Chapter 104 - A Word Between Parents

For Hou Jia, the walk with Wan Yue felt slightly unnerving. She doubted the younger woman would remember, but the year that Wan Yue had awakened, Hou Jia had been sixteen years old and made her own first and final attempt at awakening much like Ao Wen had. Now, nearly twenty years had passed and both women approached forty winters in age. To an outside observer though, Wan Yue appeared much as she had that year during the awakening. Her figure had rounded slightly with the birth of two children to be sure, but she could be mistaken for a young mother of twenty rather than a maturing matron like Hou Jia. 

It wasn't possible to live in a town so close to cultivators and not understand that time moved differently for the blessed chosen ones who set their sights on immortality. City Lord Zhang had ruled in Turning Leaf town for as long as Hou Jia had been alive and he looked the same now as he did in her earliest memories of him during a mid-summer festival she'd attended as a toddling young girl. 

"I'm sorry," Hou Jia said, realizing she'd become lost in her thoughts and had missed what Lady Wan had been telling her. "For a moment, I was remembering the autumn that you awakened," she explained, not knowing how else to cover for her own rudeness. "I tried that year as well but cultivation seems to have skipped over me. You look just like you did then," she added softly. "It brought me back."

"I didn't realize," the young concubine said, momentarily taken aback by Madame Hou's statement. With how exceptional Ao Wen had proven herself to be, it was easy to treat her parents like ordinary members of a cultivation family, perhaps separated by their status but not by inherent nature. Realizing that the matronly baker was within a few years of her age brought the timeline of mortals sharply back into focus. Wan Yue had become untethered from the mortal world when her last mortal family member passed a few years ago. Since then, she'd rarely left the City Lord's manor and the only mortals she routinely made contact with were household staff and the Zhang Family's children. "You know," Wan Yue said, trying to reduce the awkwardness that lingered between them. "Of the two of us, I think you've been a much better mother. My Bo'er has turned into such a handful. Compared to your Ao Wen, he's…" she trailed off, uncomfortable putting too fine a point on it while still feeling that she'd come up short as a mother compared to the mortal woman next to her. 

"Lady Wan is kind," Hou Jia said softly. "But it seems like my Wen'er creates considerably greater trouble. Seeing everyone injured today, especially Alchemist Wai," she shuddered at the memory of those grisly injuries. 

"That's what I wanted to explain about creating the right kind of trouble," Wan Yue said with a smile. "It's hard for husband to chastise Alchemist Wai because he has the backing of the Alchemy Consortium but the truth is that none of us have been happy with how much time he spends isolating himself away from the town these past few years. If he wishes to pursue his cultivation, that's fine," she explained. "But he should request the Consortium send another Alchemist to serve in his place. His two disciples are sorely lacking and the fact that Mao Ailum managed to poison Feng Lieren under everyone's nose is a damning indictment of Alchemist Wai's ability to serve as the senior alchemist of Turning Leaf."

"So what happens now?" Ao Yang asked from the other side of Hou Jia. From the stories his grandfather had told, cultivation organizations weren't to be taken lightly and they could become mercilessly petty about extracting retribution when they felt they'd been wronged. 

"If I know my husband," Wan Yue said with a smile. "He's already drafting a letter to the Consortium explaining that Alchemist Wai's disciple poisoned Feng Lieren in order to pressure Feng Xi into a marriage and that Alchemist Wai himself has been gravely injured in a cauldron explosion. He'll likely explain that he's titled your daughter as the supervising alchemist of Turning Leaf until the Consortium sees fit to send someone else out who can supervise the Consortium's business. All of this will embarrass the Consortium terribly and they should send out a proper alchemist within a moon," she concluded. 

"But won't Wen'er be in trouble?" Ao Yang asked, still not convinced that things would work out so well. 

"That's where the next several days become important," Wan Yue said with a gleam in her eyes. "Trust my husband. He may work your daughter a little hard for the next half a moon or so but it won't be without purpose. Several cultivation families are looking for the kind of help that she can provide. By 'loaning' the Zhang family alchemist to other notable parties, we'll have half the town singing her praises by the time anyone from the Consortium arrives. Wai Dan might make a move of his own but one voice shouting at the ocean tide is easily drowned out."

"You'll use public good will as her shield," Hou Jia realized. "Is that why she gave out the medicines today? Was this all calculated?" She had thought that it had been a kind gesture from her daughter to give so many valuable medicines to the common folk, but had she been wrong about her motivations?

"No," Wan Yue shook her head. "Your daughter insisted on making medicine for the common people. She," Wan Yue hesitated before speaking further. It seemed like Ao Wen had told her parents very little of what her life had been like since awakening and she didn't want to betray the trust her benefactor had shown her by allowing her to be present while she was concocting. At the same time, she felt it was a mistake to withhold so much from the young alchemist's parents who sincerely wanted to understand the person their daughter was becoming. "In the realm that she went to, she talked about a disease that killed untold numbers of people. Even the people who survived the disease might instead be turned into monsters," she explained softly. "Your daughter became what she called a 'Holy Healer', one of the few healers who could fight the disease. When she was making the medicine she gave as a gift tonight though, she said she owed it to the ones she couldn't save back then."

"Master Ao, Madame Hou," she said softly. "I think she doesn't talk about it because she feels guilty," Wan Yue said earnestly. She wouldn't tell them what Ao Wen had shouted about killing mortals who couldn't be cured so they wouldn't become monsters or that she'd had to do so for children. Anyone who had witnessed Ao Wen's outburst that day knew that the scars she bore from that realm ran incomparably deep. "Your daughter is very kind," she continued gently. "She doesn't know how to hold back even when helping hurts her badly. I think that's why Alchemist Wai angered her so badly tonight when he accused her of poisoning the common folk," she said. She wouldn't complete the statement, that Ao Wen had once needed to poison common folk to prevent far worse tragedies. The accusation had likely hit the deepest, rawest wound at the core of the young woman's heart. Thinking about it, Wan Yue found an unfamiliar rage stirring within her, motherly and fiercely protective of the young girl that had given her back her cultivation path. Some things should never be said and some insults should never been tolerated. If Alchemist Wai tried to take some kind of revenge for this, he'd have to get past Wan Yue's claws first!