There was a simplicity to the Healer’s Hut. As Deng Huan rushed to the bed that his patient laid upon with its familiar walls, poorly constructed thatched roof, and the earthen floor filled his soul with nostalgia, preparing him for the difficult task ahead.

He was going to stitch a dantian back together.

Perhaps in the realm of the Immortals, such a feat was not so impressive. But for Deng Huan, a mortal spirit doctor in a backwater kingdom on a dying plane? It was unheard of.

“Keep wiping away the impurities and waste,” he directed his assistant.

Black sludge sloughed off the body of the near-naked cultivator. The white loincloth he’d been changed into had already stained a mixture of yellow, purple, and brown. Even in his sleep, the cultivator’s face was a rictus of pain.

The cultivator was young, and Huan doubted whether his body’s appearance matched his physical age. Though his skin was tanned from the sun like that of a simple farmer, his face was soft and unwrinkled. Even so, his hands were calloused and rough. This was, perhaps, the most peculiar cultivator the young doctor had ever seen.

As his mind wandered, Deng Huan prepared the tools of his craft. A flame of concentrated qi manifested in his outstretched palm, its tongues flickering from finger to finger. An assortment of constructs folded themselves into existence like fractals, strands of activated qi glowing around their central matrices. He withdrew a spirit-stitching needle from his inner sea. Jade in coloration and barely thicker than a human hair, the Saint level treasure was far older than he.

Huan activated the first construct, and a protective dome surrounded the hut.

“Activate your inhibitors,” he instructed his assistant.

Conventional inhibitors severed the connection between a cultivator and their craft. The Doctor’s modifications prevented the user’s qi from interfering with the circulatory system of their patient; as foreign influence sought purchase in a cultivator’s body, their will fought against the invader, irritating vital systems and putting one’s life in danger.

The Doctor’s face grew solemn as he turned to face his assistant.

“Before we begin, you must know that this procedure will likely fail.”

The girl scrunched her face up, before firming her resolve and nodding her head.

“Such is the burden of those who practice our craft,” she responded sagaciously, her wisdom belying her youth.

Performing a final check, Huan grunted in approval.

“Let us begin.”

For three days and nights they toiled, their endurance bolstered by cultivation. Construct after construct spun up and wound down, catching floating detritus, all that remained of a once pristine dantian. Bucket after bucket was filled with filth, the young assistant scurrying to empty the filth before the boy’s body expelled even more toxic sludge.

Dantians were composed of valuable material; in his studies, the doctor had stumbled into many of those preyed upon by practitioners of the dark arts. Stealing a dantian condemned one to a mortal life, one that would never rejoin the Yellow River.

The sludge could have been from a breakthrough or from infection; either way, it sought to interfere with the procedure, a cause for failure that Deng Huan could not and would not accept.

Even in its damaged state, the doctor could see the talent of the cultivator. If he could just… survive, the boy would reincarnate with good fortune, as a young scion or even to a higher plane entirely.

If only he could survive.

By the end of the first night, all but the largest dantian fragments had been captured for later use. But Huan was in a fervor, and milestones would not stop him.

Hour after hour passed, the doctor’s needle sewing the dantian back together. Slowly, a shape began to form. It was different from any dantian he’d ever seen, but the boy had injuries more severe than any he’d ever healed before. A puzzle could not be completed without all its pieces, and so the doctor reintroduced old decaying fragments from stasis, sewing them into the discus he had begun.

Even then, it wasn’t enough. Though the dantian was wider in diameter than any he’d seen, it was still incomplete. Near the center, a gaping hole resisted his efforts to close it, and the doctor had reached his limit.

“It’s not enough,” he whispered to no one in particular.

“Senior?”

Startled, Huan remembered another benefit of having an assistant.

“My design should… theoretical maximum output… centrifugal force…. And that’s why a dantian with holes in it cannot hold qi.”

His assistant’s eyes began to glaze over, injected with far too much information than she could handle.

“Ah… apologies young one. I may have gone too far.”

As for his assistant, she understood only a fraction of what had been explained. Perhaps with time and meditation, she would come to understand the rest, but the art of healing was neither simple nor trivial. Regardless, she sought to please her elder, and so a solution she gave.

“Elder, if I may….”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s just,” she stuttered, trying to get the words out.

“Oh, don’t mince words, what is it child?”

“Does his dantian need to be closed? After all, the patient’s membrane has been altered to impermeability. How else is he supposed to draw qi from it?”

“I… can’t believe I didn’t think of that. A system of interior walls… funnel the qi… ah, I did it again, didn’t I.”

The assistant looked like her head was about to explode, but the doctor finally had a plan of action.

And so the work went on.

The words caught a lump in his throat, resisting, before being swallowed into the pit of his stomach. His heart drops as his head throbs, finally perceiving the words:

“You will never cultivate again.”

Jianyu remembered the recounting of the Spirit Doctor. He’d been recovered by hunters, collapsed over the corpse of an Earl-rank demon they’d been pursuing. The doctor had mentioned other minor details and expressed his astonishment at his victory, but none of that mattered to Jianyu.

No, nothing mattered if cultivation was lost.

Cultivation was painful, yes, and had its fair share of prejudice. But it had also lifted two homeless orphans out of poverty and given them wealth, status, and life where none had existed before. It was the tool with which he was meant to avenge his brother’s murder, and solve the mystery of his Sect’s destruction.

Cultivation was life, death, pain and joy, complexity and simplicity; it was everything.

Deng Huan could not see the hopelessness in his patient’s sightless eyes, but he could feel the disturbances in the boy’s soul. The boy’s emotions were on full display, and he made no attempt to shield them. The air began thrumming rhythmically, in time with his soul’s reverberations.

The doctor didn’t know what pain the child had experienced, and so made no attempt to interfere. Inner demons were like that; either he would overcome them and move on with his life, or he would acquire a soul wound. In his weakened state, such an injury would be fatal, but there was nothing more he could do.

For a moment, the boy’s soul sputtered, like a fire smothered with ash.

The inexplicable wind that had spawned in the cramped hut died down, and various instruments of medicine crashed to the ground with discordant clangs and thuds.

And then it reignited, blazing like an inferno, affecting all the energy in the room before dying down once more, this time to a larger, yet more controlled flame.

Even weak as a newborn and barely able to walk, still, he would advance.

In the end, his experiment had been a wild success. Any other spirit doctor would have leaned on the prestige of such an accomplishment, but Huan was unsatisfied. The boy’s dantian looked like a discus, with a series of interior barriers to funnel qi from the furthest reaches of the spinning dantian to the access points at the center, grafted to orbit the liver meridian in equilibrium.

But it wasn’t enough for the boy, who’d nearly broken down in tears, and it wasn’t enough for Huan’s ambition. He’d accomplished much, but still he felt like a failure. Logically, he’d known the abysmal success rate was nigh unobtainable, but he’d still hoped, even dreamed, he could succeed. That the child had advanced their soul was little consolation.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. All things considered, you performed a miracle.”

Even now, his wife sought to console him, but Huan knew she didn’t see the full picture.

“It’s not that. Even though the boy is alive, it’s clear he wishes he weren’t. Even in our village, cultivation is virtually necessary to acquire any prestige, and from the flames burning in his soul, he saw cultivation as a tool to exact his revenge.”

The Chieftain kneaded his back as they talked, her capable hands working wonders on the knots in his back.

“You know, cultivation isn’t the only way to acquire power.””

“I know, but how many succeed? The dark arts are downright evil, he has no bloodline to draw from, and his body will need years if not decades to recover before advancing.”

“What about the art of zhóuyŭ?”

“Mages are the stuff of children’s stories,” Huan scoffed. “Anyone claiming otherwise is a fool or a charlatan.”

The Chieftain stopped, and after a moment Huan turned around to face her. He was met with a raised eyebrow and a look of disapproval.

“Of course, excusing my infinitely talented and knowledgeable wife.”