The rain came early that week, drenching the village paths and turning the mountain trails to muddy but Yi Rong didn't mind. She welcomed the hush that rain brought the way it softened voices made people linger indoors and left the world quieter.
Perfect for thinking.
Perfect for observing.
It had been a month since her fever broke and her memories returned. She hadn't told anyone not even Ruolan. The weight of two lives sat firmly on her shoulders but Yi Rong had grown used to carrying it.
There was work to be done slow, deliberate, careful work.
She began with her family.
Ruolan's hands were raw from washing clothes with lye soap. Yi Rong noticed the chapping first then the peeling. Quietly, she gathered calendula petals soaked them in warm oil, and added beeswax she bartered from the apiarist[Beekeeper] on the eastern ridge.
She handed the cream to her mother without a word just left it on the wooden table near the stove.
By the end of the week, Ruolan's hands were smooth again.
"Old Wen's recipes are really something," Ruolan remarked in wonder, rubbing her palms together, "He never gave out cream like this before."
Yi Rong smiled faintly "Maybe he's softening in old age."
Ruolan laughed and the conversation moved on.
No one questioned it.
Her second change was more subtle.
She began keeping track of the local illnesses. Nothing elaborate just a few notations on cloth scraps, tied together with twine and hidden under her bedding. The old man with the rattle in his lungs. The baby with the persistent fever. The young woman coughing blood into her apron.
Yi Rong couldn't offer full cures without raising suspicion not yet but she could nudge, suggest, offer the right herb at the right moment.
She began to barter quietly ginger for a cracked egg. Willow bark for a piece of smoked pork. It wasn't wealth not by a long shot but their meals grew fuller. The pantry less empty.
Even Ruolan noticed.
"We've had more meat this week than all of last month," she murmured one evening as she set the table "Did something happen?"
Yi Rong shrugged lightly,"People are grateful that's all."
Zeyu looked up "Because of your medicine?"
"I just help Old Wen," Yi Rong replied with a tilt of her head "He's the real healer."
Ruolan narrowed her eyes, suspicious but said nothing.
Old Wen knew of course.
He was many things but not blind. One afternoon, as they picked through a basket of dried root slices, he eyed her from the corner of his gaze.
"You've got the hands of someone who's done this before," he muttered.
Yi Rong fingers paused,"I watch carefully."
"Not that carefully." He sniffed "You're too quick to sort out which root's bitter enough to bring down a fever without wrecking the stomach. That takes long time practice and muscle memories."
She didn't answer just went back to sorting.
Old Wen leaned back with a grunt,"I don't care what you do,just don't bring trouble here. Don't chase storms girl, You're genius and that's rare. Stay quiet. Use what you know wisely."
Yi Rong met his gaze "I intend to."
He didn't press her further.
The days stretched longer. The first hints of summer whispered through the leaves and the rice fields shimmered under early sunlight.
Yi Rong continued her work quietly.
When Zeyu came home from a fields with a twisted ankle, she wrapped it properly and told him not to walk on it for a week. He listened reluctantly and by the eighth day, he was running again.
When a neighbor's baby spiked a fever and the midwife was away, she brought mulberry bark, fennel and a cool cloth. By morning, the child's fever had broken.
Whispers began.
"They say the Wen girl knows more than she lets on."
"Yi Rong? Didn't she fall sick not long ago?"
"Maybe it opened her eyes. The way some people say the dead speak to you and give you knowledge."
"Nonsense! old Wen's probably teaching her properly at last."
But Yi Rong paid no attention to gossip around her.
She wasn't after fame not now, She moved deliberately, letting her presence ripple through the village like a pebble dropped into still water.
Small waves.
Enough to shift the surface.
Then one afternoon, while picking herbs by the outer forest, she paused suddenly a strange tightness curling in her chest.
A smell.
A memory.
Burning hair. Iron. Dust on scorched concrete.
She stood perfectly still. Her basket of herbs trembled slightly in her grip.
The memory vanished as quickly as it came but something lingered. A sense that things were not as quiet as they seemed.
She didn't speak of it not even to Old Wen. But that night, she dreamt of fire of a man's voice calling her name in a language this world didn't speak. Of blood soaking the floor and an oath she couldn't quite remember making.
When she woke, her hands were clenched so tightly her nails had left crescent marks in her palm.
She washed her face in silence and went about her day.
Ruolan began to notice the shift not in what Yi Rong said but in how she carried herself.
She stood straighter, moved with purpose and when people asked her things, she listened with a stillness beyond her years.
"Yi Rong," her mother said one evening as the fire crackled low, "you've changed."
Yi Rong looked up "Because of the illness?"
Ruolan hesitated then nodded, "Maybe. But also… maybe not."
Yi Rong simply smiled "I'm still me."
And she was but also not.
Not entirely.
She was becoming someone who remembered death and chose life anyway. Someone who knew how fragile peace could be. And someone who for now would guard her truth like a flame in the dark.
Because she had work to do.
And secrets to keep.
And somewhere beyond the mountains, fate was already moving, waiting for her to awaken fully.