Alchemy Lab

 LUO FAN

The next morning, I woke up early. As I contemplated about where I could get a bath, someone knocked on my door. When I opened it, four servants were waiting right in front of my chamber. They were holding a big wooden tub, two pales of water, a big pot of hot water, and some necessities.

I let them in and they set everything up for me. Two of them were women who volunteered to help me bath but I politely declined them. They left me to my privacy but stayed right outside the door just in case I needed something else.

After my bath, they tidied up the room, including my bed, and left. Another young woman came in and introduced herself as Mingxia. She said that her master had assigned her to be my servant during my stay in the mansion.

This special treatment made me feel uncomfortable. From a young age, I had been trained to do things on my own. I could not help but suspect that Lord Lan was up to something. This could be his way to pressure me not to fail him.

The man was obviously very cunning. He knew how to coerce people without the use of threats or physical force. He manipulated people mentally, and it was a shame I just fell for it.

Mingxia led me to the main hall. While waiting for Lord Lan, I heard a familiar sound from the courtyard.

I went over to the door and found Huang Wen in the middle of his training. He just twirled up in the air and hurled a rotating wheel around. Ever since I had lost my sight, my senses had become sharper, so although I could not see the weapon clearly, I could hear the sound it made.

The wheel made a complete rotation around the courtyard, dodging all obstacles along its way, before it returned to its owner’s hand. There were two trees on each side of the courtyard but not even a leaf fell off. Even the rows of pillars on one side were unscathed.

I found myself holding my breath in awe and jealousy. Just a few months ago, I had been doing those same things, except that my weapon was a sword.

I could not do that anymore.

With some resentment in my heart, I turned around to leave and suddenly bumped into something that had been right behind me. I quickly stepped back, and when I looked, it wasn’t something but someone that I had collided with.

I immediately lowered my head. “Forgive me, my lord. I was careless I failed to notice your presence.”

Lord Lan smirked. “Has your skill declined to a point that you can no longer sense someone standing right behind you? If I were an assassin, I could have easily stabbed you from behind without you even knowing it.”

I could not speak because there was truth in his words. Someone from the royal family of Kan Empire still wanted me dead and once they found out my whereabouts, they could send someone to assassinate me and I would be too helpless to defend myself.

“Does watching someone practice remind you of some bitter memories?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure if he was taunting me, but he only made me feel worse. “If possible, I no longer wish to remember.”

“So you want to just forget that once...” He paused and stepped closer to the door to look at Huang Wen. “You were a lot better than that lazy lad out there.”

Lazy? That’s hardly how I would describe Huan Weng. He looked like a very hard-working young man and I was certain that training so early in the morning was his daily routine.

“It only pains me to remember,” I replied. “I’ve already spent weeks grieving over that. My best course is to just accept my fate and move on.”

“You think this is your fate? To be reduced into nothing?”

The word ‘nothing’ hit me hard, but when I thought it over, it was the truth. I had indeed become ‘nothing’. “I’ll try to make something else out of myself. There may be other things that I can be good at.”

“Of course, there are, but what about your cultivation? Are you going to give it up?”

My heart broke even more upon hearing his words. Cultivation had been everything to me. My entire life had revolved around it. They could take everything else away from me, but as long as I could still cultivate, I would have been content and happy. But now that it was gone, I did not know how to move on. It was hard enough just to accept the reality that I had already lost it. “How can I give up something that had already been stripped off me?”

“As long as you recover from whatever ails you, you can always start again.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. If given the opportunity, and for my love for cultivation, I was definitely more than willing to start from the bottom.

But looking at the way things were, those things were no more than just delusions. My core was dead, my foundation was damaged, and my mysterious ailment still didn’t have a name or a cure.

My spirit was at its lowest. In fact, I was still grieving the loss of my martial arts that I had diligently cultivated for two decades. So how could he expect me to even dream about starting over again?