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The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
What Wei Zhao wanted, however, was Chinese herbal medicine, and few people bought such things. He handed the list he had long since drawn up to the clerk, who wrote him a receipt and told him to go pay; the herbs he needed were numerous and varied, and weighing them out would take a while. Fortunately there were no other customers, and while the clerk weighed his order, Wei Zhao wandered at leisure about the shop.
"Gold wound medicine." A voice drew Wei Zhao's attention.
Gold wound medicine? Wei Zhao was taken aback. There was such a medicine?
The so-called gold wound medicine: "gold" meant metal objects such as blades, and in ancient times the thing that wounded men most was undoubtedly weaponry, so "gold" also stood for weapons; "wound" meant a cut. Gold wound medicine, then, was the medicine made specifically to treat sword cuts and other injuries inflicted by metal weapons, and its effects were to stanch bleeding, deaden pain, and reduce inflammation.
Only, gold wound medicine was merely an ancient name for it. These days there didn't seem to be any medicine called that anymore, did there?
"We're out. Sold out." The shop assistant answered the earlier speaker with a face entirely without expression.
Wei Zhao glanced over. The one asking was a girl dressed all in black, a navy cap on her head with the brim pressed so low that her features could not be made out. After receiving the assistant's answer that they were sold out, the girl said nothing; she turned and left, though her steps were somewhat unsteady...
Suddenly Wei Zhao's gaze fixed on the ground beneath the girl. Along the floor where she had walked dragged a bright smear of blood, clearly having run down from inside her trouser leg; yet in this pharmacy, crowded with people coming and going, it had drawn no one's notice, and the trail was quickly trampled away by the passing feet.
The reason Wei Zhao had paid the girl any mind at all: first, the gold wound medicine on her lips had roused his curiosity; second, because from her he had sensed a trace of something kindred, the aura of killing.
This thing called the aura of killing is a subtle matter. It is, in fact, a signal animals emit when they are about to attack one another, a signal that requires a "sixth sense" to detect.
Someone once performed an experiment: a wildcat from the forest and a mouse were placed in a box, separated by two thin soundproof panels set not far apart; then the smells were eliminated, and neither could see the other. In the end the cat seemed to sense something. As though it wanted to pass through the panel, it kept clawing at it without pause, while the mouse huddled trembling at the other side. One could see that the cat sensed the mouse was right next door, and the mouse sensed the cat as well. But how did cat and mouse sense each other?
The scientists' explanation: this is perhaps the sixth sense, beyond the five senses of animals; that is to say, they do not perceive the other through ears, nose, or eyes. Animals can use a sixth sense to feel the signal given off by a natural enemy or by any other animal that means to attack them, and that signal may be explained as the "aura of killing."
In fact, humans have a sixth sense too; it is only that, long separated from nature, we have let this feeling slowly weaken. Yet there are those whose perceptiveness exceeds others', and they still retain this sixth sense. Veterans of the battlefield, for instance, can often sense whether an ambush lies ahead, as can those hunters who have spent their whole lives in the forest hunting. People who have long walked the edge of life and death can gradually awaken this feeling.