They called me to the elder hall before dawn, and the walk there was the kind that makes a man both small and visible—the courtyard moving around me like a planet recognizing a new gravity. Lanterns still smoked; servants and outer disciples shuffled like leaves. Master Qi sat as if the room were a courtroom and his robes the final sentence. Old Bro Han gave me a look that said both warning and benediction.
"You understand the consequence of your actions," Master Qi began, hands folded over a stack of papers. His voice had that precise temperature that could make confession feel like a favor. "Discipline must be restored. But the sect is pragmatic. We will use what energy is given."
Translation: we will neither break you publicly nor let you walk untested. It was the sort of compromise that smells like politics and calls itself mercy.
"You will take the morning duty to the infirmary," he continued, eyes flicking to the clerk who hovered near the doorway like a shadow with a pen. "There has been a fever in the lower wards; a caravan returned with illness. We will send you to assist the healers. You will report directly to Sister Mei."
A small, practical task. Meaningful, perhaps—useful to the sect; also a place to watch a man flinch. My first, private thought was disappointment that Master Qi would not simply exile me. My second, quieter thought—older and sharper—was curiosity. The Codex, which had settled behind my ribs like a patient pulse since the seal incident, blurred light into syllables:
Quest assigned: Compassion Trial (Tier I).Objective: Triage and care. Metrics: Lives stabilized OR empathy shown to at least three patients.Penalty: Neglect = public penance. Reward: Insight shards for successful compassionate acts.
Insight shards. The phrasing made my scholar's mouth twitch into an expression that would have looked like amusement if not for the tightness under my ribs. The system spoke in the precise language of possibility and consequence. It also liked tests named after virtues.
Sister Mei met me at the infirmary door with a basket of willow poultices and a face that belonged to someone who had learned how to split kindness into hardened portions. She did not smile—smiles here cost calories and time—but the tilt of her head was a small courtesy.
"You have experience?" she asked. Her question was neutral. Her hands were steady as if they had hammered bandages into shape for decades.
"Less than I would like," I admitted. "But I can learn."
She assessed me the way a healer sizes up a fever: patients require hands more than certificates. "Good. Then keep them clean. The poor ones in particular need more than medicine; they need presence. Do not let pity cloud your work."
I wanted to ask which was worse—pity that betrayed condescension or indifference that preserved dignity—but the infirmary smelled of herbs and the clean iron tang of disinfectant, not philosophy. There was work to be done.
The ward was a long, low room with windows flung open to the thin air. Beds were spaced like islands; each held a private storm. Some patients slept; others drifted, feverish and brittle. I moved like water, learning to take the shape of its container, washing hands, carrying water, warming tea. Each small action had the air of ritual—trades conducted between people who acknowledged dependence as part of living.
A boy no older than fifteen—his face freckled, his hair cut too close—sat propped on pillows. He coughed until the sound shredded into weakness. Beside him, a woman—his mother, I later learned—pressed her forehead to his knee like one who believed sound could act as a salve.
"Name?" I asked, and the boy blinked, surprised to be asked the thing most people forgot in the rush to illness.
"Lian," he croaked. "Caravan… from the southern road."
"You'll be alright," I said sooner than I meant to. Perhaps I lied; perhaps I offered a shape for hope to fill. The Codex chimed, unobtrusive and clinical:
Compassion action logged: vocal reassurance. Effect: minor stabilization in patient vitals.
The stern arithmetic of the system felt absurd and oddly comforting. Here, compassion had a ledger like anything else. It would measure me by the tread marks I left on others' lives.
Hours folded like paper. I learned how to set a poultice so the patient could sleep without coughing into it, how to cool a fever with cloths that smelled of mint and smoke. I learned the quiet of presence: a hand that stays until the tears stop, a silence that does not demand explanation. By midday, my arms ached not from labor but from the accumulation of small approvals—nods from staff, the light relaxation of a tight jaw when a fever lowered, the grateful whisper of a mother who could sleep because her child no longer burned.
Not all moments were small and clean. One man—an elder of the merchant caravan—was stubborn beyond the fever and clung to pride like armor. He lashed out at the healers' patience with a rage that covered guilt. He refused to be seen as sick in front of others who thought him a pillar. Sister Mei soothed him with words the way one soothes a stray animal; she offered a truth she could not force: vulnerability was not a currency that devalued a life, it was a doorway.
"Bring him tea," I said when patience thinned my own temper. "Then sit by his side. He needs someone who refuses to see him as less."
Sister Mei looked at me with a flicker I did not understand at first—respect, perhaps; or surprise that a man of my supposed background would know the small etiquette of the sick. "You learn quickly," she said.
The Codex added:
Compassion metric rising: 2/3.Behavioral pattern: patient-centered care.
Around mid-afternoon, the ward's door opened with a soft clack, and Xue Lan slipped inside, basket in hand. She looked more tired than the morning, but more luminous in that human way—weariness that had not yet been rubbed into cynicism.
"You kept your hands clean?" she asked, and I saw she expected no answer but required it nonetheless.
"I did," I said. She moved from bed to bed like someone offering small liturgies: a cup, a smile, the soft touch that says I am here. When she reached Lian's bed, the boy's mother rose until her knees refused to support the motion. Xue Lan bent and said something I could not hear, and the mother wept like relief unlocked.
Later, when the mother thanked her with a voice that was prayer and awe braided together, Xue Lan met my eye and shrugged, as if the transfer of grace were both ordinary and miraculous.
"You've done well," she told me quietly as she handed me a folded cloth. "The elders use medicine as tests. They think tending the weak will humble you."
"Does it?" I asked.
She hesitated. "It should. Humility and service are two halves of the same coin. But some use service as spectacle—an outward sign of piety. You must find the difference between service given and service performed."
Her words were a scalpel dressed as advice. The Codex, obliging, recorded the exchange with the tone of a scribe:
Insight: performative compassion recognized. Caution advised.
By dusk, the ward's fever had broken enough that the urgency dimmed to guarded optimism. Lian slept in a steadier rhythm; the stubborn merchant had opened his eyes and taken a sip of soup without spitting rage. Sister Mei prepared a tea that steamed like a small benediction and passed me a cup.
"You did more than bandage wounds," she said, folding her hands. "You offered yourself in small, inconvenient ways. That is what heals as much as herbs."
I felt the truth of that in my chest like a new coin. The Codex thrummed, not with the sterile click of a machine this time, but something like approval.
Compassion Trial completed: preliminary pass.Reward: Insight shard pending — comprehension of relational causality.
I sat back against the low wall and let the heat of the tea work into my palms. Outside, the courtyard was a smear of lamplight and rainwater. Inside, the ward's small atmospheres had reset—the soft breaths of those who might live, the relieved murmurs of caregivers. I had not done anything grand; nothing would be sung of me in the elder halls. But the Codex counted the quiet, and I counted a different number: three grateful nods, one lifted hand, the hushed blessing of a mother. Small calibrations for a man who once tried to measure souls by ink alone.
"Tomorrow," Sister Mei said as she straightened, "we will need beds cleared for people the northern road will bring. Rest tonight."
I stood, feeling the new weight of responsibility like a cloak that fit more comfortably than armor. As I guided a sleepy apprentice to a bed and tucked a blanket against a shivering shoulder, I thought of Master Qi's polished words about harmony and of Ling Yue's staff cutting the air.
Service, I realized, might not be a soft thing after all. It might be the work that sets a man's hands steady for the storms yet to come.