NOVEL NEXT Chapter 53: Loving Causalgia [Sidestory]
~~~
20 years ago…
'You have not suffered enough. You cannot paint while bearing such meagre pains.'
Those were the parting words of her Master before Lu Yihui blew up the laboratory she had grown up in nearly all her life.
Her Master's wisdom was simple, but profound all the same. Yihui's understanding of Agony was narrow, and so if she wished to be a better Painter of Wounds, she needed to walk the lands where the greatest suffering lies.
She must venture to the realm of the Flesh-Grafted Empire and its Hundred and Eight Imperial Provinces — that fabled civilisation of spiritual cultivation that bloomed beneath the shadow of a Perishing Star.
And so the woman had gleefully packed her tools, bidding her Master farewell by saluting the shrivelled corpse with her final cigarette, before setting fire to the fuel tanks attached to the side of the concrete outpost. The kaleidoscopic green and blue hues of the alchemical fires blazed wantonly atop the peaks of the Abyssal Ridge, though there was nothing alive for miles to witness it.
She was utterly alone. And it was perfect.
"Goodbye, you old hag!" Yihui shouted, uncaring of the immense heat as secondary explosions ruptured through the facility. The air reeked of burning chemicals and biological materials. "Thanks for the lessons, fuck you for all the beatings, and may we never see each other again!"
They probably would, one day. The Wise Old One was not a woman to die properly, no matter what form of Death might hold her in their grasp each time.
Great General of Karma indeed… What use was Immortality when one could freely swim against the currents of Samsara?
Yihui checked over herself once more. The satchels of woven hair tied to her waist held her best possessions, surgical or otherwise. The robes of inked human leather that clothed her were expertly flayed, dried, and stitched together by her own hands. The tainted folds beneath the layers of her flesh bore her greatest works of art.
Most important of all, a singular red crystal was sewn securely away within the notch of her jugular, hidden from view and bound permanently to her person.
She was ready, Painter and Chirurgeon both.
The good Doctor's smile was bright and easy as she travelled south. Soon, she would reach the northern borders of the Flesh-Grafted Empire. It was the start of her great adventure: a journey that both served as artistic pilgrimage and intellectual peregrination. Trials and Tribulations awaited her, but she knew the reward at the end of the Path would be worth it.
Suffering lies at the feet of Immortal Mount Tai. Though the shape of it eludes her, Yihui knows she will find the face of her final Agony there.
~~~
It was no easy thing for Yihui to walk the highways of His Imperial Majesty's Empire, for she was a mortal in a world where cultivators and Spirit Beasts roamed.
Discounting the innumerable dangers that lurked between villages and human settlements, the distances between the civilised oases of the Provinces were far from reasonable. The lands of the Flesh-Grafted Empire were massive, with each Province spanning hundreds of kilometres across unnavigable terrain, save for the few trade routes constructed by the Empire's administration: the Imperial Highways.
As far as first impressions go, Yihui found herself disappointed. The famed Imperial Highways she read in her Master's books — massive works of engineering meant to facilitate trade across the entire Empire via brick roads and stone bridges — were little more than simple tracks of dirt worn down by foot traffic and animal carts. The expected consequence of endless mortal trade caravans trailing back and forth between the same villages to peddle their goods, rather than the result of any cultivated sophistry.
Yihui supposed the drudgeries of serfdom would compel more than a few mortals to strike out and attempt to make their fortune. It must be difficult for them to live under the shadows of cultivators, seeing their heaven-defying endeavours and knowing they had little hope of achieving that same level of power.
Little wonder they sought to compensate for their inferiority with wealth or financial success, though the Painter wondered how many prospective merchants actually found genuine satisfaction in their meagre earnings.
Especially when they had to traverse such dreadful routes to meet their destinations! Mud, stones, and tree roots plagued her path, turning the soothing trek she had been hoping for into a horrid trudge that threatened to trip her every second. The bottom of her robes was caked in soil, and her long-sleeved travel wear was creased by the day's troubles. Even her leather gloves — blood-red and the velvet pride of her attire — were sullied by clearing the shit-stained obstacles blocking her path!
Perhaps the Imperial Highways of the Inner and Core Provinces possessed a more elegant showing of sophisticated road networks. Yihui could not imagine such primitive engineering to be adequate in serving the needs of a population as vast as the Flesh-Grafted Empire.
The good Doctor tried to calm herself by taking another drag of smoke from her bone pipe — the bitter opioid leaves within burning with a gnarled, smog-suffocated light — but even that provided little relief. She had yet to source a suitable replacement for the regular doses of nicotine sticks she once enjoyed. The psychoactive substances she identified and foraged amid the local flora proved woefully inadequate, though she suspected the problem stems more from an issue of chemical refinement rather than potency.
Hopefully, she would find a proper drug peddler of sorts soon. The alchemists of these lands were reportedly quite famed for their production of exotic stimulants. The prospect of trying new and foreign narcotics soothed the weary weight of her heart.
For the moment, however, she must contend with whatever she could scavenge from the woods and the occasional ransacked caravan on the roadside. Which brings her to the other matter that frequently plagued the would-be mortal traveller…
The woods to her left shivered with movement before a giant rat-like creature burst from its foliage. Its fur was covered with sickly moss, and its body was gaunt to the bone. Half a dozen more followed behind it, blocking her path ahead. Three more emerged behind her to block her retreat.
Even on all four, they each came up to her knee in height. Though she lacked the cultivated senses of those famed spiritual practitioners that populated the Empire, Yihui was still able to 'detect' their threat levels — their qi — well enough, feeble as the creatures were.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Foundation Realm, Second Step. Yihui believed these vermin were called Mire Rats, according to a travel guidebook she looted off a dead merchant several days earlier.
For a mortal, Spirit Beasts of this level were not beyond their ability to defeat. Yet, if outnumbered and surrounded as she was, they would be hard-pressed to find a way to survive.
The Mire Rats evidently knew that as well. Their hunger driving them ravenous, they charged at her from all sides, screeching and hissing in a tide of furry pestilence.
Yihui calmly snuffed out the ember in her bone pipe before tucking it away. She drew the back of her sleeves with her delicately gloved hand, revealing a kaleidoscope of sangria colours strewn across her skin in disturbing patterns. Drawing forth an engraved bone-crafted scalpel from her satchel, she carefully peeled back a length of flesh across her forearm, revealing the meat within.
Something within her arm moved.
The Chirurgeon loaded the shot, the Painter took aim, and Yihui grinned as she lifted her finger.
~~~
"Doctor Lu, it is a miracle! It is as you say, my leg is fully healed! I can walk again!"
"Doctor Lu, my son's bruises had disappeared last night! The ointment you gave me truly worked!"
"Doctor Lu, I don't know how I can ever thank you. That ache has been bothering me for all my life! How can I repay you?"
How boring this side of the World was.
After all the stories she had read about the depravity of the Flesh-Grafted Empire whilst she was studying under the tutelage of her Master, Yihui had been prepared for all manner of dreadful sights and horrors; excited, even.
What injuries could the Heaven-defying Arts inflict upon a person? What grievous wounds could be borne upon a body cultivated to the threshold of Immortality? Surely her travels would gift her all manner of exotic Agony to harvest, for the powers that dwelt within the lands were varied, if nothing else.
Yet for all her enthusiastic daydreams, she never once accounted for how uninspired her adventures might turn out to be.
Yihui travelled from village to village, peddling her service as a wandering doctor in exchange for coins and goods. She was trained in the arts of a physician, and though the herbs and healing ways of this foreign land were a mystery to her, some facets of medicine were universal no matter where one practised it.
The people here were people. They had two eyes, two ears, four limbs, and one heart. In aspects of human physiology, the locals were of little difference from the denizens beyond the Abyssal Ridge where she once lived.
For the mortals, at least. Yihui had not yet had the chance to treat one of those fabled cultivators, but she suspected their biology operated far differently.
In any case, though she was not lacking in her own brand of esoteric mystics and worldly knowledge, the good Doctor was sorely devoid of other equally vital resources: namely, food, shelter, and money.
Her secrets as a Painter were not up for trade, but her services as a Chirurgeon were. Yihui's Master was a surgeon without equal, and her skills with both the scalpel and the painting needle are unparalleled in both this world and the last.
Or rather, were unparalleled. Thankfully, those revered talents were passed down to Yihui during those long years in the lab, though the student dared not claim she stood on the same pedestal of mastery as her Master once did.
For now, at least.
Still, for matters of mundane wounds, her competence more than sufficed, and masquerading herself as a wandering doctor not only granted her some much-needed income, but also allowed her a closer look at the injuries borne by the people within the Flesh-Grafted Empire. At that time, it appeared to be the perfect solution, and Yihui had praised herself for her genius.
Sadly, in matters of progress — be they of professional interests or monetary gains — her yields thus far were dreadfully disappointing.
The villages within the so-called '103rd Outer Province' were horrifically poor. Rather than receiving a flood of golden taels or silver sycees for her services, she was instead given lumps of mouldy bread, watered-down porridge, or disgusting bamboo flasks of diluted rice wine as payment.
If she were really unlucky, she would get proposals of courtship, marriage, or some other equally disturbing nonsense instead.
Where was the tide of exotic science and mythic secrets she was promised in her books? Where were the rivers of gold and silver and silk, of gem-entrusted jewellery and harems of jade beauties she read about? Forget about riches or women, most of these primitive savages were still operating off a barter economy!
If real money existed in these lands, the good doctor doubted she would have any luck finding it in her outskirt travels of these 'Outer Provinces'. Perhaps the inner areas of the Empire boasted more advanced civilisations, but for the moment, she was stuck with the menial products of peasant farmers, exchanged as payment for her exemplary medical practices.
Yihui wasn't sure what to do with the mouldy bread (definitely not eat it; maybe she could try making penicillin?), nor the watery food or poorly fermented wine, but the woman was hardly in a position to refuse. Her financial status was hardly better than these poor barbarians, and the stores of military rations she had squirrelled away in her concrete spatial pocket beside the bloody Corpus of her Dead God were already running low.
It still galled the good Doctor that she was providing her services at all for such lacklustre rewards, especially since the secondary benefit that she had hoped her doctoring work would give her turned out to be equally disappointing. Perhaps she should just take this as beneficial labour for her karma, or Dao, or whatever the locals called the Cycles of Samsara here…
"Doctor Lu! Please, we need help!"
Fantastic, another patient… Yihui allowed a small hope to bloom in her chest. Perhaps the wound would be something more interesting this time, like the aftermath of a Spirit Beast mauling, or the soul-festering effects of a mutant disease, or perhaps even a—!
"Take a look at him! This bumbling fool cut his arm with his sickle while he was out harvesting in the rice field! It won't stop bleeding!"
Never mind. It appeared she was fated to be surrounded by inadequacy no matter where she went.
Or so it seemed at the time, anyway.
The Imperial Highway, Part 2
The construction and layout of the Imperial Highway differ from Province to Province, yet a certain level of practical sophistication is expected of their design. The alchemical formulas for producing a steady supply of durable, qi-infused material for the Highways have been tried and tested over the long millennia, with minute improvements made between each variation. The builders of the Inner Provinces make liberal use of those materials to engineer layered roads and cambered structures, ensuring adequate durability and stability even after centuries of service.
Closer to the Core Provinces, however, it is not uncommon to see practicality abandoned in favour of extravagance — as is the right of those most powerful within the Empire. The paths adopt ever more intricate designs, though they saw arguably less use as flying wagons and other aerial implements superseded the common means of ground travel instead.
Roads became ever wider, their material shifting from sturdy stone to that of indestructible jade and marble, mined straight from the rich veins of the Kunlun Mountains. Their lengths are inlaid with gems and precious metals, such that when Immortals fly above the skies, they might look down and see the pleasing sights of a thousand glimmering lights, shining towards them.
Glittering stars above and below. Though the Jade Clouds may forever block the Astral Heavens from our sight, Humanity is not without means to create its own curtains of stellar beauty.
The Highways of the Empire flow with silver and silk, with cultivators of all walks of life, with knowledge and commerce flooding from one settlement to another. Look upon the rivers of wealth and opportunity, and know how fortunate you are to live within the greatest era of mankind.
— Excerpt from A Citizen's Guide to the Flesh-Grafted Empire
(Scribbled in this particular copy were angry scrawls: 'Bloody liars, roads of silk and silver my ass! All I see is mud and pebbles and a dirt path. The Highways of the Inner and Core Provinces better be pissing gold and jade when I get there.')