that one gets back up.”

… she was impossible, this doctor. Her methods were strange and her attitude even stranger. She was utterly alien to what he knew.

And yet she was present and helping him. Helping a poor mortal… like Shao Heng had wanted to do so long ago.

If she wished for his best, he would give it. He would continue his efforts.

No. He would redouble his efforts.

One month after his treatment began… Shao Heng’s Dantian ignited.