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"Wake up, Xiao-Hua-er, there's still so much you have to tell me!"
There was more anguish in Fang Duobing's voice than Di Feisheng had heard ever since they had found Li Lianhua on the beach of the East Sea.
For a few weeks, things had been very worrisome, and Di Feisheng had sometimes found Fang Duobing sobbing inconsolably into the manes of the horses, or Huli-jing's fur.
Fang Duobing cried enough for the both of them, so Di Feisheng never said anything; he just gave him water to drink and to wash his face before he went back in to Li Lianhua with a smile on his face.
If Di Feisheng himself had felt like crying during that time, he looked up at the moon and clutched the hilt of Li Lianhua's broken sword; he drank a little water and then rejoined them after the urge to spill tears had subsided.
But now, Li Lianhua hadn't been dying for years, not more than any person was dying all the time; hearing Fang Duobing panic inside the Lotus Lodge as he was coming back from his errand gave Di Feisheng a stab of dark worry like he hadn't felt in quite some time.
He jumped up the stairs to the front door and pushed it open. Huli-jing came running into his arms, as if she meant to say 'Thank the Heavens you are here, now deal with them!'
Fang Duobing was sitting on the bed, Li Lianhua cradled in his arms; he looked up at Di Feisheng when he came inside with heavy steps, fear and sadness filling his big brown eyes.
Li Lianhua was wrapped tightly in his good warm blanket, blue shadows under his closed eyes, his nose large and peaky, the flush of fever reddening his cheeks. The blanket was moving rhythmically, slowly rising and falling.
He was doubtlessly alive, but utterly unresponsive in Fang Duobing's grip.
"Xiao-Hua-er!" the young man sobbed again, shaking him once more.
Di Feisheng went over to the big terracotta water barrel and got Fang Duobing a cup of it to drink, as his voice was alredy hoarse.
"A-Fei," he said, accepting the water.
"Present," Di Feisheng said. "I was just gone a few days on Alliance business; what happened here?"
What the hell did he do now?, he didn't say, but it went unspoken in the background.
"I know," Fang Duobing said, handing back the empty cup, "I was here when the hawk came from Wuyan."
Pause.
"We went into town yesterday for a bit of light work and to buy meat and vegetables, and then he…"
He swallowed.
"Then he what?"
"He healed a dead kitten."
"Huh?"
"That's what I said," Fang Duobing nodded. "Little girl came with her little grey cat, all still and bloody, just barely alive, breathing slowly and painfully, obviously on its last legs. Some feral dog had caught and shaken it, and when the girl's big brother had got it back, it was all broken inside. The girl was full of panic and sniffling about Li Lianhua being that famous miracle healer who could wake the dead, and put the bloodied bit of grey fur into his hands right there and then, where he had been picking the nicest long eggplants. He had been joking with the woman who sold them about how good aubergines and nice penises are known by the same signs — ah, never mind. He took the cat in his hands and stroked it and murmured to it, and I could positively see the Yangzhouman he was pushing into it, like an invisible wind ruffling its fur?"
Di Feisheng nodded.
"Finally, the cat opened its eyes, which were pale green like the choicest jade, and then it stood in his hands and jumped over to its little mistress, who was still sniffling, but now with gratitude, hugging her kitten. Li Lianhua took out a bit of paper from his bag and wrote a recipe and told her to put that in the cat's food, a spoonful every day until the package was finished, and even added a coin for the apothecary. Then, he bought all the eggplants, made an off-colour joke about my junk which had all the aunties cackling, and then declared we needed to take our bounty home immediately."
He sniffled, and then kissed the peaky tip of Li Lianhua's nose.
"That idiot! His feet were faltering when we were hardly through the gates of the town, and when we came home, he told me to make tea and stow the eggplants, and when I turned around, he had collapsed on the bed, stopped moving, and wouldn't wake up. I thought he'd just sleep it off, but in the morning, he was still out cold, so I got more and more worried. I tried passing him qi, but that just runs through him like water. It's as if he'd emptied himself out."
Di Feisheng set the water cup aside, divested himself of his dao, his heavy belt, and his outermost layer of robes, and then checked the vegetable crate.
"He will have to make eggplant preserve from that," he grumbled.
Xiangyi was such a moron sometimes. Buying that woman's entire crop just because he knew if he kept joking and picking, he was likely to collapse before he'd finished the transaction.
"If he wakes up at all before they all go bad," Fang Duobing said in a very small voice.
Di Feisheng sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off his boots.
He slung an arm around both Li Lianhua, and Fang Duobing on the other side of him, and heaved a sigh.
"He will," he said. "I'm here now. Take his pulse."
With his free hand, Di Feisheng unwrapped the blanket a little and picked up the limp wrist nearest to him. Li Lianhua ran hot with fever; he had never been hot under the influence of the bicha poison, always cold. This was new, and actually worrying.
"He is alive," Fang Duobing grumbled. "I don't doubt it. His pulse is weak, and what little qi remains inside him is very shallow, and he won't retain anything I give him."
"Take his pulse," Di Feisheng said again. Repeating himself often worked better than arguing.
Fang Duobing picked up the other hand and put two fingers on his pulse point.
"No change," he said.
"Keep holding on," Di Feisheng said. Through the point of contact on his side, he began pushing the thinnest thread of beifeng baiyang into Li Lianhua's tired and worn-out meridians, allowing it to wander naturally into the centre, around the exhausted sacrum and perineum nodes, then up the other arm to the pulse point to prick at Fang Duobing's fingers.
"Ouch?"
"Pull a little, take it, add your Yangzhouman, then push back," Di Feisheng said. "Just pouring in our neili will probably not work, but if we spin our qi together inside his very meridians, it might take."
He tugged on his end once Fang Duobing had accepted the thread and pushed back, twisting the energy through Li Lianhua's meridians and nodes until the ozone tang of Yangzhouman reached him, and he then turned the power around yet again.
Fang Duobing immediately understood what they were doing, and now tugged from his own end while Di Feisheng was pushing.
Still, it took ages, and it was pitch dark outside when Li Lianhua finally opened his eyes.
Fang Duobing sobbed with relief and smothered him in kisses; Di Feisheng sat back, simply held on to them both and waited until Xiaobao's emotions subsided.
"Hello, Lao-Di," was the first thing Li Lianhua said. "Good to see you back. I hope your business went well?"
"It did," Di Feisheng grumbled. "But you bought far too many eggplants while I was gone. Don't ever do this again."
Li Lianhua sat, then asked Fang Duobing to give him some water, light the lamps, and make tea for all of them.
"Sorry, not sorry," Li Lianhua finally said when he handed Di Feisheng the empty water cup. "I will absolutely do it again. You didn't see the little lady and her little fluffy friend. He wasn't older than half a year, and he was suffering so painfully — his spine was snapped in several places, and his ribs were crushed. Anybody else would have put him out of his misery, but I knew that I — I knew I didn't have to, so I gave him what I had, felt his breathing even out and his little body knit itself back together. I never have much Yangzhouman any more, but how could I leave such a little creature to his suffering? How could I inflict suffering on his little mistress if he died? I had to do it; I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Compassion with all suffering creatures compelled me. He had the most beautiful green eyes, like the finest jade; his little nose that had been ghastly pale from the blood loss was pink again, and he clung to the little lady, even though his fine grey fur was still flecked with blood."
"How are you so sure he was a tomcat?" Di Feisheng said. Assigning the cat a human gender was probably a trick of Li Lianhua to make him feel with the cat more, and to feel less anger at the way Xiangyi had endangered himself.
"His little harbls were very visible in the short grey fur of his rear end," Li Lianhua said with a chuckle. "It was obvious he was a little guy. In a few months, a skilled apothecary may have to take a tiny knife to those so he won't stink up the little girl's house. I wrote that on the recipe I gave her; the coin should cover it all."
"You were utterly out of qi and still thought about gelding a cat??" Di Feisheng said. "I never know if you are aiming to be a boddhisattva, or just have lost your mind."
"I vote for lost his mind," Fang Duobing grumbled from where he was making tea in the kitchen, both braziers lit. "Never do that again!"
"I will absolutely do it again, if something like that ever comes up," Li Lianhua said, shrugging. "Yes, I went beyond my limits. But I know that I have the two of you. You've got me. You will come through for me like this every time. You are my safety line so I can lean out far and be reckless. And now, tea please!"