"A sword cultivator, auditing the light-element lecture?"
"Not just a sword cultivator — a direct disciple. Which peak grows oddballs like this?"
"Hold on. Now that you say it, there IS one person it could be.
Have you all forgotten the image-recording mirrors?"
"Forgotten? Be serious. How could anyone forget?
The mirrors are STILL hanging out there. Who knows for how long.
Even now it's hard to believe — the Li Clan, one of the four great clans, and someone in it did THAT.
To his own flesh and blood, no less. What a hand to raise."
"Truly. Senior Sister Li's father is a vicious piece of work."
"Which has nothing to do with Senior Sister Li. She's a perfectly lovely person.
In this whole affair — mirrors true or false — I'd say Senior Sister Li is the one hurt worst."
"True or false, still? Senior brothers appraised them ages ago. The mirrors are absolutely genuine. Even if a fake could fool US, it wouldn't fool the elders."
"Exactly. And spare me the 'Senior Sister Li is innocent' line.
She was raised in the Li Clan's palm from the cradle — the death-substitute puppet was being made FOR her.
The Li Clan never once failed her. Now that the clan's in disgrace, she bears none of it?"
"Wait, wait — that's not my point. My point is: remember what the people who've SEEN Senior Sister Ning all say?
Light-element spirit master. Always carrying a sword casket."
The words landed.
And Ning Ruan felt the gazes converging on her turn strange.
Sympathy.
Curiosity.
Shock.
The full sampler platter.
Ning Ruan: ...
Mercifully.
Before the disciples could work up the nerve to approach and start asking questions,
a figure in fluttering white came gliding in from the front.
The Elder Yu Yuan of legend had arrived.
At last, the crowd's attention shifted.
Ning Ruan looked up with everyone else.
"Today's subject: the group healing art..."
Yu Yuan's voice was soft, threaded with a faint, deliberate remoteness.
Paired with a face that was, in honesty, exceptionally well made — and an aura of otherworldly detachment —
it only drew people in harder.
She lectured for nearly three hours.
At last Yu Yuan wound down and glanced coolly across her students:
"That concludes today's material on the group healing art. If anything remains unclear, you may ask now."
At the very front,
a direct disciple in the same whites-and-red-sash rose first, saluted Yu Yuan, and pitched his voice clearly:
"Elder Yu, I've recently increased my single-target healing speed considerably.
If I can push the speed further still, could single-target healing replace group healing outright? The latter burns far more spiritual power, after all."
A rare trace of a smile crossed Yu Yuan's face:
"In live combat, surrounded by enemies — do you imagine anyone will grant you the leisure to heal your companions one at a time?
However fast you cast.
Group healing and single-target healing each hold a place the other cannot fill.
Each of you will naturally favor your stronger art — that is no license to abandon the weaker one.
The two healing arts: neither may be lacking."
The direct disciple pondered a moment, then bowed to her again, deeply respectful:
"Thank you for the guidance, Elder Yu. I understand."
He wasn't the only one who understood.
Ning Ruan, too, sat lost in thought.
Seven or eight more disciples asked their questions. Then Ning Ruan stood:
"Elder Yu. A question: is it possible for a light-element healing art to heal in REVERSE?"
"In... reverse?" Yu Yuan visibly froze.
Below, the assembled disciples wore matching expressions of bafflement.
A flicker of panic went through Ning Ruan: ...
Was she saying... none of these people had EVER had a reverse-heal incident?
"...That is — you cast the healing art, and the patient's injuries get worse instead..."
The instant the words left her mouth,
several irrepressible pfft sounds escaped around the hall.
People were audibly failing to hold in their laughter...
Even Yu Yuan — cool and remote as a fairy from the ninth heaven — blanked for a beat, then fought a visible twitch at the corner of her mouth, wrestling something down:
"Ahem... I have never once seen the situation you describe.
Nor, I suspect, has any light-element spirit master of my acquaintance.
It is a HEALING art. How could it worsen an injury?
If such a thing were possible, our kind would hardly be known across the cultivation world as the cultivators with the lowest offensive power."
Exactly. If healing arts hurt people instead of saving them, what kind of healer would that make anyone?
Ning Ruan knew the logic perfectly well.
The problem was... she really DID keep healing people in reverse!
Inside the hall, the disciples still had an elder to mind their manners in front of.
The freeloaders OUTSIDE the hall had no such constraint.
On hearing Ning Ruan's question,
they simply detonated.
"I can't— I'm dying — REVERSE healing, she says. HAHAHAHA."
"The sheer imagination! If that were real, who'd ever dare let a light-element spirit master treat them again?"
"Need healing? The kind where you go in with light wounds and come out critical?"
"If that existed you'd obviously heal the ENEMY. One cast, whole squad down."
"Right, but the real question: why is a SWORD CULTIVATOR attending OUR light-element lecture?"
"What sword cultivator? I could swear I heard someone inside say she might be that Xueyang Peak direct disciple — Senior Sister Ning, the one who hung image-recording mirrors over half the world..."
"..."