Chapter 35- What Would You Pay For Your Family?

It turned out that necessity did require an apology, even with entirely valid excuses. At least if the necessity in question involved getting your sister naked and washing her down with a handcloth.

Tian tried to point at the gory hell-pit that was the residue filled stone trough they had healed in. The ruins of the clothes were still somewhat visible as discolored stalagmites congealed into rising peaks by the accumulated blood, flesh, fat and foulness that had been sloughed off or lost during the process. If that wasn’t a good enough reason for a scrub, what was?

“I’m not saying I didn’t need a wash, I’m saying you shouldn’t have been the one to wash me!”

Tian felt a vein in his neck start to throb, and anger seeped up from his broken hips. It had hurt dragging her out of the pit and cleaning her off.

“I completely agree and understand. I should have asked one of the other available orderlies to do it.”

“If you had just waited, I could have done it myself.”

Oh yes, the woman who had nearly as many broken bones as he did, after losing a significant percentage of her skin and just having had most of her back, calves and rear rebuilt through profound daoist magic and the costly intervention of Grandpa Jun, would definitely do a fantastic job of cleaning herself. Grandpa Jun used up all his energy for her! He would be silent for who knows how long, years maybe. And now she’s bitching about getting wiped down?!

Tian took a deep breath and forced himself to use his calm orderly voice.

“If I had just waited, you would be fifty percent disease and fifty percent reeking, yellowy puss. As it is, I’m still going to need to draw disease out of you in the next day or so. My body and cultivation art managed to clear out all the thorns and the toxins that came with them, but there is just no way it also cleared out all the disease. It was completely necessary, and urgent.”

Hong grunted, clearly not willing to let the subject go, but her attention had caught on something. “I know you cultivate Advent of Spring for your vital energy cultivation, but… what exactly is your body cultivation art?”

“Nosy.” Tian snapped. He couldn’t keep the orderly voice up.

“Yes. Yes I am. I am completely violating a social taboo. Much like a young man getting a teenage girl naked while she’s unconscious and rubbing his hands all over her.”

There was a heavy silence.

Tian felt his anger deflate, making his mood crater. She was right. She was absolutely right. Under other circumstances, their parents might even insist they get married now. It wasn’t going to be like that, but still. Brother Fu would be furious with him. Aunty Wu would be even more furious. Doctor Pei would glare at him and demand to know if he had forgotten about respecting the patient’s dignity. Tian tried to explain.

“I… genuinely didn’t think of it like that. I knew about the nudity thing, but that part didn’t occur to me. I’m sorry. Really. I am very sorry. But I also really believe you would have gotten extremely sick and possibly died if I hadn’t.”

There was silence again.

“Best I’m going to get, huh?”

“If it makes you feel better, I’m now both angry over you being angry, and ashamed at myself for not understanding why you might get angry.” Tian offered. “At this point it’s mostly shame.”

It was, in fact, all shame. The flame of anger had guttered out in the cold wind of self loathing.

“Yeah, best I’m going to get. What exactly is your body cultivation art?”

“Supreme Virtue Hell Suppressing Body Refining Sutra. Which is less of an art and more like a piece of magical machinery I have planted inside of me. It runs like a waterwheel, Yang and yin turning into nourishment for my body and my meridians. It doesn’t stop me from getting hurt, but it does turn things like curses, poisons, gu and diseases into tonics and supplements. And… I can’t prove this or anything, but I have a feeling I hit demons a lot harder than I probably should be able to. It also makes my body more yin aligned, so I am literally heavier than I should be. Which is probably why I can’t float.”

Tian paused, thought through some things and continued. “I also think it might be doing something with those gold and purple flashes we have been seeing when we rescue the kids. But I don’t know what.”

Hong grunted. Silence settled back in. Then, “I cultivate the Ten Suns Godslaying Body. Remember when you stopped that Gu from trying to kill me while I was cultivating back at Depot Four? That was when I lit the first sun. I still only have the one sun lit. It’s an extreme yang body cultivation art. Hard, rigid. Linear. Explosive. The requirements for cultivating it are very strict, but each sun I light makes me exponentially stronger.”

This time it was Tian’s turn to grunt. “Sounds like we should be prioritizing finding you cultivation aids then. More sungold oranges and things.”

“Screw that, do you know how hard it is to find pure yang food and medicine? But we can hardly move for all the cursed crap around. Let’s push you to the Heavenly Realm. We’ll drop you in a cauldron with four thousand four hundred and forty four cursed nails, Blackwater demon-dragon spit, set yin fires burning below it, cook another batch of Tian Soup and BOOM! Heavenly Person Realm. Just that easy.”

“It’s yin refinement, so it would be silent or a sort of drawn out sigh, not a boom. But I see the vision. I’m glad I have finally persuaded you on the power of soup. It’s wonderfully effective.”

“You have not. You absolutely have not. I don’t know what you actually did, but I will be…”

She stopped abruptly.

“You were going to say ‘dead and in the ground before I believe you,’ weren’t you?” Tian grinned up at the dark cavern ceiling. He felt another giggle bubbling up, but kept ahold of it. He was not a giggler. He did not giggle. It was unbecoming of an older brother. Even if he really wanted to.

“No!”

“Uh huh.”

There was silence again.

“It would be a lead cauldron, obviously.” Hong continued.

“Mmm. The metal of extreme yin. I wonder if there is a spiritual version of lead. Abyssal Lead, Four Darknesses Lead, something like that.” Tian nodded. Small nods, he had a headache coming on, and it was shaping up to be a doozy.

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“There must be.” Hong sounded quite certain on that front. “There’s at least a dozen forms of cinnabar that I know of, so there has to be at least that many forms of lead.”