Chapter 27- Picking Poison

The competition had been fierce to deliver the goods. Tian had posted the delivery job with one merit point and one spirit crystal, reckoning it was fair enough to carry a few items and a bit of paper across town. What he hadn’t expected was a dozen senior brothers swooping in to snatch the job, resulting in an all out brawl in the Mission Hall. It was highly instructive, Tian felt. He thought he was pretty decent at fighting. His senior brothers showed him that he still had a long way to go.

The brother who did a perfect horizontal split to punch two brothers in the crotch simultaneously was impressive, but Tian was more moved by the brother who kept jumping up and kicking off walls to land brutal headshots on anyone who looked like they were going to grab the letter. Then, of course, people came to find out what the noise was about and pretty soon there was a general, if surprisingly bloodless, riot. Even Senior Brother Fu turned up with a long stick.

Tian thought he was just there to keep things under control. What he actually did was use his stick to trip people and make them headbut each other. It was quite beautiful. Just a little poke and a senior brother with the back of a bear and the waist of a tiger would fall into the embrace of a graceful swordsman. And then their heads would smash together.

Brother Fu never seemed to get tired of it. Neither did Tian. “Get Old Mustache!”

“That’s Senior Brother Old Mustache, ah no, Senior Brother Xue. Manners, little Tian, manners!” Brother Fu skillfully snagged a stool and flicked it across the floor. Brother Xue, who did indeed have a fine long mustache, managed to hop over the stool… but fell victim to the brother flying off the walls. Their faces connected with a thunk of martial passion that brought tears to the eyes.

“YAY Senior Brother Fu!”

“Decorum, Junior Brother, decorum in all things.” Brother Fu’s staff darted into the melee like a striking heron, cracking an ankle and a knee with a single blow which resulted in the rare three-face mashup.

“I am learning, Senior Brother Fu!”

Twenty minutes later, Brother Fu and Tian were the only two left standing in the hall. Brother Fu shook his head sadly. “You gossipy old men! If you are so bored, go to the Southern Border and take some heads. Hell, go back to the secular world and take some wives! I think some of you could really accomplish something as farmers. Some of you. Not all of you are good enough to be peasants. But some of you could really make something of yourselves, instead of being a pack of nosy reprobates who like nothing more than making me sweat.”

Brother Fu shook his head with deep regret. “Alas, it seems none of you are in good shape at the moment. So I am taking this mission.”

Senior Brother Fu, demonstrating the grace and poise of the most senior member of the West Town Temple, deployed an exquisite light body technique. His soft shoes barely tapped on the red faces of his suddenly roaring brothers as he dashed to the desk and snatched up the letter and parcel. A light tap of his toes, and he leapt from the desk out a high window and was gone.

Tian didn’t know a light body technique. He did his best to emulate his elder and slipped away at speed. He’d snagged a long term mission during the melee, the only one not restricted to the senior brothers, so really, there was no sense in hanging around.

___________________________________________________________________

“Oh, it’s Little Brother Tian! You finally took the mission. Did you send the letter? What happened when she got it? Tell me everything!” The senior brother smelled faintly of herbs. Tian noticed immediately, as the old man crowded him as soon as he stepped into the medicine workshop.

“There was a bit of an argument in the mission hall about who got to do it, and eventually Senior Brother Fu took the delivery mission himself. I don’t know what’s happened yet. Why is everyone so interested?”

“Why is everyone so interested, Senior Brother Wong. And the clue is in the question. Our cute little junior writing his very first letter to the Hong Clan’s little princess? Sending her cough a thoughtful gift? We have brothers rushing in from a thousand miles away to see how this plays out.”

The senior brothers, Tian remembered, had been stuck at the peak of Level Nine for a very, very long time, and were very, very bored. He was starting to regret telling his seniors what he was doing. They kept asking why he wanted paper and writing brushes and ink when he had to be forced to read under threat of banishment from the martial practice courtyards. He quickly changed the topic.

“I understand you are looking for help in the workshop, senior?”

“Yes indeed. I had heard for a while now you had an interest in herbs and medicine, so I thought I would put something up.”

“Yes. My body was much worse than this before, but some of the seniors I met gave me some advice on making medicine, and it really helped,” Tian said. Grandpa Jun always said to tell the truth whenever he could. Just don’t say too much of it.

“Mmm. Fortunate.”

“Yes, I was lucky to meet them.”

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“No, I meant that it’s fortunate you didn’t die. Look around the workshop. Don’t touch anything, don’t sniff anything, above all don’t eat anything. Just walk around and look.”

The workshop was a modest sized building in the southern end of the Temple complex. High ceilings and whitewashed plaster walls, with large windows covered in elegant wooden lattices and translucent paper for plenty of light but no drafts. There was a large iron stove in the back, and a few work tables up front. There was a special room for drying herbs, strong strings stretching from wall to wall with dangling bunches of fragrant plants hanging from them. But what they seemed to have the most of was cabinets full of drawers.

The cabinets were polished wood, the drawers and corners softly rounded by years of frequent use. Each drawer was about as wide as Tian’s hand, and had a large paper card glued to it. On the card was a name, followed by a string of symbols and characters. Each was carefully color coded.

“Marsh Yarrow Root- Yin, Water, Dog… and I don’t know what the little pictures are.” Tian slowly read aloud. “Senior brother, I know what the words mean but not when they are in this order.”