An interesting fact about brains; there is very much a reason for why they don’t keep you aware of all the background things all the time. It’s like being reminded that you’re breathing, and then all of a sudden you can’t stop noticing it, but it’s worse, because the feeling doesn’t fade, and she can’t really control her heartbeat like she can her breath. Well, not easily, anyways. Every moment of every day, she feels her pulse, and it took a while to realize she isn’t actually sensing it in her chest, where her heart is- she’s feeling it in her skin. The vibration of it, the pulse of kinetic force and heat, feels like it’s hitting the surface of her as it travels through her body and running into a kind of block that keeps it from leaking out, and the feeling that generates is so constant and tuned to, unsurprisingly, the beat that her brain translates it as her heartbeat.

It sucks. It is the single most annoying thing Raika has ever experienced, like a little kid poking her every moment of every day, or like a tic that she can’t control. It makes her constantly aware of her entire body, and mixed with the constant sense of pins and needles, her entire body feels unbearably sensitive. She spends the first three nights straight in her new quarters awake, and it was only by gambling her way into a bottle of rice liquor that she finally managed to sleep on the fourth day. The longer she stays still, the worse it gets.

Fun story, that’s actually how she won the bet. She bet one of the servants in the general quarters, a brash young man by the name of Hi Quo, that she could move more manure than him in six hours. She couldn’t walk afterwards, but the kid said that getting her a drink was the least he could do after a performance like that. In truth, it was just a relief to let the energy out, to move and make the itching and tingling and pulsing fade to the background for a bit, but a bet is a bet.

And, most importantly, it proved what she already thought; she can do more now.

It’s taken her a year, against all odds and involving multiple doses of self harm and one big dose of, admittedly, a fucked up dark ritual, but… it’s worth it. She has taken her first step back onto the path.

Her right leg still can’t hold much weight, but in a pinch, she can limp about without a cane for a few minutes, and with her weird new control of the outer wrapping of her body, she can balance much better on her left alone if need be. Her back is still crooked, but markedly less so, a mix of having the strength and energy to stretch and forcefully realigning it bit by bit helping to straighten it out. There’s not much to be done about missing chunks, but the scar tissue is weirdly included in her overall “skin” modification, and doesn’t slow her down as much (or fight her when she has to move her jaw, which makes eating much easier now).

Li Shu has some theories, of course. She’s come to visit more than once in the three weeks since Qen Hou got her reassigned, and frankly, no one cares enough to stop them from talking, with even Qen Hou himself having better shit to do most days. She theorizes that Raika’s natural body processes are increasing in strength, but also that, between the body trying to adapt and the altered state her mind was in during the ritual, her mind and body might be more linked, both acting as quasi-conduits for Qi in place of meridians. It’s a total fringe theory that makes Raika’s philosophical Qi theoretics look like mainstream science by comparison, but it’s as good as any explanation, so she doesn’t mind, and she loves the healer’s company, so it works out.

It doesn’t change much in terms of what she can do, though, and Li Shu, for all that she is incredibly smart and helpful, doesn’t want Raika to get hurt. Raika really doesn’t care about getting hurt, so long as she gets stronger for it or can heal it, at least. So… she maybe avoids telling her favorite healer about what she’s up to at night.

Doesn’t stop the rumors from spreading, though.

At first, visits from Li Shu dissuaded would-be bullies, but when no reprisals came for minor things (spitting in her food, tripping her as she walks, hiding thumb tacks in her bed, etc), they started getting bolder.

Then the other servants noticed that one of them didn’t make it back to the dorms late one night, and found out the following day that he had been hospitalized with life threatening wounds. Raika, that same night, appeared to work wrapped in barely scabbed wounds and a series of visible splotches of bruising up and down her body.

That’s when the rumors really started. People wondering whether Raika had some hidden benefactor, even in her crippled state, were quickly dismissed; no patron out there would be so generous to continue supporting someone who cannot cultivate and has barely more Qi than a child, and Raika, no matter how slightly off she might seem to one’s Qi senses, still fits both qualities. Then came the rumors that she was somehow blackmailing Li Shu into defending her, which got dismissed later when people realized how ridiculous that would be; she’s not even a real servant or mortal, she’s a cripple, no one would believe her or care if she was killed, so why let her live?

One day, Hi Qou, alongside a lovely young woman with sharp, aquiline features and cat-like pupils and another young man, larger than the next two put together and shaved from head to toe, sat down next to Raika while she ate.

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“So,” Hi Qou had started, “I hear you’ve got some hidden monster looking out for you, cripple. Is it that cute healer? I hear she’s got all sorts of strange ideas.”

He says the word cripple without much heat behind it, more a frank analysis than an insult. She immediately prefers him to most of the people she’s met in the purple-whatever sect for it. Still, she just shook her head. “Not her,” she says simply.

“Well whoever it is, how the hell did you get such luck?” he asks, leaning forward, ready to mock her answer.

She paused. Thought for a moment, looking to her left at the mountain of a young man and the mild mutant across the table. Could be they’re outsiders, too, looking to stop being so by mocking the bigger loser. Could be they’re just another gang of assholes. She shrugged internally; why not fuck with them?

“Well,” she’d said, voice recovered and edging from ragged to husky ever more each day, “back when I still had all my organs and Qi, I was famed as the greatest lover in the northeastern Empire, capable of bringing to blind unconsciousness even the greatest of cultivators. Apparently rumors persist of my talent.”

They’d looked at her, wide eyed, unable to come up with a response fast enough before she bowed and excused herself. She let them fill in their own details around the lie.

That rumor never really caught on, but she heard it once or twice before it vanished, and that was a wild success in her book.

Still, even with the false leads and general lack of interest in her, when the aforementioned bully disappeared things got a bit quiet around Raika. She was left mostly unbothered, physically at least, for a few days, but she was watched much more closely. She figured, sooner than later, someone would find out where she was going at night. Not like she cared to sneak out, or that she couldn’t even if she tried.

“What are you doing?” asks the skinny person with the catlike eyes.

Raika does not respond, finishing her rep. All around them, surrounded as they are by bamboo shoots, bushes, and trees in one of the naturally preserved sections of the sect, the night is quiet and filled with only a whisper of small insects still awake at this hour. Three more hits, each one barely shaking the wood, land in the middle of a small circle worn into the wood. Only when she’s done does she stop and turn to look at the other servant, finally letting the outside world back in and kicking herself for not noticing the smell. The almost-stranger smells... startlingly like yuzu and sharp cat claws.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asks.

“It looks like you’re punching a plank of wood tied to a post in the woods,” replies her nighttime watcher.

“Congratulations,” Raika says. “I am glad my senior sibling has such potent powers of observation.”

The stranger steps off the rock they were sitting on, that Raika hadn’t noticed them sit on before they spoke up. “My name is Maen,” the cat-eyed figure says. “You’re Raika, right?”

Raika shrugs. “Sure. You can call me just “the cripple” if you want, since everybody does. Haven't met anyone else like me, so I’ll know who you mean.”

Maen doesn’t really respond to the thinly-veiled invitation and criticism. “Why are you out at night hitting a post, Raika? Why be out here at all?” she asks. “Given your health, doesn’t it cause you pain, or hurt you more?”

Raika shrugs (and that, too, is much easier than before, which is a fucking joy). “Not as much pain or hurt as lying in bed doing nothing,” she says. “Besides, it reminds me from where I came from. I started out with exercises like this, forever ago.”

"Ah," Maen says. "Everyone thought you were just coming out here to cry or try to steal fruits and leaves from the sect."

Then they cock their head, like they just processed something. “You mean you weren’t born a cripple?” they ask, like the thought never occurred to them.

Raika huffs a laugh, sweating even in the night air, and takes a second to wipe off her forehead. “No,” she eventually responds. “I was a cultivator. Made it higher than most of these outer sect disciples we run into around here, the barely late stage Foundation realm kids. I was most of the way through the Core Formation realm, actually.”

Maen’s eyes go wide, a surprisingly bright display considering how visible they are in the night darkness. “Wow…” whispers her fellow servant. "No one's gonna believe you used to be a cultivator. I can’t imagine being that strong. Most of us here are here for the pay, but even the brash ones who want to become cultivators don’t usually aim that high. Maybe Hi Qou, but it’s hard to tell when he’s being serious.”

Raika shrugs again. “Anyone who plans on starting cultivation to stop at some point isn’t gonna do very well at it,” she says. “Supposed to be a life-long thing. I mean, it was for me, and I had barely any talent at all for it.”

“You were Core Formation realm!” Maen says, tilting their head quizzically. “How is that no talent?”

She laughs. “Most geniuses blast through Core Formation in what, five years? A decade, tops, and it took me almost that long just to get halfway. Besides, you’re talking like Core Formation is something impressive, when we have Soul Emperors and Titans wandering the empire; what’s Core Formation compared to those heights?”

Maen seems to think for a bit, but eventually nods. “Well, I doubt I’m ever getting to Foundation Stage,” she says. “My family has never had any good cultivators.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Raika replies. “Try it if you want. Don’t if you don’t want. Do what suits you, and if you do it long enough, you’ll do it well.”

Maen laughs. “Very wise, for a cripple,” they say.

Raika shrugs, restarting her set, learning how to strike properly in her new body. “Hard to be a cripple. Easy to think about… whatever you want, though.”

Maen seems about to say something, but… decides not to. They watch Raika go through two more sets, then wander off, back towards the servant’s quarters.

Raika spends about two more hours punching a wooden post. Then, she spends three more hitting the next board. The feeling of the hits, striking over and over, bruising her knuckles and washing a pulse of pain and impact all through her, bounces off and soothes the ever-present full-body tingling. She can feel each one building, like a tuning fork, designed for one specific note, harmonizing bit by bit by bit. She's not sure what it means, except that exercise is good if you can afford it and that it helps her sleep.

Eventually, Raika puts the freshly broken board next to three more, and awkwardly balances them on her stumpy arm to throw away before she makes it back to bed.