Chapter 111 - Obligations of Alchemists

A mere two days after the banquet, Ao Wen again earned the praise of the people when the City Lord's manor announced that she would be hosting a clinic for the mortal townsfolk of Turning Leaf. Moreover, she specifically invited any children who planned to attempt awakening the following autumn including those who had already made the attempt and failed. 

"Why are you examining all of the children who are going to attempt awakening?" Wu Lin asked as he helped Ao Wen prepare to open their clinic. Outside, Wan Yue had been organizing the hundreds of townsfolk who had turned out, still baffled by Ao Wen's insistence that she would be able to treat more than a hundred people in a single day, but unwilling to express any doubt given the miracles she'd already seen from the young alchemist. 

"Spirit Folk aren't suited to be cultivators," Ao Wen explained, double-checking her supply of silver needles and medicinal oils. "Maybe we were thousands of years ago," she continued, "but it's been too long and our bloodlines have become too muddled. Those of us who manage to awaken, if we're lucky, have one bloodline or another that becomes dominant. Tang Jin's Radiant Mountain Lion bloodline is a great example of this. There's almost no trace of his mother's Snow Swallow bloodline in him at all. When he awakened, one had to take primacy over the other. People who manage to cultivate two divergent bloodlines are extraordinarily rare."

"So why does that make Spirit Folk poor cultivators?" Wu Lin asked, not understanding the difficulty. It was well known that a single bloodline needed to establish dominance in order for awakening to succeed and most cultivators made at least some attempt to guide one or another during the process. For many, one of their bloodlines had already asserted itself long before they made the awakening attempt so all that remained for the cultivator was to embrace the choice nature had made for them. 

"The problem is that even if one is dominant, the other isn't gone. Worse, after so many thousands of years since we separated from our ancestral spirits, most of us don't have two bloodlines but dozens," she explained. "I inherited my father's Earth Dragon bloodline and my mother's Vermillion Bird bloodline. Let's say, purely hypothetically, that I had a child with Tang Jin. That child would inherit both of my bloodlines, and both of his. The Vermillion Bird bloodline might even strengthen the dormant Snow Swallow bloodline since both are birds while the Earth Dragon has very little in common with the Radiant Mountain Lion. Now repeat this again and again, for dozens of generations," she added. "See the problem?"

"No, not really," Wu Lin said, still struggling to understand why this was so important. "I understand that the more pure a person's bloodline is, the greater their talent for cultivation, but that's different from being poorly suited to cultivation."

"You only say that because you've never treated humans," Ao Wen said. "Spirit Folk have dozens of competing bloodlines that cause thousands of variations in our meridians, our acupoints, our energy flows, our elemental attunements… We're each individually different enough that we have to work three times as hard to do the same things a human would do. Part of that comes from the disharmony of our component bloodlines. There is, however, a silver lining," she added with a smile. 

"Spirit Folk cultivators are stronger than humans," Wu Ling said, expressing something that wasn't just an opinion but a well-demonstrated fact. "We have more energy to draw on, better elemental attunement, and the ability to awaken the powers of our latent Ancestral Spirits."

"Exactly," Ao Wen said with a smile. "Now, what if you could correct the defects that came from mixing bloodlines?"

"If you could do that… we could awaken at the same rate as humans!" Wu Lin exclaimed in astonishment. "You'd double the number of cultivators within a generation!"

"Quadrouple more like," Ao Wen corrected with a widening grin. "I've been treating Tao Juan and I've learned a lot about correcting the flaws within the development of his meridians. I'm going to teach you the method today. Watch the first several, and then I'll guide you through a few. By the end of the day, I expect you to be just as good at this as I am." 

Of course, Ao Wen didn't only tend to children who desired to be cultivators. Alchemist Wai Dan had been so wrapped up in his own cultivation and his attempts to become a Master Scholar that he'd neglected the public health of the common folk for a long time. Many minor illnesses, left untended, had festered into problems that could now only be treated by a skilled medical practitioner. 

"You said you lost your foot in a logging accident last year?" Ao Wen asked one patient as she examined the tender flesh that had begun to darken and yellow near the point of amputation and remained red, inflamed, and swollen all the way up to the knee. 

"It was at the start o' the rains last year," the burly man said, wincing in pain as Ao Wen gently felt her way over the place where the logging camp's mortal doctor had stitched up his leg. "We got caught by the lightning and had to spend half a moon in the camp before I could get home. At first, it had some places that would blister up and then it would drain a thick kind of puss. The camp doc gave me a medicinal paste for it and it cleared up through the winter. Lately, though, it's been getting worse, and since I'm not working…"

"I understand," Ao Wen said gently. "I'm glad you came today. I'm going to have to cut away a few pieces of skin that are too damaged to recover, but I have a much better ointment to apply afterward to make sure this doesn't happen again. I'm sure it's been too tender to fit a peg to walk on, but when I'm done, within a few months, you'll be able to see a good woodcarver who can fashion something you can slip over the stump so you can walk again."

"I heard that there were elixirs that could glow back a lost limb," the man said with a hopeful look in his eyes. "Is there any chance that you could do that for me?"

"I'm sorry," Ao Wen said as gently as she could. "Those things only work on cultivators. If we tried giving you an elixir like that, the elixir would consume the remainder of your lifespan to regrow the lost limb. You might survive for a few years but it would be as a frail old man instead of a healthy ox of a man that you are today. I promise though, you'll be able to work again, and you'll be able to live for a long time, even if you don't have your foot."

"Okay," the man said, regathering what inner strength he had. "Thank you," he added. "Not just for the help, but for being honest."

"Of course," Ao Wen said with a smile. "Now, let's get you cleaned up and do something about that leg so you're in less pain."