Treating the Matriarch’s condition would not be easy. For anyone else, Sen thought it might be all but impossible. If for no other reason, it required a certain level of mastery in both formations and alchemy. Few cultivators were skilled in either, and he wasn’t aware of any who were skilled in both. Yet, that was what they would need if they planned to attempt what he meant to do. Auntie Caihong had given him several possible ideas. After considering them all in context with what he was seeing in the Matriarch, he decided to use two of them simultaneously since they shouldn’t interfere with each other.

The first step was setting up a formation that amplified the amount of fire qi around the woman. Of course, nothing was ever that simple. If he just set up a formation to draw in fire qi, it would build and build until it eventually set off an inferno inside the formation. Just as importantly, even pure fire cultivators like the Matriarch didn’t rely solely on fire qi. Their bodies required a certain measure of the other types of qi to function properly. That made Sen’s job remarkably more difficult. The formation he set up needed to create a strict ratio of fire qi to other kinds of qi, and then it needed to maintain that ratio at concentrations that wouldn’t lead to the inadvertent inferno.

If everything went right, it should create a qi environment that would help the matriarch absorb fire qi faster. That, in turn, should start to restore her normal fire qi reserves. Even if that worked, though, Sen doubted it would be enough on its own. She might awaken eventually, but that loss of vital qi would forever deprive her of her former strength. And that was if everything went well. If it didn’t, she might never find a way to restore true balance to her nascent soul body. He suspected that living with her body out of balance like that would ultimately damage her body and shorten her life. Sadly, he didn’t know that for sure because nascent soul cultivators were so rarely injured. There simply wasn’t a guide for what to expect.

It took him hours of careful work to establish the formation using fire-attributed beast cores and a few natural treasures. Then, he had to have an argument with the remaining Order members to keep them out of the room.

“Why can’t we enter?” demanded one of them.

“Because I set up a formation in that room that is very specifically tuned to your Matriarch’s current needs. If you go in there and fail to control your qi properly, by which I mean perfectly, you could turn my hard work into a firestorm. But, in the end, the only reason that matters is because I said so,” answered Sen with a stony look for the Order cultivators. “If you go in there and disrupt my hard work, my response will not be kind.”

The Order members all seemed to remember at the same time that they were dealing with a nascent soul cultivator. They all took a step back and bowed.

“It will be as you say, Judgment’s Gale,” said the same demanding cultivator, adopting a much more conciliatory tone.

“Good,” said Sen. “Now, I need to go and gather what I need. If I’m lucky, it won’t take more than a day.”

“What do you need?” asked Chou Dai Lu.

Sen eyed her for a moment. He thought that she might be asking on behalf of the Order cultivators, who all looked too nervous to question him. Still, he supposed it was a relevant question.

“I need to find nascent soul fire-attributed and water-attributed natural treasures. I need a few other things, but those are the crucial components. If I can’t find them, I can’t make what I need to make.”

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Chou Dai Lu looked stunned and gave voice to what Sen imagined everyone else was thinking.

“Patriarch, such treasures are beyond rare. A cultivator can go a lifetime and never find such a thing.”

In other words, his statement about finding them in less than a day had to sound like an outrageous and impossible boast.

“That’s true,” admitted Sen, “but most cultivators aren’t willing to go as far into the wilds as I am.”

“What about the spirit beasts?” asked Chou Dai Lu.

“What about them?” asked Sen, unsure of what she was getting at.

“What if they attack you?”

Sen lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug and said, “I expect that they’ll die.”

“I… I see,” said Chou Dai Lu.

She seemed a little stunned by how uncaring he was about the prospect of being attacked by spirit beasts. He supposed that he might be a little too unconcerned about that possibility, but he’d been attacked by spirit beasts so many times that it was difficult to work up any real concern. Also, he had been surrounded by people so much in recent months that he was excited by the prospect of a few hours alone. If that meant fighting with some spirit beasts, or even a lot of spirit beasts, it felt like a small price to pay for even a brief few hours of genuine peace and solitude. He made sure to leave enough food to last everyone at least a couple of days, while studiously avoiding Falling Leaf’s unhappy stare. She did at least do him the courtesy of following him outside before she said anything.

“You mean to leave me here? With them?” she asked.

“Someone has to keep them out of that room. Mostly, though, I want to leave someone here who will protect that foundation formation cultivator if something happens. It’s not like I can take her with me into the deep wilds. If I do get attacked by spirit beasts there, they’ll be the kind who could kill her almost instantly.”

Sen knew that this wasn’t her favorite kind of task, but she was the only option for it. The Order cultivators would prioritize getting the Matriarch to somewhere safe, even if that meant abandoning Chou Dai Lu to her death. It wouldn’t even be malicious. They didn’t owe his disciple anything, while they had very real obligations to the Matriarch. Not that Falling Leaf owed the Chou Dai Lu anything either, but she would protect the girl because he asked her to do it. The ghost panther finally gave him a reluctant nod.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try to find something for you to do that you’ll like better very soon.”

“Good,” she said, but her eyes were on all of the bodies. “This will become a bad place, a sick place, if they are left like that.”

“I know. I mean to do something for them after I treat the Matriarch.”

Sen had never seen them, but he’d heard stories about vengeful spirits and hungry ghosts. His teachers had confirmed that such ghosts were a real thing, if far rarer than mortals believed. Armed with that knowledge, it seemed imprudent not to do what he could for the fallen cultivators. It wouldn’t be possible to carry out funeral rites for all of them, even if he wanted to do so. There were too many. But he could cremate the dead and offer prayers. He wasn’t sure if the gods were interested in hearing his prayers—or maybe they were too interested—but it was what he could do.

It didn’t feel like enough, but it wasn’t as though they had families to conduct the rituals. Or, if they did, he had no way to identify or contact them. Not that it would be safe for them to travel to get the bodies. That thought made Sen grind his teeth. Most of the time, the disruptions of the war were things he understood indirectly. The death or displacement of so many mortals meant that food was going to be in short supply because they weren’t farming, herding, or acting as merchants. It was in moments like this that the insidiousness of the war really struck him.

While he’d never had family to bury, he’d seen it happen often enough. Those rituals weren’t just empty gestures but a kind of connective thread that helped bind people. They were something that almost everyone did and went through. They created a common shared experience. Every time the war deprived people of those experiences, it weakened the foundation of what it meant to be part of a human community. Not that I can fix any of that now, thought Sen. Even so, it made him wonder just what kind of people would be left after the war, if there were any people left after the war.

“Be swift with your hunt. I don’t like this place,” said Falling Leaf.

“As swift as I can be.”