81. Preventing The Head of My Finance Hall From Medical Malpractice

We stop travelling midday because Shen Qiao notices what I do not.

“We need to stop,” he says.

Wei Zheng gives him a look sharp enough to cut thread. “No, we do not.”

“You are breathing too fast.”

“I’m just old.”

“You were old yesterday,” Shen Qiao says. His eyes move up and down. “Yesterday, you took forty-seven steps between pauses. Today, you have not passed thirty since sunrise. Your stride is shorter by almost a third. Your breathing is shallow, and you are sweating despite the air.”

Wei Zheng stares at him. Shen Qiao adjusts his ledger under one arm, expression perfectly serious. “Also, you have complained less. That is the most concerning sign.”

For a moment, I think Wei Zheng might hit him with his tool chest. Then the old craftsman coughs into his sleeve. I turn toward him properly. He is standing with one hand braced against a pale-barked tree, his tool chest set near his feet. Sweat clings to his temples despite the morning chill. His face has the grey, stubborn pallor of a man trying to bully his own body into obedience.

I activate the Gaze.

My stomach tightens. The weather has been mild since we reached Celestial Jade City. Warm days, cool nights, manageable wind. But we are heading south again, toward poorer roads, higher elevation, and nights that bite harder once the sun drops. For Ling’er and me, that’s negligible. For Shen Qiao, discomfort. For Wei Zheng, it could be lethal.

“We stop,” I say. “Let’s set up camp. Ling’er?”

She looks at me before pointing at a spot to our left.

“There’s a place over there where we can rest.”

The hollow we choose is tucked into the side of a low hill, half-sheltered by exposed roots and a leaning shrine marker so old the characters have worn into shallow scars. It is far enough from the path that a casual traveler will not stumble over us, but open enough for Ling’er to scout without losing sight of the surroundings. Thornbrush screens the lower slope. A cluster of stones makes a natural windbreak.

Wei Zheng sits because I tell him to.

Then, because sitting apparently offends him, he attempts to stand three breaths later. Shen Qiao exhales. Not quite impatience, not quite anger either. For a moment, something crosses his face, tired and familiar.

“Master Wei,” Shen Qiao says, quieter now. “Please sit down.”

After a moment, he remains seated. I tend to him with what knowledge I have, which is both more and less than I want. Basic medicine from the original Lu Chen. Conventional practices from Earth. Fragments from two lives that do not always agree with each other and are equally capable of leaving me feeling underqualified.

“He has a fever,” I say.

Shen Qiao immediately straightens. “Then we must purge the fire. I have a pouch of crushed white stone paste in my pack for emergencies like this.”

I pause. He was more well-prepared than I thought.

“White stone paste?”

He is already reaching into his belongings with the grave urgency of a man about to save a life. He produces a small cloth pouch, unties it, and shows me a fine white powder.

I stare at the powder.

Gypsum.

For a moment, two worlds overlap in the worst possible way. In this world, it is a heat-clearing medicinal stone. On Earth, it is what people use to make drywall. Shen Qiao continues, unaware that my confidence in him has just suffered a spiritual deviation.

“If we boil the rock-powder into a thick paste, it will shock his stomach with extreme cold and break the heat instantly. I can also use needles to stimulate the proper points and force the fire outward.”

I look at Wei Zheng. Then at the pouch of powdered drywall.

“No.”

Shen Qiao pauses. “No?”

“No rock sludge. No needles.”

His expression tightens. “Senior Cultivator, with respect, mortal bodies do not work the same way as cultivator bodies.”

“I am aware.”

Looking down at Wei Zheng, it hits me just how terrifying medicine can be without the right framework. Shen Qiao is brilliant. He’s a man with sharp business acumen that can calculate anything he needs. But brilliance does not create microscopes or clinical trials.

Wei Zheng opens one eye. “You are both very comforting.”

I ignore him and continue sorting through our supplies. “The heat is not the enemy by itself, Shen Qiao. It is the body’s defense. His body is raising its temperature to fight whatever is making him sick. We do not want to crush that response unless it becomes dangerous. We support it.”

Shen Qiao looks deeply unconvinced.

“Water,” I say. “Rest. Food. Shade. Keep him warm enough not to shiver, cool enough not to overheat. We let his body fight, but we keep him from breaking while it does.”

“And if his heat climbs too high?” Shen Qiao asks. “You would use ice? Freeze the meridians?”

He says it in the tone of a man discovering I have chosen poison as seasoning.

“Never directly, and never to freeze him.” I discard two spiritual herbs from my own pouch after the Gaze warns me they would likely do unpleasant things to a mortal’s veins. “If I shock his skin with raw ice, his body may panic. That is not what we want.”

I produce a clean cloth, dip it into a basin of lukewarm water, and wring it out. I place it gently against the side of Wei Zheng’s neck, then another across his wrists. Shen Qiao watches closely, his eyes tracking the placement of the cloths. He looks like a man trying to decipher a foreign school of alchemy, unable to comprehend why doing less might be the correct answer. The Gaze confirms there is no poison, no spiritual parasite, no obvious curse hiding beneath the symptoms. Just a fever carried in a mortal body that has been dragged through too much fear, too much cold, and too much movement.

I make Wei Zheng drink slowly. I make him eat a thick bowl of snake meat and grain porridge even though he claims to have no appetite. Ling’er offers a small measure of preserved Shen-Long Constrictor blood for fatigue. I dilute it before giving it to him. Then he lies back against the stone, eyes closed, face still drawn but a little less grey than before.

I sit beside him for longer than necessary, watching his breathing until the rhythm steadies.

Once Wei Zheng sleeps and Shen Qiao begins sorting supplies near the fire pit, I take Frostbite from my ring.

The air changes immediately.

Even wrapped, the sword carries winter with it. When I draw the blade, frost gathers along the exposed steel in thin, deliberate lines. I hold the sword out and let my qi enter. The resistance is smoother than before, the flow less jagged. When I release a careful breath of ice qi, the frost crawling along the ground spreads farther than it should, threading through grass and stone with a precision I did not command.

Wei Zheng repaired its spirit from sixty to seventy percent.

Ten percent, and the difference is enough that my ice techniques feel like night and day. If Frostbite ever reaches full restoration, I do not know what it will make me. Foundation peak, perhaps. Maybe something close to Core Formation in brief bursts.

‘Enough to make me rely on it too much.’

I glance at Ling’er. She is watching the blade.

“Do you want to try holding it?”

Ling’er blinks. “Me?”

“Only holding. Carefully.”

She comes closer and accepts the sword. The moment Frostbite enters her hand, the clearing goes still. Ling’er adjusts her grip. Her eyes narrow in concentration. Then she moves. It begins as a testing cut. A single slow arc, the blade trailing frost through the air. Then another. A turn of her wrist, a step across loose stone, a pivot that carries the sword behind her back and forward again in a line so smooth it feels less like combat and more like calligraphy written with winter.

The sword hums. Ling’er’s robes whisper around her. Her feet barely touch the ground. Each cut leaves a pale trace in the air, precise enough that the frost hangs for a breath before dissolving. For a moment, she looks like she is performing for an empty court beneath falling snow. Beautiful and lethal.

Then she stops. Her nose wrinkles.

“I don’t like it.”

I stare. “You don’t?”

“No.” She holds Frostbite away from herself, as if the sword has said something impolite. “It listens, but not properly.”

I take the sword back carefully. Frostbite feels colder after leaving her hand.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Ling’er frowns at the blade. “It is used to you. It knows your qi. It does not reject me, but it does not submit either.”

Her pupils narrow into vertical slits.

“I do not like weapons that think they can choose.”