Chapter 6 - Discovering New Things

The entire healing process took over two hours. By the end, Lu Na had fetched more tea and other necessities for the doctor than she’d ever had before in her life. Although to be fair, she rarely ever had to with so many maids around her, anyway. She had only ever done it for her brother or for her mother when she was younger.

“She was injured worse than I thought,” the doctor said. “It seemed like whoever attacked her meant to kill her. If her own spirit realm constitution wasn’t so strong to begin with, they might have succeeded. There’s still some of the spirit essence in her body, but it will go away over the next few days. It shouldn’t hurt or hinder her.”

“Thank you doctor,” Uncle Chen said with a loud yawn. “I trust this incident won’t be shared with anyone else.” He took out another nugget of silver and handed it to the doctor.

“No, of course not.” The doctor took the nugget and placed it inside his money pouch. “Besides, you don’t get a doctor in the middle of the night who doesn’t have discretion.”

After the doctor left, Uncle Chen sat down beside Lu Na.

“You must be exhausted from helping him all night.”

Lu Na was staring at Sun Ren’s chest. She wasn’t all there at that moment, but something had clicked inside her mind. Watching the doctor use spirit essence in such new ways gave her an idea. First, the doctor’s molding technique told her about how the world of spirit essence worked. It gave her the idea of how she might use raw spirit essence to build a device to do whatever she wanted. That had endless possibilities, but would have to be explored later.

The more important one was when the doctor used his technique to block off the foreign spirit essence that entered Sun Ren’s body. He could isolate it and cut it out of her. It took him many tries and a long time but it looked like he was also trying to avoid hurting Sun Ren’s spirit realm and her body. He went in just enough to cut out pieces of it like drinking boiling soup, one sip at a time.

Lu Na reached her hand over Sun Ren and felt more than she saw that the doctor wasn’t able to cut out everything. There was still some spirit essence left that was pulsing red.

“Uncle Chen, do you have a spirit wand here?”

“Are you okay, Lu Na? I have been trying to talk with you for the last few minutes and you just stared off into space. Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“No, no, I’m fine Uncle Chen. I’ve just discovered something that I want to try out now. Do you have a spirit wand?”

“Of course. Summoner items and equipment are all I sell here after all, but what do you want to do with it?”

Lu Na peered over at Sun Ren’s injury again.

“I think I’m going to help fix Sun Ren.”

“Fix her? You mean heal her? You’re not a doctor. You might kill her.”

“Oh, I will heal nothing, Uncle Chen. Just give me a spirit wand and I’ll show you.”

“Fine. I see there’s no arguing with you. You’re just like your mother.”

Uncle Chen went and got a spirit wand for Lu Na.

The spirit wand was one of the higher quality wands. Normally, summoners would use these to attract spirits by gathering spirit essence at the tip of the wand. Sometimes, spirits would devour other spirits in order to grow stronger and so these wands would be used as bait.

With the help of her mother and her spirit, Lu Na found a new way to use the spirit wands. They realized they could combine the spirit essences in certain ways to make them do certain things. It was after many years of trial and error did she finally mimic her brother’s earth wall.

Now, after watching the doctor reject spirit essence in Sun Ren’s body, Lu Na can finally combine her earlier idea with the doctor’s technique. She started small at first, trying to create a ward that would push all the spirit essence away from it.

Lu Na grabbed a few pieces of yellow paper with Buddhist texts written on it from Uncle Chen’s store and started making her ward. It turned blue like the doctor’s technique and pushed some of the ambient spirit essence away.

But like blowing feathers in the wind, some of the spirit essence came back. So the next few wards, she used a different effect. This time, she made a ward that would absorb spirit essence into it. It absorbed spirit essence, but the paper itself couldn’t hold that much and burned up in an eerie blue light.

“Don’t burn down my store,” Uncle Chen said. He wrote down all the materials that Lu Na was using to bill her father. He added it all to the sixty taels of silver that he gave to the doctor.

“Uncle Chen, do you have anything that captures spirit essence?” Lu Na asked.

Uncle Chen put down his brush to look at Lu Na.

“Yes, but those are very expensive. I get those from the imperial government as a licensed seller. They’re also incredibly dangerous if you put too much spirit essence in there. It can turn into a bomb.”

“Nevermind then. I don’t want this exploding.”

Lu Na had to think of another way to make the effect she wanted work.

“What are you doing, anyway? You look like you’re about to burn the biggest offering to your spirit.”

“I’m trying to create something new. This ward that I am trying to create will at once push all spirit essence away from the wearer while also sucking it out of the person. I wanted to store it in a bottle or something so it didn’t hurt the person.”

“Oh, is that how you were going to help your friend? The doctor said it would go away on its own in a few days.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Lu Na nodded, still thinking hard about how to do this. The doctor was right because even now, the spirit essence was dripping out of Sun Ren’s body. But if there was a way she could get it to leave her body faster and test a new ward, why not?

“Why don’t you just push it out of her body instead of storing it?” one of Uncle Chen’s guards asked.

“That could work, except if it’s bad spirit essence, wouldn’t it hurt others or the wearer?” Lu Na asked.

“Then why don’t you convert it into harmless spirit essence? There are some techniques that can do that.”

“Except I don’t know it. I would have to observe it before I can copy it to make it into the ward.”

Uncle Chen opened his mouth and then shut it quickly.

“Uncle Chen, what aren’t you telling me?” Lu Na asked.

“I can’t believe I’m going to indulge this foolishness, but my spirit can do that. It’s one of the few reasons I’m the only seller of those spirit essence bottles because I can change whatever is kept in there into water.”

Lu Na sat up and stared at Uncle Chen.

“Oh, don’t look at me with those big round eyes. I’ll show you, but your father is going to have to pay a lot of money for this experiment because we’re going to have to use one of those bottles.”

Lu Na nodded vigorously.

“First, I’ll need to borrow some spirit essence.” Uncle Chen walked over to his guard that butted in the conversation. He took one of the bottles off the shelf. “Give me some into this bottle.”

“Why me?” the guard asked.

“Because you said something you shouldn’t have and now, we’re both in this experiment together.”

“Fine. I better get overtime for this.” The guard waved his hand over the bottle. His hand glowed green and after a short while, the bottle also glowed green. “That should be enough.”

Uncle Chen held the bottle in his hands.

“Watch closely, as I can only do this once a day.”

Lu Na nodded again, eyes glued to Uncle Chen’s hands.

Uncle Chen dipped one of his forefinger into the bottle. His finger glowed black as the green spirit essence clung to it. After a few moments, the green spirit essence turned into water.

To everyone else, even the guards, all they saw was something both magical and also mundane. They’ve seen things happen like this every day. But to Lu Na, it was like the secrets of the spirits were being opened to her.

The process seemed simple, but through her eyes, she saw a whole new way of how spirit essence worked. Uncle Chen’s finger glowed with his technique, but what it did was eat away at the green spirit essence. Once it ate its fill, it exploded into a shower of tiny little water droplets that gathered at the bottom of the bottle.

“That was amazing,” Lu Na said.

“Which part? The part where it changed to water or the part where we just wasted a good ten taels of silver for this trick?” Uncle Chen took his finger out and put the bottle down.

“All of it. I think this is going to help me out with something I’ve been trying to do for months. If you don’t mind, Uncle Chen, I’m going to sit in the back and work on it while Sun Ren rests.”

“That’s fine. But just remember, everything you use I’m going to charge your father.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine. If not, I’ll pay for it myself.”

“You don’t have any money.”

“It’s fine. I’ll work for you to pay it off. Besides, I know you love me.”

Uncle Chen rolled his eyes before turning away.

“I love money more. Unlike your mother, it doesn’t suddenly disappear on me one day with nothing more than a note that says to take care of her kids.”

Lu Na didn’t know how to respond to that. At least Uncle Chen got a note from her mother. She got nothing.

Lu Na spent the next few hours creating new wards with the yellow paper, making them into triangles after she was done and tying them up with red thread. She had to alter Uncle Chen’s technique a little so that when it ate the old spirit energy, it would turn into water vapor instead. It took a lot of trial and error before she finally had a completed version.

Sun Ren stirred in her sleep. The foreign spirit energy pulsed red. Although the doctor took out most of the harmful spirit energy, there was still some left that was trying to invade her body. So what better time to try her ward?

Of course, before she did that, she tested it on herself first. The guard was gracious enough to inject a little of his spirit essence onto her finger. It stung a little, as it was supposed to be similar to his spider spirit’s attack, but it did nothing more than make it numb.

Lu Na activated her ward by tugging at the string and placing it on her finger. In seconds, the harmful spirit energy disappeared and turned into cool water vapor. At least that’s what it looked like from the outside.

Lu Na could see how the ward isolated her entire hand from outside spirit energy, almost like encasing it in a cloth. Then it located any spirit energy within and started eating away at it like Uncle Chen’s technique. It then turned into water vapor that made her hand feel damp.

“That is amazing,” the guard said.

Uncle Chen walked over and peeked at the ward.

“That’s not the only thing that is amazing. It also doesn’t affect the body’s natural spirit essence. Like so.”

Without warning, Uncle Chen picked up the ward and threw it at the guard. To the guard’s credit, he didn’t flinch as it hit him in the chest. It stuck there.

To Lu Na, it formed a small bubble around his chest, but did nothing else.

“Can you try using a little spirit energy against it?”

The guard complied and waved his hand over it, glowing green. The ward didn’t reject the guard’s natural spirit essence.

Uncle Chen threw a splash of spirit essence of his own at it. As soon as it made contact with the guard’s chest, the ward activated and conerted Uncle Chen’s spirit essence into water vapor.

“I think I found a way for you to pay me back instead of with money,” Uncle Chen said. He picked up the ward from the guard’s chest. A blue spark shot out from it. “Ouch.” Uncle Chen dropped it to the ground.

“After you’ve worked out the issues, I can already tell doctors and summoners from all over will be buying them in bulk.”

Lu Na picked up the broken ward and unwrapped it to see what went wrong. There were a few things that could be improved to prevent it from sparking like that, but it shouldn’t take too long to fix. Maybe another day of working on it.

For now, Lu Na created a version of her ward that would only siphon off the spirit energy. She put a few of them onto Sun Ren’s chest and watched as the wards slowly ate away at the spirit energy. It was very slow, but it was better than nothing. She monitored Sun Ren in case any of her wards went bad again. She had a bucket of water next to her in case her clothes caught on fire.

Which made her wonder how Uncle Chen just happened to have a bucket of water. Was it the same water he converted from those bottles? If so, wouldn’t that mean he’d be able to make all the water he needed to drink without ever worrying about a well or a stream?

Whatever the case was, Lu Na had all day to work on her wards in the relative safety of Uncle Chen’s store. Morning had come by now and the sunlight was flooding into the store all the way to the back. The ordeal from yesterday left Lu Na’s mind as she got a new thing to focus on.

At least that was until a loud roar was heard outside. Lu Na peeked outside with Uncle Chen and his guards. A large dragon showed up in the sky, its body unmoving like a painting.

There was a booming voice from the dragon proclaiming, “People of Jianye. There is an emergency and we seek the criminal Lu Na of the Lu family for injuring and killing Wintersweet disciples. We know they are in this sector of the city. Anyone who is harboring this individual will become an enemy of the Wintersweet Sect. Anyone that brings this individual to us will be greatly rewarded with anything within the Wintersweet Sect’s power. To Lu Na, we are coming for you. Resist, and we will kill you.”

“What did you do?” Uncle Chen asked.