Meiling sat in a cleared room with her eyes closed. Cloth had been placed on the floors and on the walls, cordoning off the room from the rest of the building. Her Qi swirled gently around her body, the odd tingling feeling of it sterilizing the room an ever-present sensation.

It was time. Time for the surgery. It was a week after their autumn colours viewing and the last test performed. Her father had ventured from his home to assist her. Every tool was prepared, every eventuality planned for… or so she hoped.

Bowu was already sitting down on the cloth-covered table as Ri Zu checked over the various concoctions that would place Liu Bowu into unconsciousness, keeping him asleep without harming him. It was rare that such things were used.

On occasion, when they had to amputate a limb, the person would be rendered unconscious first. The medicines to accomplish this were relatively risky, the doses sometimes interacted badly with the patient, killing them. Quite a lot of men chose to be awake, the more general numbing herbs reducing the sensations to mere pain instead of excruciating agony.

Meiling shook her head. She still wondered sometimes how it came to this. How she went from being a mere mortal village doctor to the precipice of performing the work of miracle doctors and spiritual healers. She probably should have waited to do it until after she gave birth… but she had been fixated on the problem ever since it had been brought to her.

It was terrifying, and yet the practice runs had gone off without a hitch. She had studied the new scrolls Jin had got her. It was well within her capabilities.

Trust had been placed in her, and she would exceed their expectations without fail.

She took a sharp breath, as a large hand gently rested on her shoulder. Glancing up she opened her eyes to her husband’s smile.

“You got this, Meimei,” Jin stated simply.

Absolute faith shone in his eyes.

Reassured by his steady presence. She smiled at him, and nodded.

She rose and stared into the cloth-clad room. Her father, Ri Zu, Wa Shi and Pi Pa awaited her. Pi Pa had a brush in her mouth, off to the side, she would record today’s procedure as was proper so that others could benefit.

Meiling glanced over the room one last time.

Xianghua sat in the corner, absolutely still; her body tense like a coiled spring. She had refused to be separated from her brother and thus had been allowed in as an observer after Jin had said he would handle her if she tried to interfere at any point.

Some of these suggestions for the procedure had been Jin’s. The sterile clothes, the idea to completely paralyze the limb.

The rest had been fairly straightforward. The acupuncture and numbing agents would paralyze the leg, to make sure no pain would force a reflexive movement. Liu Xianghua had been instrumental in that, bringing with her gifts of medicinal plants from the Misty Lake, as well as scrolls detailing what they were used for. The numbing Five Tongue Flower was what they would be using today.

Meiling put everything save Bowu her out of mind and walked forward.

“Bowu,” Meiling said as the boy laid down. “Are you ready?”

A small part of her hoped he would say he was not. That she could have more time. Perhaps a year or two?

The boy on the raised bench, however, was resolute.

“I’m good, Auntie Meimei,” Bowu managed to get out. She had to fight back a laugh. Now, just before a life-changing procedure for the both of them, was when he finally relaxed enough to call her that? …It was good. Lady Meiling was a bit much for her tastes.

Meiling closed her eyes and bowed her head. When she opened them again, everything else fell away. The anxiety disappeared. The pounding of her heart steadied. Mieling was prepared.

“Ri Zu,” she commanded. Her student nodded, Qi flowing out of her body. The little rat took out her needle and pressed it into Bowu’s neck. The boy didn’t finch as Meiling started counting backwards from ten. Ri Zu could control how the concoction would react, speeding it up and slowing it down as she monitored Bowu’s vitals, and the most important person in this operation.

At one, Bowu’s eyes closed. Needles, coated with numbing agents, stabbed into pressure points, effectively cut his leg off from the rest of his body.

Meiling took one last breath, then her knife moved, pressing down.

She avoided as many blood vessels as she could. She knew where each and every one of them were, her Qi helping to guide her around every deviation from the scrolls in Bowu’s body. She opened the skin and slid gently between muscles, Meiling attempted to curb as much blood loss as possible, but he was still bleeding… and they didn’t really have a way to replace that lost blood until the operation was over.

At least not yet. Jin knew of some medicine that powerful cultivators used to help deal with blood loss. He also knew that blood could be shared, but confessed he had no idea how to check which blood would help… or be poison.

Another project for another time.

She opened Bowu’s bone to the air and her father helped her place the specially made metal pieces Yao Che had created for them to keep the wound open. There was a thin film of blood coating everything, impeding her vision.

“Wa Shi,” she requested, eyes not deviating one bit from the operation site. Wa Shi’s control was impeccable as tiny, thin streamers of water descended, siphoning away blood.

She would thank him later.

The wound came into view, for the first time unimpeded by flesh. Bowu’s kneecap looked completely mangled, like a shattered plate that had been poorly stuck together with more clay. The cartilage was red and inflamed-looking even now… and she could see tiny, needle-like bone shards sticking out, and the ugly looking bumps where they were below the surface.

All well within expectations, Meiling concluded as she lowered her knife again.

What followed was butcher’s work. The cartilage, filled with shards of bone, had to be scraped out in some sections. In others, Meiling wielded a tiny pair of tweezers her father handed to her, carefully pulling pieces thinner than needles out from the afflicted areas.

She could see each and every one when she was sure that they would have been invisible to mortal eyes. Her hands moved with speed and precision. There were no minute shakes, no hesitation. Her body did as she commanded it, the practice with the deer making this feel routine, despite the difference in structure.

“How is he?” She paused to ask Ri Zu, more for her own peace of mind and a second opinion.

‘All is accounted for, Master. He feels not a thing. His heart beats strongly, and his breathing is even.’

Meiling nodded in assent as she deposited another shard of bone into a tray. Her Qi surrounded and invaded the knee, searching for other shards of bone. She kept working, and her hand kept moving, until she was satisfied there were none left.

“Ninety two.” Meiling reported the number of shards removed as she turned her attention to the kneecap.

This… this was going to be the hard part. Carefully grasping the bone with two fingers, Meiling took a quick breath to gather her courage and snapped the bone before her resolve could falter. She was amazed at how easy it was. Less like bone and more like a child breaking a cookie.

There were no shards from the movement. It had broken cleanly. With only a minute in-and-out, she repeated the process with each breath, breaking the bone along each poorly healed line, dismantling it with ease.

Once it had all been broken properly, Meiling then sliced two of the pieces, and placed the two ends together as they should have healed. Her father reached in and placed a single drop of the Spiritual Herb liquid onto the joint with a brush.

The Liquid she had refined, with Wa Shi’s aid. It seemed to spark and crackle as it dropped onto the bone.

The broken bone, carefully held in place, hissed slightly… and then fused. It regrew and fused like it had never been broken at all.

It was like piercing together some sort of wooden puzzle sculpture from the big cities, she thought as she reassembled the kneecap, wood and glue, save this was bone and miracle medicine. When the last drop hit the bone it looked smooth and whole. It was as if it had never broken.

Meiling paused. She searched for something, anything that might have gone wrong... but there was nothing.

She checked two more times, just to be sure. Then she began the final steps.

More of the healing liquid was applied after her handiwork. Meiling watched as cartilage regrew at a rapid pace, the incisions she made fading as Qi worked its magic.

There was no stitching required. There would be no weeks or months of healing, though Bowu might need to relearn how to walk without limping.

Meiling applied the last drop… and stared at a completely unblemished leg. It almost felt anti-climactic. A lifetime of pain gone in not even an hour.

It took so little time for a little girl who simply loved medicine to become a Healing Sage.

The world of cultivators was truly a strange place.

=====================

Liu Bowu woke up slowly. His head felt full of fog for a couple of minutes before there was a muffled squeak and his mind suddenly cleared.

He was in a bed, with a weight beside him and a hand on his forehead.

He opened his eyes to a freckled woman with amethyst eyes staring down on him.

“Good morning,” Auntie Meimei said to him as she pulled her hand back. The normally slightly scary looking woman’s eyes were warm and not nearly as intense as they normally were.

“Did... did it work?” he asked, blurting out the only thing on his mind.

“I do believe so. How are you feeling, Bowu?”

He paused and took stock of himself. He felt… pretty great, actually. He expected to feel a lot worse than he did. He felt like crap all the other times the doctors had looked at him.

“I feel fine,” he reported. No little aches or pains besides his leg—

And then it hit him. It didn’t hurt.

There was no pain in his leg.

It was always there. The dull ache that was ever present, that would morph into blinding pain when he put weight on it.

He bolted upright, Auntie Meimei dodging him as he pulled the covers from his leg and stared at his knee.

His knee, normally bumpy in texture, shattered and broken.

He bent his leg. It went to the area where it would normally stop and refuse to bend any further without extreme pain… and then it kept going.

He swung his leg back out. There was no scar, no trace of the lifetime of pain.

A hand on his shoulder kept him from bolting to his feet.

“Slowly,” Aunty Meimei commanded, gently but firmly.

Bowu nodded his head. Carefully, he swung his legs to the side and pushed himself out of bed.

He stood up. He stood, without a crutch, and without any pain.

As if in a trance, he started forwards, taking his first step.

There was a slight twinge, and he paused… but there was no pain.

He took another.

He put one foot in front of the other, fighting the urge to limp as he had so often before.

Each slow step carried him to the door as Auntie Meimei followed behind him, watching his movements carefully.

He was walking. Walking, without any pain at all.

He had the urge to burst into a run, but a reproachful “slowly” from Lady Meiling halted the idea in its tracks. Instead, he paced himself. He walked fully uptight and without a limp, opening the door into the main room where his sister was leaning against Big Brother Gou, her face set into a heavy frown.

Her eyes whipped to Bowu as she shot to her feet locking onto his face.

Bowu grinned at her and lifted his leg up, bending it completely.

There was an impact as Xianghua vaulted the table and scooped him up into a painful hug. Her limbs shook with the action, the embrace slightly too tight. He hugged back just as strongly.