Chapter 36 - A Break In

After her senior sister passed, Ao Wen took her body to the courtyard behind the building and built a small pyre. She didn't know what the rituals for death were here but she imagined that the presence of so much yin energy would only disturb the rest of the dead. Better, she thought, to send her senior sister to the afterlife in a final blaze.

Her senior sister had mentioned Azure Flames so Ao Wen looked within herself where her vermilion flames had been in her life as Ao Wen. Surprisingly, she found an inner flame there again, much brighter and stronger than her vermillion flame. Touching the base of the pyre she allowed her energy to flow, sending the thinnest thread of azure flame into the kindling. As the pyre burned, one of the children came out to join her.

"Big sister Yu," the young boy said. He looked to be seven or eight but might be older if he was as underfed as she was. "Is big sister Mai gone now too?"

"She is," Ao Wen said softly.

"You're not going away too are you?" The little boy's big eyes pleaded with her to stay, clinging to her the way she'd clung to Feng Xi when she'd first awoken.

"No, I'm not going anywhere till help gets here," she said. "The others are probably hungry, aren't they? Do you want to help me?" Ao Wen asked gently.

"Okay," the little boy said, turning to return to the orphanage. As he did, Ao Wen saw a similar set of dark purple veins pulsing along his neck to what she'd seen on Senior Sister Mai. As he walked, he pulled his right foot along in a shuffling step, putting weight on it only gingerly.

"You know what," Ao Wen said, her heart breaking. "I think I saw some flour in the kitchen. Why don't I make everyone a little treat tonight? You can sit at the table and help me roll the dough."

"Okay," he said with enthusiasm. Anything was better than more of big sister Mai's soup!

Seeing that many of the children had trouble swallowing, Ao Wen scrounged around the kitchen for things that would be easy to eat. Fortunately, a little bit could go a long way. A sweet potato turned into the base of a sweet little steamed mini-bun that the young boy, Fen, helped her roll into small balls.

Once the children had eaten, Ao Wen allowed herself to collapse. Tomorrow, she'd make congee for everyone. She wasn't actually thinking of rationing the food at all. The body needed fuel to fight sickness. If everyone was weak from not eating, they'd never manage to resist the disease. The city was in shambles but it had only taken several days for thousands of people to die. That many people must have staples somewhere. Flour, rice, root vegetables… even if there wasn't any preserved meat to find, there would be food. She just had to find it. Teacher Xie said a stranded group of soldiers could starve waiting for rescue or live off the supplies they raided from the enemy. Taking the initiative was almost always better than remaining passive. That was why she had come to learn Alchemy instead of waiting for rescue. She just had to do the same thing here and take the initiative.

The next day, Ao Wen took stock of the other children as she fed them a simplified version of her mother's congee. There were eleven in total, aged seven to twelve. The oldest was a girl named Ehuang who suffered from a sickness that had turned her feet a dark sickly green that spread up her legs like vines and prevented her from getting out of bed. The youngest was a boy named Gong whose skin had become covered by a mass of pea-sized bumps that flowed along his meridians. Each child seemed to be suffering a unique sickness and all of them complained of a variety of other symptoms like dreams of turning into a vine that devoured people, to spitting up gobs of blue phlegm. Clearly, none of these were ordinary illnesses.

Before she left, Ao Wen put Fen in charge and told him she'd be back soon. The tears in his eyes said he didn't believe her but the only thing she could do about that was to return.

Outside the orphanage, the air reeked of black smoke, rotting flesh, and human waste. Under all of it, an omnipresent yin chill tried to sink into the flesh and bones of anyone foolish enough to venture outside. No wonder she'd seen few people moving about. Wrapping a scarf around her mouth and nose, Ao Wen set off in the direction of Doctor Dongfang's clinic.

The gates of the four-story building had been locked tight but as senior sister Mai had thought, Ao Wen's skinny frame was able to squeeze through the bars even if just barely. Not wanting to be observed from the street, she moved rapidly to the back of the building, looking for a way in. The rear door was shut tight and the windows on the ground level were too small even for her to squeeze through. "That doesn't mean it's impossible to use them though," she thought.

Casting around the rear courtyard she found a simple wooden bench that was light enough to drag over to the wall and lean on its side to form a ramp to the first window. Climbing up that, she was able to reach the lip of the second story molding to pull herself up higher. For the first time, she thanked her small and underfed body as she perched on features that would never have supported her normal weight much less Jun Biyu's more athletic figure.

Finally, she reached her destination, the third-story balcony. "Sorry doctor," she said as forced her way inside. The room she arrived in was a chaotic mess. Books and scrolls were strewn everywhere with dozens of sheets of paper piled on a writing desk. Doubtlessly, some of what she had come to seek was here but in this mess, how would she find it?

Setting aside the study, she first moved through the rest of the clinic eventually learning what had become of the late doctor. In a small room on the top floor, she found the body of a man halfway through a hideous transformation into a form of Yin Fiend with bone spikes protruding from his hands and spine. The doctor lay sprawled where he'd fallen, his hands still clutching the knife he'd used to end his own life. "What darkness filled your heart Doctor Dongfang?" Ao Wen wondered.

For a moment, Ao Wen debated what to do with the body. It felt wrong to leave it here but she was also afraid that touching the body might infect her with some kind of yin poison. Finally, she shook her head looking at the skin on her left arm. Likely it was already too late to worry about that. Using a blanket from a cot in another room she wrapped up the body and took him outside to burn the body the same way she'd burned Senior Sister Mai.

After a moment's hesitation, Ao Wen knelt towards the burning body and kowtowed three times, pressing her forehead to the stone ground. "Disciple Yu pays respects to Master Dongfang. In this life, Master Dongfang will be my first Master in the Path of Alchemy. If we meet in another life, Disciple Yu promises to repay her debt to Master Dongfang for his instruction."

Once the body had burned, Ao Wen gathered his remains along with the scorched knife that had claimed his life and buried them in a plot of empty earth beside the building. When she had time, she'd place a proper memorial but for now, she had living children that needed her.

Returning to the clinic Ao Wen took stock of the resources. It seemed that the doctor had only shut things up tight after the initial looting had begun, or else he had sacked his own clinic in desperation to fight off the Yin corruption. Neat drawers of herbs had been pulled open, their contents scattered or missing. Things that were the most rare and valuable along the top shelf were almost all missing or too little remained to be useful to most people.

The good news, however, was that the clinic had a small kitchen stocked well to cook for sick people. Several sacks of rice, flour, salt, and other staples were present along with many dried herbs that could aid digestion or calm fever. It was too much to hope to find dried or fresh meat but she did find a half-empty sack of lentils that would help the children's diet immensely. The clinic had cots for twenty in separate rooms for men and women plus a number of smaller rooms for treatment. Nothing looked new. The doctor might have been an alchemist but in a city of this size, she was sure that an Independent Alchemist like Master Dongfang hadn't made a significant income treating mortals in the poor quarter. Still, it was clean for the most part and in much better shape than the orphanage.

"There's too much to move," she concluded. "I should bring the kids here."