Luo Min made a few, very halfhearted attempts to refuse the money before she plucked the coins from Sen's hand. Sen pretended he didn’t notice the way that a veritable mountain of stress seemed to evaporate from the young woman’s body. Sen expected that she was so busy being relieved by the money in her hand that she didn’t notice something unclenching inside Sen’s spirit. He hadn’t even noticed how much it was bothering him that he hadn’t made good on that offer to pay for what he’d taken until he followed through. With that bit of distraction dealt with, he was finally able to bring his full attention to bear on the problem of helping Luo Min’s mother. One thing was obvious. This wasn’t going to be like helping Zhang Muchen, where one simple elixir would do most of the work. He also wasn’t going to be able to simply hand the problem over to someone else. If he was going to help her, he’d have to commit to finishing the job. Of course, he thought, that’s assuming that I can finish the job. Sen was in no way certain about his capacity to do that.

“I’m going to be here a while,” he said. “Possibly weeks.”

Luo Min frowned at him. “We can’t offer you much hospitality. Not even a roof, really.”

Sen shook his head. “I don’t need anything from you except a place I can set up my tent that won’t be disturbed.”

The young woman considered that for a moment before she nodded. “There are a few places nearby where the animals shouldn’t disturb you, Cultivator Lu. Well, the farm animals shouldn’t. There are spirit beasts. Who knows what they’ll do.”

Sen waved that concern away. “I can deal with spirit beasts if I must.”

The young woman took Sen to a few places that were close enough to the hut that a firm shout would be enough to get his attention. He picked one that looked like it would get some shade in the afternoon and swiftly put up the tent. Practicalities, he thought, sending up a mental thank you to Grandmother Lu. With his own sleeping arrangements dealt with, Sen let Luo Min take him back to the hut, where he settled in to do some work. The young woman watched him with a mixture of interest and doubt when she saw the plain, simple pot he produced from his storage ring. A little part of him was relieved that the first thing he had to make was something for pain.

He did need to be careful that he didn’t make the elixir too potent, or there could be other problems. He could put the woman into a permanent coma. She might even grow addicted to the medication, although Sen doubted that anything he made would cause that. No, he liked starting with the painkiller because it was relatively simple. Unlike virtually everything else he would make for the older woman, the painkiller didn’t need to be tailor-made for her condition. By nature, most painkillers were meant to work on the whole body. That meant that were actual recipes for them. Auntie Caihong had made him memorize about a dozen.

In a pinch, Sen could make one using the ingredients he found to hand, but there was something very comforting about following a recipe that someone older, wiser, and more experienced had created. Sadly, making that painkiller only took Sen about an hour. He filtered the final brew through a piece of cheesecloth and, once it cooled, tipped the pale green liquid into a stoppered bottle. He’d made a point to buy a supply of those back in Orchard’s Reach before he left, realizing that it wasn’t the kind of thing that most people who just have lying around. He held the bottle out to Luo Min, who took it with care.

“A small spoonful should suffice,” he said. “Two, if she’s in a lot of pain. No more than three times per day.”

“Three times per day,” said Luo Min.

After a moment’s thought, Sen realized he should clarify. “Every eight hours or so.”

The sudden understanding on Luo Min’s face assured Sen that he’d been right to explain that a little more. He supposed for a farmer, a day meant dawn to dusk, not dawn to dawn. After a hasty explanation from Luo Min, Sen took the pot outside, drew up some water from a well, and scrubbed the pot clean. He took the opportunity to eat something and consider his strategy for dealing with the problem one last time. He’d have to deal with the leg first. It was the root of all the other problems. Even as he went through that thought process again, Sen also knew that he was stalling, stretching out the moments before he’d need to start doing things. Things that he knew could have irrevocable and potentially lethal results. The knowledge that doing nothing would have the same results didn’t assuage his fears much.

If he did nothing and the woman died, that was just the natural course of events. If he did something and she died, that was his fault. Sen wasn’t eager to assume that level of responsibility. Recognizing his stalling for the minor act of cowardice that it was, Sen poured a little water into the pot and took it back inside. The second round of work was substantially more complicated. He was slowly adding and cooking down a wide assortment of generic plants, not-so-generic plants, and alchemical agents into a kind of poultice.

Some ingredients were meant to do simple things, like reduce inflammation, while others were intended to draw out impurities, and still others would help to kill any infections. It was complicated, possibly one of the most complicated things that Sen had ever made. Keeping the mixture in balance was an effort that required constant attention and the liberal application of different kinds of qi. Many of the ingredients seemed to have a natural antipathy to each other, which meant that Sen had to almost beat the mixture into submission. When the cooking was done, Sen leaned back and let himself relax for a few minutes. The whole thing would need a little while to cool and thicken before he could apply it to the woman’s leg. With his whole focus no longer on the pot, he noticed that Luo Min was standing nearby, eyeing the pot with clear curiosity.

When she saw him looking her way, she blushed but gestured at the pot. “What is that?”

Knowing that he had a little time, Sen gave her a very basic explanation of what it was and what it should do. The young woman frowned at the pot.

“All of that from plants? Like the ones you were harvesting?”

Sen hesitated. It was a lot more complicated than that, but he wasn’t sure a full explanation would benefit the girl.

“In a way,” he conceded. “The plants themselves, even if you mixed them together, wouldn’t necessarily do all of that. I have to do things to the mixture to make it work the way this will. There are some other ingredients and I have to balance the qi.”

He cut the explanation off there because he could see that the explanation was losing any real meaning for her. He supposed she knew what qi was, but that it was mostly theoretical to her. You couldn’t see it unless a cultivator did something flashy. You could feel it, although Sen wasn’t sure if that was even true for mortals. No, better to let it rest there. If the young woman really wanted to know more, she could ask more questions. Instead of asking more about the poultice, she asked what Sen realized was the much more pressing question for her.

“Will that help my mother?”

Sen sighed. Auntie Caihong had warned him about things like this. He needed to set the proper expectations.

“It’s a start. Assuming it works the way that I expect, it should take care of the root of the problem. You need to understand, though, that there is a lot of damage inside your mother’s body. Healing that will take time. Healing it entirely may not even be possible. You also need to know that she’s going to seem worse before she gets better.”

Luo Min seemed truly confused by that last comment.

“Why?” she asked.

“Healing is hard. It’s hard on the body. It’s hard on the mind. It takes a toll on a person’s qi, their life energy. When you’re healthy, you don’t notice so much. When you’re sick, there’s already strain on your body, mind, and life energy. Healing puts even more strain on you. That’s what will happen with your mother.”

The young woman’s gaze drifted over to the part of the hut where her mother was trying to rest behind a tattered cloth. Sen could see the indecision on the girl’s face. The idea of making her mother worse, even if it would ultimately benefit the older woman, didn’t rest easy on Luo Min’s heart. In the end, though, she nodded to Sen. He checked the temperature of the poultice. It had cooled enough.

“Then, let’s get started.”