Fates Parallel Chapter 271 - Treatment

“Congenital, yes. Means you were born with it—er, probably. Hard to tell for certain, which is why I need to check your qi flow.”

Jung leaned forward, her intense stare boring into Luo Huang.

“If I was born with it, doesn’t that mean I could pass it on to my children?”

“Hmph, surprised you know that. It’s possible, yes. Not a sure thing, but these things can be hereditary. Have there been many young deaths in your family?”

Eui waved her hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Uh, excuse me? Can we rewind to the part where you just said she’s a beastkin?”

Jung shook her head without even looking at Eui.

“No, this is more important. I don’t know about my family—I was orphaned at a very young age. I never knew my parents.”

Master Luo cast a questioning glance at Jia, but didn’t press.

“That could be it, then. You’ll have to take care if you end up living long enough.”

“I already have a daughter.”

The room fell into silence at that. Jia sensed sympathy and loss from Luo Huang as he nodded slowly.

“Ah. Well, uh...you can bring her around some time, if you like. No extra charge. In the meantime—clothes off, face down. Yi Lan—the infused needles, cultivator grade.”

While Jung undressed and Yi Lan ran off to comply with her master’s order, Eui took the opportunity to regain control of the conversation.

“Hey! I’m glad we got that out of the way, but you owe us an explanation!”

The doctor sighed and scratched the back of his head.

“I’m a physician, Miss Jing Yi—you really think I wouldn’t notice if my patient’s anatomy wasn’t entirely human?”

Eui glared at him, unsatisfied. He tried to hold her gaze, but relented after just a moment, gesturing towards the glass containers with his thumb.

“The tests. You’ve all been very suspicious—especially that thing with the ears. It’s not hard to check for excess qi. It reacted, so there’s extra qi present in her blood, but it didn’t explode so she’s not a cultivator. That only leaves one answer.”

Jia pursed her lips.

“And...that doesn’t bother you?”

She could feel his emotions, but she needed to hear him say it out loud. The doctor scoffed.

“Why should it? I already knew you lot were trouble the moment Wu Yuan tried to turn away good coin. I’ve made my decision, and I’m not gonna change it now. So you can start telling the truth whenever you like.”

Jia rubbed at her face in frustration. This doctor was far too smart, and she was not cut out for subterfuge. Next time she was just going to leave everything to Rika.

“Tian Lihua, what do you think?”

Rika blinked.

“Me? Uh...well, Master Luo, how much have you already figured out?”

The doctor chortled.

“Alright, I’ll play along. Li Zhen is certainly a beastkin, Li Meili is not her sister, and you’re using some kind of illusion to hide Li Zhen’s identity, which means that there’s a cultivator among you. My guess would be Jing Yi, since she was so knowledgeable about Li Zhen’s condition—but you would be my second guess, Miss Tian Lihua, if only because you’ve been so silent thus far.”

Rika smiled and shrugged helplessly as she exchanged glances with Jia. The doctor chuckled at the exchange as Yi Lan finally returned with his acupuncture needles.

“So how’d I do?”

Jia sighed, dropping the illusion over herself and her sister. Yi Lan nearly dropped the needles, gasping as Rika and Eui followed suit.

“Close, I guess. They’re both cultivators, and so am I. Also, while we aren’t related by blood, Li Zhen is absolutely my sister.”

“I see.”

Luo Huang retrieved the acupuncture needles from his gawking apprentice and arranged them neatly on a table at the foot of the bed.

“I must admit, this goes a bit deeper than I expected. One beastkin in the company of one cultivator—that much I was prepared for, but...”

“Half-spirit.”

The doctor blinked at Jia.

“Pardon?”

“Half-spirits, not beastkin. That’s an insult where we come from.

“Ah, my apologies. I meant no disrespect.”

Yi Lan recovered from her shock and shook her head.

“M-master, what are we going to do? Harboring foreign spies is...”

The doctor snorted and waved her off.

“We’re not going to do anything. This changes nothing, and even if it did, talking about it right in front of them would be rather unwise, don’t you think?”

Yi Lan’s eyes went wide with alarm and she covered her mouth, casting nervous glances at the cultivators in the room. Jia sighed.

“Relax, please. We don’t mean you any harm.”

The doctor nodded.

“And if they did, there’s nothing we could do to stop them. Besides, do you really think they’d risk coming here if they planned to undermine the empire?”

Yi Lan trembled at the thought.

“But...they’re foreigners!”

Master Luo sighed.

“Please forgive her—she’s young, and hasn’t had the dubious honor of meeting cultivators such as yourselves. She hasn’t had the opportunity to learn how they think and operate. Could I trouble you to tell her why you’ve come to this country?”

Jia scratched her cheek, looking at the others before shrugging.

“We’re here for a wedding.”

The doctor laughed as his apprentices expression slowly turned from terror to abject confusion.

“Hahaha! See? Immortals are insane. You can’t apply regular human logic to them.”

Jung cleared her throat.

“Not that I disagree, and I’m quite happy not to have to fold my ears back anymore, but could we get on with it, please? I’m starting to get cold over here.”

Master Luo chuckled.

“Right you are, miss. What should I call you all, anyway—now that everything’s out in the open?”

Rika shook her head.

“Let’s just stick to the fake names for now. Not that we don’t trust you, but it’s better you don’t know—just in case.”

The doctor shrugged as he picked up his needles and got to work.

“Suit yourselves.”

—-

The acupuncture process was slow and methodical, and Jia watched with fascination as the qi-infused needles slowly adjusted the flow of Jung’s natural essence. Where it pooled in some places, the needles would create small openings in her meridians to get it flowing again, and in places where it flowed too strongly the needles would gently obstruct the flow, bringing it all into a steady balance.

By the time he finished, the essence in Jung’s body moved sluggishly, but consistently throughout her meridians. It was the first time Jia had seen her sister’s qi so nicely balanced, and even her aura had improved slightly as a result. She was impressed by how much the doctor was able to do without even being able to sense the qi for himself. She’d been foolish to discount mortal medicine for so long.

As the last needle slid into place in Jung’s skin, Luo Huang wiped his brow and sighed.

“Well, that’s the easy part finished. Now I’ll need to actually measure the flow of her qi—Yi Lan, fetch the sealed box from my room, please.”

As Yi Lan ran off, Jia cocked her head curiously—quickly finding the box in question within her domain. It had a few very simple wards on it, but nothing that stopped her from sensing what was inside.

“What do you need the mana crystals for?”

The doctor jerked in surprise, then chuckled and muttered something about cultivators under his breath.

“I should have guessed that cultivators like yourselves would immediately divine my most prized possessions. As Li Zhen’s qi flows through the needles, the crystals will react to it. I can watch the reactions to get a sense of it.”

Eui raised an eyebrow.

“Something like this?”

With a bit of focus, Eui created an illusion of Jung’s essence—represented as a glowing liquid—flowing through the air from needle to needle, perfectly replicating the pattern of her actual qi flow. The doctor stared at it and frowned.

“Is this accurate?”

Eui nodded.

“It doesn’t actually look like that, but you don’t have the right senses to perceive it, so this is the closest approximation I could manage.”

“Tsk, well you could have saved me a whole lot of time by just doing that in the first place.”

“No I couldn’t. Your needles balanced out her essence for her—I can’t do that.”

Master Luo looked taken aback.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. Thank you. I think I’ve seen enough—Yi Lan, you can put the box back.”

Yi Lan groaned with exasperation and turned on her heels to run back the way she had just come. The doctor stared at the qi flow for a long moment, tracing it with his fingers and muttering incomprehensibly under his breath.

“It truly is a wonder that you’ve managed to survive this long, Miss Li Zhen. Maybe it’s your improved constitution as a half-spirit, or just good fortune—such as it is. For your qi to flow so slowly, even when balanced... Your body is being poisoned by its own qi, and carrying that poison through the blood.”

Eui crossed her arms and scowled.

“We already knew that—well, not the part about the blood. The question is—what can we do about it?”

Master Luo shook his head.

“I’ve already done all I can. There’s no medicine to fix this. Regular acupuncture treatments to keep things in balance might improve quality of life—especially in combination with your treatments—but it won’t give you any more time.”

“Then what the fuck did we even come here for?! We’ve got all kinds of magical herbs, there’s got to be something! Jia, show him.”

Jia hesitated for a moment before reaching into her sleeve to pull out a handful of herbs from her ring. She tried to get as wide a variety as she could manage as she laid them out. Luo Huang’s eyes widened in shock, and she suspected she hadn’t done the best job of hiding her storage artifact.

“This is—that’s a very impressive collection, but I am an apothecary, not an alchemist. I can use some of these—maybe put together a qi inhibitor—but as weak as her qi already is, it might just kill her on the spot. There’s also pills to help rejuvenate the qi, but that would only accelerate her condition. If only...no, never mind. I’m sorry, there’s nothing else I can do for you.”

Once again, Jia sensed a feeling of deep loss from the doctor, and she could no longer contain her curiosity.

“Who’s Mingyu?”

Master Luo looked up with shock.

“What?! How did you—? No, where did you hear that name?”

“I have sharp hearing.”

Jia wiggled her ears to illustrate the point. Technically she’d used her domain to listen in, but she didn’t see the point in clarifying. Yi Lan went pale and covered her mouth as she realized that Jia had been able to hear her conversations with Wu Yuan.

“The mistress mentioned him earlier...”

The doctor scratched his head and sighed, shaking his head in resignation.

“My son, Luo Mingyu. He was meant to take over after me. Had a real talent for medicine—better than I ever was. The boy was never satisfied with just that, though. He always wanted more—bigger dreams, higher aspirations. He didn’t just want to be a physician or an apothecary—he wanted to be a true alchemist.”

Jia frowned, the sense of loss was powerful, but there was something else. A bitterness that didn’t feel right for the death of a loved one.

“What happened?”

Luo Huang snorted.

“The ungrateful brat got his wish is what happened. Learned how to make his own qi refinement pills while he was still mortal and awakened not long after. Didn’t take long for some sect to come along and scoop him up. Never saw him again—not so much as a letter home.”

Master Luo surreptitiously wiped the corner of his eye and cleared his throat.

“The kid was a genius. If anyone could have figured out a way to help your sister, Li Meili, it would have been him. But he’s gone, I’m sorry.”

Jia stared down at her feet for a long moment. She knew it was stupid, but every fibre of her being felt like it was pulling her towards the same decision. She looked at her sister—Jung wasn’t even paying attention to the conversation, more worried about Narae than herself. She looked at Rika, who was already burying her face in her palms—was Jia so predictable? Finally, she turned to Eui, who just smirked and nodded once.

Well, that was it then. Jia made her stupid decision and looked up to meet the doctor’s eyes.

“Which sect?”