Stir-crazy would even begin to describe the itch that Dan was currently feeling. Constant echoing whispers from dark corners of the Jaioduo were all he could focus on right now. Xiaomei hadn’t been wrong that Dan was getting overly stressed, but he felt that maybe this was worse. Ostensibly, Dan should have been meditating. Alone.

Dan never felt alone though. Unless he intentionally muffled his own senses, choked himself, the buzz of other people was impossible to ignore. Right now, he couldn’t stop himself from turning his attention to Gan Shun. Gan Shun’s job was to deliver food to the “problem children”, which apparently included Dan.

Dan had ignored the comings and goings of specific people for the most part, but Gan Shun was interesting. They gossipped like it was their job, and the delivery of food was just incidental. While Dan himself had not spoken to the man, he felt as though he knew his whole life story.

“And then I bumped right into that main family fella, the one with the rings on his ears? Yes! That one! I always thought they looked terribly painful, that metal must be heavy, but like I was saying… I bounced right off him, he didn’t even look at me. Hurt my knee, let me tell you.”

The poor listener who, due to their incarceration, had no way to disengage from Gan Shun was definitely not listening as closely as Dan was. That didn’t seem to bother the gregarious man. He bade goodbye to the teen, an angry boy just slightly older than Dan, and continued on his rounds.

What made this man interesting was that, whether he was lying or not, it seemed the only thing he really wanted to talk about were the main family politics. Something Dan was currently finding himself intensely interested in understanding himself. There was a brief moment where Dan thought about pushing past his caretaker and trying to receive the bowl of curry and rice prepared for him, then picking the man’s brain about Guan Po Shang’s faction.

The man who sat “guard” outside Dan’s room was not there to stop people from visiting apparently, which is why Hyun Soon was able to come and go. The foot had definitely been put down on Dan himself though. He had attempted to casually leave with Hyun Soon, no longer willing to sneak around the Jiaoduo, but Dan felt the man’s power flare from behind his desk and decided not to have the argument.

Even the staff of the Guan family were powerful, it seemed. The slightly portly man was square stage. An arrogant and angry part of Dan’s mind said that he could win in a fight against him. Then what, though? It was only impatience pushing Dan out of his door right now, and he could ignore impatience.

As Gan Shun left, and Dan heard no new useful information, Dan fell onto his bed. He knew that he was just looking for any excuse to leave, an event that meant he could say he had to leave. It was childish.

Elder Baba had come to him two nights prior. It had been this visit which had also prompted Hyun Soon to cut short Dan’s training. It had been impossible to hide his growth from the woman, and Dan hadn’t really wanted to. Look. Look what I can do. Let me out and I can do more.

She hadn’t seen it that way. Guan Shi Ai looked ancient when Dan first met her, but right now she looked tragic. A shawl draped over her flimsy shoulders, but the shakes she was suffering from were not from the cold. She had explained some things to Dan, but again he was left frustrated at the sense of vagueness in her answers.

“Just keeping you safe.” An answer that made some kind of sense after the attempt on his life, but Dan didn’t think that he was even the primary target of that plan any more. His own importance to the Guan family was not clear, even to himself, but it hadn’t been anything before he entered the forest. If anything, he had saved Guan Fa Lian’s life, not his own, and that had been accidental. Dan’s own value had become clear by virtue of that alone, he was sure.

“It won’t be long now.” Elder Baba’s ominous answers were growing tired, both to Dan and to herself, as she yawned. What had happened to the woman’s vibrancy in the last week or so? Had the turmoil with her sons drained her so much? Another half-answer served to deafen Dan to the rest of her platitudes. Dan thought back with guilt about how he had snapped at the old woman and groaned, flipping himself on his bed so he could bury his face in a pillow.

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“Just let me leave, I never wanted anything to do with any of you!”

He had seen the pain in her face but it hadn’t hurt as much as the acceptance he had seen. He couldn’t take the words back once they left his mouth, and the truth in them had been enough to tremble the woman’s lip. Dan bit his own cheek as tears began to form. He definitely needed to apologise to the woman. Elder Baba was as close to a grandmother as Dan could possibly have had, and he had made her cry.

Lying in his bed remembering it now, he hated his past self. It didn’t help anything, but he would do better in the future. For now, he was content to wait in his room until she was ready. After all, Guan Shi Ai had saved him as a young boy. He could be patient.

That truly was his plan.

Then he saw a glimpse. Her. Guan Po Daiyu casually walked past his awareness, stepping into it for just a second before she vanished. Whatever thoughts Dan had of sitting still disappeared along with her. If she was on the move, which according to Gan Shun had not happened since the Quiet Combat, then things were truly in motion and he could not afford to stay here any longer.

Even knowing the urgency, it took Dan a moment to work up the courage to deal with his caretaker. A man of absolutely no words, Dan hadn’t even worked out the man’s name, let alone how to deal with him and make him see the importance of the situation which Dan now felt.

A worry Dan needn’t have had. Dan’s point was made clear as the Jiaoduo itself shook with a tremendous rumbling. Po Daiyu?

Dan opened his door right as the man stood from his desk. He was looking very serious, and instead of saying anything, just pointed down the hall. Dan was glad that he didn’t need to argue, if a little surprised that the silent man would suggest he run towards an explosion.

It had only been a few minutes since he last saw Guan Po Daiyu. The earth-splitting noise had definitely come from that direction. What had she done?

Asked and answered in the same heartbeat. Mostly.

Dan saw Hyun Soon’s mana and felt his heart jump to his throat. The boy was as scared as anyone Dan had ever seen. It took another moment for Dan to see why, focusing on the heap in his friend’s arms as he made his way towards him. Hyun Soon was running to the room which Dan had just left. For the sake of Hyun Soon, Dan felt himself go hollow. His own emotions weren’t important right now, in the pandemonium of the moment.

Hyun Soon was screaming as he ran, though Dan was sure he didn’t know that. His arms were as still as mountains, keeping the broken girl in his arms as unjostled as possible. Only possible for someone with the strength that Hyun Soon had, but his arms must also be howling. When Hyun Soon saw Dan, he stumbled to a pained stop.

“Can you fix her?” He asked. Dan’s heart felt as though it would snap in two at the sound of one friend’s pain, and the sight of another’s.

“Yes,” he lied confidently. “I can fix this.” Dan looked into Hyun Soon’s eyes and felt his mana snap towards his friends. It washed over him, unbidden by Dan. Dan himself hadn’t meant to do anything, and also had no idea if he had done anything. Hyun Soon seemed to calm slightly though, which was the important thing.

The whole Jiaoduo was in turmoil, but Dan guided Hyun Soon and his precious cargo back to his room. Hyun Soon winced and apologised as he “righted”some of the ways Xiaomei’s body now bent. The room had been a hospital to Dan, and would be one to Xiaomei now, too. When they reached his door, Dan’s caretaker began moving. He walked up to Dan as Hyun Soon lay Xiaomei on the bed and placed a large hand on Dan’s shoulder. When Dan looked at him, a mask of confusion on his face, the man just squeezed his arm and grunted. Then he left, as always, without a word. Dan shouted after him to get help, confused and almost angry at the man for just running away.

Hoping that getting assistance was exactly what the man was doing, Dan focused on what he could do. As if there were a clear answer. The actual healing aspect of his energy was something they had not yet been brave enough to test the limits of. A bruise or cut might disappear without any adverse effects but this? If Xiaomei’s chest wasn’t stubbornly rising up and down, Dan would have been certain it was too late to help.

Instead of talking himself into a tangle, Dan took a deep breath. He collected all of his dispersed mana. Compared to moments before, Dan was now in a bubble of silence. All that existed was the room, and its three helpless inhabitants.

Forward and back. Up and down. In and out. Around and around. Feel the mana.

Dan needed the calm. He needed the ritual right now. His mind was as panicked as he had ever been, and he required control. Focusing on the basics helped. He found the boundaries of his core and set out to make room for Xiaomei’s mana. Whether it was a single technique, or could be split apart, Dan didn’t know, but the process he understood would need to be enough right now.

When he had first tried to learn how his mana worked, he had thought that leaving himself empty was necessary for the technique to work. That had been his state in the Sasin forest, but it was not the actual answer. Dan’s core now braced itself, dragging all of his mana to one side. This mana would act as an internal buffer against the incoming mana. Then, like a bottle being filled via gravity, Dan’s mana would leave his own core and find a spot in Xiaomei’s core instead.

That was what caused the healing. For Dan, his own mana was plain and useless. When a “true” practitioner like Hyun Soon, Xiaomei or Fa Lian, who could shape their mana in unique ways, received Dan’s mana, it flooded their body with energy. At least, that was the best guess that he had.

Using guesswork to save a life seemed terribly ill-advised, but there was no alternative. Bracing himself for the worst, he pressed his hand onto Xiaomei’s core and prayed, in a very rare moment, to the empty god. Prayed that he hadn’t lied.

That he could fix this.