Chapter 84 - Two Paths, One Choice

"The first option," Ao Wen began to explain, holding up a single finger. "Is to divest yourself of the identities of wife and mother. These are the parts of yourself that stop you from drawing forth the power of figures you've previously venerated," she continued, beginning to outline the steps for this method. "I can prepare an elixir for you that will stop your monthly flow, crippling your womb and leaving you barren. As a woman, you've provided your husband with both a son and a daughter, you can be said to have done your duty as a concubine, owing him no further children. Your son is nearly an adult and your daughter will be old enough to attempt awakening the year after next. Their need to have a mother attend to them is significantly less. Focus on yourself and your cultivation path, leave this place, and maybe seek out the sect your cultivation method came from," she suggested. 

"And condemn myself to a loveless life?" Wan Yue said bitterly. She'd worked so hard to find love, to stay the favored concubine in the City Lord's manner. She was disappointed in her son Zhang Bo's recent actions but youthful indiscretion was hardly a reason for a mother to abandon her son and her daughter had been nothing but her pride and joy. How could she throw all of that away?

"I never said you had to live the life of a spinster," Ao Wen explained patiently. She did her best to imitate Senior Brother Huang's acting as she delivered her next piece of 'advice.' "After all, the figures you channeled previously fought hard to protect the women they loved. Emulate them. Find delight in soft curves and lush lips. How many ballads have you read written by famed poets to the women who moved them to fight against impossible odds? Find a woman who moves you the same way and you'll find no problems with your cultivation method," she said it simply as though a person could just decide to start loving women instead of men… Inwardly, Ao Wen asked herself if she could do the same but the only man she felt she could come close to fancying was Senior Brother Huang and he barely counted as male at all! 

"You said this was the first option," the young concubine said, genuinely afraid of what the second option might entail if the first option required so much sacrifice. "What's the alternative?"

"We correct your body, purging the masculine influence and infusing it with a fierce femininity and motherhood that would support you in cultivating historical figures like the Medical Saintess Cong Houzi," Ao Wen said simply. "I happen to have a rare ingredient that we could use for such an elixir and it would likely propel your cultivation forward to become a Novice Scholar, but there are side effects."

"Explain," Wan Yue said, wondering why Ao Wen didn't start from here and instead recommended abandoning her family. 

"I can concoct an elixir for you but elixirs aren't pills. Even the purest of elixirs can't bring about the changes that pills can. The elixir I would concoct for you would be similar to the one I prepared for Tang Jin, drawing on the power of the Rage Queen's motherhood, imbuing you with her fierceness and ability to fight to protect her young. Tang Jin is currently dealing with the side effects of absorbing the hearts and cores of Blood Rage Cougar cubs. His temper can cloud his judgment, and while he has strength like he never possessed before, he also struggles to keep his senses and discards his sword to use his bare hands as claws when he's provoked," she explained, laying some secrets bare so Wan Yue would understand. "An Independent Alchemist could have refined a pill that would have provided only the boost in power and cultivation without the side effects. Using an elixir in place of a pill will impact you more. Alchemy isn't magic. It has the power to alter your destiny but destiny can't be easily defied. The correct use of elixirs is to support and nourish natural cultivation and to provide a remedy for injury and illness. Recovering a cultivation deviation like yours isn't technically possible. We're just replacing a very damaging deviation with one that is preferable to the path you choose," she explained. 

"So the choice before me is to either cast off my family and my life as a mother to become more like the masculine heroes I channeled before, or to make use of a dangerous elixir that will imbue me with properties of a Rage Queen," Wan Yue summarized, trying to put equal weight behind each option even though the choice felt like it couldn't be more obvious to her. "Is the latter even possible given my Dark Moon Crow bloodline?" she asked. She couldn't help but feel that the side effects would be extreme given the way Ao Wen had placed it as an equally valid choice alongside one that required her to abandon her family. Would living with those side effects be worse than losing her loved ones? 

"Crows and Cougars aren't as far apart as you think," Ao Wen said with a slight smile. "We just have to help the two bloodlines find a mutual balance on the points of congruence. A crow will fight to protect her nest, a cougar will fight to protect her den. That doesn't mean you'll go unchanged though. My teacher told me on the day we met that Alchemists could change a person's destiny," she said, recalling her first meeting with Cong Houzi. "You had a destiny to be a great Historian but you broke that destiny when you became a mother instead. You also gained the destiny of a crippled cultivator. We can purge that destiny and select another one," Ao Wen explained, staring directly into Lady Wan's eyes. "But I cannot give you back the destiny you would have had were it not for your cultivation deviation. That would require a far better alchemist than I. I suppose that's the third option," she said, her voice quieting. "You could seek out an Independent or Master Alchemist to concoct a pill for you. The solutions I'm offering are the meager means of an Alchemy Novice. Lady Wan shouldn't consider them her only options."

"Maybe," Wan Yue said with a shake of her head. "But I've already seen Independent Alchemist Wai and he's on the verge of becoming a Master Scholar. He couldn't even diagnose my problem. I won't pry into your secrets," she said, "but it's clear to me that the alchemy standards you were trained under are superior to the ones practiced locally. I might have to venture to the far side of the mainland to find someone with sufficient standards to understand my problem and concoct an appropriate pill. Even this crow knows that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. If I go chasing after an alchemist who can concoct a pill for me, I may lose the opportunity I have to resume my cultivation now." 

"So you've decided?" Ao Wen asked gently. "No matter which path you pursue, the choice is yours. I will never tell another soul about the choice you don't take."

"I can tell that you're trying to not influence me, young alchemist," the concubine said with a soft smile. "But it's fine. I'll take the second option and I'll explain it to my husband. You have done what you said you would. You diagnosed me, you offered treatment and you told me what you couldn't do. You gave me the option to seek out other treatment despite the fact that my husband might withhold justice from you if you proved to be an incapable alchemist. I respect you for doing all of those things," continued, placing a hand gently on Ao Wen's shoulder. "But I know my heart. I've never wanted anything other than to love my husband, raise my children, and walk a long road of cultivation together with the people who are important to me. As an Initiate, I could perhaps live for two centuries. As a Novice Scholar, I could live as many as five. You describe your elixir as though it's defective when in fact, it gives me up to three hundred more years to spend with the man I love the most. Now tell me, how should I turn away from that? If you could gain hundreds of years to spend with your true love, would you gamble on a dimmer hope or seize every opportunity that fell into your grasp?"

Ao Wen smiled broadly at the older woman's question. What wouldn't she do to have more time to spend with Feng Xi? On the heels of that thought came another far more disturbing one. What wouldn't she do to reunite with Qi Yue? With Cong Houzi? Her feelings there were no less intense, no less real. Would she ever have to choose between them? Pushing such unbidden thoughts to the back of her mind, Ao Wen began writing a prescription for the elixir she would concoct the next day. "These are the items that I'll need to make a treatment for you," she said, thinking through each of several possibilities and making several notes about possible alternatives should some ingredients prove to be in short supply. "I don't know how expensive or rare they are here, but if something can't be obtained, I may be able to find an alternative. Even if we have to wait until the storm passes and make the trip to Red Moon City, or send someone to purchase ingredients there, your condition isn't dire in a way that makes waiting a few extra days dangerous to you. Truthfully, I think the hardest part comes after. You'll have to go read about a whole new set of historical figures to cultivate the power of powerful women," Ao Wen finished with a teasing smile as she handed over the prescription. 

She'd given Wan Yue two paths, but she'd hoped that this would be the one she chose. So long as she chose the path that held close to her loved ones, Ao Wen didn't mind the extra effort she'd have to put in to make the treatment work.