The door slid open as the clacking of shoes stepping on the marbled floor reached Shu He's ears, it was unfortunate that he couldn't turn his head to look over at her coming since it would hurt too much, so he had to settle with his 'sight'.
She walked across the room glancing at the empty beds before reaching the curtains around his one, with a screech the curtains glided along.
She adjusted her glasses as she glanced at Shu He, he was laying still with his eyes closed currently, since even opening his eyelids ached a little, she then walked towards the end of the room picking up one of the devices resting on a desk, returning to Shu He she took out a needle and attached it to the device before inserting it into Shu He's wrist.
'What's that for?' He thought, seeing her pick up a slate that was attached to the device, it was basically just a small box with thin wires running from it.
She tapped on the slate, it seemed to be similar technology to the other formation equipment he had seen in the sect, a few lines of 'text' showed, surprisingly he could read it! It was the general text he had learned growing up.
'Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, Qi Concentration….' There were a few things listed, those among them.
"That's interesting…" He couldn't help but murmur, not expecting to see something like this in this world, he had thought Alchemy was the main source of recovery for cultivators.
The woman jumped slightly as she heard his murmur, adjusting her spectacles while frowning.
"You're awake? Why didn't you say so?"
"Sorry… it's hard to talk much…" He said, feeling the slight pain in his throat.
"Well, that's not too much of a surprise, you were in quite a state when you were sent here, even with the medication you've taken you haven't fully recovered" she explained, tapping the slate once more changing the information that was on it.
'That bad…' He wasn't fully clear on how bad his injuries were after that fight; he only knew that he hurt like hell.
"How long was I asleep?" He managed to get out of his aching throat.
"Three days" She answered simply, but Shu He somehow slumped in his bed a bit.
"The tournament is over then?" He couldn't help but ask.
She sighed "You should care more about your health first…" but then she still answered, "There was a short break after your match but then they continued normally, it ended that day as planned".
"The winner?"
"Rong j- The sect master's disciple, Gang Bo was it? It was between him and Tai Hui, but he came out on top".
Shu He glossed over the doctors slip up and exhaled.
'So he won in the end'.
"Enough about that, how do you feel?" She asked, moving the conversation along.
"I can't move my body".
Her eyebrow rose "Not at all?"
"If I do it causes me immense pain, in fact talking like this hurts as well."
Her brow furrowed "This doesn't make sense… but it would explain your screaming the past few days".
"Pardon?" Shu He thought he misheard for a moment, but the doctors expression said otherwise as she brushed aside a strand of her hair.
"You've been quite noisy for the past few days, I checked you over after administering anaesthetics, but I couldn't find anything, so I assumed it was just a nightmare" she pulled out a smaller slate from her robe containing scribblings, records of the past few days "That's until I saw that your injuries were worsening, not just re-opening but new ones forming".
'I must have been thrashing about in my sleep, causing the trapped Qi to rupture my insides…'
"No matter how much I looked I couldn't find the cause, so I just topped you up on pain killers and medication to heal you and decided to wait for you to wake up" she glanced at him, seeing his eyes were still closed she shook her head and crossed her legs "So, do YOU know why you're in pain?".
Shu He could feel her stare fixated on his face like she was looking for a reaction, he wasn't going to give her the answer she wanted though, not entirely at least.
"I do"
With that, she leaned in with interest.
"But I can't tell you" He shut her down immediately, she leaned back and sighed.
"I'm your doctor, how am I supposed to help you if I don't know what's wrong?" She played the doctor card, but Shu He could see the deep interest lurking behind her façade.
"The help you've been giving me is plenty enough, I'll recover after a week or two" Shu He explained as he refused her.
"If you tell me you could recover even faster" She tried one last attempt.
"I'm afraid you couldn't help me even if I explained" But he completely shut her out.
She crossed her arms "Alright, I won't ask any more, but if you want to tell me in the future go ahead, it's not often I see something I can't explain after all" she smiled slightly.
"…I'll consider it" Shu He said, feeling that once again, everyone has ulterior motives.
After that she administered the same medication she had been doing to help him heal and suppress the pain and left leaving Shu He alone, she remarked "Stay as long as you want, the beds here aren't exactly hot commodities" as she left.
Shu He breathed a sigh of relief, sinking into the pillow.
'At least these beds are more comfortable than the hospital beds I'm used to…'
He was going to spend even more time stuck here, which he wasn't all too pleased about, he was lucky that as a cultivator he didn't need to eat or drink as often as a normal person, and he had better control of his lower extremities…
He shook those thoughts out of his mind as he refocused on his body.
'Just me and this lovely golden hue for a while now a I guess…'
…
After a few days Shu He had recovered enough that he could move his head and speak without any pain, he could slightly shift his hands and make signs, but most important of all is that his methods of extraction were beginning to improve.
He had never spent this long on non-stop Qi control before, but it was doing wonders for his skills, compared to the single thread extracting before he was now extracting a handful of threads by entwining them, the rate was much faster than before, yet his estimates were still slightly off, in the end it will still take about a week more to finish recovering.
The doctor visited a couple times a day, realising she never actually introduced herself before Shu He asked when he got the chance to, her name was Jing Yaling and apparently she was the elder in charge of the Medical Division, which prompted Shu He's reaction-
"There's such a division?" He stared wide eyed at her, questioning why he hadn't heard of such a division before.
Jing Yaling, or Elder Jing simply adjusted her spectacles clearly unsurprised about his reaction "Divisions are created when an Elder wants their own area established in the sect, that's why there's hundreds of divisions in the sect, many with only a couple members, of course only those with large enough influence are considered true divisions".
"So you made this Division?"
"That's right, the Medical Division didn't exist before I arrived in the sect" She glanced to the distance, like she was looking elsewhere when she spoke.
"Did you not start as a disciple in this sect?"
"No, but I'm not going to explain everything about myself to just anyone." She said while writing on the slate in her hands before she looked up at him "That Is, unless you want to share your own secrets?"
Shu Here merely laughed nervously, she was incredibly insistent on learning about his 'secret'.
He then went silent as he began to think.
'The Medical Division…' The idea of such a division was very attractive to him, the problem was he didn't understand just what happened in this division and what he could get out of it.
A world free of illness was his ideal, but even he understood such a thing wouldn't be possible, so he wanted to be able to cure anything that he came across.
The problem was, he had been roped into the Beast Taming Division, while he was apprehensive at first he had begun to get used to it, he had begun to understand animals more and enjoy being around them, he didn't want to leave.
He only had three slots for Divisions he could join, with the Beast Taming Division first, the Alchemy Division will be second, he was almost ready to take the test after all, he was planning to take it right after the tournament, but it was evidently postponed now.
The last slot was the problem.
He was already considering the Combat Division; he knows that he needs to be strong to truly thrive in this world and having plenty duelling opponents and seniors that could give advice would go a long way towards that.
He heard that the feature point of the Combat Division was the ranking board, an internal ranking based on one-to-one duels between members where members would earn rewards based on their performance.
This all sounded great to him, but he couldn't help second guessing, after all he felt he could improve himself on his own, his archery didn't require a duel to hone, he could practice techniques without an opponent, the only thing was his split-second decision making and instincts built from real combat.
Even then, he has also heard that you can request duels with division members, and they'll gladly oblige, you just won't benefit from the ranking rewards.
And now he had this new division dangling in front of him, he couldn't help but become incredibly curious.
"Out of curiosity, how many members does your division have?"
"One" Jing Yaling answered plainly.
"Only one? Where are they?" He asked curiously.
"…Right in front of you" She paused slightly before murmuring her answer.
"…Aren't you the elder in charge?"
"I still count… This is a small division, I mostly made it, so I had a place to do research, well, it's an emergency hospital as well when needed, but with alchemy pills around most of the time it's not needed" She explained, a slight hint of reluctance in her voice towards the end.
Shu He picked up on said reluctance "Do you not like alchemy?"
She glanced at him, pausing for a moment before speaking "It doesn't matter whether I like it or not, Alchemy has completely trumped normal medicine in healing cultivators" she said with a sour expression.
"But…"
"But?"
"I refuse to believe Alchemy is the answer to everything, take for example you, as an unconscious patient you wouldn't be able to swallow and process a pill easily, there's also the concept of dosages, pills are made according to recipe and changing them can affect the balance of the pill ruining it, you can't just freely adjust dosages and needs on the fly like most medication, there's also deeper subjects like performing repairs and surgeries that are too complicated or unique for a pill to solve, pills just aren't the one solution solves all miracle they claim to be!"
Shu He's eyes widened with each word she barraged him with, yet he listened attentively.
"But what if an alchemist is capable of changing and modifying pills on the fly?" He asked, playing devil's advocate.
Jing Yaling scoffed "If there was such a person he would be a monster, what I'm talking about is something anyone can do with a bit of training, generalised specialities are far more useful than hyper specific, exclusive ones."
She then looked up at Shu He "Why are you asking all this anyway? Do you want to join my Division?"
Shu He stared at her for a second while thinking before replying "Maybe".
She had asked that question in jest, not expecting his reply; She shifted her posture slightly and readjusted her glasses before staring deeply at him.
"Really?"