Slowly, Wu Ling walked across the muddy battlefield to the drier area where Yu Jinqi tended to the group's most severely injured members. Jin Wuya had regained consciousness but had expended all of her energy and slumped heavily against a nearby rock. Fang Lin's complexion was ghostly pale and his face still showed signs of pain but his breathing was at least steady and his pulse was strong.
"Brother Yu," Wu Ling said gently, kneeling next to the young man. "I should be congratulating you on your breakthrough, but right now, I need to know. How soon will Brother Fang wake? When he does, will he be able to walk?" Wu Ling didn't believe it was likely that Fang Lin would be walking any time soon, but he wasn't a healer. Before he assumed, he wanted to hear things directly from the young alchemist.
"Brother Fang's injuries are severe," Yu Jinqi said with a heavy sigh and a deeply furrowed brow. "I'm still not sure I'll be able to save his leg. I haven't even begun to heal him, I've only stabilized him for the moment."
"As to when he'll wake," the young alchemist continued. "He may regain consciousness in a few hours or a few days, it's difficult for me to tell for sure. Even now, his body is expelling the toxin of the Blood Moon Mist Wolf's saliva and the pain he's experiencing is intense."
"I've given him as heavy a dose of fortified poppy essence as I dare but that numbs the mind as well as the body. Since he's also recovering from an injury to his soul," his voice trailed off as he shrugged. At the moment, it was hard for Yu Jinqi to feel any pride in his breakthrough. He might have become a Novice Scholar, but when he was confronted by the strange injuries the Wolf King's phantoms had inflicted on Fang Lin, he was still clueless about how to proceed.
"Give me a place to work and access to plenty of clean water," the young alchemist finally said with more conviction than he truly felt. He might not have an answer yet, but he was still a Scholar. Before he left the sect, he'd taken several books with him in his cosmos sack, and his uncle Yu Tao had suggested several more. If he had time to search for an answer…
"Within a day's time I can tell you if I can continue to treat him or if we need to find a way to return him to Silver Sword City," Yu Jinqi finally said. He didn't dare promise that he could find an answer, but one way or another, he'd know if there was a solution that he could find or if it was out of his ability to help his friend.
"Clean water and a place to work," Wu Ling repeated slowly, nodding as he began to assemble a plan. "You'll have it. How about Sister Jin?"
"Her case isn't nearly as bad as Brother Fang's," Yu Jinqi answered, giving Zhang Buyan a reassuring look as he did so. "The damage to her body was much less, and she's mostly just exhausted from overdrawing her cultivation when she threw that ball of flame. Her hand will be usable again within five to seven days and full strength within half a month," he promised.
"It would be good for her to have a place to recover though," Yu Jinqi added, looking nervously at Wu Ling. He knew their young leader had several goals in mind for them in the mountains and his plans might not have room for them to rest for very long, but the young alchemist felt that taking an extended rest would be best for everyone who was injured so he pressed on anyway.
"I think everyone could use at least some treatment," Yu Jinqi said, more firmly and confidently than he truly felt. "I haven't examined Brother Xiong or Brother Zhang yet but I think they'll need at least a few days of rest after this. Here, let me see your hands," he said, belatedly realizing that Wu Ling had suffered injuries of his own while using a zither string to pull a wolf off of Fang Lin.
"What? Oh," Wu Ling said, finally noticing the ache and sting of the wounds himself. In the heat of battle, he hadn't even noticed the damage at the time. Now that he looked, the zither string had bitten deeply into the flesh of his palms, though the wound didn't threaten the movement of any of his fingers.
After washing the wounds and applying an ointment with a heavy herbal fragrance, Yu Jinqi carefully wrapped his hands before calling everyone else over to have their wounds treated. Xiong Dahuo grumbled that he was fine, just tired after he finally allowed his stolen energy to dissipate but Zhang Buyan pushed him forward to be treated first while he went to sit with his junior sister.
"Everyone," Wu Ling said, looking over the group. "Thank you. There's more I should say but it will have to wait for celebration later. Right now, everyone fought hard for our victory tonight and more than that, fought hard to protect each other. We wouldn't have found victory tonight without each of you doing, well, everything you did," he finished awkwardly.
Looking around the bloody, injured group, Wu Ling felt the weight of leadership more heavily than he had imagined it would when Fang Lin clamored that they needed to designate an official 'leader.' He'd said it was fine at the time, but now he couldn't help but wonder if that was really true.
He and Su Xiang were the experienced ones who had ventured deep into the mountains before. She'd even fought the Wolf King and part of his pack before. Yet none of that experience had prepared them for just how intense things turned out to be now that the Wolf King had been given the time to grow and fully process the blessings of the Blood Moon.
If he'd thought about it, he might have realized how much the Blood Moon helped to accelerate his own cultivation when he broke through to become a middle-stage Aesthete. Now that he saw the transformed wolf pack, he could only chastise himself for not thinking the wolves would continue to grow as much as he had after that night.
The worst part, however, was that he and Su Xiang weren't the ones to suffer from their hubris. Both of them had come away relatively unscathed. The wounds in his hands stung, but they felt paltry compared to what Jin Wuya and Fang Lin had suffered. Even Zhang Buyan and Xiong Dahuo were more heavily injured.
Taking a deep breath, Wu Ling painted over the feelings of guilt and self-recrimination with a dark coppery determination. He'd have time to make amends for his mistakes later. Right now, as long as he was still their leader, he needed to bring them to safety to rest and recover. Drawing another breath, he began to outline the next steps in his plan.