The Scent of the Orchid in the Forest of Secrets (密林兰香)

Chapter Six

Shu Haolin had snuck out of the medicine wards. Her legs still felt shaky and she didn't seem to have a lot of strength after lying in bed for several days, but the more she walked, the steadier she felt, until she arrived at the honorary ancestral hall of the Yu Sect's deceased heroes. In life, Sen Zhongyu had never been honored amongst the Yu Sect, yet in death, she was given one of the highest honors that a Yu Sect cultivator not of the main clan could receive.

The entire coffin before her was draped in white, and the way the fabric swayed a little in the passing winds that swirled into the ancestral hall. Her eyes stared forward at the wooden casket, but her eyes seemed not to see, blankly lingering on a spot far, far away. She was afraid to get closer, to look into the casket, but she did, shuffling forward with slow steps.

All the blood that had been on Sen Zhongyu's body in her death had been washed away, leaving clean, deathly white skin. Her eyes were closed peacefully, her hands folded serenely over her stomach. With a lack of any visible wound on the surface of her body, she could've almost been sleeping. The corners of Shu Haolin's eyes grew red, and her lip trembled.

"This disciple is unfilial. I wasn't able to hold vigil by you for the full seven days." A knot grew in her throat, and she couldn't speak, instead turning away and kneeling on the white prayer cushion. She pressed her forehead to the floor, kowtowing three times, before straightening.

Shu Haolin stared without speaking. At least, a quiet whisper escaped her lips, so quiet that if one didn't listen closely, it could almost be mistaken as the whistle of a passing breeze.

"Shifu, you said there were many things you still needed to tell me, and days and days to do so. How could you break your promise?"

***

Shu Haolin had no time to despise them. She had no time to despise their mockery buried in flattering words, the praises sung only after Sen Zhongyu was gone. She was too buried in the stacks and stacks of books in the clan archives, searching desperately, with an urgency that bordered on madness, for an answer. An answer to her burning question: why? Why had the Baiyu Alliance resurfaced after so many years? Why had they targeted her parents and cursed her little brother? How could her little brother be saved?

At the end of her first day, Shu Haolin's search still hadn't produced any fruit. However, a segment had piqued her interest. It detailed how to create sticky rice mortar to repair broken objects good as new. She felt the shards of her jade pendant, wrapped up in a handkerchief and hidden in her robes. She had taken to bringing it around on her person ever since her shifu's death. Perhaps it was that feeling that her jade pendant was a good luck charm, and would bring about the quick discovery of the answers she was seeking.

Following the instructions in the book she had found, she created a sticky mixture, and with patience and precision, she glued the pieces of the jade pendant back together. Although they now looked a little clumsy and messy, the jade pendant was still back in one piece. Shu Haolin smiled, feeling some of the heavy feeling on her chest lift up at the sight. She tucked it back into her robes, putting the book away, and started towards the medicine wards to find Chen Linfeng.

When she arrived in front of the medicine wards, the first thing she heard was the loud voice of one of the senior medicine disciples criticizing someone. "What, are your arms made out of noodles? Can't you hurry up? We're here treating patients, if you want to play, don't bother us in here."

Shu Haolin frowned at the medicine disciple's arrogant tone and pushed open the door. The door almost bumped into Shu Haoyang, who was busy lugging a heavy basin of water towards one of the patients' bed. "Sorry, sorry," he repeated quickly without looking up, and wordlessly staggered over with the basin of water.

"Yang-er, don't overexhaust yourself. You can help out if you want, but you should be mindful of your body. Leave this heavy work for others to do."

Shu Haoyang looked surprised to see Shu Haolin there. He set down the basin of water and wiped his forehead. "A-jie, what are you here for?"

"I came to pick up your medicine for this week." Shu Haolin patted her little brother's head and strode over to find Chen Linfeng, who was partitioning out a set of herbs for another patient. Chen Linfeng glanced up at Shu Haolin, and a strange expression took over his face briefly before reverting to normal.

"Here for Yang-er's medicine? I'll get it in a minute, why don't you sit down?"

Shu Haolin went along with his request and sat down at one of the small tables in the corner. Chen Linfeng partitioned out the herbs for Shu Haoyang's medicine, and then paused.

"Haolin, I was thinking about something, I don't know if I should tell you or not."

Shu Haolin looked up. "What is it?"

"Your parents died several months ago, and now the Baiyu Alliance has made a sudden reappearance on the jianghu... Back in the day, the Baiyu Alliance was famous for their demonic curses, including the one that is now on your little brother. Have you ever thought that..."

"That my little brother's curse was cast by a demonic cultivator of the Baiyu Alliance?" Shu Haolin finished the sentence for Chen Linfeng. "I did. But there's not much to go off of from there."

Chen Linfeng nodded and turned away, not continuing on the subject. Shu Haolin kept her expression measured, but when Chen Linfeng wasn't looking any longer, her brows lightly furrowed. How had it been that Shao Mingrong and Chen Linfeng had brought up the exact same thing?

This was the thought on her mind when Shu Haolin returned to the clan archives the next day. For a week straight, she buried herself in research, only emerging for occasional meals. She had put aside the matter of getting herself a new sword, only using the practice swords in the training grounds. A part of it was the nagging thought of her shifu's last words—that she was more suited to practice the saber—and whether or not she was right. The other part was the refusal to replace something that had accompanied her from her youth all the way until now.

As the pile of books that she'd read already became larger than the pile of the books she hadn't read yet, she finally came upon the briefest section on the very curse that plagued her little brother. So excited she almost knocked over the candle she'd brought, she brought the light a little closer to the pages and read with the eagerness of someone dying of hunger presented with food.

Later, Shu Haoyang was getting ready to go to bed when the door burst open. His arms and legs ached from a day of hard work, and they hurt as he moved them into bed, but he hid his grimace. "­A-jie?" He asked.

"I found it." Shu Haolin said breathlessly, her hair a little messy. "Sit down. I'll lift your curse."

Shu Haoyang blinked, not quite getting it. "What? How?"

"I found the method. Quick, sit down. I'll use my spiritual energy to break the curse."

Before Shu Haoyang could fully react, Shu Haolin sat herself behind Shu Haoyang and closed her eyes. Slowing her breaths, she channeled her spiritual energy in the patterns directed in the book, and gently guided them into Shu Haoyang's body. Unused to a sudden burst of energy within his body, Shu Haoyang's fists balled up at his knees and beads of sweat formed at his forehead. Shu Haolin gritted her teeth as well from the force it was taking her, and, using her spiritual energy, started to force apart the curse that tightly bound Shu Haoyang. It was as if she was trying to push down a tree, unyielding underneath her force.

Shu Haolin put in a final push, but at this moment, all of the spiritual energy she had poured into her little brother's body rebounded, striking her squarely in the chest, and causing a mouthful of blood to spill out. Shu Haoyang relaxed, the tension that felt like it was expanding his body relaxing, and he opened his eyes, turning around. He was about to ask what had just happened when Shu Haolin immediately passed out.

Before she passed out, however, a single thought crossed her mind. She had read in that crumbling text that there were only two ways to break this curse. The first way was by forcefully removing it through this method. The second way required death—between the caster of the curse and the victim, only one could survive.