Blood Cultivation

cursed

"I cannot practice traditional cultivation." Senior Lin looked away. "Not because I have no golden core, but because I have no access to it. It's sealed."

Jin Ling blinked. "Sealed away like you seal away your spiritual powers?"

"Yes, but not the way you might do it to yourself," Senior Lin clarified. "It's a curse." She opened her mouth to say something more but shut it so quickly with a pained look on her face that Jin Ling feared she had bitten her tongue in half for a moment. "It's like I have no core at all, except that every so often I can feel something, a small stream of familiar energy flowing throughout my body again, like when I was a child. But it never lasts long, and there will be a day that I lose every time. When I wake up I am without it again and I don't know what has happened. It must be that whoever cursed me renews it every time, but I don't know how or how they make me forget."

Jin Ling was floored by this information. It had been some time since something had come into his world and changed how it looked. Seeing Senior Lin's cultivation had been something he hadn't encountered, but the reason for it wasn't at all what he expected. "I assumed that you lost it somehow, perhaps when you were a child."

"I was a child when I was cursed, I know that. I know that it was a curse and not something else, but-" she stopped herself from speaking again. "I learned demonic cultivation before I was cursed. I did not want to pursue it. The curse was supposed to make it my only option."

"And you found another one, by creating your own cultivation techniques." Jin Ling couldn't say he wasn't impressed. Not even Wei Wuxian had the creativity to found a new type of cultivation. "So, the one who taught you demonic cultivation is the one who cursed you."

Senior Lin said nothing.

"Are there things you cannot tell me because it will harm you to say them?" There were many social cues that Jin Ling did not pick up on and he often missed how a subtle change in tone or expression changed a conversation, but he had been improving. The things said by a silence had become something he'd started to notice more and more since becoming sect leader. Some things couldn't or wouldn't be said by either his advisers or other sect leaders that he now could interpret much better than when he first started.

The silence that followed his question provided him with the answer he'd suspected. No wonder she had been so silent when she'd first arrived. The curse had likely hit her harder by being in the presence of the one who cast it. Which likely meant, "The person who cursed you is from the Jin sect."

Senior Lin seemed to wilt in front of him like the last of summer blossoms. "I trust you," is what she said, a response that confused Jin Ling into perpetuating the silence while he puzzled on it.

Senior Lin trusted him to find whoever cursed her? She trusted him to do the right thing? Was she referring to the fact that yet another Jin sect member was an unrecognized danger? Probably. Did she mean that she did not hold him responsible for another's actions? Jin Ling had only known her for a very brief time and would have to spent much more with her to be able to find answers to any of these questions in a silence between them.

"If you can't answer, say nothing. I'll ask a few more questions and then you can retire." Jin Ling resumed his sect leader voice, providing Senior Lin with sanctuary in formality.

"If you saw this person again, could you point them out to me?"

"It's like he doesn't exist sometimes."

That was an odd response, but Jin Ling pressed forward. "Are you unable to recognize him?"

"I know him when I see him."

"Do you forget what he looks like afterward?"

"No." Senior Lin still wouldn't look at him but Jin Ling didn't begrudge her the escape of an unmet gaze. "I remember."

"But you can't tell me. Can you write it down?"

"The truth burns, whether written or spoken."

"The curse makes the paper burn?" Jin Ling couldn't believe how specific and strong this curse was. Wei Wuxian would be fascinated. "What if I watched you write it?"

"There are things I can't say in any form, at all," Senior Lin spat out, "and other things that I can hedge around, but there are consequences." And then she literally spat. Blood dripped from her lips as she fell over and coughed up more blood onto the ground between her hands. "P-poison," she garbled, pressing a hand to her throat. More blood bubbled up and spilled down her chin, painting her yellow robes a dark, angry crimson. "I'm s-sorry. I have to- to get it out." She coughed once more, the blood closer to black than red. "I'm sorry." Her voice was hoarse and tired.

"Don't be sorry," Jin Ling hurried to say before calling for help. "And didn't I tell you to say nothing if you couldn't answer?"

"I wanted to you to know."

"That there's danger in the Jin sect. Again." Jin Ling moved so that he could help Senior Lin lean back against a pillar of the pavilion. "We'll have to practice. I'll asker vaguer questions and you can give me answers in riddles. I'll get Lan Jingyi to come over. He's surprisingly good at deciphering things. I think he just didn't want Sizhui to be better than him at everything."

"Jingyi is good at many things," Senior Lin agreed, her smile a bit horrifying with the blood still on her face. "I like him."

"It's hard not to," Jin Ling admitted, able to do so since the Lan in question wasn't present. "Should we invite them to the nighthunt?"

"If you wish it." Senior Lin panted a little and wiped her mouth on her hand.

Servants and a healer arrived, filling the air with a cacophony of worried voices and indiscernible requests. Jin Ling told them to be quiet and help Senior Lin to her room, give her another set of robes and some tea to help her sleep. "No need to check her meridians. I already did." The healer looked uncomfortable but merely bowed his head. "Check for a fever and prescribe what you feel might be beneficial in helping to purge toxins. I know you have questions but they can't be answered at this time. Now please, go."

It seemed a second letter was in order, and perhaps the first one wouldn't be sent at all. The more important thing was that there was yet again a threat to the Jin sect having a good name and presence and also that his friends deserved to know these new truths about their mutual friend. Jin Ling thought about his willingness to trust Senior Lin for another moment and dismissed propriety over his instincts. They had also improved in these last several months. Where before he thought only with his emotions, now he had to consider everything.

Everything presented to him by and about Senior Lin spoke of someone with a heavy burden who was trying to do good things with a limited capability. Someone who was far more likely to hurt herself over seeing someone else get hurt and who willingly allowed poison to enter her body if there was a benefit, whether brief or permanent, to those around her. Senior Lin was something in between Jin Ling's two remaining uncles. He liked her, he realized as he stepped aside to let the servants clean up the mess in the pavilion.

He liked her, and if she could trust in him after knowing him for barely a day, then he could do the same for her. Senior Lin was still a conundrum, but less of one. Hopefully over time she wouldn't be one at all.