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Chapter 17 - Mystery Afoot

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Watching Lao Yi freak out over his age got old after a few minutes.

“It’s not like I look particularly old or anything, Master. How old did you think I was?” he asked amusedly. Okay, it hadn’t entirely gotten old yet.

“I thought you were at least fifteen!” the old man spluttered.

Zhujiao gave him a flat look.

“It’s possible!” Lao Yi exclaimed somewhat defensively. “You could just be short! Actually, wait, why am I defending myself? You’re the one who’s weirdly young; this is all your fault!”

He couldn’t help but laugh at Lao Yi’s incredulous expression. It was the first time Zhujiao had seen the old man look anything other than poised or occasionally sly.

“I’m sure you’ll get used to it, Master. Actually, while you’re wrapping your head around that, I, uh, had a question about my pay?”

Lao Yi raised an eyebrow. “If you want a raise, talk to me when you’re old enough to drink.”

Zhujiao snorted. “No, I’m just wondering how much I’m getting paid as an apprentice. And how often I get paid. I need to sort out my finances to make sure I can afford to, you know, eat.”

“…What kind of twelve-year-old thinks about his finances?” Lao Yi squinted at him suspiciously. “Is this a joke? Are you playing tricks on this old man? Because I hate to say it, but I would be very impressed.”

“No, master, I really am twelve; I’m just really mature for my age.”

“Right. Mature.” Lao Yi shook his head ruefully. “As for your pay, an apprentice healer receives a stipend depending on what other support their master provides. In your case, I’m paying for your housing and uniforms, so your stipend will be a bit higher than usual to ensure you have enough to cover everything else. I think I have…”

Lao Yi turned to rummage around some loose papers on the nearby bench before plucking one from the pile. “Aha! Here it is, let’s see… it looks like you will get 175 copper jots per month, or one silver mark and seventy five jots, or however you want it.”

“R-Right. That’s… better than I expected, actually,” Zhujiao admitted, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. 175 copper jots a month was, what, 6 jots a day? The steamed bun he had for breakfast had cost three, but he wouldn’t be surprised at all if the merchant had upped the price when he saw an easy mark. Besides, if he got raw ingredients instead of ready-made meals it would probably be cheaper as well…

And if he could figure out whatever cultivation technique would allow people to eat less, that would translate to pure savings. Easier said than done, of course, considering he had never noticed any reduction in hunger while using his reinforcement techniques.

Presumably, it was something more complicated, which would take time to figure out.

Still, as long as he was a little frugal it seemed like he was in a fairly good spot, money wise. He still had that silver mark back at home after all, which should be enough to pay for at least a couple of weeks worth of food.

“Thank you, Master. I’ll make sure to budget accordingly.”

Lao Yi gave him a thoughtful look. “You know, all jokes aside, it’s quite rare to see someone your age so concerned with finances. Not that I’m complaining – maturity and planning will serve you well no matter which path you choose to take through life, but remember, you’re still a child. Don’t forget to enjoy your youth.”

Zhujiao smiled, though it felt a bit forced. “I’ll try, Master. It’s just... well, circumstances make it necessary.”

“Ah. I see.” Lao Yi gave him a gentle look of understanding but was tactful enough to leave it at that.

After all, life was not kind to orphans, and those who managed to survive did so by leaving behind their childhoods and growing up quickly.

“Right then,” Lao Yi continued a little awkwardly. “Let’s move on to what you’re going to be doing over the next few weeks.”

“You mean other than sweeping the floors?”

“Ah, my boy, there’s not going to be any more sweeping. No, that was a test to make sure you wouldn’t just give up too quickly – most of the prospective students sent my way give up after a few days.”

For some reason, that surprised him. Not that the other students gave up – considering no one had even really mentioned an apprenticeship as a possibility, most kids wouldn’t put up with the tedious, dirty work for nothing more than a copper a day. Really, the only reason he had stuck it out was partially because he didn’t know enough about the currency to realise how badly he was getting ripped off, and partially because he was actually an adult.

He had experience working crappy jobs.

No, the real surprise was that he wasn’t the first orphan Madame Liu had sent Lao Yi’s way. It made sense when he thought about it – obviously, even the slightest possibility of getting an orphan an apprenticeship under a healer was worth pursuing, but…

Well, it was embarrassing to admit, but he secretly thought he was special. Someone that Madame Liu had picked out as worth nurturing.

He quickly shook off the slight feeling of hurt. For one, he really had nothing to complain about considering how everything had worked out, and for two, Madame Liu clearly didn’t offer the opportunity to every orphan, so he could still feel a little bit special.

Lao Yi raised an eyebrow at him as he snorted softly to himself in amusement. Even despite being technically forty years old – mentally, anyway – he still couldn’t shake the childish feeling of wanting to feel special.

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Before he could get too caught up in his thoughts, Lao Yi turned and tottered off towards the back room.

“Come on then, boy, we don’t have all day!” the old man called over his shoulder. “In a normal apprenticeship, you would spend the next six months studying scrolls before your master would let you even look at a patient. Bah!”

He spun to pin Zhujiao with an intense glare. “What a waste! By the time you start actually helping anyone, you would’ve already picked up a bunch of useless habits from the damn scrolls. All this nonsense about ‘making the patient feel comfortable’.” The old man’s voice was distinctly mocking. “What a waste of time. The patient will feel more comfortable once they’re healed, I say!”

Zhujiao frowned in confusion. “But I’ve seen you act all nice and gentle for people,” he pointed out, not inaccurately.

Lao Yi scowled at him. “Don’t point out my hypocrisy, apprentice, I don’t like it. Besides, I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive. It hardly takes me any effort to diagnose an injury or illness, so I can afford to split my concentration by being nice.”

That… was a better explanation than Zhujiao had expected, actually.

“In any event, we’re not talking about me right now; we’re talking about you,” Lao Yi jabbed him in the chest with a gnarled finger. “Right now, you’re a completely blank slate, which means there are two ways I can teach you – the useful way and the other way. If I taught you the way all the fancy healers learn, you would learn to fix an incredible array of strange illnesses and injuries, but only as long as you have everything you need.”

The old man scoffed. “Perfect for a coddled, stuck-up, self-important ponce that lives in a gilded cage and only helps the rich.”

Clearly, Lao Yi had opinions on the kind of healers who chose that path. Good to know.

“No apprentice of mine is going to end up like that! No, you’re going to learn by doing.” The old man took a look at Zhujiao’s expression and chuckled. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to throw you into the deep end by making you do everything yourself or anything. You’ll be watching me as I work, fetching tinctures or creams as needed, and depending on how well you do, I might get you to try bandaging things up a little, that’s all.”

Zhujiao sighed in relief. He’d been a little worried that Lao Yi’s apparent disregard for procedure extended to having someone with no experience working on patients, and he was glad to be proven wrong.

His master looked at the door consideringly before continuing. “Hmm. We should have enough time for a quick discussion. Tell me, apprentice, what do you think the most difficult aspect of being a healer is?”

Zhujiao blinked, somewhat taken aback at the sudden shift to a lecture. “Uh, dealing with losing a patient?” he tried. Really, the question was so broad that almost any answer could be somewhat applicable.

Lao Yi raised an eyebrow at the response. “That’s an interesting answer, and not one I expected. I suppose… yes, well, I suppose an orphan would be more familiar with loss than most. While that’s a good answer, my boy, I was looking for something a little more basic, something that would affect our work directly.”

Zhujiao tried to ignore the stab of hurt that flashed through him at the reminder of his loss in favour of thinking about the question. He had sort of brought it up himself, after all. “Is it having to learn about so many different remedies?”

Lao Yi nodded. “Very good. Well, not exactly, but close enough. The biggest problem most healers face is not knowing what is going to walk through that door next. It could be a simple cut, in which case having some bandages is all the preparation they need. It could be an infection, which is trickier to deal with, or it could even be the start of a new plague, which is every healer’s worst nightmare.”

Zhujiao blinked at the reminder that, yeah, plagues were absolutely a thing in this world. In fact, hadn’t one of the guards at the city gate mentioned something about a plague?

He shook his head, refocusing on his master’s lecture.

“Alternatively, absolutely nothing could come through that door!” Lao Yi continued. “I’ve have many a day with no patients, and some days where I hardly have time to sit down! Every good healer likes to be prepared, to make sure they have enough bandages and tinctures and remedies available, but no one can predict the future. So then, apprentice, tell me what can be done about this problem?”

Before Zhujiao could think to respond, the door to the clinic crashed open and a tall man staggered through, barely supported by a younger looking woman. The woman looked more than a little panicked, and the man was clutching his side, a dark stain spreading across the front of his tunic.

“As if to illustrate our discussion,” Lao Yi commented, sounding almost bored by the commotion.

“Please, you have to help,” the woman sobbed. “He was attacked, there was a knife. I—I can’t stop the bleeding…”

For all that Lao Yi didn’t seem terribly concerned, he was certainly moving very quickly as he sprang to his feet and moved over to the couple. “Zhujiao, grab the red tincture from the cabinet behind you. Quickly,” he ordered almost absently.

Zhujiao sprang into action, fumbling only slightly in his haste. The red tincture was one of the first he had learned about, a potent coagulant that could stop severe bleeding in moments. He handed it to Lao Yi, who was already moving the man over to the main table.

“Hold him steady,” Lao Yi instructed, and Zhujiao moved to support the man’s shoulders while Lao Yi smoothly moved the man’s shirt out of the way to better look at the wound. The injury itself was about three finger-width wide, which all things considered, was fairly small. He didn’t have much experience with stab wounds, but the way it was all but gushing bright red blood everywhere didn’t look like a positive thing.

Zhujiao sort of expected a more visceral reaction to the wound, but right now he was feeling a little… disconnected, like what was happening in front of him wasn’t entirely real.

He watched on as the old healer’s hands moved with practiced precision, cleaning the worst of the blood away with a rag he got from… somewhere, and applying the tincture to the wound. The bleeding visibly slowed to a trickle, which, even in his slightly muddled state, Zhujiao found a little odd.

Could a herbal remedy really be this effective?

Then again, this was a world where random people could toss fireballs around by meditating for a while, so what did he know.

His master clearly had things in hand, and even though the wound was still exposed the urgency had dropped out of his movements, so he figured the poor guy was going to be fine.

The woman who had dragged the poor sod here clearly hadn’t gotten the message and was looking increasingly pale. Zhujiao’s eyes flicked to the still-exposed stomach wound, and he winced. Probably wasn’t terribly calming for her to see that.

“Ah, don’t worry miss, he’s going to be fine,” he tried aiming for a reassuring tone. “Why don’t you tell me what happened? Is there anything else we need to know about?”

“We were just walking home,” she sobbed, not even looking at him, “when these men jumped out of nowhere. They—they took everything we had and stabbed him when he tried to protect me. Please, Master Healer, is he going to be okay?”

It took him a moment to realise that the woman was talking to him. Clearly she was shaken up enough to not have realised he was a child.

“Yes, miss, he’s going to be fine,” he repeated. “Master Lao Yi is very good at what he does.”

He didn’t actually know if the old man was any good at this sort of thing or not, but he figured the woman probably wouldn’t want to hear that. This was undoubtedly one of the more… dramatic injuries he’d seen Lao Yi work on – most of the time, people came in here with infections or the occasional broken bone.

Still, the old healer was working quite confidently, bent over the man who he only just realised had fallen unconscious. That… probably wasn’t a great sign.

Zhujiao frowned, suddenly struck with the notion that the man might have just died. He reached out cautiously with his Qi senses, almost slumping with relief as he felt a faint sensation of cool-purple-quiet from the man.

Still alive, then.

Man, this healer stuff was way more stressful than he had thought, and he wasn’t even the one doing anything. He also hadn’t known that someone could feel ‘purple’ before now, so that was interesting. It wasn’t until he had already retracted his senses that he realised… he hadn’t felt anything from Lao Yi.

Nothing.

Not the faint trickle of Qi that was present in every person he’d ever sensed. Not even the traces of Qi that he could always somehow feel in the air around him.

The man was a total void to his Qi senses.