No, she was alright—thank goodness, Mom was still breathing.
When Milady held her fingers under Yidan's nose but couldn't feel any warm breath, she almost collapsed in terror. Luckily, she glanced around and had an idea. She hastily snatched a shard of pale blue crystal from the ground and held it under her mother's nose.
In the few seconds that felt like an eternity, a faint wisp of white mist bloomed on the crystal's surface—as ephemeral as an illusion, it vanished in an instant.
The world snapped back into focus, light and color flooding back into Milady's vision.
She tossed the crystal shard aside and started dragging her mother toward the path. She had no idea where the nearest purification point was, or who was stationed there, and could only scream for help over and over. Her voice echoed through the undulating forest of pale blue crystals, only to be scattered by the sea wind.
But the sea wind brought no reply.
"Mom, can you hear me?" Milady didn't dare to look at the unconscious Yidan. Her mother's body felt surprisingly heavy—and it wasn't just the weight. The strange, dead-weight pressure of her body on hers reminded Milady of a cloth sack filled with chunks of iron.
Fighting back shivers and tears, Milady forced the thought from her mind. Her voice trembled as she said, "I'm getting you out of here now. Just hold on a little longer… We'll find someone to treat you soon. Very soon."
On the winding, man-made path, Milady half-carried, half-dragged her mother, lugging the body slumped over her shoulder as she shuffled step by step toward the entrance of the crystal contamination zone.
The path had taken her twenty minutes on the way in, but now it seemed to stretch on forever.
Her hoarse cries for help echoed in the air, her own ragged gasps filling her ears. It felt as if she were the only one breathing. As she navigated the twisting, turning path—which, instead of leading her out, seemed to draw her ever deeper into the heart of the crystals—she began to suspect she was trapped in a long, absurd nightmare.
By the time she finally got her mother out of the crystal contamination zone, her memories and senses had washed away into a blur of shaky fragments. Through the haze, a few strangers rushed toward her, bombarding her with questions. "What happened?" "Is it the crystal sickness?" But Milady couldn't find her voice to answer, her throat raw and burning.
"They're from the Tower family," a middle-aged woman commanded sharply after Yidan was carried into an emergency care tent. "Find the Tower family's sub-unit. Release it, quickly!"
A younger person quickly rummaged through a few boxes and pulled out the Tower family's communication sub-unit: a round box, about half a palm thick.
This was one of Haidu's unusually advanced and diverse methods of communication. Once released, the sub-unit would carry a verbal message or a small item and fly in a straight line, following a signal to the parent-unit's location. By the time it returned to the emergency care tent, it would be in the hands of a doctor from the Tower family.
At least, that was the reassurance the middle-aged woman offered Milady.
"Yidan is usually so healthy. Maybe it's just anemia," she repeated to Milady. "We're not equipped to handle this here. Just wait. It'll be fine once the doctor arrives…"
In her daze and confusion, Milady numbly lifted her head and realized who the woman was. She was a friend her mother had made while working as a purifier—a nurse stationed outside the contamination zone who had even visited their home a few times.
"Hai… Hailan?" she whispered. "My mom… the purification…"
"It doesn't look like the crystal sickness," Hailan said, immediately understanding her unspoken fear. "I've checked her. There are no crystals on her body."
Milady didn't know if that counted as good news.
"You're members of the Tower family," Hailan said, clearly grasping for words to comfort her. "The doctors hired by the Tower family are bound to be more skilled. They'll definitely figure out what's wrong…"
In a daze, Milady recalled the small clinic where her mother would wait in line to see a doctor whenever she felt unwell. One of its lights was always burnt out, leaving the room dim and cool, and it was perpetually steeped in an odor unique to the elderly poor of Haidu. Even the smell carried a sense of urgency and dread: the desperation of those who couldn't afford better doctors, who could only pray that the one before them might ease their pain.
Milady didn't even know who the Tower family doctors were, because they had never had the privilege of simply calling for one.
"The message from the crystal zone should make them send a family doctor," Hailan said softly, as if reading her mind. "After all, they're supposed to look after the purifier families within the clan… It's an unwritten rule in Haidu."