“What in the—! Where did that come from?!” Jiro yelled, scrambling backward so violently he nearly toppled over, his good hand flying up to point a trembling finger at the ornate box that had just materialized in Kai’s palm. His eyes, wide with a fear that momentarily eclipsed his despair, were fixed on the impossible object. In his world of hard soil and tangible tools, such a thing defied all reason. His mind, starved for an explanation and steeped in the folklore of the harsh north, seized upon the only logic it possessed. “Wait… are you a spirit?! A ghost come to collect a damned soul?!”

  Jiro’s entire existence had been spent in the isolated, pragmatic confines of the Northend. The concepts of cultivation, spatial artifacts, or the manipulation of qi were as foreign to him as the bottom of the sea. His mythology was built on tales of winter wraiths and mountain spirits—capricious, ethereal beings said to conjure mirages and make things vanish into the mist. To him, Kai had just performed an act of pure, terrifying magic.

  “No, I’m not a spirit,” Kai said, his voice a calm, steady anchor in the man’s storm of panic. He hesitated for a heartbeat, the habit of secrecy a hard one to break. But looking at the raw torment on Jiro’s face, he knew that truth—and the potential hope it carried—was a stronger medicine than mystery. “I’m a… cultivator.”

  The word landed between them, strange and heavy. Jiro’s frantic breathing slowed, his terror momentarily baffled by the term. It tugged at a half-forgotten memory, a story told by a traveling merchant or a tale from his own childhood, whispered about distant, unimaginable lands.

  “A cultivator?” he repeated, the word feeling awkward on his tongue. His eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but in deep concentration. “Like… like those legendary people from the south? The ones in the stories who can split mountains with their bare hands and ride clouds across the sky?”

  A humble, almost apologetic smile touched Kai’s lips. He gave a slight, dismissive wave of his hand. “Yes, like them. But please, I’m not that amazing. I can’t split mountains.” He glanced at his own hands. “I can break a decent-sized rock, perhaps. But that’s not the help I offer today.” His tone softened, becoming earnest and direct. “Your story… It moved me. And I wish to help you. I have here a medicine,” he said, gently opening the lid of the box to reveal the jade-green pill resting on its bed of fabric, “that was made for a plight such as yours.”

  Jiro’s gaze dropped to the pill. It gleamed with an unearthly, serene light, so perfect it seemed more a jewel than a remedy. He looked from the impossible medicine to the man who had conjured it from nothing, his mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions.

  The crushing weight of his hopelessness argued against this sudden, miraculous intervention, yet the evidence was undeniably before him.

  The crippled man stared in deep contemplation.

  Jiro’s eyes, wide with a mixture of desperate hope and deep-seated suspicion, narrowed slightly. A lifetime of hardship in the Northend had taught him that nothing came without a price, especially not from strangers. Miracles, in his experience, were just debts dressed in fine clothes.

  “W-What’s the catch?” he stammered, his voice rough with uncertainty. He gestured weakly at the gleaming pill. “What do you want from me? My family’s land? Years of service? My firstborn child?” The questions were a reflex, a shield against the terrifying prospect of hope. He was utterly unwilling to believe that a stranger—a cultivator no less—would simply bestow a miraculous cure out of pure benevolence.

  Kai met his gaze with unwavering patience, his expression open and sincere. “There is no catch,” he said, his voice calm and firm. “And there is nothing I want from you. Well,” he amended with a slight, genuine smile, “perhaps a little bit of privacy regarding my presence here for now. But that is all. No, I am doing this for a far simpler reason: because I can, and because I want to help you.”

  Jiro continued to stare intensely, the lines of skepticism etched deeply on his face. He was a man who measured worth in sweat and grain, and the economy of unconditional kindness was one he couldn’t fathom. Kai sensed the lingering doubt, the ingrained wariness that no words could easily erase.

  He leaned forward slightly, his tone softening into something more personal, more heartfelt. “Jiro, there really is nothing more to it. You said it yourself moments ago—if you saw another man on that branch, you would try to stop him. That is a good man’s instinct. You recognized a fundamental truth: that we help one another.” Kai placed a hand on his own chest. “I am only doing the same. If I see someone in trouble, and I possess the means to help, then I should. Not because I seek a reward or a favor, but because it is simply… the right thing to do. It is the way the world should work.”

  He let the words hang in the air between them, simple and profound. It was a philosophy born from the kindness of his past life and reforged in the crucible of his present one. He wasn’t preaching; he was merely stating a core truth of his being.

  It took a long moment. Kai could see the internal struggle playing out across Jiro’s face—the hardened survivor wrestling with the embers of hope that Kai’s actions had fanned. Finally, with a shuddering sigh that seemed to release a lifetime of tension, the man’s shoulders slumped. The defensive rigidity drained from his posture, replaced by a weary, tentative acceptance. The fierce light of suspicion in his eyes dimmed, giving way to a glimmer of cautious wonder.

  “Okay,” Jiro relented, the word a soft exhale of surrender. He looked from Kai’s earnest face to the pill. “Okay. What… what does this medicine do?”

  A warm, reassuring smile spread across Kai’s face. “This medicine,” he began, his voice filled with a hopeful certainty, “should be able to help you regrow your leg there and probably restore the full function of your arm as well.” He gestured first to the bandaged stump, then to the scarred and withered limb. “In theory.”

  “R-Really?!” Jiro’s voice was a gasp of pure, unadulterated amazement. The very idea was so far beyond his comprehension it seemed like a fantasy. But then his sharp, pragmatic mind caught the cautious qualifier at the end of Kai’s sentence. His hopeful expression faltered, replaced by a flicker of doubt. “Why… why do you not sound sure about that?”

  Kai’s smile became slightly apologetic, but his gaze remained honest and direct. He believed in transparency, especially with something this important. “Because I haven’t tested it yet on anyone,” he admitted freely. “You would be the first.”

  While he trusted Gin when it came to this kind of thing, and the drunken master had run the pill through every theoretical and minor practical test he could devise, Kai understood the vast difference between theory and a living, breathing human body. There were countless variables—Jiro’s unique constitution, the pill’s interaction with a body that had never been exposed to cultivated energy—that even Gin couldn’t have fully accounted for. To hide that uncertainty would be dishonest and a betrayal.

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  “So, what I’m hearing,” Jiro said slowly, working through the logic, “is that you’re not sure if this… jewel… will actually help me?”

  “I am telling you I am mostly sure it can return the full function of your lost leg and arm,” Kai clarified, careful not to overpromise. “The principles are sound. But there remains a chance, however small, that it may not work as intended, or that the process may be incomplete.”

  Jiro’s eyes narrowed. “Does that mean it could also poison me? Is that the ‘not intended’ part?”

  “No,” Kai stated, his voice firm and confident on this single point. He knew Gin’s ingredients—the local, mundane herbs—inside and out. Their safety was the one thing he was absolutely sure of. “The components of this pill will not poison you. I can promise you that.”

  “But you’re not completely sure of the rest,” Jiro pressed, a hint of his old, grim humor returning. “And you’re using me as your test subject.”

  “I am telling you with near certainty that it will not harm you,” Kai reiterated. Then, he gently pointed out the stark reality of the situation. “And besides, weren’t you just about to hang yourself from this very tree? Why would you worry about something like poison now?”

  A long, silent moment passed between them. Jiro looked from the pill to the rope still coiled on the ground, then back to Kai’s earnest face.

  The cultivator’s logic was brutally, undeniably sound.

  “Okay. Fair enough,” Jiro grunted, the resistance fully leaving him. What did he have to lose? If this was a trick, the result was the same as the one he’d already chosen. He reached out with his good hand, took the cool, smooth pill from the box, and without further ceremony, popped it into his mouth and swallowed.

  He sat there for a moment, waiting. A minute passed. Then another. He flexed the fingers of his damaged arm. He shifted the stump of his leg. He felt… exactly the same.

  “Um,” he said, a note of confusion in his voice. “How long does it take for the pill to… you know… work?”

  Kai rubbed the back of his neck, a slightly sheepish expression on his face. “Ah, yes. That. Gin, the alchemist who made it, estimated the full regenerative process would take somewhere around… twenty-four weeks.”

  Jiro’s jaw went slack. He stared at Kai, the sheer, absurd timescale of the promised miracle momentarily stunning him back into silence.

  “That’s like half a year?!” Jiro yelled, the hope in his voice instantly curdling into a new kind of despair. The sheer, impractical length of time felt like a cruel joke.

  “Technically, a little less than half a year,” Kai corrected gently, though he immediately realized how unhelpful the precision was. “But regrowing an entire leg from nothing in twenty-four weeks is still phenomenally impressive, all things considered. You must have a little patience.” He was trying to frame it as the miracle it was, but Jiro was operating on a different timescale entirely—that of survival.

  “Patience? That’s not the problem!” Jiro’s voice cracked with frustration. “I don’t need my leg back in half a year! I need to be able to walk and work now! My family needs to plant the last of the winter root, mend the roof, and stock the woodpile before the first snows fall! It won’t matter if I get my leg back in spring if we’ve all starved to death in our beds!”

  Kai’s expression shifted to one of deep, conflicted understanding. He had been so focused on the long-term, miraculous solution that he’d completely overlooked the immediate, brutal reality of this man’s life. He sighed, a sound of resignation and decision. “You’re right. Forgive my shortsightedness.”

  He reached into his storage ring again. This time, he didn’t pull out a small box. The air shimmered, and with a series of soft thumps, a large pile of prime-quality furs, thick hides, and bundled strips of dried, seasoned jerky materialized on the grass between them. It was a fortune in provisions.

  Jiro’s eyes widened to the point of pain, his jaw going utterly slack. The pile was taller than he was sitting down. He had never seen so much wealth in one place in his entire life.

  To Kai, it was a significant but manageable donation. Thanks to the bountiful hunts of his spirit beast family, the warehouses of Azure Sky Haven were overflowing. He was over-preparing for a winter whose severity he couldn’t predict, and this pile wouldn’t even put a dent in his reserves. But to Jiro, it was salvation incarnate.

  “Here,” Kai said, his voice soft but firm. “This should be more than enough to see you and your family comfortably through the winter. You can trade the leathers in Wonju or Pillarforge for anything else you need—grain, tools, medicine for your pain.”

  Jiro stared at the mountain of food and fur. For weeks, his world had been a shrinking tunnel of anguish, defined by the harsh, unyielding calculus of the Northend, where a cripple was a drain on resources and a loving father’s ultimate sacrifice was to disappear into the snow. He had been preparing himself for that exact fate. This was the absolute inversion of that reality. A stranger had not only promised to restore his body but had also obliterated the very reason for his despair in the first place.

  The emotions—overwhelming relief, soul-crushing gratitude, and a dizzying, disorienting shock—crashed over him all at once. Tears, no longer of sorrow but of profound, uncomprehending thankfulness, welled in his eyes and streamed down his face.

  With a grunt of effort, he shifted his weight and pushed himself off the ground, ignoring the pain in his stump to prostrate himself fully, pressing his forehead into the dirt at Kai’s feet.

  “Honorable Great Master!” he choked out, his voice thick with emotion. “Thank you! Thank you so much! With this… with this, my children will be warm. My wife will not have to choose between feeding them and feeding me. I-I will name my next child after you, I swear it! A son, to be called Kai, so we never forget your kindness!”

  Kai took a sharp step back, his face flushing with acute discomfort. Such abject, worshipful praise was utterly foreign to him. He never experienced anything like this at Ember Sword Sect or his past life as Mike. This was something else entirely.

  “I-It’s okay! Please, get up. You really, really don’t have to do that,” he insisted, his voice flustered. “I was just… I was just doing what any person should do if they have the ability. It’s nothing special.”

  “And such humility!” Jiro wept, looking up from the ground with utter reverence. “You are not just a cultivator! You are a saint! Just like the legends say! A being of boundless compassion who descends to aid the suffering!”

  “Nope. No, no, no. I am definitely not a saint,” Kai denied immediately, waving his hands in front of him as if to physically ward off the title. The last thing he needed was that particular label getting attached to him.

  It was then that a small, curious voice piped up from the side.

  “Uncle Kai… is a saint?” Zhang Liao asked, his head tilted as he processed this new, grand-sounding word.

  Kai’s head snapped toward the boy. He saw the wheels turning in Zhang Liao’s mind, the look of dawning awe. A cold dread washed over him.

  Please, heavens above, Kai prayed silently, his eyes wide with internal panic. Don’t let any weird ideas form in his head from this. I already have to deal with Chen Gong’s ‘Great Compendium’ and his wildly inflated interpretations of my every sneeze. Please, please, please don’t let Zhang Liao start calling me a saint. One chronicler is more than enough!

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