v5c51: The Cleanup Begins

Peppa’s eyes were still wet when she pulled away from the hug. She was hurting, and I had a feeling it had to do with what happened to Chunky. He had a nasty puncture wound, but his eyes were shining with life. He did look a bit worried about Peppa though.

I wanted nothing more than to clear the air, to talk to her, to fix what was hurting her, but I felt like that’s not what Peppa needed right now.

Some people needed time to just sit and process things. Peppa, however… I think she needed something else. She was like me in that way. When we were stressed and hurting, we needed a distraction at first. And for Peppa? I think she needed to feel like nothing had changed, that she was in control of at least something—and there were things that needed to get done

“Peppa? I need your help.” She practically snapped to attention, her eyes wide. “We have a bunch of injured cultivators up north. I need you to get together aid kits and prep things for at least thirty people. Can you do that for me?”

“Ah…” she whispered. Some of the haziness lifted from her pale blue eyes, but she hesitated.

Chunky oinked from beside us and Peppa flinched, immediately looking to make sure he was okay. He smiled up at her.

‘Chunky okay. Wife do what wife do best. Very good at helping others.’ His voice was strong. Peppa’s fingers traced along the scars on his face. ‘Chunky is fine. Not like last time.’

At those words Peppa sucked in a shuddering breath. She clenched her skirt in her fists for a moment… and then rose.

“Yes. Yes, I know what to do. We need satchels, and bed rolls, and pillows…” she trailed off for a moment, clearly deep in thought.

It was a stopgap for now, until we could talk properly. We’d keep an eye on her, just in case.

“There we go. That should be good. Rest for a little more, and you tell me if anything changes, okay?” Meimei said, and patted Chunky on the side. The boar oinked in affirmation, and Meimei leaned back onto her haunches. She grimaced and clutched her stomach for a moment.

“You okay?” I asked her. She let out a breath, and straightened up.

“I’ll be fine. It’s just sore,” She replied, before her eyes fixed pointedly onto my arms. “Besides, I have more work to do.”

I looked down at my arms. Honestly I couldn’t really feel them anymore… and was trying to avoid looking at them. They had massive, deep rents in them, to go along with the fact that both of them were missing most of their skin. The only upside was I wasn’t bleeding anywhere… but the fact that my body looked more like cracked and pitted stone than flesh was strange.

If I hadn’t been a cultivator, both of my limbs probably would have been write-offs. As it was…. They still moved pretty fine?

The rest of my body wasn’t that bad. Hell, one of my cracked ribs was already sealed back together!

Meimei quickly pushed several pots filled with medicinal herbs and sludgy looking water off to the side—the poison she had drained from Chunky, I guessed, and settled down beside me.

Her soothing Qi filled me, and sparkling medicine was applied to my wounds. The good news was that it felt really good. The bad news was that the pain came back.

The worst news was that instead of sealing everything up… the skin didn’t heal, and neither did the cracks.

Meimei frowned heavily. “This… is going to take a while.” She murmured. “Its not a normal wound. It’s… Spiritual? I think?”

“Tianlan said using those techniques without her help, and without the proper knowledge was a risk.” I replied.

Meimei’s amethyst eyes met my own, full of worry. I could barely feel where her fingers pressed into my skin.

I knew she wanted to ask me to rest. To pause… but we still had too much to do. My arms still worked. As long as I kept Qi use to a minimum, I should be fine.

“I’ll bandage these up.” She told me, and got to work. Strips of silk, impregnated with medicine and some of Vajra’s wax, were wrapped around my arms, from the tips of my fingers to the elbows.

At the end, Meimei lifted my bandaged arm, and kissed the back of my hand.

“We won.” She murmured.

“We won.” I agreed. The moment lingered. The relief… and the hollow feeling in my stomach settled. And then, I asked what I needed to ask. “Are you okay with some more patients? I don’t think we should just leave them out in the snow…”

My wife nodded. “I’ll come with you. You said one of them had a worm in their head?”

I pulled out the vial. I was somewhat surprised it hadn’t shattered. Meimei’s eyes narrowed when she saw the little creature within.

The vial was safely stowed away and we got ready. I brought out the cart out of storage so we could, hopefully, transport everybody. Peppa had already gathered everything by the time we were ready to go—blankets, pillows, and bedrolls prepared to receive injured guests. Chunky limped along beside her, keeping close to her legs.

…we would all get through this, together.

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And so… the work began again. After fighting for most of the night, we had more hard labour ahead of us.

We transported the Shrouded Mountain Sect Members back home—all of them still out cold. Meimei’s paralytics were no joke. Thankfully, most of them were relatively uninjured, at least for cultivators. Still, we would be going through a bunch of medicine to care for them.

After that was done… we took stock.

Thankfully, due to our decision to build the fortress quite far back, there was barely any damage to the main house. One of the upper windows was broken from a flung rock, but otherwise the it was fine… as were the animals. They were spooked to hell, but the cows and the sheep settled down under my words and touch.

The worst damage was to the surrounding forests. There was a massive swathe of trees that were just dead—including part of our maple grove.

Most of the other things were an easy fix, but this… this was a loss. The place was poisoned, and though Meimei had blunted the worst of it… we needed to somehow clean it up.

So we catalogued everything… and worked on the last part.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The gruesome part.

I made sure to keep Peppa, Chunky, and Noodle away from this. I would have told Tigu to go too, but she had already started helping.

I hated that this was even something that needed doing.

We had to stack all the bodies together. There were hundreds of them. Hundreds of monsters with black chitin sticking out from their ruined flesh. They stank to high heaven and made my stomach roil… which also highlighted just how many of the fuckers had come to attack us.

I sighed when I saw the number of corpses. One of my memories of Crimson Crucible City flashed through my mind. I remember the despair I felt back then, seeing all those bodies; the people ravaged by plague and consigned to mass pyres.

…No, I would not give into despair. This would be fixed, all of it. Some spots would never be the same… but they would be repaired.

This attack would change our home. It would scar it. But instead of remaining something ugly…I would make it all the more beautiful, for having survived.

I just hoped the others were doing okay, and that nobody else had been hurt too badly.

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The sun had risen, yet Hong Xian the Younger still danced. The drum still thundered.

He was exhausted, his legs felt like lead, but still he danced.