While Sen would have preferred to get started immediately, it seemed that nothing in his life was immediate any more. First, he had to contact the generals and explain he would be away for at least a day or two while he tended to the Matriarch. Then, he had to explain to the other Order of the Celestial Flame members why he hadn’t already treated her with something. After that, he had to mediate the most absurd argument about who would stay in the room closest to the Matriarch. He ultimately decided that it would be him, and he assigned rooms to everyone else. That made everyone equally unhappy, so he thought he’d probably done the right thing. It was only when he’d done all of those other things that he was finally able to give the Matriarch a proper examination.

What he found was equal parts odd and confusing. He’d been expecting a discernible injury. Maybe even some manner of injury to her head to help explain her continued unconsciousness. Auntie Caihong had told him that injuries to a mortal’s brain could do things like that. Under normal circumstances, though, anything that nascent soul cultivator could survive was something that they would heal from, especially after a couple of months. They might be weakened to an extent, but they would wake up. However, her body seemed to be uninjured to the best of his spiritual sense and qi’s ability to find such problems. Of course, he hadn’t ever examined her before, so he could be missing some change. That made her state confusing.

What made her present condition odd was that she didn’t seem to have nearly enough qi or dense enough qi to support a nascent soul cultivator. There wasn’t any evidence that she was actively losing qi, but there was also no evidence that she was regaining any of her qi either. Even while sleeping, every cultivator absorbed a little qi. After months, she should have regained some. Sen frowned. Unless what I’m looking at is the result of months of passive absorption, he thought. He thought about how so much of the vale had been destroyed. What if she had bled herself dry and burned some of her vital qi to make it happen? Cultivators rarely survived doing that, but it did happen occasionally. He supposed that what he was seeing could be the result.

If he’d been one of the spirit beasts in charge of destroying the Order, he wouldn’t have left until he knew she was dead. But it was entirely possible that in the immediate aftermath, she might not have looked like a nascent soul cultivator in their spiritual sense. She still didn’t look like one in his. If they’d just suffered catastrophic losses, though, that assumption might well have been sufficient to explain why they didn’t come in and finish off the last few survivors. That’s a lot of guesses and assumptions, Sen told himself. Uncle Kho would be disappointed in me. It also wasn’t relevant at the moment. The only relevant part was that she was still alive. The only question now was whether there was anything he could do to remedy the situation.

“I just don’t know enough about what I’m seeing here,” he muttered. “I need to talk to Auntie Caihong.”

At least there was a way to make that happen. He reached into one the pockets of his robes and removed a communication core. He activated it and waited a moment.

“Deeps Wilds Sect,” said a woman’s voice. “This is Disciple Zhang.”

Sen usually contacted them later in the day when he spoke with Ai, so he wasn’t familiar with this woman.

“Disciple Zhang. This is—” Sen almost said his name before he remembered that he had to maintain a certain posture with sect members. “Patriarch Lu. I need to speak with Ma Caihong.”

There was a pronounced silence before the woman seemed to remember herself.

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“Yes, Patriarch!” the woman shouted loud enough that make Sen hold the core away from himself. “I will send someone to inform her immediately!”

“Thank you,” said Sen.

He was glad that cores only moved sounds and didn’t somehow provide images. This way, the disciple couldn’t see him rolling his eyes. He knew it would take them a little while to find Auntie Caihong. So, he set the core on the stone table he made for every room and returned to his examination of the Matriarch. Unfortunately, he didn’t learn anything new by the time Auntie Caihong’s voice came through the core.

“Sen?”

“I’m here, Auntie Caihong.”

“Are you hurt? Is something wrong?”

“I’m fine. What I have is a nascent soul cultivator in a strange condition. I didn’t want to start doing things until I talked to someone who might have a better idea of what’s happening and how to address it.”

“What nascent soul cultivator?” demanded Auntie Caihong, a hard edge in her voice.

“The Matriarch of the Order of the Celestial Flame.”

“Oh. What seems to be the problem?”

Sen looked at the core. Auntie Caihong had gone from stern to calm in one moment. Maybe she thought Uncle Kho was here and injured

, thought Sen. Shaking his head, he gave her a summary of what he knew about the Matriarch’s condition. He also described what facts he’d gathered about how she’d ended up in her present condition. Then, he offered what few suspicions he held about the situation. Auntie Caihong was mostly quiet, but he could hear her making soft humming noises from time to time as she considered what he’d described to her.

“I wish I was there to see this for myself,” she muttered. “Not that I think you’re keeping any details back, but sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for unless you see it.”

“I understand,” said Sen, and he did understand.

He frequently found that seeing someone provided insights into how best to treat them. Half the time, he didn’t even know why he knew that one thing would work better than something else. It was just intuition. With so much more experience, her pure knowledge outstripped his so much it was almost laughable. On top of that, he had to imagine that her intuitions would be refined in ways that he could only hope to match on some distant day in the future.

“Well, wishing won’t make it so,” said Auntie Caihong. “I think that you’ve probably hit on the right idea. What you’re describing is what I’d expect to see if a nascent soul cultivator burned some of their vital qi. It’s almost worse when we do it than when cultivators at lower stages do it. Our qi is so much more deeply entwined with our bodies, and our vital qi is the densest qi we have. If we burn some off and fail to replace it, it changes the rest of our qi.”

Sen considered the potential consequences of that.

“But if our bodies are reliant on a certain density of qi—” he started.

“Exactly,” said Auntie Caihong. “The body struggles to function properly.”

Sen considered the prone form of the Matriarch. He had, by some people’s reckoning, worked alchemical miracles. He just wasn’t sure that he could do the same here. Replacing someone’s vital qi? He didn’t even know what he would start with something like that. He wasn’t even sure he believed that it was possible.

“Sen?” asked Auntie Caihong.

“I sincerely hope that you have some ideas about how to fix this, because I don’t.”

“Ideas? Yes, I have some ideas. I don’t have anything like a certain solution. My advice to you is simple. Do nothing. You didn’t put her in that state. It’s not your responsibility to undo what she’s done to herself. More importantly, you might well kill her in the attempt”

Sen knew that was good advice. Auntie Caihong was right. This wasn’t his fault, except perhaps in the most abstract sense. As the new ruler of the kingdom, everything was his responsibility in some fashion. However, nothing he’d done could put the blame for the Matriarch’s health on him. He also didn’t find the prospect of killing the woman terribly appealing. If he did nothing, she might eventually recover on her own. The problem was that if he did nothing, she might also die. There could be practical benefits if he succeeded. There would be far worse things than having a nascent soul cultivator directly indebted to him, even if he hated himself a little for thinking that.

“You’re going to try anyway, aren’t you?” asked Auntie Caihong.

“Yes. At least, I’ll try if I think I can make one of your ideas work.”

There was a prolonged silence before he heard a disgruntled noise.

“Very well,” said Auntie Caihong. “Listen carefully. These are the things that I believe have a chance at restoring her.”