Chapter 58 - Essential Healing

Once she had her headache under control, Ao Wen started trying to figure out a plan for getting everyone home. Much like her Initiate exam, she only had so many things to work with and several problems that needed solving. "Hey Xi, how's your sewing?" Ao Wen asked as she tried to figure out what she could work with. 

"Better than yours," Feng Xi teased. "Unless you spent some of your time becoming a seamstress while you were at it?"

"Hardly," Ao Wen said. "The only thing I learned to sew were wounds," she added with a laugh. "What I need isn't actually complicated but it kinda needs two hands," she explained. "In a little bit, I'm going to use the rest of the needles to disable my left arm. It's temporary," she added quickly seeing Feng Xi's breathing quicken. "It'll just hang kinda limp. The useful part is that I won't feel anything. The bad part is that I won't feel anything so if I flop it around and do more damage I won't even notice. I need a good sling to keep it immobile and then I can actually start moving around and help a bit. Think you can play housewife for me and sew something up?" Ao Wen asked with a teasing smile.

"Wen, if that is how you propose to me, I swear, I'll stitch the sling to your sleeve and drag you with it!" Feng Xi said, her ears burning with embarrassment at being called a housewife in such a casual way. "First you confess in your father's workshop and now this! Ao Wen, keep this up and I'm going to beat you until you find out which of your past lives actually understood romance and you can't come back from it till you learn something!" 

"Oh?" Ao Wen teased, a brow quirked and a flirtatious smile hanging on her lips. "You speak like seeing you so flustered and blushing wasn't a worthy goal in its own right. Ah ah, you don't need to say anything," she teased. "Your eyes already said it for you." 

"You! Who are you?" Feng Xi teased. "Give me back my naive little sister Wen! She would never bully me like this."

"Okay, okay," Ao Wen said with a laugh as she finished placing silver needles in her left arm to block the pain. "Come help stitch things up for me and then I'll take a look at Jin. From what I can see from here, he's not looking so great." 

"No, he isn't," Feng Xi said, worry clear in her voice. "He just keeps wasting away." 

A few minutes later, her arm safely immobilized, Ao Wen and Feng Xi knelt at Tan Jin's side, neither of them feeling good about the state their younger friend was in. Ao Wen reached out delicately, first feeling his pulse, then pulling back the lids of his eyes to look at the condition of his pupils and the whites of his eyes. Finally, she pressed on several of his acupoints, frowning as her hand moved from one point to the next on the young man's body. Eventually, after several minutes of skillful examination and consideration, Ao Wen sat back on her heels and frowned. 

"Do you know what's wrong with him?" Feng Xi finally asked, afraid to hear the answer but unable to wait any longer after the past three days of watching him wither like a husk. 

"I know what's wrong with him," Ao Wen said confidently. "He's losing a battle that neither of us would ever have needed to fight. He's different though because his bloodline overlaps with the bloodline of the Rage Queen." 

"His bloodline is the problem?" Feng Xi asked, confusion clear in the set of her brows. "What battle is he fighting?"

"He got hit in the head by the Rage Queen's tail, right? I'm not remembering that wrong?" Ao Wen asked, waiting to receive Feng Xi's nod before continuing. "There's the thing about a lot of spirit beasts, tigers in particular but evidently mountain lions too. While they can all use their tails to strike at enemies to one extent or another, some beasts use their tails to discipline their children. Jade Stripe Tigers and Flame Tailed Lions are both particularly known for it but I think we can add Blood Rage Cougars to the list as well. Against you or me, a smack on the head by the Rage Queen's tail is just a physical attack, but from a spirit beast of similar bloodline, she inflicted a spiritual injury… almost like a parent striking their child too hard for discipline, turning into abuse. The Rage Queen left remnant energy rampaging in Jin, trying to discipline him as an unruly child. Only the Rage Queen died. That rampaging energy should have naturally dissipated by now but it didn't. Instead, because the Rage Queen isn't an ordinary member of her race, that remnant energy is feeding on Jin's Radiant Mountain Lion bloodline. That's why he's wasting away. If that keeps going on, there won't be enough of his bloodline left to support his cultivation and he'll regress back to being a mortal." 

The more Ao Wen spoke the more horrified Feng Xi became, but fear quickly turned to anger when she heard that this could cost Tang Jin his cultivation. He'd only just awakened, he was out on his first real adventure as a cultivator and he could lose his cultivation? Feng Xi wouldn't allow it. "Can I help him fight back? Now that I know he's fighting a battle, I can use my zither to stir his heart, empowering him in his fight against the remnant energy. Oh no!" she said, all color draining from her face. "I've been playing soothing music to try to ease suffering and help him rest. Have I been making it harder for him to fight?"

"I wouldn't say that," Ao Wen said gently. "It's impossible to say that you made it better or worse. If you made him slower or sapped his will to fight you also did the same thing to the remnant energy stalking through his spirit. You may have bought him days by slowing the progression of the consumption," she offered. Truthfully, Ao Wen meant it when she said it was impossible to know. She didn't get to observe Feng Xi's playing directly and the theory could go either way. There were just too many variables to be sure. "You can absolutely help him get better though. Honestly, he'll need so much of your help that he better give you a sincere kowtow when he wakes up and call you Big Sister Xi for the rest of his life," she teased, working to both reassure and bolster Feng Xi's heart. She wasn't an Artist of any sort to know what Feng Xi was feeling but she'd talked to too many loved ones at the bedside who discovered that they may have harmed the loved one they were trying to care for. Huang Yuze had taught her to act around patients and their families when she needed to and to soothe Feng Xi she didn't hesitate to over emphasize things now. 

"How do I help?" 

"Well, first thing, we're going to need a few ingredients, a few of them are a bit special, but you won't have much trouble getting those.," Ao Wen said. Mentally, she ran her Scholar's mind over the major and minor ingredients she'd need to attempt what may be an outrageous plan but when she considered all of the alternatives, she still felt this would produce the best outcomes. She just had to believe in Jin and give him the strength to fight his own battle. 

"I'll walk into the forest with you, hopefully we don't need to go far and the lightning isn't lingering too intensely. The hardest thing is that we're going to need at least one Thundercloud Plum that contains a healthy amount of lighting energy. Best case, we can get six or more of them. Anything over six is extra to have in case a refinement fails, but if we can't get that many we can make things work with just one. It's just that the more we find, the better his odds are. With one, I give him one chance in five of pulling through in the best state. With six, those odds improve to three or four out of five." 

"If more help, why not keep going till we find enough to make it a guaranteed success?" Feng Xi asked.

"Two reasons really," Ao Wen explained as she stood to begin searching in the forest. "First, I'm pairing the plums with two other components that we already possess," she said. "The curse he's trapped in is that his Radiant Mountain Lion bloodline overlaps too much with the Blood Rage Cougar bloodline. Maybe close enough that a true Radiant Mountain Lion could have cubs with a Blood Rage Cougar. The blessing is that he can also perfectly absorb Elixirs made from the Beast Core and Hearts of the Blood Rage Cougar cubs we hunted a few days ago. I intend to use the Hearts from the cubs to restore the missing strength of his bloodline, replenishing the physical strength he's lost. The Beast Cores will be part of an elixir to empower him with real rage, enough to hunt down the remnant energy and destroy it. He'll still have to take advantage of the power we'll be giving him, that's the second part of the uncertainty. Even if it was a sure thing, if his will doesn't rally then he's doomed from the beginning," she said. "I don't think our little Jin is that weak though," she added. "He had the courage to fight the Rage Queen with nothing but a sword and two friends to help. He charged in to protect both of us. He's only losing now because he lacks the strength to fight. Once we give him that, I have no doubt his spirit will do the rest," she finished firmly.