Hao marched through the Sect.

  Grandma He was dead, resting alongside her husband, for that maybe one day he could do something, not today. For now, he needed to find Meiqi and Zhenqi.

  Disciples and servants alike gave him a wide berth as he turned corners. Interaction was limited to a glance and a flinch. Their comments about his empty or inhuman face once they were behind him didn’t escape his ears.

  Hao didn’t care. He would only respond if they slowed him down on his way to look for his servants—friends he promised to protect. If someone provoked him, drew a sword, or smacked him, he wouldn’t turn his head.

  The medicine hall. If Zhengqi is anywhere, it would be the medicine hall. But Meiqi, where would she be? He had repeated the thought in his head since he pushed himself up from the grave markers.

  They wouldn’t have left the home untended in such a way. Hao could only imagine they were taken, and the only one who would take them would be Taoyi, the one who lent them in the first place.

  Pao Taoyi had an extra say as the Servant Hall Leader. The lowest of the upper echelon of the Lower Peaks, a protector and guide, but he saw both Meiqi and Zhengqi as commodities to trade for anything that would benefit him. Taoyi saw everyone as similar, even disciples in his charge.

  He saw Hao as no different, a foundationless fool, whom he could make a quick profit from. Now Taoyi had broken their pact.

  Hao’s left hand was weak, but he clenched both his hands enough to leave his wounds reopened. Scabs tore and blood mixed with rain. He only noticed them because of the glances people made at the ground around him, and red droplets fell in his path.

  Zhengqi had an impressive knowledge base in medicine. Her skill gained the snaked-tongued Pao Taoyi face; if he had taken her back under the guise of being her Ancestor, she would have sent her there. Not only for the face. But today, there would be many disciples to tend to, voices to spread his name and influence.

  Hao avoided the courtyard as much as he could. There were only certain parts of it that were occupied with a few dozen loud voices that called out for trades with offers that got stronger by the second.

  Far more looked to buy than returned. More were dead than coming back, of course, they didn’t think of that while shouting, “One hundred spirit stones for any Day-Night Amethyst!”

  Words shouted at Hao with pointed fingers. He fit the description of the average person who returned just moments ago, battered and sullen. Eyes on the already open medicine hall entrance.

  Hao entered without a second of thought. He looked around without courtesy, his head stretched over the chaos of white garbed servants who worked as aides to the flat-faced disciples who worked in the hall, doing less than the servants, yet always getting more.

  His eyes stared through most people. The injured were not his concern, nor were the disciples, as for the servants, none of them had that strange ageless beauty to their faces that Zhengqi inherited from Meiqi, her mother.

  It was Hao’s first time inside. He was unfamiliar but quickly got used to the sight of bloody sheets being pulled off and replaced with unmatched haste. The layout, too, he found another space. An area blocked off from sight, with a deep blue curtain hung in an archway.

  Back there then, if not, where else, Hao walked towards it, but didn’t get too far.

  A woman blocked his way. She was tall, taller than any woman he knew, and pretty compared to many of the people he had met in the Secret Realm. But she had the advantage of not being covered in mud. There was a respectful crease to her expression, her eyes half-lidded, her head slightly tilted.

  Hao found himself bothered. He checked not just her appearance, but also quickly looked for any odd protrusions that would be a concealed weapon or tool. While doing so, he noticed something else. Untrained muscles moved beneath soft, scarless skin. For a moment, he could imagine the slight skeleton of the mortal woman.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She moved slowly, and deliberately so, her hands lay together on her stomach before she spoke. “If Lord Cultivator needs treatment, please take a seat. The Sect Contribution point will be…”

  “That’s not what I’m here for,” Hao said. He needed treatment, but he had more urgent things to deal with.

  She didn’t move, her respectful act broken as she stared at Hao, her head nodding as if she counted his wounds. That white-tooth grin spoke clearly of how she was used to dealing with disciples like Hao bursting in and wandering the medicine hall daily.

  Hao stepped around her. Zhengqi was not in this room. He had to check beyond the curtain, the arches.

  The woman followed behind him, her footsteps matched his beat for beat, “Please wait! That room is for people who require urgent attention!”

  Hao continued, in a single move, he threw the curtain aside. He could have guessed this area was for more dire people from the moans and groans that echoed from the space. Dozens of beds lined the walls. All of them creaked from the tossing and turning of those stuck in sleep.

  The further back he looked, the emptier the room became. None in the very back, where the space between the beds got larger and a great door loomed like a shadow over the place with a burned-on image of a cauldron and a pill.

  Hao found who he was looking for in between.

  Zhengqi, garbed in the same white as the rest of the servants, wrapped a man’s leg. Her face was down, locked in focus. Sweat had formed on her brow despite the chilled air. The sweat didn’t distract her, nor did the hair that escaped her bun and latched onto her face. Around and around, her hands went.

  Hao felt relieved for a moment, but that didn’t stop his momentum as he rushed forward.

  The woman behind him kept pace. Her lips moving, sounds coming out, “You can’t be back here.”

  As he got closer, it was evident that the man Zhengqi tended to was red in the face, with a dimwitted grin that stretched his lips. It bothered Hao, just a bit. Enough, keep an eye on him as he approached Zhengqi and stood behind her.

  Zhengqi’s patient just finished laughing. He stared right back at Hao, his arms lowered slowly to rest on the bed. His face said he had something to say as he looked at Hao. But soon his face turned pale, his gaze shifted to the woman who followed Hao, until his head was down and his eyes were on his bedsheets. His back pushed harder against his cushion as Hao took a step forward.

  Zhengqi lifted her head. She must have felt the movement of the man, his leg pulled back as he rested harder. Perhaps it was his sudden silence that seemed loud. Her hips twisted, and the wooden stool she leaned on turned with her.

  Zhengqi checked the entryway Hao had walked through, then kept going until she saw the tall woman at Hao’s side, then Hao himself.

  Hao’s face shifted. It nearly cracked into a smile as she stared at his face.

  The surprise was clear on her face. The stare became prolonged, her eyes grew watery, and for just a moment, the world felt a little more right. Then she turned her head down.

  “Young Master…” She managed to get out the words before she covered her mouth, both her hands coming off the wrapping as she tried to hide her face.

  Hao wasn’t sure how much she had to say, but it was more than just an arbitrary title Zhengqi and her mother called him. “You will treat me,” he said.

  Zhengqi nodded her head, her arms shot out to grab the cut-up threads of his robe as she rose, her head stopped down in a bow. When she looked up again, Hao couldn’t tell if she was glad, scared, or sad.

  “Miss Wu, you must finish your work no matter your relation to this young Cultivator.” The woman who followed Hao reminded everyone of her presence. “... And Young Lord, if you don’t have an injury beyond cuts and bruises, the front hall can tend to you.”

  “Young Master…” Meiqi looked at the woman, gave her a slight bow, and her hands came off Hao for just a moment.

  Hao looked down at the bandage on the man’s leg. It was all the way around, many times over, fit snug; it only needed to be tied off. Hao didn’t think he had the patience for even that right now.

  Plus, that look of victory on the face of the man in the bed annoyed the hell out of him.

  Hao pulled the belt of his robes loose. He had to peel most of the fabric from his skin. Blood and scabs had glued chunks of the fabric to his skin. Luckily, the rain had made it easier. Still, he winced as he pulled shredded threads of cloth off his left, and again, when he finally got the top loose enough to pull it down to below his ribs.

  “Is this enough?” Hao asked as he bit down on the makeshift bandage that wrapped his left arm. It was his worst wound, but it caused him the least pain.

  “This… This…” The random servant woman muttered.

  Hao hadn’t even finished tearing off the bandage when the smell of the wound permeated. He could see the woman through the hole in his arm, its edges covered with herbs that had turned brown.

  “Quick!”

  Hao was shoved, the screech of Zhengqi was right in his ear, her hands ripped his arm from his mouth, down to her eye level.

  She stared down at his arm, “Young Master! Can you still feel your hand? Quick, tell me!”