Chapter 35 - An Orphan And A Plague

When Ao Wen woke, for a moment, she felt that whatever process she went through when plunging into these memories had failed. Her whole body ached, her left arm felt like it was on fire and when she opened her eyes, the world still spun.

"Yu," a soft woman's voice said, noticing that she had begun to stir. "Sit still," the voice said moments before a weight was removed from her forehead, and a fresh cool cloth was set in its place. "The fever finally broke, thank goodness," the woman continued. "Stay still, I'll bring you some soup in a little bit, I need to finish checking on the others first."

Slowly, Ao Wen's vision cleared enough for her to look around at the room she was in. Stout timber framing that appeared ancient overhead, thin walls that had been repaired many times, a small window high on one wall that let in pale light, and more than anything else, the cloying scent of sickness filled the air. Looking around, Ao Wen saw several humble cots, each with a young child lying atop it. All told, there were nearly a dozen in the room, including Ao Wen.

Looking herself over, Ao Wen was horrified at how thin and weak she felt. It looked like she hadn't had regular meals for quite some time, when she pulled back the sheets she found she could count her ribs with ease and that her fingers were thin and bony with broken yellowed nails. "What happened to me?" Ao Wen asked confused. Looking at her left arm that throbbed in pain only brought more alarm and confusion. When she'd entered her inner world it had been with a broken left arm. Now, while the arm wasn't broken, its condition was potentially worse. Her skin had become thick, craggly, and ashen along much of her forearm and on the back of her left hand. The veins running up her arm from there seemed paler blue than they should be and stood out starkly against her sickly pale skin. On her right arm, both thighs, and the tops of her feet, she saw signs of more of the sickness though not nearly to the extent of what she saw on her left arm. "What sickness is this?"

"Yu," the woman said, coming back into view and frowning at Ao Wen's movements. "I told you to stay still." The woman's voice broke off in a series of ragged coughs as she brought a stained cloth to her mouth. Pulling the cloth away to continue speaking, Ao Wen noticed that the cloth was stained with dark reddish flecks and bits of yellow-green puss. "Yu, you need to lie back down. Recover your strength. Here," she said, placing a bowl of thin egg soup in her hands. "You've been out for three days, but it looks like you're actually getting better instead of worse," the woman cut off in another burst of coughing. "Senior Sister Ang didn't make it," she said bluntly. "Now it's just you and me."

"Senior sister?" Ao Wen asked, trying to sort out what was happening around her. 

"Hush, eat your soup," the older woman said. "I need you to listen. I don't think I can make it much longer either," she continued. Moving gently, she pulled back her faded white robes to reveal a pulsing network of angry purple and black veins spreading from the center of her chest and up her neck. "I stopped being able to circulate my energy two days ago," she said in a deeply resigned tone. "I probably don't have long left. Are you ready for the last instructions from your senior sister?"

Ao Wen had much she wanted to ask but seeing the look in the older woman's eyes, she forced the words back and nodded weakly.

"Good," the older woman said. "I received a letter back from the sect yesterday. They're sending the Medical Saintess along with a subjugation force. They should be here in ten days. You just need to hold out that long," the woman's sunken eyes burned as she forced herself to keep speaking. "There isn't much food left for the others. You can have my portions, it won't do me any good anyway," the woman continued bitterly. "I know you've only just awakened but your Azure Flames mean you have what it takes to be an alchemist," she choked out before breaking down in another coughing fit.

"Senior sister, stop," Ao Wen said. "Take a moment of rest."

"Listen to your senior sister," the older woman said as forcefully as she could with her breath rattling in her lungs. "The looting hasn't gotten too bad around here yet. Everything worth taking is in the core districts, no one cares much about what's out here except the people who live out here and most of us are dead or dying," she said bitterly. "Yu, when you can walk, I want you to see if there's anything you can use in Doctor Dongfang's clinic. He hasn't come back since the outbreak started, I don't know if he'll ever come back, but you're probably still small enough to fit through the bars on his windows. You're smart too, I know you are. Use anything you can find to help the others, okay?"

"I will senior sister," Ao Wen promised.

"Good girl," she said. "No, good woman," she corrected herself. "You've awakened, you're a cultivator now, not a child. You have the sect waiting for you. They'll take you away from this place, you just have to hang on. Save as many of them as you can," she coughed out. "But remember this Yu," she said sternly. "The sect took you in, you owe the sect the life you have. If you can't save the other orphans, at least save yourself. You can make it up to them in your next life along with me and Senior Sister Ang."

"I will. Senior Sister should rest here," Ao Wen said, lifting herself out of bed and setting the empty soup cup down. "My cot is already warm senior sister," she said, helping the older woman to lay down. "Rest while I get something for you."

The older woman wanted to protest but she had too little strength left to resist even Ao Wen's weakened pressure. Dressing quickly in the clean robes that were folded at the bottom of the cot, Ao Wen began to explore the rest of the building, searching for the kitchen and anything that would help alleviate the suffering of the older woman as she approached her end.

The building turned out to be a small three-story structure in a run-down district of a city much larger than Turning Leaf town. Looking out a window, Ao Wen could see large palaces rising in the distance and several pagodas seven stories or taller. At the same time, several black plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the city, trash and bodies littered the streets and a thick miasma of dark yin energy hung over much of the town. Ao Wen stared out the window for several moments, her mind refusing to take in the scale of the tragedy she'd woken in the middle of. As far as she could see, most buildings had burned-out holes in them, hunched figures picked through debris or searched the bodies of the dead… everywhere she looked, more misery, more destruction, and much, much more death.

Returning to the building, Ao Wen resumed her search, eventually finding the kitchen along with a limited amount of clean water. Suddenly, seeing the world outside, even the simple act of providing a cup of water to sip felt like a resource that might need rationing but she couldn't bring herself to not do something to relieve her ailing senior sister's suffering. Looking further, she found a jug of wine that seemed to be marked for specific ceremonies. Ceremonies didn't matter, not when everyone was dying. Opening the jug, Ao Wen mixed the wine with water and warmed it by the fire before returning to the dying woman's side.

"Drink this senior sister," she said gently. "It should help."

"You should save the water," the woman stubbornly refused.

"It's not just water. Drink," Ao Wen insisted.

After taking a sip the older woman's eyes widened in surprise, then a hint of a smile played across her lips. "What a cheeky junior sister," she said. "Serving me my own funeral wine."

Ao Wen paled for a moment, thinking that she might have given offense but in the end, the older woman didn't seem that upset. "Better to enjoy it than pour it over your memorial tablet isn't it?" Ao Wen said lightly. "Senior Sister can just drink and talk to pass the time. Tell me what happened these days or about the sect. Anything that Senior Sister wants."

"Mmmn," the older woman said after another few sips soothed her throat. "Listen closely then junior sister," she said, beginning to speak slowly between sips.

Over the next hours, Ao Wen learned a great deal. She and her Senior Sister were initiates of the Sacred Flame Celestial Temple, one of the three mightiest sects of the Jade Bamboo Western Continent and according to Senior Sister, the most dedicated to fighting the Yin Fiends.

That was the second thing she learned about. For as long as her senior sister could remember, they'd suffered invasion and attacks from the Yin Fiends, beings from a dark realm of a twisted nature who threatened to overrun the world. The state of the city they were in had been caused by a cultivator mistakenly releasing the seal on an ancient Yin Fiend. No one knew what he thought he was doing but the results were clear. Yin energy had flooded the city and with it had come all manner of sicknesses. Tens of thousands died in the first days, but within a week the number surpassed a hundred thousand. Most mortals had succumbed leaving the youngest and most pure the least affected. The more darkness lurked in a person's heart, the faster they succumbed. No one was immune to having some darkness within them but the young had considerably less. The most twisted didn't actually become sick. Instead, they changed, twisting into Yin Fiends themselves. The Yin Fiends had never needed to breach the walls to destroy the city. The city had fallen from within.

After that, her senior sister spoke more about her dreams. A person couldn't be more than an initiate in the sect if they couldn't reach the second stage in at least one cultivation path by thirty years of age. Her senior sister had been a painter and storyteller who loved caring for children. She'd thought that working in the sects' orphanage would let her both care for others and further her cultivation. Sadly, the years had passed her by and she'd never made it past being a late-stage Aesthete.

As night fell she began to talk about a young man named Ji Ying. He'd been a talented young man at the orphanage who talked about becoming a cultivator to bring her senior sister away. A few years before Yu arrived at the orphanage, Ji Ying had broken through to become an early-stage Soldier. The sect had called for him to become an outer disciple. For the first few years, he'd written regularly. Then less. Now it had been a year since he'd written. Her senior sister didn't know if he was still alive or if he'd perished fighting Yin Fiends. Now, she knew he would never return to take her away but she hoped that he was living well in the sect, perhaps with a beautiful senior sister that spoiled him the way she once had.

Not long after that, her senior sister breathed her last, leaving Ao Wen alone with the children of the orphanage.