BOOK 12: CHAPTER 24: SHOULD YOU TRY TO SAVE HER?

One of the guards pulled aside the canvas to let Sen enter the hut. He didn’t recognize the cultivator who stood by the makeshift bed. It wasn’t clear if the man was watching over the Matriarch or praying for her. Either way, Sen had to suppress a wince. It seemed he would need to have a conversation with Lo Meifeng. He’d ask about her brother, but the odds didn’t look good at all. He dismissed those concerns for later as he focused on the Matriarch. That problem, at least, he might be able to do something about. He stepped toward the bed, only for the man to draw a dao and level it at him.

“Are you insane?” demanded the guard who had stepped in behind Sen. “Put that away before he decides to kill you with it.”

The cultivator holding the sword looked at the guard, blinked a few times, and seemed to come to himself. He turned to his gaze on Sen, paled, and dropped the sword.

“Forgive me,” said the man with a bow.

“Just stand aside,” said Sen, making a point to sound exasperated.

Not that he really needed the man to move. He could evaluate the matriarch from where he stood, but the cultivator expected him to say something. Giving an order in an exasperated voice ought to be enough to satisfy the idiot’s expectations while also conveying that Sen didn’t really care about him. All of that should be sufficient to let the cultivator breathe normally again. If nascent soul cultivators decided to take offense, they generally made their displeasure known immediately. That was the impression they’d always given Sen, at least. He supposed he might be interpreting it wrong.

Still, the cultivator hastily grabbed his sword from the ground and stepped back. Sen moved to stand where the man had been and just looked down at the woman. Her outward appearance hadn’t changed, but he could sense that something had changed about her.

“How long has she been in this state?” he asked.

“Months,” answered the guard who hadn’t drawn a weapon.

Sen glanced at the man, and then around at the hut. Months, thought Sen, and thishut was the best they could do? He supposed that it qualified as shelter, but that was about the best he could say about it. It was small, dark, and not especially clean. It wouldn’t do for what he had in mind. He reminded himself not to think too badly of them. They had probably been in mourning while they built it.

“Everyone, go outside and stand well back,” ordered Sen. “I need to make something.”

The guards scurried out, and Sen went to work. The hut effectively disintegrated around him. He lifted the bed that held the matriarch with air qi and carried it away. He held it aloft with a sliver of attention and began the familiar process of building a galehouse. In this case, though, it was much larger than he usually created them. He needed seven rooms to accommodate the Order cultivators, the martriarch, and his group. He also needed a room for alchemy. Assuming he might be there for a few days, he also made an attached bathhouse, kitchen, and a large open common area. Finally, he created a well. Although, he took great care to build it from the bottom up and to seal it off from any surface water. There would be far too many contaminants in it otherwise.

Once it was completed, he took the matriarch and her bed inside. He sent compact fireballs into the many recesses he’d made for that exact purpose as he moved through the building. They weren’t a substitute for daylight, but they were more than enough for cultivators to see by. He settled the matriarch in one of the rooms before he went back out into the common area. Falling Leaf was already inside, throwing wood that she’d apparently kept in a storage ring into the fireplace. She threw an expectant look at him. He shook his head and set the wood ablaze. He waited for a moment, expecting the other cultivators to enter, but he eventually had to go back outside. He found them all staring at the oversized galehouse. Even Chou Dai Lu appeared startled by it, which Sen found strange. She’d seen him do something similar before. Maybe it was the size that had caught her off guard.

“You should all come inside,” said Sen. “Choose a room. Sleep. Bathe if you wish. If nothing else, it will be more comfortable than standing out here.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

The other cultivators blinked away their surprise and followed Sen inside. He pointed out where things were and left them to their own devices. He went into the room where he’d put the Matriarch. He found Falling Leaf standing in the room and giving the unconscious woman a complicated look. Sen went and stood next to the ghost panther. It had been a while, but he suspected that this was going to be one of those times when she would need him to explain something.

“Can you help her?” asked Falling Leaf.

“Perhaps,” he answered. “I’m not sure, yet. It depends on some…Actually, it depends on a lot of things.”

“What things?”

Sen thought it over. Falling Leaf wasn’t usually interested in the details of his alchemy. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate what he could do with it. She expressed a number of thoughts about the results, most of them positive. It was rather that the meticulous and sometimes tedious process simply didn’t appeal to her. It wasn’t even a matter of patience. The ghost panther could display extraordinary patience. She simply viewed patience as something best employed when hunting or fighting. Applying that same patience to other things in life proved a struggle for her. His intuition was telling him that she was trying to understand something, but couldn’t quite figure out the right way to ask about it.

“I suppose the biggest thing is the nature of her injury or ailment. I can do a lot to help the body recover, but she’s a nascent soul cultivator. Her body isn’t the same as the body of a foundation formation or core cultivator. Whatever is wrong might not respond the same way. Then, there’s the question of materials. Healing a nascent soul cultivator could require incredibly powerful natural treasures, herbs, and reagents. It might well prove impossible simply because I don’t have or can’t find the things I’d need. Beyond that, I might lack the skill to make whatever she needs. I’m very good, but I’m not Auntie Caihong.”

Falling Leaf was quiet for several minutes. Her face scrunched up in fierce concentration several times before she seemed to settle on what she wanted to ask.

“Should you try to save her?”

That question caught Sen off guard. If the Matriarch had been obviously hostile toward him or acted in some way to undermine the kingdom, he might have questioned that. She hadn’t done anything against him that he knew about, though. He just took it for granted that if he could help her, he should at least try. There was also a good chance that he was one of the few people capable of helping her. His first thought was that this was just Falling Leaf being a little callous, but the expression on her face didn’t suggest that. If anything, she looked confused. Sen felt like he needed more information before he provided any kind of an answer.

“Why do you ask?”

Falling Leaf shifted on her feet before she said, “Death comes. It always comes. We, my people, we didn’t do this thing you do.”

It was Sen’s turn to be confused.

“Healing? You didn’t do that?”

The ghost panther shook her head hard.

“We healed, but there was a point at which we just accepted that death comes. You don’t do that. You keep trying until death takes them from you.”

Sen nodded. Now, he understood her question. It wasn’t healing she questioned, but how far someone should go in the attempt. That was something Auntie Caihong had talked to him about as well. Deciding when it was time to stop. Deciding when you were doing more harm than good. It was a question that he considered, but a firm answer had eluded him. On the one hand, he knew that people would go on to another life. That fact argued for making a genuine effort, but not taking it too far. On the other hand, that next life was a completely new life in which a person had to start over from the very beginning. No wisdom, insight, or hard-earned power carried over. That fact argued for making every effort.

“I don’t know if have a good answer for you. Should I try to save her? The other members of the Order certainly think I should. Auntie Caihong might think differently. The Matriarch’s enemies would want me to let her die. She’s lived a very long life. She accomplished a great deal. Yet, most of her accomplishments are in ruins around us. Her disciples are dead. Saving her might not be a kindness. She might not want to live in that world. If I save her, I’m also condemning her to live through a war. Hells, I’m probably condemning her to fight in that war. Something else I doubt she’d thank me for. And I can’t even ask her what she’d prefer.”

Falling Leaf frowned and stared at Sen.

“You always seem so sure.”

“Do I?” asked Sen with a laugh. “Well, I’m not always sure.”

“This is complicated,” said the ghost panther with a sigh. “How do you decide?”

“I wish I had a simple answer for you, but I don’t. There are times when I make every possible effort, but there have also been times when I stopped,” said Sen, grimacing as he remembered the plague village. “Sometimes people don’t want to live, and nothing I do can change that. In this case, I will try. She’s lost more than most people can comprehend, but she also has time and power. She can try to rebuild if that’s what she wants. Or, she might decide that it’s time to try to ascend.”

“And if she doesn’t want to live, and you save her anyway?”

Sen hardened himself when he answered her.

“We’re fighting a war. If she wants to die, she won’t struggle with finding a way to make it happen.”