"Hoolay... do you know the saddest thing about being a physician?" Jiaoqiu suddenly asked. He did not wait for Hoolay to answer, but continued on his own:
"All this time, I've used everything I've ever learned to wrest lives bound for death from monsters like you. I would slump down in exhaustion, my hands trembling, and tell myself that everything I'd done meant something...
"But they would rush back to the battlefield. Then I would hear of their deaths. They died beneath your claws and fangs, in the flames of crashing starskiffs, amid the Reignbow Arbiter's light arrows...
"I was like a fool laboring in vain, fishing a fish called life out of a cauldron called death-only to watch it struggle once and leap back into the boiling broth.
"I asked myself what made them throw everything aside and rush back to their deaths once their wounds had healed. Why didn't they cherish the lives they'd fought so hard to keep? It left me lost and empty."
"Heh..." Hoolay laughed. "I smell despair steeped deep into your bones."
"In the end, I understood that passing on had value, too," Jiaoqiu said. "They pressed the weight of their passing onto the hearts of those of us still alive, giving us greater strength. They used the coin of death to buy back something more..."
At this point, Jiaoqiu suddenly laughed as well. "That is why I do everything I do now, staying close by your side, just to witness one outcome with my own eyes: your death...
"Your death has value, too. It will buy safety for the wardance, and for Feixiao, whom I healed."
"Hmph. The thoughts churning inside that pathetic head of yours are exactly what I expected," Hoolay said disdainfully.
"You knew all along?"
"Indeed. No one understands the