Chapter 98

Strange Matters of Heart

Shen Tao was exhausted--mentally and physically.

He couldn't meditate, couldn't cultivate, and couldn't even move properly. For nearly a day straight, he remained vigilant, sending out his Divine Sense just outside the tunnel and toward the periphery, wondering if anyone had realized where they were. Luckily, that wasn't the case.

Quite a few people swung by, in fact--they'd scour the remnant battlefield for a few minutes before departing. Whether they picked up on anything or not, Shen Tao couldn't tell. He didn't dare risk using his Divine Sense to listen in on their conversations.

When he wasn't inspecting the outside, he was busy trying to save Mei.

From the looks of it, though, his little bursts of Qi did little to nothing in that department. She was burning, so much so that the water would all but steam up immediately upon touching her. Her breathing, too, had grown shallower, and she would often moan in pain. Every time she did, he'd feel a pang of pain burst through his heart, as though he was infected with something as well.

But it was just anger, he figured, anger that she was stupid enough to do something like that, all consequences be damned. All her talk, after all, about becoming the strongest, catching up to him and surpassing him, all of it was pointless. In the end, she became a listless, hapless little thing, drifting at the edge of two realms, back and forth.

Shortly after the first day, Song woke up. Aside from some bruising and a couple of cracked ribs that were on their way to healing, Shen Tao figured he was fine and didn't pay him much attention.

"Where are we?" the boy asked soon after waking up.

"I put us back into that tunnel," Shen Tao said. "While waiting for you three to heal up."

"What happened? Did we manage to escape?"

"What? No. We--Senior Sister Mei killed them."

"What?!! How?!"

"Hush. They are still asleep."

"Ah. Sorry," the boy hushed his voice; a moment after, Shen Tao saw light radiating out of his rather strange pupils. "Senior Sister... doesn't look good."

"She's... not," Shen Tao said. "Remember that dagger?"

"Hm."

"She used it, and it drained all of her Qi in go. She has a Qi Fever. You don't happen to have a pill on you?"

"... no," Song replied softly, with some guilt in his voice. "I wanted to buy some at the Sect, but they were too expensive. Will she be fine?"

"I don't know," Shen Tao replied as honestly as he could. "In most cases, without the pill, people who develop Qi Fever die."

"In most?"

"Occasionally, someone with good constitution survives. But even they develop some long-term issues."

"So, you're saying--"

"--I don't know," Shen Tao snapped, gnashing his teeth. "She... she might be fine."

Why was he so angry?

From the onset, since he decided to join the Holy Blade Sect, he did it with two purposes in mind--to find out what they'd discovered in the Nameless Forest, and to take it from them. He never intended to actually inundate himself with an ordinary Disciple's aspirations, or to engross himself in the environment of it. All these things, all these people, they were just supposed to be blurry shadows on his periphery that he would use as he pleased before moving on.

So what if she sacrificed herself for him? Wasn't that perfectly acceptable? It was better that she suffered, after all, rather than him. And especially her, someone so weak yet so arrogant. And yet... he hated it. He heated the fact that he was so weak as to even require her help and sacrifice, and he hated it every time she would wince or moan, slanted on either side of life.

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It was all playing out the same again, just like with his Father.

While he stood frozen, unable to change anything, somebody else took the reins of mortality and saved him--both seemingly unafraid of death he was so mortified of. The weakness permeated his skin and his bones, but he buried it even deeper; cultivators needn't feel shame or guilt, for so long as they lived, there was always a chance. Yes, so long as they lived.

He glanced over to his right and saw her shake yet again. Her face was red yet pale, an impossible juxtaposition, and her eyes would twitch every so often. Weak, dying, pathetic. No... he was the pathetic one.

Moments later, he heard groans from the other side and saw Lya wake up; unlike Song, she only suffered some minor lacerations, though from what he glimpsed, she suffered hugely under Qi pressure.

He remained silent while Song explained what happened, and soon uttered the words that shocked him.

"I... I might be able to help," she said.

"What? You have anti-fever pills?!" Shen Tao spun and faced her quickly.

"N-no, sorry, not that," she said, squirming in place, as though uncertain.

"Spill it, then! How can you help?! By annoying me?!" by now, he'd completely thrown off the mask of a new Disciple and behaved as he usually did.

"Y-y-you must... you must swear an Oath," though she appeared afraid, she still spoke rather directly. "To never tell anyone else."

"What? Ah," his eyes brightened up for a moment. "You mean, you have something from the Forest?"

"..."

"That's fine," he said with a sigh. For some reason, his entire body relaxed. All the fear, trepidation, and guilt seemed to have been washed away with that one realization. "I swear an Oath of Heart and Soul to never divulge anything that happened in this Realm to anyone outside the four of us, lest I be struck by the Heavenly Curse. There, good enough?"

"I thought Elder told us not to take anything, Lya." Song said.

"... M-Master insisted," she said, seeming guilty. "It's not, not much. Just a small pouch of fruit juice."

"... huh? Fruit... juice? Are you insane?! You think that will somehow help a person with Qi Fever?! Goddammit, are all Disciples of your Sect abject morons or is it just you?!" though Shen Tao's tongue told one story, his heart was drenched in another. He hoped--with all his might--that the 'magic' of the Nameless Forest would somehow make it work.

Almost in tears, Lya took out a small, waterskin pouch--no larger than the size of a palm--and handed it over with shaky hands.

"... I'm sorry," he mumbled through his teeth as he took it, looking away quickly. He wasn't used to apologizing, or caring much how others felt, so much so that every interaction he had with anyone outside of Mei was just... awkward, he felt. Rather than talking with them, it often felt like he was simply humoring kids with a few spare words, like he used to do back in the Bloodmoon Sect with his Junior Disciples.

He carefully sat Mei up as gently as he could, asking Song to hold her steady while he angled her head ever so slightly backwards, using his free hand to hold her chin and open her mouth. He accidentally brushed his fingers across her lips, nearly skidding the dry skin off of them. They were extremely parched, dry, and cracked, but even so there was a certain allure to them that he swiftly ignored.

Before pouring the liquid in, he tapped her throat gently to confirm that she still had a swallowing reflex. Luckily, that seemed to be the case.

He ripped a small piece of cloth from his robes and used Qi to clean it completely before tilting her head ever so slightly to the side with Song's help. He drenched the cloth with the liquid from the pouch, brought it over her parted lips, and gently let a few drops drip in one by one. Since there was a good chance that some of the fruit juice might end up going astray if he poured too much at once, he only fed her through the cloth, drop by drop, for what felt like hours.

Even with just the first few drops, and even before she swallowed them, he noticed changes. Her body stopped shaking as much, her skin felt cooler, and her skin color turned rosier. The more drops she swallowed, the better she seemed.

Two hours later, the pouch was empty, and she was lying on her side calmly. Unlike before, it simply looked as though she were taking a nap rather than fighting for her life. Her breathing was normal, her fever was gone, and inspecting her body with Qi revealed that her parched meridians were now housing sturdy rapids of Qi. Just like that, she was perfectly fine--if only exhausted.

He set the waterskin down and looked at Lya and Song who winced, pulling themselves back. Gnashing his teeth, he did something he didn't for a second think he'd ever do in his life, something he didn't even do toward his Mother or Father--kneeling, he pressed his forehead against the ground facing them, and spoke.

"Thank you," he said. "And I am truly sorry for what I said."

What devil overcame him, he did not know. He felt compelled, drawn, and almost sequestered by the voices within that he couldn't resist them. Sitting up, he saw the two facing him with strange expressions, and burst out in laughter. It wasn't long before they joined him, though it didn't last as he quickly shushed them so that their voices didn't escape the tunnel accidentally.

He couldn't quite figure it out, the bubbling feelings in his heart. Though he knew it was dangerous, and that it would open him up to a myriad kinds of hurt... it wasn't bad. Not in the abstracts, at least. Looking away from the young duo, his eyes landed on her yet again. At that moment, she spun over and 'faced' him, though still very much comatose. She seemed to shine, even in the dark, with colors that he'd never seen before. The darkness, for a second, faded from his view, and he found himself in a world of endless iridescence--and for the first time perhaps in his entire life... he felt happy about something that had nothing to do with cultivation.