Bab 5: Ch 05 - A Hopeful Cure
Against everyone's hopes, the situation did not improve much as the days passed. While some people only had a small case of coughs in the beginning few days, the ones for whom it lasted longer had their health continue to deteriorate.
Many villagers became weak and listless as the days passed. A majority of them developed a fever and became bedridden. As a result, the village's functioning had come to a stop, everyone too busy looking after themselves.
Shen Jian himself suddenly became very busy because his services were in high demand. Because many hunters had also fallen sick and he was one of the few who didn't, it became his duty to collect food for the villagers.
He didn't mind. Apart from hunting wild beasts, he also went foraging for natural fruits and herbs. In the spirit of altruism, he even went so far as to provide his services free of charge. Asking money from people when they were in such a desperate situation just didn't seem right to him.
Shen Jian would have been happy to continue doing his self-assigned duty if not for the alarming problem that soon popped up in his own family.
His mother also fell ill just like his father. Both of them were confined to bed and Shen Jian was too worried to go hunting with a carefree mind. He was forced to split his time to take care of them as well.
In the meanwhile however, the cause for the epidemic was found and it turned out to be the bird meat that some hunters had found many days ago. The way this came to be known was not a good story either.
Among the few healthy teenagers in the village, one of them found some of the last remaining special meat hidden in his house and brought it to his friends. Because of a childish dare, the teenager grilled the meat and consumed it. And although nothing happened immediately, within just a few days, he had also started to let out shaking coughs just like the others had before they became bedridden.
Upon this discovery, almost all of the remaining toxic meat was gathered and brought to a forest clearing a distance away from the village. There, all of it was burnt into ashes with the people gathered making sure that the smoke from it went downwind from the village.
Unfortunately, that didn't solve the existing problem. While the people that hadn't eaten the meat were fine and a few of the people who had eaten it also didn't develop any problems, a significant number of villagers were still affected by the epidemic.
The only good news was that the illness didn't transmit from person to person through the air.
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Shen Jian jumped headfirst towards the charging boar and viciously stabbed his sword straight into one of its eyes. The blade went so deep inside that he didn't have to do anything else before the beast's legs went limp and it fell to the ground, the remaining momentum from its charge making it slide along the ground for a few meters.
The beast's agitated slayer pulled his sword out, flicked the gore off it and sheathed it. Then without wasting a moment's time, he ran to the back of the beast, grabbed its tail and started pulling it towards the village.
His feet stomped on the ground at a quick pace, growing even quicker by the second. At some point, he was almost jogging with the animal he was pulling bouncing off obstacles around him like a pinball.
Reaching his destination, his muscles strained as he almost tossed his cargo to the side, waved a hand to get the harvesters' attention – completely unnecessary – then shot off towards his home without another word.
With how his parents' condition was, Shen Jian hated being away from them for any longer than absolutely necessary.
Barging into his house as silently as he could, he made his way to his parents' room before stopping outside the door. He silently straightened his clothes, cleaned the dirt off and took a deep breath. Then he slowly pushed open the door and entered.
Inside, his mother and father were sleeping, their bodies covered by a shared blanket up to their necks. He would have said they were sleeping peacefully if not for their heavy breathing and pale faces.
Quietly making his way over to them, he placed a hand on his father's forehead and grimaced almost immediately.
Too warm. No improvement.
He checked his mother's temperature and it was the same. Too warm and showing no signs of improving.
"… Jian?" A whisper of his name startled him slightly but he calmed down and gave his now awake mother a smile.
"Mother, I'm back. Let me go get some wet towels. I'll be right back." Shen Jian quickly left the room and came back a few minutes later with a couple of wet towels.
Once he placed them gingerly on his parents' foreheads, he dragged a chair over to his mother's side of the bed and sat next to her. He held one of her hands with both of his, trying to give her a reassuring feeling.
He couldn't get over how distressingly warm her hand was.
Shen Qi looked at her son with a smile, her tired amber eyes filled with love, finding his fidgeting and worrying incredibly cute. He was usually such a reclusive boy, so resistant to physical displays of affection. And yet, here he was so openly expressive and transparent with his feelings.
She was sad that all of those feelings consisted of fear and worrying for her and her husband's health.
"Don't worry too much, Jian. It's just a fever. It'll be gone soon… Fevers come and go all the time." The mother slowly said, taking a breath in between.
"Mm." Shen Jian nodded gently, trying to show his belief in her words even if he was sure this wasn't just a normal fever.
There was in fact, a reason for Shen Jian's worry. And it was related to some memories of his past life.
A few months before he died in his previous world, he used to have two cats that his family kept as pets. One of them had randomly lost its appetite for seemingly no reason and had done almost nothing but sleep for almost two whole days along with a fever that slowly worsened.
Rightfully worried and not familiar with diagnosing a pet's health condition, he'd brought the cat to a pet clinic. There he learned that the cat was suffering from food poisoning.
Somewhat reassured that it was "just" food poisoning, he waited for the doctor to do their treatment, took the prescription medicine and set off home with his cat back in its carrier box.
By the time he'd reached home and opened the box, the cat was dead with foam coming from its mouth.
It was an almost traumatising memory for him. Something he'd cried and screamed over, something he'd tried to forget.
He got over it eventually, of course. But the memory still remained.
That someone, despite it being an animal, had died from something as 'small' as food poisoning was an unpleasant shock to him. Because up until then, his thoughts towards food poisoning were that it was something that simply caused a stomach ache that went away after some time.
He had no idea that someone could die from such a seemingly insignificant problem.
And it was the same case at the current moment as well.
Shen Jian was worried for his parents. Consuming tainted meat, developing a high fever, loss of appetite… The symptoms were worrying similar and it was causing him a significant amount of distress.
He was of course, doing his best to look after his parents. Making sure to feed them at least twice a day, making sure they maintained sufficient water intake and letting them have plenty of rest. He was even dutifully feeding them the medicine that the village doctor prescribed to everyone, even though it didn't seem to be having much effect.
Shen Jian was doing everything he could. And he was worried that it wasn't enough.
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The days continued to pass. As the world entered the second week of the eighth month, rain had started to fall intermittently around the globe.
And right at that time, the village was hit with the worst kind of news, the kind its inhabitants hoped to never hear.
"Old Gu is dead." One of the people who welcomed Shen Jian back from his hunt told him solemnly.
The child stared at him blankly, his mind trying to understand what he'd just heard. It took a long moment for him to properly connect the dots.
The first fatality of the epidemic.
In a state of blank shock, Shen Jian wandered the village until he came to the house where he knew Old Gu lived.
The loud sound of someone crying echoed from inside the house. Even outside the abode, a small group of people were standing with grim looks on their faces.
The scene told Shen Jian everything he needed to know. He silently went back home, more disturbed than ever before.
As usual, he first checked the condition of his parents. There was still no improvement. But on the upside, their condition hadn't deteriorated either. However, that did little to soothe him.
Entering his own room, he quietly sat on his bed and buried his face in his hands.
Shen Jian didn't know what to do.
Whether it was in his past life or in this life, Shen Jian had preferred to be a follower. He personally didn't feel that he had enough mental flexibility to make plans or decisions.
This was one of the reasons Shen Jian felt so lost at the moment. As much as he wished to find out more about the rampant illness or ways to cure it, he didn't know how to actually find that information. He just wished someone would tell him where to go and what to do.
Alas, no one did. Even the only doctor in the village had no idea what to do even though he was consulting all the medical and herb related books he had. Aside from him, no one else had even a clue as to where to begin. The only thing they had succeeded in so far was to find the source of the illness and purge it but that course of action was too little too late.
Distantly feeling that his clothes were a bit too wet from the rain, Shen Jian sluggishly went to his small wardrobe to change into something drier.
He stood in front of the open wardrobe, holding onto a folded shirt. But his mind was too far away, lost in thoughts of what-if.
His face scrunched up. In a rare loss of self-control, Shen Jian dragged the clothes in his hand and threw them on the floor. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed any cloth he could get his hands and threw them around his room.
Even when he was frustrated, he was too conscious of his household situation to throw anything loud or precious. So he settled on listening to the muffled thumps of balled up cloth to ease his stress.
Leaning on the door of the wardrobe, Shen Jian let out a long sigh. Taking a deep breath, he took a look at his stray clothes. His shoulders slumped.
Letting out another sigh, he grabbed the closest cloth and started to fold it. As he turned to put it on the wardrobe shelf, Shen Jian's eyes caught sight of something peculiar tucked away in the corner of the shelf.
A brocade box with faded colours.
Shen Jian stared at it dumbly.
Then his eyes lit up.
"The medicine pills!" He whispered excitedly.
Throwing the cloth in his hands to the side, he grabbed the hidden box. Bringing it closer, he undid the secret latch and gingerly opened the box.
A puff of aromatic vapours hit his face. He breathed in the herbal vapours and looked at the contents of the box.
Three dark green pills.
Shen Jian gulped. He closed the box and made his way out of his room and towards his parents'. When he opened the door, he found to his luck that both of them were awake, maybe awakened by his muffled tantrum earlier.
"Mother, father." He greeted and went inside, becoming nervous now that he saw their faces.
"Jian?" His father asked enquiringly.
Shen Jian gulped again and showed them the box in his hands.
As expected, his mother reacted first, her eyes widening in recognition. "Isn't that…?"
He nodded silently, approaching next to their bed. Shen Boqin looked between the two of them, confused. That confusion was wiped away when his son opened the box and a herbal aroma hit his nose and his eyes laid on the pills within.
He stared dumbly.
"Are those pills?" He muttered in bafflement. "Where did you get pills?"
"An inheritance from my mother that Jian and I found buried in the storage cellar a couple months ago." Shen Qi mumbled in explanation, her eyes fixed on the pills.
"Mother-in-law? Wha-" Shen Boqin but suddenly cut himself off with a series of harsh coughs. Rubbing his throat, the man shook his head. "No, never mind. So what are you going to do with them?" He directed the question to his son.
Shen Jian picked up one of the pills from the box. The dark green pill was about one and a half inch in diameter, its surface having a smooth texture. He held the pill in his hand for a moment, then stretched his hand towards his father.
Shen Boqin stared. "What?"
"Grandmother said to use these pills when someone is very sick. And well… you are." Shen Jian replied awkwardly. "So… take it."
Father Shen stared for a few moments longer before he shook his head. He took the pill, turned and brought it towards his wife's mouth.
He smiled lightly. "Say ah, dear."
Shen Qi looked exasperated. "Your condition is worse than mine. You take it."
"Say ah." Her husband paid her words no mind and said insistingly.
"I just said-"
The man stuffed the pill into her mouth right as she was speaking. The woman struggled for a moment, then swallowed the pill reflexively. Despite its size, it went down her throat surprisingly easily.
She coughed a few times but then she turned and glared at her husband. "Boqin."
Shen Boqin looked completely unrepentant. "What kind of husband would I be if I took my wife's inheritance before her?"
His wife opened her mouth in annoyance. "That's not-! This and that are different! Why did you-" She suddenly sighed in between her words and looked at him with fond exasperation. Shen Boqin looked at her lovingly in return.
Shen Jian on the side let out an awkward cough. "Do you feel anything, mother? Pills are said to work fast."
Breaking out of her reverie, Shen Qi put a hand on her throat and closed her eyes. Her husband and son waited with bated breath, not knowing what to expect.
The moment was ruined when the woman burst out with wheezing coughs. Shen Jian startled and moved to get her a glass of water.
Drinking from the offered glass, Shen Qi sighed and looked at her son and husband confused. "What… am I supposed to feel?"
Everyone looked at each other awkwardly before the youngest of them said "Maybe a warm feeling in your belly? Or in contrast, a cool feeling? If not in your belly, perhaps you feel it flowing through your body? Something like that?"
Shen Qi shook her head to all of his questions, her face slowly growing more and more anxious.
Silence reigned in the room. Shen Jian looked at the remaining two pills in the box in hesitation. 'Do pills have a maximum shelf life? Are these ineffective after such a long time?'
"Jian…" He looked up at his father's call. The man hesitated for a moment before saying slowly. "Why don't you keep those pills for now? We can try mine later. Maybe it just… takes a while to show its effects." He looked at his wife imploringly.
The woman nodded with a forced smile. "That's right, Jian. Go take a rest for now. You just came back from a hunt, no? You should rest well."
Shen Jian looked down, his shoulders slumping. He obediently closed the brocade box and proceeded to leave the room while mumbling that he'd bring them dinner soon.
Everyone was left disappointed. No one could bring themselves to express it.
---
A few days passed. Rain continued to fall every afternoon.
In the end, the pill showed no effect in Shen Qi. Her condition did not improve. Her coughs did not stop. Her appetite did not return. Nothing happened.
Conversely, both her and her husband's condition worsened. They started to cough blood every now and then, a clear sign that something was wrong inside their bodies.
Shen Jian hurriedly went to consult the village doctor but the man had very little to say and no way to help. The cause for the blood was organ failure. Their internal organs were damaged and their function was starting to slow.
"No, no, no." Shen Jian muttered in growing despair. He was desperate as he paced outside his parents' room.
"Husband…" His ears caught a tiny voice from within the room. His mother's. It was filled with pain. "It hurts."
"Me too, dear." His father's voice replied just as weakly. "But we'll get through this. We will. We… will…" He trailed off, too depressed to believe his own words.
Shen Jian's heart ached. His fists clenched tightly, his nails piercing his skin and making his hands bleed.
He stood in the corridor like a statue, his head down and blood dripping from his clenched fists to the floor.
"Jian?" His head snapped up at his father's call. He rubbed his bloody hands with a towel he'd brought and hurried inside the room.
"Yes, father. Do you need anything? Anything at all? Food? Water?" Shen Jian rapid fired questions.
His father and mother however, just smiled at him. Their eyes filled with love and sorrow. Shen Boqin lifted a hand and pointed weakly at the wardrobe. "Open that."
Shen Jian rushed to comply. Opening the wardrobe, he followed his father's continued instructions to find a key among the stacks of clothes, then used that key to open a locked compartment on the bottom shelf.
Inside, he found multiple leather sacks. With an unsure feeling, he traced his fingers on the sacks to see if they contained what he thought they did. And he was correct.
The sacks were filled with coins. Money.
He slowly turned to his parents, a sinking feeling in his gut. "… Father?"
Both of his parents were still smiling. His father spoke first. "Our savings. It's the money we were saving from trading with the merchants that visited."
His mother continued. "We knew this village was too small for you, Jian. So we started saving many years ago so we could send you to the nearest city. You'd have better opportunities there."
"Maybe you can even find a way to enter the path of cultivation. Who knows?" The father said before he broke out coughing. Blood came out of his mouth, staining his clothes.
Shen Jian said nothing, staring at them silently. His breath grew fast, his eyes slowly tearing up.
"Tomorrow's your birthday, isn't it?" Mother Shen asked after the lull. "You can consider this an early birthday present for turning ten." She said with a smile.
Shen Jian silently stood from his crouch and approached them. Climbing onto the bed, he crawled between the two and without a word, gave them both a hug.
Shen Qi and Shen Boqin both embraced him, similarly silent.
Afterwards, Shen Jian left to go get a cloth that he could sleep on. He planned to spend the night in his parents' room.
With the moonlight streaming from the open window, the scent of fresh nature after rain filling the room, Shen Jian laid on his side, watching his parents sleep with wide open eyes and resolving not to fall asleep.
However, soon his eyelids drooped. He had already spent the past few nights with little sleep and he couldn't force himself to stay awake another night.
Despite his best efforts, Shen Jian slowly fell into slumber, the cool night air caressing the cheeks of the room's inhabitants.
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Early in the morning the next day, Shen Jian woke up with a gasp. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, then hurried to check his parents' condition. He gently pulled their blanket and looked at their forms.
He stilled.
With their eyes closed, their hands embraced with their fingers intertwined, and peaceful smiles on their faces, his mother and father laid on the bed.
Unmoving.
Not breathing.
Shen Jian stared blankly, his mind struggling to grasp reality.
His eyes remained focused on their still forms.
Sometime later, the serene morning was disturbed as loud sobs echoed outside the house.
On the 15th day of the 8th month, for his long-awaited tenth birthday, Shen Jian was gifted the death of his parents.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
ExBlazE
ExBlazE That’s chapter 5.
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Several things to say here. First is that the story about the cat is based on true events. It was truly a traumatizing event for me. Watching a cat go from howling in its carrier to ominously silent, then reaching home and opening the box to wide unseeing eyes forever remains one of my worst memories to date.
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Now, as for the killing the parents plot everyone saw coming. It’s only after writing a story myself that I saw why it was so… convenient. Essentially, it ‘liberates’ my MC from any lingering attachments. In the future, he could leave the village and not look back.
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A skilled storyteller could still keep those attachments that comes with keeping them alive and write a compelling relationship. I am not a skilled writer. I am an amateur. And for such a me, such a development is just… simpler to handle… despite how much I hate it myself.
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Anyway, that’s that. On a side note, it seems like I’m gonna stick to Monday releases for quite a while still. Please follow / add to reading list / add to library to stay tuned for future chapters.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone