Book 3: Chapter 47: The Universe of Alchemy

Book 3: Chapter 47: The Universe of Alchemy

Having never participated in a large-scale battle before, Sen had no appreciation for just how much work or how much time it would take even for the basic task of gathering the wounded. With core formation cultivators on the field, he thought it might take an hour. Oh, how wrong he’d been. If it had just been gathering the wounded, things might have gone quicker. Except, it wasn’t just that. By basically proclaiming himself “in charge,” every problem had suddenly become his problem. The very first problem he had to solve was how to keep both sides from quietly murdering the wounded from the other side. Heavenly oaths or not, relief that the battle was over or not, there was still a lot of bad blood and anger left over on that field. Sen eventually had to co-opt Chan Yu Ming into service and the pair of them patrolled the efforts to find and collect the wounded from a hovering qi platform. The implied threat of two core cultivators seemed to stem that problem.

Once that logistical problem had been more or less completed, Sen hoped that his role in things would be done. He’d made that observation out loud to Chan Yu Ming, who laughed so hard that she nearly fell off the qi platform. He glowered at her until she managed to get her mirth under control. Wiping tears from her eyes, she shook her head sadly at him.

“You poor boy. You’re probably going to be personally managing this mess until my people are back at our sect compound.”Trace the lineage of this substance back to the dawn of Nøv€lß¡n★

“Why? Nobody needed my personal supervision to make this mess.”

She shrugged. “Everybody wants an authority figure to turn to. You elected yourself to the role.”

A terrible fatigue flowed through Sen at the very thought of having to deal with this mess, a mess he’d had no hand in creating. “I only elected myself to stop the killing.”

“And you did. Thank you for that, by the way. I’d already lost enough friends for a lifetime before you showed up.”

Sen glanced at her and saw the pain on her face. “Aren’t you still angry?”

Chan Yu Ming shook her head. “I was never angry. I never wanted to do this in the first place. It was stupid, destructive, and pointless. Plus, we came here looking for a fight. They gave us one. I can’t be angry that people died in that fight. I can be sad, though, that so many died. That friends died.”

Sen nodded because he thought that’s what a person should do in these situations. He understood what she meant, at least intellectually, but he lacked the personal experience to really empathize with her. He looked out across the battlefield to the rows of injured people who were laid out in lines both near the fire cultivator compound and farther out near where the water cultivators had established something like a command tent. He frowned as a thought occurred to him.

“Do you bring healers with you?”

Chan Yu Ming grimaced. “Some. Not enough for all of this, though.”

Sen looked over at the rows of injured fire cultivators and the handful of people who were trying to tend to them. He sighed to himself. This was going to turn into a long day. Sen started grabbing people and issuing orders about what he needed and where he wanted it. It took almost an hour before he was finally set up in the middle of the field, exactly halfway between the two groups. Chan Yu Ming had watched all of it happen with a mystified expression. It wasn’t until he had two massive cauldrons set up and water boiling in them that she finally asked.

The water cultivator paled under Sen’s hard look, perhaps realizing that he had wildly overstepped the bounds of politeness if not position. More importantly, he’d done it to someone who had ordered hundreds upon hundreds of cultivators to stop fighting...and made it stick. The man hurriedly offered Sen a deep bow.

“I apologize. It’s just that if you can do this,” he said, gesturing at the cauldrons, “I hoped that you might be able to help others. The most grievously wounded. There are a few that are beyond our ability to aid, at least here. I had to try.”

Sen felt a bit of sympathy for the man, but he wasn’t sure he should help that way. What he was doing here, offering general aid to all, said very clearly that he was taking a neutral position. If he went to the water cultivators and helped their most desperately injured, that could look a lot like taking sides. On the other hand, he’d taken sides at the beginning of the fight and killed more than his fair share of water cultivators. He might not owe the man in front of him anything, but he did owe something to the water cultivators as a whole. He glanced at Chan Yu Ming, but her face was an opaque mask to him. He couldn’t tell what she thought or wanted him to do. Pulling a dagger from his storage ring, he made a mark on the ladle he’d been using to portion out the elixir. He held the ladle out to Chan Yu Ming, who took it without changing her expression.

“Up to the line. No more, no less.”

“It will be as you say.”

He turned to one of the fire cultivators who tried to hide the dirty look they’d been giving Sen.

“Send someone to the compound and inform them that I will be treating the most seriously injured of the water cultivators. I will do the same for the fire cultivators if they wish it.”

Some of the hostility Sen could feel in the fire cultivator vanished when the man realized that Sen wasn’t handing out preferential help. The fire cultivator nodded.

“It will be as you say, Judgment’s Gale.”

It took a huge effort of will to resist the urge to yell at the man not to call him that. It was how he had introduced himself to everyone. He couldn’t very well get angry that people used the name he’d given to them. He gestured at the healer to lead the way and followed the man back to the water cultivator’s bivouac area. Sen steadfastly refused to acknowledge any of the looks he was given, whether they were hateful, grateful, or anything else. He was just there to see if he could help some people. The healer led Sen to a spot that had been isolated with hastily built canvas walls. Once he stepped behind those walls, he understood. There were perhaps a dozen people laid out on the ground, and Sen was simply astounded that they were alive at all. Most of them had been injured in direct combat, with missing limbs or gaping head wounds. He saw one who had been caught in the wake of that steam explosion. As gently as he could, he examined them with his spiritual sense and his qi. He could tell that at least three of them were truly beyond help or his help at any rate. For the rest, though, he thought there was a chance.

He started with the one who had been so hideously burned by the steam. He could tell that their injuries weren’t just external, but that their lungs and windpipe had been seared by the steam as well. He picked a corner and set up his pot. Then, he started asking for the ingredients he needed. The water cultivator healers promptly started handing him what he asked for, mostly. In some cases, they'd simply run out. In other cases, they didn’t know what he wanted. A quick explanation often yielded viable substitutes, but Sen all too often found himself dipping into his own stores. The work turned into a blur for him as he built elixirs from the ground up to treat incredibly specific problems. The only bright spot was that they were all water cultivators, so he didn’t have to customize around different qi specializations. Except, then there were fire cultivators.

He was so deep into the process of analyzing the injuries and trying to dream up creative ways to heal them that the implications were lost on him. He just kept working. He wasn’t successful every time, which hurt him more than he liked to consider. Of course, most of those cases were borderline. He’d never know if it was that their bodies were too injured or if their wills to live just weren’t sufficient to endure the healing. He’d have to console himself with the knowledge that he’d done all he could for them. As the hours blurred together into days, though, Sen was surprised to find that he was gleaning new insights into alchemy. He didn’t know if it was his utter focus, the diversity of injuries, or some combination of factors, but he saw so many things he’d missed before. He saw ways to use metal qi-attributed ingredients to reinforce the fundamental structures of elixirs, so they’d be more stable. He saw how to connect water and fire qi-attributed ingredients, not simply as balancing agents, but at a more fundamental level that would let him temper them to work on injuries that might resist healing otherwise. The universe of alchemy opened before him like a map, and he followed its winding roads to places he might never have gone otherwise.

When the trance finally broke, Sen nearly collapsed in exhaustion. How long was I like that, he wondered. He looked around and saw that there were no new people to treat. There was, however, a mixed group of water and fire cultivators kneeling on the ground around him. When they saw that he was aware of his surroundings again, the group pressed their heads against the ground three times. Oh, that can’t be good, thought Sen.