Gleaming inside the broken jar was a fully refined heartcore.

Koi Heartcore

Intact // Dull Quality (3rd Refinement)

When a koi lives for a decade, it has a small chance of forming a pearl such as this, representing primitive attempts at cultivation.

Effects:

Qi Recovery 5% (Water)

>> Demon Purging (Earth 3) <<

Water Breathing (+)

Potency 5% (+)

Booker let out a sigh of relief, pulling out the ash and broken fragments and letting them all slop onto the grass, the heartcore spilling out and rolling across the scorched ground.

He sank onto his knees, sweat pasting his hair down to his face and dripping down his nose. His body was shaking hard, caught between the cold of night that grew as the wind rose and the heat billowing from the kiln. Froggie was thundering along, belching out golden-green flame.

“Froggie…” Booker gasped out. “You can rest…”

The fires dimmed, sank down, and collapsed. The bed of ash and half-burned wood glowed with golden sparks, liked nested fireflies.

Snips came fluttering down from the roof and landed on Booker’s shoulder, now that the flames had died.

Taking the three refined ingredients, he cupped them in his hand and murmured “Furnace.”

A wheel of fire erupted between his hands, consuming the ingredients. Drifts of ashen material flowed in rings of tattered shreds, spiraling through the wheel until they collected at the core. The scent was divine – the scent of a fresh-flowing river, the sweetness of milk, and the an unguent medicinal bitterness – combining into something that smelled bracing, harsh, and purifying.

It was a pearlescent white pill swirled with reflective pink, resembling a tiny planet made out of opal stone.

Booker took it in hand and smiled.

Spiritual Earth Rebalancing Pill (Earth)

8% Potency // 18% Toxicity

Effect:

Neutralizes maladies and inner demons. May cause the demon to be spat out directly, or in rare cases, subdued and captured by the host.

Ingredients:

3rd Refinement Earth-Type Beast Blood

3rd Refinement Earth-Type Frog Liver

3rd Refinement Earth-Type Koi Heartcore

— — —

The Sect was guarded at every entrance. But Booker, a cripple, knew that those guards overlooked a great deal of the day-to-day business. After all, every day there was the need for cauldrons of grain to make congee, there was the need for the robes and undergarments of the proper disciples to be washed in the river, and a dozen other small things that were utterly essential to the running of the Sect, but so boring and banal that none of the guards spared a thought for them.

The cripples who did this work were simply invisible.

The washing in particular was a weak point in the Sect’s defenses. It extended down the river for half a mile, out of the massive open-mouthed gate that stood bridging the Sect’s walls from one side of the river to the other. Numerous cripples were hard at work, scrubbing and rinsing and squeezing the garments in broad vats of diluted lye, then dragging them through the river’s currents at the end of long poles to let the flowing water wash them clean. Stubborn stains were dealt with by pounding the garments with mallets, or scraping them with dulled clamshell knives to abraid the dirt free.

It was a massive endeavor, one that left the workers with reddened hands, the caustic lye in the wash-water drying and cracking their skin. The only good thing was the smell – ground pea flowers, eaglewood, and other scents drifted through the air in steamy wafts.

Booker found Chen Jie with his robes stripped down to the waist and tied there, his skinny legs planted in the muddy shore of the river, stirring bedsheets through the river’s flow at the end of a long pole.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Brother Rain, I hear things have been going quite badly for you…” The old man said, without looking up.

“How did you know it was me?” Booker asked. He’d become quite good at restraining his aura, but the old man had recognized him at once.

“You smell like medicine and walk like an elephant. Most alchemists have softer footsteps.” Chen Jie replied, grunting with effort as he lifted the soaking fabric free of the river and, with a casual motion, flipped it off the end of the pole and onto a washing line to dry. All around them bedsheets hung from similar lines, forming a loose barrier that protected them from being seen by the other servants.

“I’m afraid I need to borrow a favor. Or buy one, if you prefer.” Booker said, not sure if offering money directly was tactless.

“Like for like. One favor for another – and it needn’t be me, so long as it’s another in our brotherhood. That’s the way it’s always been for us cripples.” Chen Jie smiled. “By that measure, I’d say you’re owed a good turn.”

“For what?”

Chen Jie shook his head. “Child, it’s hard to hide anything from these eyes. Those two cripples you saved from being whipped to death have kept it quiet, they’ve certainly got no reason to blab, but they did mention the pills being brought to them by a peculiar spirit beast.” His gazed lifted meaningfully towards at the mantis sitting on Booker’s shoulder.

“Ah.” Booker said. Damn, I guess it really is impossible to hide anything from Chen Jie. I’m lucky to have even kept the book secret… “In that case, you probably know what I’m going to ask?”

“Mhm. Help me finish up and I’ll see that you get inside without being noticed. It’s the least an old man can do…”

— — —

With the moon rising, Booker was snuck into the Sect inside a heavy basket of laundry. All around him was the scent of the fragrant powders used to purify the washing. The guards never bothered to look twice as two cripples lugged him up the stairs and through the gates; and even if they had noticed the basket looked too heavy, smuggling via this route was common enough. They looked the other way and they were well paid to do so.

As they let him out, Booker passed a silver to each of the cripples who’d helped carry him in, bowed thankfully, and headed out on his way to the infirmary. He had dusted a little of the soap powder across his cloak, perfuming it with a different scent than the one Chen Jie had noted belonged to Booker in his everyday clothes.

Just another small precaution…

The infirmary was a free-standing building alone in a thick garden of tall pine trees, shading the windows and the courtyards. As Booker vanished into the trees, he pulled on his mask and his white-fur cape, coiling the latter around him to hide his robes. He placed a sprig of medicinal herb between his teeth, chewing until a numb tingle spread across his tongue and throat, changing his voice.

As he pushed free of the pines, he was totally disguised, and crept along the outer wall of the infirmary glancing through the windows. Rows of cleanly-made beds and convalescing patients ran the inside of the wall. He found Wild Swan lying in a private room near the end of the infirmary, the boy’s face lined in sweat and cooled by a wet towel placed on his forehead. His eyes were clenched shut, his breathing rising and falling in labored heaves.

Booker tapped on the window with the back of his hand, and the boy stirred.

“Wild Swan.” He said.

Swan’s eyes flashed open, and he sat up, pushing himself weakly from the sweat-darkened impression his body had dug into the cushions below him.

“Y-you?” Wild Swan stuttered out, his eyes still hazy with sleep. Judging by the lack of color in his face and the fumbling way he moved…

He was close to death.

“I… I did what you said. I believed… I found the idol, and caught the lightning, but…” His voice broke into slow, heavy breathing for a moment, struggling to regain even the small amount of energy spent speaking. “I’m not strong enough. It’s tearing me apart inside. There are… moments the world goes white and I feel it fighting inside me, and… and they say I roll on the ground twitching, shaking like a leaf in the wind…”

“Fighting fate is hard.” Booker said, in the croaking voice of the masked fortune teller. “But you don’t need to be afraid. I’m here, and I’ve brought you a medicine.” He unclenched his hand to reveal the milk-white pill with its dull rainbows of opalescence.

Wild Swan gazed out the window for a moment, and then turned his head away. Booker barely heard his next words at all: “Is… is it really possible?”

“Is what possible?” He asked.

“Making your own fate. F-fighting your destiny.” Wild Swan shifted, pushing himself up on the elbow of one arm and looking out the window again. “When I was… y-young… my father sought out a fortune teller. He said… he said someday I’d cut my own family down. All of them.”

Booker saw a strange desperation in Wild Swan’s eyes. The look of a boy who had been hounded by an ill omen through his young life – a cloud of suspicions that no amount of cultivation lift, because every step he took on the road of cultivation, only brought him closer to being able to commit the deed he was already deemed guilty of.

“I-if that’s true… Maybe it’s better…”

“No.” Booker didn’t let him finish the sentence. “No. You control your own hands, your own sword. As long as these things are true… Fate, whatever it is, doesn’t have the power to steal your choices from you.”

He didn’t know if that was true. For all he knew, all he had to offer were comforting lies.

But Wild Swan needed that comfort, so Booker spoke, and he would worry about the truth of his words later.

“Open the window.” He insisted, gesturing at the latch. “Let me give you this pill. You’re weak now. It’s natural to think of surrendering. But when you have your strength back, these fears will be farther away.”

Wild Swan nodded, and slowly rolled out of bed. His feet made shuffling steps towards the window–

And suddenly he went to the ground, his legs crumpling underneath him as he clutched his chest. Something electric danced on the back of his knuckles, thin electric threads wreathing their way out between his fingers. As he hit the ground, cracking his chin and nose against the floorboards, the boy began to thrash, wild seizures rocking through his body and making his limbs lift and flop.

Booker didn’t hesitate, twisting his cloak around his fist and punching through the window. Sweeping the glass from the frame, Booker shoved his way forward, stepping through the frame and down to Wild Swan to lift the boy into his arms.

Electricity spasmed through his arms as soon as he touched Wild Swan, and he nearly dropped him in shock.

Checking quickly that his skull hadn’t been fractured, Booker pressed the pill into Wild Swan’s mouth. The boy’s eyes were vaguely aware, but staring out in horror, unable to stop his body twitching like a landed fish. Booker had to pry his jaws apart with a finger and force the medicine down…

Footsteps were rushing through the half-abandoned halls. At this hour all the doctors were eating, but there were still crippled nurses on duty. One of them threw the door open and–

Froze.

What she saw was was a figure in a mask and a white cloak crouched over a deadly sick Wild Swan, with lightning coursing across the boy’s body in sparks and tendrils. Booker had expected the lightning to die off thanks to the pill…

But if anything, it was growing more and more ferocious, until his own fingers began to twitch and shake with the voltage coursing painfully down his muscles.

He laid Wild Swan down in bed and turned to the nurse, who was frozen, confused.

“Keep careful watch over him. He may spit out a devil in the next few hours.”

Still stunned, she simply nodded.

Booker stepped back out the window and departed into the night.