Ginseng + Yew (人蔘 + ᚔ) [NBxNB healer x necromancer xianxia adventure]

25 - What could I have done differently?

A/N: I crashed and burned with my 32 chapters in 5 weeks attempt, got spectacularly sick and burnt out, yay!

So I'm just bringing all my stories up to 25 chapters and then I'll return to my previous schedule of posting one chapter for each story every week, which worked well for me.

I'm also testing out taking away the use of (1), (2), (3), etc. in-text. It seems like it throws some people off, and honestly, they're really only supposed to be there for people who are curious about what certain names mean, some background explanation of things like Daoist principles... You should be able to ready the story without referring to them. So I'll still put explanations in the post-chapter notes, but feel free to skip them.

Next chapter will be up Wednesday 29 Nov (AEST).

CW: suggestion ofself-harm

***

In a valley where water ran green and slow between steep walls of grey and beige limestone, where strange, stunted oaks hung over a carpet of brilliant late spring wildflowers of vivid red and blue and yellow, a place where water spirits with long white hair and translucent skin slipped effortlessly through the rivers, one such creature had surfaced to smile at the two people and their dog that had paused to draw water.

The necromancer has giving her a harsh scolding.

"Hey! Don't think ye can get away with this! I've had plenty of experience with yer type!"

"Naked spirit women?" Sou Yuet asked curiously, stirring the soup that was boiling over their campfire.

"What? No! Water spirits! That try to drag people into water! Like them aughisky, remember them? The water horses we saw at Yùhǎi?"

"Ah, is that what you meant..."

"Why do ye say that like ye don't believe me?"

"I wonder. Ah, your new friend just jumped back in the water."

"Damn it!"

It had been two weeks since the funeral. They had taken their time heading west after parting with the dog-people, barely speaking.

Or rather, the necromancer would try to start a conversation, and Sou Yuet would just smile, and nod, or shrug, or sometimes not even notice that their friend had said something.

They carried small packs now, having bartered and traded and otherwise acquired some cooking utensils, a water gourd each, and an old collar that had once belonged to a horse, now adorning the neck of the ever-growing Sunny, who was now as tall as the monk's shoulder and over the necromancer's waist height.

The most expensive possession was a book.

A thick blank notebook that required all the coins they had at the time, plus some healing work on the part of Sou Yuet. The further west one travelled, the less it was possible to obtain paper, and a book with so much was a rare and costly find. And yet Sou Yuet insisted on purchasing it, in a way that the necromancer had never seen them insist before.

Well, the witch understood why now.

Sou Yuet wrote in it ever single day, pages and pages of notes that the necromancer would not have understood if it were not for the impressive drawings that the monk added to accompany the text. Detailed studies of leaves and flowers, sketches of roots and branches, close-ups on fruits and seeds – Sou Yuet was assembling a botanical.

"So what's this one do?" the necromancer asked casually, tapping a finger on a picture of a fleshy, spiky plant.

"Kumari can be used for reducing bleeding, healing burns, improving lost appeti-" The monk stopped abruptly.