Chapter 8 – Anatomy Of A Problem

Mother had been a healer’s apprentice before she married Father.

I didn’t learn this from the original Liang’s memories, which were patchy at best.

I learned it because I asked.

“You use chrysanthemum for headaches and dried ginger for nausea,” I said, sitting across from her on a morning when her coughing was light. “Did someone teach you that?”

She looked at me over her tea. “Sun Ai. The healer in Chenjia village, east of the river fork. I apprenticed under her from age eleven to fifteen, before I married your father and moved here.”

“Why didn’t you keep practicing?” I asked.

“Hekou village didn’t have a healer’s hut or any supplies, and your father needed help with the farm more than the villages needed a girl with very little medical training. ” She said it without bitterness.

“What did Sun Ai teach you?”

Mother’s eyebrows lifted. She was used to Hao’s questions, which were starkly different than the nature of mine.

“We went over how to prepare and identify herbs,” She counted on thin fingers. “As well as reading pulses and the body’s pressure lines in order to relieve pain, and stop bleeding. One thing she was sure of was to teach me where not to press because the body’s flow runs through it, and disrupting that flow will kill someone faster than any wound.”

I went very still.

“Say that last part again…”

“The body’s flow?” She dupped her head to the side.

“The pressure lines. What did your teacher call them?”

Mother frowned, dredging up terminology from many years ago. “She called them Mai. It’s the pathways that carry the body’s vital energy from the core to the extremities. Sun Ai said every healer learned them first because you couldn’t treat the body without understanding it. Needle a point along the Mai and you could redirect the flow to speed up the healing process. Block a point and the limb went numb. Sever a major pathway…” She trailed off. Nothing more needed to be said.

Meridians. She’s describing meridians.

Every cultivation novel I’d ever read treated meridians as spiritual architecture. Abstract channels for abstract energy, mapped by ancient immortals and accessible only through cultivation techniques passed down through sect lineages. But Mother was describing them as a healer’s tool. Physical pathways with physical locations on the body, known to village herbalists and used for medicine.

“How many mai did Sun Ai teach you?” I asked.

“She showed me twelve primary pathways. She mentioned that there were more, but that the twelve were essential for healing work.” Mother paused. “She also said that some people had stronger flow through their mai than others. That you could feel it when you took their pulse. She said some bodies carried more than others.”

That’s aptitude, and the difference between someone who can cultivate and someone who can’t.

“Could you show me the twelve pathways?” I asked her.

“Why?”

I’d prepared for this question. “If I’m going to assess the village’s health, I should understand the basics of how the body works. You’re the closest thing Hekou has to a medical practitioner.”

It was true enough. The wellness checks were still my cover for scouting cultivation aptitude, but the medical knowledge was genuinely necessary. A village with no healer, no doctor, and a Prefect who didn’t care whether his conscripts came back healthy or in pieces needed someone who understood basic anatomy. If that someone also used the knowledge to map how qi moved through the human body, well…dual purpose. As usual.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Mother studied me for a long moment. Then she set down her tea and held out her left arm, palm up.