Hao Ning proceeded to draw out the needle from where she had tucked it - the interior of her robe, yet again - and offered it to Xiao Fan by the handle. The farmgirl was... less than enthused to take it, but not because she didn't want it. She was just afraid to accidentally stick one of the two of them with it, and cause another absolute mess like before.
Hao Ning gestured at her with the needle, insistently, brows furrowing. Finally, Xiao Fan reached forth and took it from her sifu. Hao Ning's scowl became a smile in the blink of an eye, and she then nodded her head down towards the cotton-stuffed dummy beside the two. "So. This is... We'll call him Chin. Shu Chin, but he's our close friend and sect-brother, so we'll just call him Chin. Chin has had a terrible injury... He was fighting an enemy martial artist, a master of Wuweimen, and had both his eyes gouged out, and both arms broken. He had to be taken home on an ox cart like a bag of trash. Very sad for him; very, very sad. But whatever. We have that needle."
She pointed to the needle in Xiao Fan's hands, her trademark too-wide smile appearing now on the youngest sifu's face. Xiao Fan raised it up and twirled it about in her fingers, inspecting it and showing it off in a single motion. "I think it's called... I'm not really sure, actually. The Needle of Doubt? Something like that. That's what Qinshu Lang called it... But he called it that to inspire fear in his followers. Anyone who doubted him had the needle put within their lower dantian until they were rendered impotent, so... Maybe come up with a different name? Something more suited to you, simei... I don't want it anymore, and I don't need it, so don't worry about that."
Xiao Fan gulped. She was being put on the spot to name a seemingly magical artifact, crafted by demons' hands, bestowed to a sinister martial master and used for torture... That was more than a little daunting. For such a storied object to even exist, much less have fallen into her hands, was bewildering to consider. Knowing it was hers - that its previous owners were both dead, and one of those dead owners wanted her to become the next dead owner in line? Not a good pattern to continue, on principle... But still. It was overwhelming, to say the least.
Hao Ning noticed how Xiao Fan had grown silent, and cleared her throat to snap her simei out of it. A ghostly hand went up to brush some of Xiao Fan's inky locks from her face, pushing them over her shoulder so that they formed substantially less of a curtain. "Ah, simei... You can do that later, hahaha... By the way, your hair is so long and pretty. I wish mine still grew - I'd love to try out having mine as long as yours." Another smile; this one was born from desire to offer comfort, rather than self-serving amusement. It had the intended effect.
Xiao Fan released a sigh she hadn't known she was even holding in, eyes shutting, shoulders lowering. She raised her hand to get the other half of her head-based drapery, those strands of localized midnight thrown over either shoulder now. With the cheongsam, she figured she probably looked rather refined in this moment - but that wasn't important. "Ah, thank you... when you farm rice, short hair isn't as much of a necessity. There are no oxen or pigs to chew on it, haha, and no millstone to grind it down with... I mean, I could've had a millstone, if I had the money... But I spent most of my yuan on my wife." She smiled too, now, putting a hand up to scratch the back of her head in a display of bashfulness.
Hao Ning pursed her lips and curled their edges, brows arching down even as her eyes widened. She looked as if she had seen a wild rabbit and wanted to pet it. "That's adorable, simei! You and your wife... I don't think you've told me her name, yet, but that can come later. We need to focus on acupunture now, otherwise the two of us are so distractible we'll never get this lesson done!" She laughed as her face returned to the resting sort of smile she always held, looking back down to the dummy. It was time for that medidians explanation, Xiao Fan hoped - it wouldn't do for them to just dive into it without any sort of background information.
She was in luck. "So! Xiao Fan, your meridians have to do with your qi. Again, qi is what flows through us and allows us to live - it's the energy of the very world around us, you know? The Dao itself! So... Having it continue to flow? That's good. You want that, at all points. Your meridians in particular are like pathways in your body where qi flows through in larger quantities. You're a rice farmer - thing about it like pathways in your paddy. " She waited then for Xiao Fan's response, eyes wide and endearing - Xiao Fan, in turn, considered what she was saying, eventually nodding and returning the verbal serve.
"Yes, so when the pathway gets blocked... The flow of water stops, and the crops all wither and die. And qi is like water in the body, then, with the meridians being pathways... Okay, okay, yeah. I see it now. So, how many are there?" She was ready to really crack into things, now - it all made sense so far, as much sense as it was gonna mean, anyways. Xiao Fan thought she was ready for whatever number Hao Ning might tell her - it couldn't be that bad, could it?
She was floored by Hao Ning's response.
"So, in total? There are about twenty meridians... but the acupoints? The places to actually poke your needle so that you clear up those blockages or imbalances, allowing the qi to flow through how it needs and wants to, to clear up sickness or ill health? Four hundred. Cool, right?" The worst part was? She genuinely did seem to think it was cool. Xiao Fan nearly began to cry, only out of sheer anguish at needing to learn four hundred different places to stick someone with a needle. Hao Ning seemed to pick up on this, though... She waved both her hands, rotating at the wrists, trying to shoo away her simei's downheartedness.
"No, no! You don't need to learn them all! Just... Just learn what it's like to use them! And then we can, ah... I guess we can let you carry a reference guide with you? We have a few manuals that were transcribed like that, copies of the larger book..." She let her gaze fall as the idea took hold of her, now barely able to concentrate on the woman just beside her. One could practically see the cogs turning in Hao Ning's brain. Finally, though, Xiao Fan snapped her fingers - and Hao Ning's dissociation was snapped alongside them.
"Oh! Oh, that's right, simei! Fan-Fan, here. This dummy? Just stick our dear friend Chen wherever you want, try to feel around with your needle to see where his acupoints are. I'll go grab a manual. Oh - never do that to any living person. Or a ghost, either. It'll... it'll fuck everything up really bad, like when you're making rice and you stick the paddle in, but you accidentally break a bunch of rice because you're mixing it wrong..." Her voice died in her throat as she wandered away, body moving even if her brain was frozen.
Xiao Fan sighed, looking down to address the dummy on the bed before her. It was very plain, without any sort of features save for the stitches where its limbs had been sewn to the torso... and someone had drawn a rudimentary attempt at a face on the dummy. Xiao Fan had never been a gambling woman, but if she had, she would have bet every yuan she had ever earned that the face was Hao Ning's doing, back when she was alive. The farmer dropped to a squat to get closer to the dummy, needle twirled about her fingers to point forward, and... with a deep breath... she stuck him.
Part of her was afraid Chin was going to cry out. Or was it Chen? Hao Ning seemed to have gotten her own naming choices mixed up - whatever, didn't matter. Chin lay still and silent, as dummies do - his interior was pure cotton, and made little in the way of difficulty for Xiao Fan to root around for acupoints. She wondered to herself what the acupoints would feel like within this soft effigy of a human - surely it wouldn't be exactly like they'd feel inside her own body, right? That was perfectly right, she quickly found. The tip of her needle clacked against something hard and sturdy, and a little bit smooth.
Okay, so right there was an acupoint. One of... four hundred. This was gonna take a while. Xiao Fan groaned once again, but continued her work diligently. The needle was drawn free and stabbed back in time and time again, beginning to vaguely get a hang of where acupoints might be. They were all across the various parts of the body, yes, but also specific points that seemed to 'flow' with the natural progression of one's form. Plus, four hundred might be an awful lot, but it was made far better when she learned that they were mirrored - two hundred on one half of the body, two hundred in the exact same place on the other.
Hao Ning returned after some time with a manual clutched between two no-longer-burning pieces of charred wood. She winked when Xiao Fan saw her, rushing over to drop the manual beside Chin. "Ok! Got the manual. This one has a great many references to the different acupoints, where they are, and what meridian they're associated with... And when to clear their blockages... But you won't need any of the symptoms section! The only symptom you'll need is 'oh what acupoint is related to this enormous hole in my chest or ass or arm or-" She broke off with her theoretical, giggling to herself as she did. Xiao Fan couldn't help but smirk.
"Okay! So! Time to train! We're just gonna go over the basics, and then hopefully fix Chin here's injuries, so that he can live and get his ass kicked another day. So! Page one: the actual diagram of all of them..." And so Hao Ning began to teach, taking up a role that she had never expected in her life or unlife. Xiao Fan listened intently, too - not only to impress her sifu, or because the knowledge was useful, but because she liked hearing Hao Ning's voice. The first day they had met, Hao Ning had been a terrifying concept to be presented with: a ghostly girl with a magic needle. Frightening.
But now? After speaking with her, and then Zhichao Tingfeng, and then allowing them to speak to one another through her? She felt more like a close friend than a terrifying otherworldly entity. She was cute, and sweet in her own silly way, Xiao Fan thought... And the older woman went to pat the younger one on the head at this thought, completely throwing all social convention out the window. She had been so zoned out that she didn't even realize what she was doing until Hao Ning was scrunching down her head and raising her shoulders.
She said nothing, though - and leaned towards Xiao Fan's hand as the taller girl tried to pull the offending palm away. With such encouragement, Xiao Fan decided to keep going, patting her sifu on the head while the mischievous master instructed her disciple on acupoints. The seconds, then minutes, then hours ticked... And soon, the sun was rising. Hao Ning had, at this point, cozied up to Xiao Fan while the latter woman worked - instructing her from beneath the rice farmer's left arm, which was draped around the ghostly girl. To an outside observer, they would have seemed as sisters - if only observers could have seen Hao Ning.
As the sun began to trickle in through the paper slats of the great hall's windows, sound came from outside - out in the courtyard, or at least, in that direction. Xiao Fan paid it no mind at first, jabbing the blackwood needle into the poor Chin's hand - he was having a heart attack, and apparently, the hand was where the acupoint was for the heart. Or... one of them? There were a lot to keep track of. Just as Xiao Fan had begun lamenting this fact, groaning to herself about the presence of so damn many little points in a person's body to keep track of, she heard an unusual sound.
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The rustling in the courtyard had initially been, in her mind, passed off as Zhichao Tingfeng going about his daily affairs. Waking up, going to the storehouse to get food for himself, cooking said food... Etcetera. Normal things to expect at a place like this - normal things to expect in a general sense for any living person to go about doing. It was the crack of dawn, after all, and he had fallen asleep quite early last night - while his simei and meimei had stayed up all through the evening, their lack of sleep both a blessing and a curse. They hadn't even paid any mind to the time.
This sound wasn't something you heard when someone was just doing their morning routine, though. It was metallic... raspy, and brief, and sharp... drawn out as if the person making it was trying to keep it quiet, but still with some expedience. She leaned up and drew Hao Ning closer in a single motion, holding the other girl protectively to herself as she turned and tried to listen. "Ning... Did you hear that? It sounded like someone drawing a knife from its sheath, or... or...-!" That was all she needed to put two and two together. Likening the sound she heard to the sound of a knife being drawn was as auspicious an analogy as she could've made - because it was correct, she realized.
The Tian Lei sect was under attack.
She let go of Hao Ning, about to tell her to stay here and hide - before realizing that Hao Ning was, in fact, a ghost. Unless these attackers were carrying a specific sort of weaponry, or had a priest or monk in tow? She'd be fine, though she wouldn't be able to help much. Instead, Xiao Fan simply grit her teeth and began to pad out of the room and down the hall, towards the incense tree. The scent of jasmine and burnt food from last night still hung in the air, mingling in a dance of sweetness and acridity, sharp stinging acid and sweet, smooth floral tones. It made Xiao Fan feel... strong. Something about the room made her feel strong and confident, now - a stark contrast to how terrified she had initially been when she came here. Before, the oppressive aura of the tree was palpable - now, it seemed to be accepting her.
From the southern corridor, the one that faced the road and the entrance to the sect, she could hear a man whisper. "Alright, Xin... You go check out the storehouses. Lu? You take the bunkhouses. Hong? You're with me, let's go inside..." They sounded like common bandits, having picked a ruin to rob. They'd probably seen the fires last night, glowing through the woods or smoking through the trees. These low life scum probably thought that there were just some squatters camped here, with some valuables and maybe a wife or daughter to steal. It would be so easy for them to simply charge in at the break of dawn, when squatters might still be asleep or just groggy...
So-o-o easy to kill them. Xiao Fan sneered as she stepped silently to the side, hiding behind the wall near the entrance to the southern corridor. She heard the sliding door open, drawn to the side with that same attempt to be sneaky that the thugs had initially given to drawing their blades. It was useless, of course - Xiao Fan already knew they were here. She already knew where they were, where they were going, what they were doing... And she knew how they'd die, too.
Screaming, pleading, begging for mercy.
She could hear their footsteps in the hall, soft woolen footwraps barely making a sound. The creaking of the floorboards was far more of a giveaway than the actual sound of their feet setting down... but it was enough, more than enough. Xiao Fan twirled the needle in her left hand, readying herself - she had just learned all about how to use this needle to fix people, right? Now, it was time to see how to use it to break them.
The first man's foot passed the doorframe separating the corridor from the grand hall. Like the tigers engraved upon the incense tree, Xiao Fan's strike was ferocious and quick; like the dragons, the blow delivered was impossible to refute. None but the strongest could have stayed standing against such an assault - and these two, not even knowing they were about to be attacked? They were far from the strongest. The needle pierced the first man's throat right below his Adam's apple, and immediately, blood sprayed like a geyser. It splattered over the carven animals of the central pillar, knocking free burnt incense sticks and sending the nubs clattering to the floor.
For only a split-second did the blood flow red and hot - as it passed the needle, however, the taint began to set in. The man's neck visibly began to necrotize in only a moment, the outpouring of blood turning from bright red to a foul reddish-black, coming out more in gobs than a pleasant spray. He tried to scream in pain, but all that came was a bloody, disgusting mess from his mouth, frothy and bubbling even as it began to harden into a scab over his tongue and within his windpipe. He tried to stagger away, but losing so much blood so quickly was hard on a person's body, and so he simply dropped to his knees.
The first man's companion did manage to make out a scream, though, both at the sudden attack and the impending, horrible, otherworldly death of his companion. The men were both dressed roughly, like men of the fields turned brigand; their swords seemed cheaply made, but they still looked sharp enough to kill. The dried blood on the blades, and their tunics, was more than enough to condemn these two to death. That's what Xiao Fan decided, anyways. Her core came alight then, glowing with heat and fury, the black rage burning white hot within her veins. Again the roots came down - again, she could feel her whole body with an acuity never given to her when she was alive. She could almost see her flesh pinken up as the blood in her veins began to move again.
"W-What the fuck!? Who are- Fuck! Die, you horrible bitch! Die, die, die!" The still-standing outlaw wound back amateurishly and swung his blade down at her, eyes already streaming with the hot tears of bloody rage and lust for revenge. Xiao Fan sidestepped the blow without a second thought, and decided to take a moment to try something, to put her new knowledge into deadly effect. The effect this fury had on her was... Unspeakable, in a sense, but it made her feel very much alive again - she had seen the way her blood sprayed, how hot it had been, and how warm her flesh was. In calm, she was dead - but, surprisingly, in rage?
She was more alive than she had ever been.
And she had recently learned of dantians - what their effects where, in a very general sense. She had no idea what jing or shen were, and while she was familiar with qi, the explanation of wu wei had only been brief... but when those roots were down? When she could feel the tendrils of her own qi coiling out into her own body, restarting the flame in her heart, perhaps they also restarted the flame in her golden furnace? It was worth a try. She focused, then, on where Hao Ning had told her the lower dantian was: about where the perineum was.
What was a perineum, again? Xiao Fan didn't have time to wonder, continuing to sidestep the sloppy blows that this peasant-turned-thug kept attempting to deliver. Instead, she thought of whereabout the furnace had been on that diagram - just below the stomach, between her loins and her bellybutton. It took a great sort of concentration to truly feel her way through the dark and unexplored tunnels of her own body... but eventually, her soul happened upon something that she could feel without feeling. It was a powerful presence, in the same way that the heart was a powerful presence within the body, or one's identity was a powerful presence within the mind.
She pushed these spectral roots out just as the ruffian made another wild swing, his blade finding purchase in Xiao Fan's left shoulder. She couldn't feel it, of course - but he certainly felt her blood as it ran down his blade. Xiao Fan had more important things to be inspecting, and while she really, really wanted to just reach out and kill this arrogant fool, she had to make use of her temporary bloom of false life while she had it. The roots entangled this presence, and she felt something new within her, in the same way she had felt pleasure and pain when Hao Ning had manipulated the needle: a sensation detached from the body, but not from the soul.
Energy filled her immediately, flowing back up her roots and into her core with the rush of a molten flood. Her whole body felt hot - not just the knowledge that her blood was hot, but she was finally actually able to sense the warmth. The sudden overflow of power was far too much for her to not be intoxicated by, and she could feel her lips smiling madly despite giving them no impulse to. She would try and connect the furnace to the palace another time, she decided - this was too good to not make use of immediately, while she still had time. Who knew when she would calm down again?
As the delinquent tried to pull his shoddy scrap-iron sword free of Xiao Fan's shoulder, she decided to give him a little scare before she killed him. Her left arm flexed, muscle beginning to bulge visibly under the skin, bone audibly cracking and re-mending as her overflowing qi rippled through her body like a cataclysmic torrent. The bone in her shoulder, and the muscle too, followed suit - breaking, then remolding, then breaking and remolding anew in a matter of seconds. It was awful to listen to, honestly, and she was painting the whole room red with her own blood while she did it - flexing your muscles like this tended to make a mess.
And then, the bone in her shoulder became so compressed by her muscles, its entire mass now so impossibly dense... that a new sort of snap rang out through the great hall. The man shrieked and stumbled back to his ass as he saw his blade split in two. His eyes were now wide; his mouth nearly as circular, though the dropped jaw made that more difficult. He pointed at the approaching revenant with the remnants of his blade, a hit with a few inches of iron remaining, broken jaggedly at the end.
"Oh? What's wrong, filth? We weren't the peasants or vagabonds you expected? We weren't the easy prey you were hoping for? You're way in over your fucking head, you piece of pig's shit?" Xiao Fan cocked her head as she approached, playfully giving the impression of genuine curiosity. Her eyes went wide and doeish; her mouth smiled wide, nearly as wide as Hao Ning's. She could feel her heart swell with a twisted sense of pride over what she was capable of, and what she had already performed... She'd make a smear out of this guy in a second. She wanted to hear him cry first.
And cry he did. Only for a few moments, and then came the pleading, and the begging, and the screaming... and finally, the silence. Xiao Fan moved to step out of a side corridor, smiling from ear to ear, her lips nearly splitting from the strain. She could hear sifu Tingfeng fighting at least one of them in the storehouse - objects falling from shelves, jars of wine and potted food clattering or even smashing against the stone floor, and the slamming sound of a human body falling into a wall. He'd be fine, she imagined... He was probably just playing with his opponent, like she had done with hers.
The door to the bunkhouse slid open, and a young man peeked out - he couldn't have been more than eighteen, fresh-faced and inexperienced. Xiao Fan didn't want him to see his nineteenth year.