The rain didn’t stop.

It only grew worse.

Each drop splattered against my robes with a dull, wet thump, soaking through fabric, seeping down to the skin. The air had turned thick; humid, heavy, laced with something I couldn’t quite name but could feel in my teeth.

The violet hue was unmistakable now.

It pooled in the wagon grooves and ran down bark in sticky streaks. Leaves sagged beneath its weight.

Windy stirred uneasily across my shoulders, scales twitching as the rain touched them. Even Tianyi, wings tucked tight against her back as she sat at the rear of the carriage, was unusually silent. Her antennae curled downward. Her glow dimmed.

Something was wrong.

I drew in a slow breath, extending my senses through the soles of my feet, through the tips of my fingers resting against the side of the cart.

Nature’s Attunement.

Usually, it opened like a bloom. The world speaking back in the soft, wordless language of roots and wind, of moss and burrowing worms.

But now?

It felt… quieter. Like reaching into a room where the fireplace had gone cold and no one had spoken in hours.

The trees were still breathing... but slower. Duller. As if drained.

I snapped upright, my grip tightening on the reins.

"Faster," I hissed to the horses desperately. “Come on. Move!”

The horses responded with a whinny and a lurch forward, hooves sloshing through muddied ground. I turned behind me to signal to the others, but before I could shout, I heard the cry.

"Kai!"

Han Chen’s voice, hoarse and panicked, from inside one of the rear carriages.

I jumped down mid-motion, landing hard in the slick mud and running toward the second wagon. Jun Tao had already turned, eyes wide, and peeled open the carriage’s side flap.

Han Chen sat cradling Yu Long against his chest. The boy's skin was pale, almost grey. His breathing had turned ragged, lips flecked with spit and something darker. Sweat soaked through his collar despite the cold.

“He was stable just an hour ago,” Han Chen muttered, frantic. “But now he’s burning up, and his pulse is erratic.”

My heart dropped.

I shoved aside a sack and tore through our remaining satchels, fingers slipping past bandages and vials until I found it: the last of our Essence Purifying Elixir, glowing faintly in its lacquered case, like a single firefly trapped in glass.

“Hold him still.”

I popped the cork with my thumb and pried Yu Long’s lips open. His jaw trembled, barely responsive. I poured the elixir in slow, three measured drops.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then his chest hitched. His limbs convulsed once, sharply. He shuddered and sagged back against Han Chen’s arms, sweat breaking over his skin again, but the color in his face began to shift. A little less ashen. The shadows beneath his eyes pulled back.

He wasn’t healed.

But he was no longer dying.

“Keep him wrapped,” I said, voice firm. “Cover him completely. Use your body if you have to—just don’t let the rain touch him.”

Han Chen nodded immediately, shedding his outer robe and shielding his brother as best he could. His face was pale with guilt, but focused.

I turned to the rest. “Jun Tao, Jian Feng, please control the carriages! We can't stop until the sun breaks or we find shelter.”

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The Verdant Lotus disciples nodded and peeled off.

As I returned to the lead wagon, Windy let out a low, uneasy hiss against my throat.

I looked up at the sky again.

The clouds weren’t just dark.

They were sick.

Twisting in slow, unnatural coils like something inside them was writhing just beneath the surface. I looked back at the others.

Tianyi, Windy, Jian Feng, the refugees. Although they didn’t seem any worse for wear… I couldn’t shake it.

This had to be them. The cultists. Even if I couldn’t see their hands directly, I could feel their influence trailing through the storm like oil on water. This was no natural weather.

I clicked my tongue and internally reviewed what I had in my storage ring; wrapped bundles, bone jars, packets of powder, and glass vials, each sealed tight to keep weight and essence balanced. I hadn’t overpacked, I never did. Only what I needed. Only what could become useful.

I took out a small pouch. Lotus seeds. Strong-bellied, slow to sprout, but when fully matured, the leaf could grow to the size of a person.

Good.

I pulled out a handful, about six, and sifted through the storage ring again for plant essences; bitterroot for resilience, veilvine for barrier formation, and breathflower to encourage expansion. With practiced motions, I extracted each essence into a swirling bead of liquid atop my palm, then guided the droplets into the seeds.

They absorbed them greedily.

The lotus seeds pulsed once in my hand, a heartbeat of potential, and I fed them more; my own qi.

In my palm, the largest seed burst open like a jaw snapping wide, three stems spiraling upward in quick succession. Leaves unfurled in thick, waxy fans—three broad lotus leaves, each the size of a small shield, overlapping with faint veins glowing in pale green as they soaked up the last of the infused qi.

I nearly dropped it from the drain alone.

“Take it,” I muttered, stepping toward the nearest wagon. “Hang it above the roof, over the frame—now.”

Jian Feng caught the stem before it dipped and blinked at me. “A… plant? You’re shielding us with a plant?”

“I said do it,” I snapped. Then, quieter: “This rain. It’s not right. I don’t know what it is yet. But I know it’s not natural. Something’s leeching into the soil. Into the air. And if it can reach into the roots, it can reach into us.”

He nodded once and leapt onto the wagon, fixing the lotus leaves above the roof like a living canopy.

Behind me, Jun Tao and Jia Ren helped hoist the remaining leaves over the other carriages, tying them down with rope and string.

It wasn’t much.

But it was something.

I looked down at my hands. My fingers trembled slightly from exertion, and my qi was low. I closed my eyes, trying to will away the pounding in my temples.

'Why does this rain seem so familiar?'

Violet rain.

The words repeated like a mantra. A whisper clawing its way from the back of my skull. Violet rain. Violet rain.

I scanned through my memories, chasing that thread; lectures, pages of old alchemical texts, the cultists...

The third round of the Gauntlet.

The name surfaced like a corpse in dark water.

The Amethyst Plague.

Ma Hualong’s voice rang clear in my mind now, his words no longer background noise in the rush of competition, but a warning too easily dismissed:

“Centuries ago, demonic cultivators unleashed a plague carried by violet rain. The Amethyst Plague, they called it. By targeting the meridians, it turned skin a sickly purple, brought high fevers, hemorrhaging, dysentery, and inevitably, an agonizing death. No one was spared—cultivator or commoner alike.”

My stomach dropped.

I’d looked it up afterward, half out of curiosity, half out of paranoia. I remembered the diagrams. The case studies. How it wasn’t like ordinary illnesses that most cultivators could shrug off with a pulse of qi or a mouthful of cleansing pills.

No. The Amethyst Plague lingered. It worked slow, methodical. Corrupting meridians in layers, breaking the body’s ability to circulate qi efficiently, even turning the flow inward until it poisoned itself.

If left untreated, it would unravel the core entirely.

I breathed out, voice thin. “No. It can’t be a coincidence.”

I turned inward, running through what I had. What I didn’t have.

Bloodthorn seeds. Essential. Used to produce a powder that would breakdown the toxins within the bloodstream. I didn’t have them.

Female ginseng. Just as vital. It was needed to coax the body into regenerating cleanly after the cure had run its course. Without it, the weakened body might succumb anyway.

My blood ran cold.

But I didn’t let despair sink its claws in.

I had tools. A greenhouse garden waiting for me. Dozens of viable seeds. Essence infusions. And most importantly, time. Not much, but enough.

I looked down at my rain-streaked hands, then at the others. Jian Feng still barked orders to the horses. Windy clung tight, silent now. Tianyi sat motionless, watching the rain slide down her folded wings.

I whispered, almost to myself: “Three weeks. Maybe less.”

Three weeks before symptoms worsened. Before fevers turned to bleeding. Before meridians collapsed.

Three weeks to find a cure.

By the time dusk painted the sky with bruised clouds, we found a slanted outcrop wide enough to shelter the carriages. The rain had slowed, but not stopped.

We didn’t speak. We didn’t eat. Just huddled beneath makeshift canopies of lotus and tarp.

I sat with my back to the wagon, Tianyi beside me, her wings curled tightly. Windy slept on my lap, occasionally twitching in his dreams.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered.

Gentle Wind was less than a day away.

Tianyi shifted beside me.

Her voice came softly, almost as a vibration through the air rather than a sound. “Your emotions are heavy.”

I blinked and turned slightly. Her eyes glowed faintly in the gloom, wide and searching, antennae twitching once, like they could taste my unease.

“Are you alright?”

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

There was too much to say, and no time to say it. I couldn’t explain the Amethyst Plague. The symptoms. The deadline already counting down. I couldn’t tell her how scared I was, not just for Yu Long or the others, but for her. For Windy. For everyone I loved, and the entire region slowly darkening beneath this damn rain.

“... Don’t let it touch you. As much as you can.”

She blinked once, then nodded without question. Her wings curled tighter.

I exhaled slowly and leaned back against the wagon, watching the horses stir uneasily in the half-light. Their breath steamed in the cooling air, hooves scraping the muddied ground in restless arcs.

Even the animals could feel it.

This region was already blanketed. Contaminated.

Whatever this was... this curse, this plague, this invisible hand reaching through the heavens to poison the soil... it had already begun. And I couldn’t stop it. Not all of it. Not everywhere.

But I could help here.

I could protect this group. My village.

One step at a time.

My gaze drifted toward the rescued victims, their backs hunched beneath borrowed cloaks, some coughing quietly, others fast asleep from exhaustion or the lingering effects of medicine.

Whether I liked it or not, they were under my care.

And the world wouldn’t wait. The sickness wouldn’t wait. Neither would the cultists.

My hand clenched.

No more waiting.

I opened the menu.

It blinked into existence like an answer to a prayer. Cool, pale light unfurled across my vision, carving through the fog with the familiarity of breath.

No cure could be crafted without the proper knowledge. I needed clarity before creation.

I didn’t hesitate.

The menu pulsed once, then vanished.