Tao Sian Lecture
Tao Sian“Dear colleagues, I would like to reiterate the pleasure I feel being of with you today and I thank the Imperial Academy for organizing this conference.”
Tao Sian puts her healer’s bag on her shoulder, rolls up her sleeves and moves forward, an attitude that suddenly gives her great authority.
“My knowledge about Kitins is really modest compared to yours, I am first and foremost a healer dealing with homins’ suffering.
However, a little by chance, I discovered something that left me in a great perplexity and that I have to share with you.
But to this end, let me first explain a part of my new protocol for the follow-up of homins suffering from the Evil. A necessary detour.
In our bodies flows Qi-zi, the sap sometimes called the blood. Because more exactly, the blood is clearly visible as soon an injury occurs while the sap can only be felt, by using magic especially. In a healthy body, blood and sap flow together in harmony between organs and to the limb extremities. More precisely, the sap is carried by the blood and therefore can always be found in abundance in this fluid. I will give you a demonstration in a few moments.
The Evil, the one in my country, destroys our bodies by infecting the sap, which then causes inflammation and cascading damage to the organs. The body will struggle through terrible sufferings until the seed of life is reached. Paradoxically, an initially healthy body, “full of sap” is all the more likely to be invaded by the Evil, if an internal contamination occurs. Our Kami companions, pure magical beings, are also extremely vulnerable.
In order to relieve the sufferings, I developed a method to slightly ‘sleep’ the patient’s sap. It is very delicate because if the sap is too weak, other problems appear, affecting first of all the respiratory functions but it relieves inflammations and, in the very rare favourable cases, it allows the body to better fight the Evil.
To control what I do - because it's walking on the razor's edge - I have to precisely know every day the proportion of sap in the patient’s blood, to go on ‘sleeping’ the sap or not.
But as the sap is invisible, I have a ritual to quantified it indirectly and, by the way, it allows a follow-up of the internal contamination.”
She takes out of her bag a kind of small bowl with a conical bottom and scrupulously cleans it with a cloth.
“The ritual is simple, although you have no idea how many years it took me to achieve this protocol. I draw a small amount of blood from the patient and I measure its weight very precisely.”
She gives a quick motion of her other wrist across the edge of the bowl, which turns out to be sharp. She lets her blood flow a little while mumbling a prayer. Then the cut is suddenly closed, a characteristic sign of the use of self-regeneration.
“I put a little Psykopla’s bud in the fluid. It acts as a catalyser.”
She does what she’s describing.
“Then, sitting in a meditation position, I swing the bowl regularly, so as to rotate the fluid along its wall and the bud in the middle and I focus exactly on the bud with a Sen’oqi Bawaa’qi spell, which means a spell of slow moving with low power that is made without gesture in a continuous manner and with only a subtle concentration.”
She is already seated to perform the ritual, and goes on chanting inaudible words.
“Little by little, a part of the blood will coagulate all around the bud and after about 3 minutes, the remnant blood will not coagulate, even if I go on or do it again.”
Although visibly very focused, she manages to talk to her audience while performing her ritual. Homins can progressively hear something rolling in the bowl.
She stops and take out her bag two sticks with her free hand. Her gesture is incredibly assured.
“I take the clot out of the bowl with the sticks. It's as if this part of the blood has vitrified around the bud.”
She removes from the bowl a beautiful little red stone with shimmering reflections and exhibits it to the assembly.
“For a contaminated patient, attentive examination of the clot gives me information about the extent of the disease and by comparing from day to day, I manage to discover whether the patient’s condition is stabilizing or not.
I weigh the remaining blood that didn’t coagulate. It’s the part without sap, the xiao’qi-zi. For a healthy body, its proportion is variable, between 46% and 54% of the initial amount of blood. With 58%, homins suffocate and, in my opinion, beyond 60% homins cannot live.
During his lifetime, the Sage Season had consented to let me evaluate the composition of his qi-zi. The Da’qi-zi, the proportion of sap or “magic blood” was exceptional : the two-thirds. For me it explains his so unusual metabolism!”
She puts away the pearl in a compartment of her bag, puts away the sticks, throws the little blood which is left onto the floor as an offering, wipes the bowl and puts it away.
“One day I was called in emergency, because Cai-Ci Luoi, hunter in Haven of Purity, was found seriously wounded, trapped under a huge capryni that he had the recklessness to attack alone and barely defeated. It's always tricky when a wound lags, but Luoi just had a broken leg and wasn't in danger. But seeing the scene, I thought I should also evaluate animal qi-zi, by scientific duty.
After taking care of Luoi, I collected some of the blood from the fallen creature and then went to my sokna-hay to perform the ritual.
After one single minute, I was already surprised by the speed of the clotting.
After two minutes, I had to stop because the clot was too big and the rest of the fluid was too pasty for me to swing it in the bowl. It was as if the blood of this animal was composed only of Da'qi-zi!
Cai-Ci Luoi, who wanted to thank me so much for saving him from becoming crippled for the rest of his life, was delighted that I charged him with the mission of delivering some qi-zi of each species of his hunting field, with assistance this time! At the same time, I asked Haido Xuan, the dynastic gardener, to get me samples of sap or fluid (juice) from jungle plants that she could find.
After two weeks, the results were the same: the qi-zi from animals or plants is always a da’qi-zi. Initially it was only for the Jungle but since then I have been able to diversify my tests and I haven’t found any exceptions yet.
I do beg your pardon because I haven’t spoken about kitins yet, you can feel it, I’m about to but before, I impose you a last digression, a spiritual one this time.
Why do we, homins, have less sap than the rest of Ma-Duk's creation? I was meditating.
The answer gave me great joy. An izam or a slaveni are part of Ma-Duk, as a Kami, it’s innate to them. But a homin will be a part of it only at the culmination of the path to enlightenment. Everything made sense. Ochi Kami no!
But later I realized that Cai-Ci Luoi has forgotten to bring me back some kitin Qi-zi! Which, besides, he retorted when I came back to see him, that I had asked him for animal blood yet ‘a kitin is not an animal but a kitin’. Yui. Of course.
I apologised profusely and for the next few days he diligently brought me back kitin blood samples.
The result of my ritual on this blood led me to believe in a joke from the kami: although completely different from ours, the kitin qi-zi is also separable in xiao’qi-zi and da’qi-zi.
About half and half, exactly like homin qi-zi. So Cai-Ci Luoi is right.
I'm sure that my first intuition has some high degree of truth, but objectively, I admit that I don't have all the answers! I leave everyone to meditate on the meaning of my discovery.”