Work Text:
The morning is filled with the usual drudgery: Bai Zhan disciple, broken arm; Bai Zhan disciple, broken ribs; one unlucky Ku Xing boy who swears he only got lost while delivering a message to Xian Shu and stepped on one of their nastier traps; Bai Zhan disciple, broken arm again.
Shortly before noon Shen Qingqiu comes in leaning heavily on one of his disciples for support, breaking the day’s monotony. Mu Qingfang takes in his blue-tinged lips and ice-cold qi and diagnoses him with a mild case of Bitterfrost poisoning. A full month of medically-assisted meditation will flush it out of his system; the only alternative would require Phoenix Henbane, which only grows on the slopes of active volcanoes and is therefore not standard practice.
In between hosting Shen Qingqiu’s many visitors – none of his colleagues, it seems, have anything better to do, and since they’re all above him in the Peaks’s hierarchy he has to bring out the tea every time – Mu Qingfang writes a complaint to An Ding for another mishandled delivery; he understands that the difference between Sun-Kissed Thousand-Years Leaf and Sun-Dried Thousand-Years Leaf is lost on most people, but Shang Qinghua at least should know better!
He’s seeing off the evening batch of Bai Zhan disciples (along with one excitable Zui Xian elder who decided to join the fray) when Shen Qingqiu’s youngest disciple comes back with one single stalk of Phoenix Henbane proudly clutched in his hand, which is, incidentally, burned to a fine crisp. If he was going to go through all that trouble anyway, he could at least have brought back more! Seeing how delighted the boy looks as Shen Qingqiu berates him for his recklessness, though, Mu Qingfang decides to keep that thought for himself. He certainly doesn’t need the extra workload.