Chapter 5

The lead black dog pricked up its ears, its gaze fixed intently on a spot. Qu Yan stood up, walking while ordering the three dogs to be quiet. Although she lived in a remote area, the barking of the dogs was indeed disturbing, especially since her mind was already unsettled.

The room was dark and silent, as if the earlier strange noise had been just an illusion. Qu Yan gently closed the door and felt her way to the candlestick to pick up a matchstick.

By the candlelight, she saw that the bedding on the couch was neatly folded, but the person who should have been lying there was nowhere to be seen. Qu Yan’s brow furrowed involuntarily.

This was completely beyond her prediction. Based on past experience, the injuries he had sustained would require at least half a month of rest before he could get up. Yet he had been awake for just one day and was already able to move about.

Looking around and not seeing his figure, Qu Yan’s heart sank, and the faint smile at the corner of her lips disappeared. Could he have run away? The thought had barely formed when she dismissed it in her mind.

This room was a side chamber, formerly used as a storeroom. There wasn’t much furniture inside, and only one place where someone could hide. Qu Yan quickened her pace, walking around the couch and heading straight for the back side, where there was a small room partitioned off for storing miscellaneous items.

As she got closer to her destination, Qu Yan’s steps became lighter. There wasn’t even a door there, just a bamboo curtain for cover. She stood beside it, quietly listening for any sound from inside.

A few suppressed and heavy breaths, as if the person inside was determined not to make a sound. Qu Yan listened for a long time but didn’t hear any pained groans of distress. She decided not to wait any longer, lifted the curtain with her hand, and stepped in.

The candlelight illuminated the cramped and cluttered small room. In the center of the floor lay a person. He was wearing a thin aqua-colored shirt, his body tightly curled up, hair once again plastered all over his face, making it impossible to see his expression.

Qu Yan crouched down to check the situation. The moment she moved to embrace him, the man’s body suddenly trembled, and a pained groan involuntarily escaped his mouth. His clothes were soaked with cold sweat in large patches. When his hair was brushed away, it revealed a deathly pale face covered in cold sweat. His eyes were tightly shut, teeth clenched on his lip, his expression one of unbearable pain.

She had been prepared to explain why she was sneaking into his room in the middle of the night, but seeing him in such a pitiful state, she only said softly:

“Don’t be afraid.”

The place was really cramped. Qu Yan didn’t hesitate at all, picking him up by the waist and quickly walking out. Only when he was in her arms did she feel that he had been shaking all along.

On the soft couch, Qu Yan spread out her acupuncture bag. Holding the hair-thin silver needles in her hand, she steadied her mind and then inserted the needles at acupoints such as Yuantan, Taichong, and Hegu.

Before the last needle fell, the man’s eyelids twitched, and then he opened them with great effort. Unlike his calm demeanor during the day, his eyes were now bloodshot, his pitch-black pupils as deep as the sea, with intense emotions roiling within them, the most prominent being pain.

It wasn’t normal for someone to bite their own mouth to endure pain. Qu Yan looked at his lower lip covered in fresh blood, her brow furrowing even deeper. After the last silver needle fell, she couldn’t help but reach out her fingertip to wipe away the blood from the corner of his lip.

He struggled to part his lips, causing more blood to flow. The man’s lips moved slightly, his eyes fixed intently on her. Qu Yan observed for a while before realizing what he was trying to say.

“Leave.”

Qu Yan’s fingertip paused. After confirming that he was conscious, she pressed her lips together and took out a small bottle. A black pill rolled into her hand, and she pinched the man’s cheek to put it in his mouth, then stuffed a piece of cloth for him to bite on.

“It will be very painful…” Qu Yan finished saying this, her tone unusually gentle, as if with a hint of coaxing, “But it won’t last long, just bear with it.”

He didn’t react to this at all, just kept repeating that word. Time slowly passed, and after a quarter of an hour of needling, Qu Yan began to remove the needles.

As each silver needle was pulled out, his brows furrowed tightly, his face twisted in pain, and finally, he couldn’t help but let out a painful wail.

She clenched her fists and said in a low voice, “Just half a quarter of an hour, you only need to endure for half a quarter of an hour.”

Over these three days, she had already given Qi Ying the antidote for the Ten-Day Scatter, but not only had the strange fragrance not disappeared, it had grown stronger each day. Qu Yan was shocked and spent an entire afternoon taking the pulse of the unconscious man, finally reaching an unprecedented conclusion.

Since there was more than one type of poison in his body, the antidote for the Ten-Day Scatter was useless to him because it had already fused with other poisons.

His body was like a container for cultivating venomous insects, with several poisons planted inside, intertwining and entangling within him. Years had passed, and no one knew what reactions had occurred. Some drugs might have long lost their effect, while others had undergone some subtle changes, such as intertwining and fusing together.

Since the antidote was ineffective, the only option was to go against the grain, seeking drugs that were both compatible and antagonistic to the main ingredients of the Ten-Day Scatter, using poison to fight poison. This might temporarily suppress the outbreak of the Ten-Day Scatter.

This wasn’t the best method, but it was the only option in the short term. Given time, Qu Yan was confident she could unravel all the poisons in his body one by one. But the man couldn’t wait. Given his current physical condition, once the poison acted up, death was only a matter of time.

Since death was inevitable, why not take a gamble? If she won, it could be recorded in the valley’s medical books. If she lost… Qu Yan’s eyes turned cold, kicking that thought out of her mind. Even if she lost, she would snatch him back from the King of Hell’s hands.

If any ordinary doctor were present to witness this scene, they would be terrified. Such a devious method of using poison to combat poison, leaving life and death to fate, showed utter disregard for human life.

And he looked a hundred times more miserable than before.

What she had given him was Cold Leaf. The most prominent feature of this drug was its cold nature. In summer, the non-toxic roots and stems could be picked to make a cooling drink, while the most toxic leaves, if consumed in excess, would make one feel a chill penetrating to the bone, ultimately freezing to death even in the scorching summer heat.

It’s hard for a person to maintain rationality under extreme pain. Self-harm or hurting others, either wouldn’t be surprising, but judging from earlier, he would only choose the former. Qu Yan wrapped him tightly in the blanket, staring at him without blinking.

His whole body was trembling, large beads of cold sweat rolling down from his temples, soaking his wet raven-black eyelashes. Whether it was sweat or tears that fell on the pillow, it quickly soaked a patch. His left hand tightly gripped the blanket, and he never cried out in pain from beginning to end, but the cloth in his mouth was already stained with blood, and tiny whimpers came from within.

Time ticked by slowly, and he finally couldn’t bear it anymore. Pained groans escaped from between his tightly clenched teeth. Qu Yan looked at the blue veins on his neck, her heart filled with complex emotions.

When she was young and practicing medicine, she had once seen a person afflicted with a strange poison. On their deathbed, they were in unbearable pain, yet still stubbornly waited for their daughter to return, dying with their eyes wide open, staring at the door.

Qu Yan shook her head, pushing aside the thoughts in her heart. She lowered her gaze to look at the figure on the soft couch. After thinking for a moment, she finally leaned down close to the man’s ear, making sure he could hear what she said.

“I know you’re in pain, but if you can endure this time, I’ll help you unravel all the poisons in your body, ensuring you’re no longer controlled by them.”

The man’s eyelashes trembled, and his labored breathing became more erratic. Qu Yan knew he had heard her. The current situation was much better than she had imagined; at least he hadn’t passed out from the pain and lost consciousness.

Qu Yan had never seen a man who could endure such pain before. In the past, those gentlemen she had treated were all delicate masters, who would cry out in pain even from a small scratch on their hands, let alone enduring such inhuman torment.

Half a quarter of an hour felt exceptionally long and difficult to endure.

This afternoon, after Qi Ying saw the woman leave the room, he forced himself to get out of bed barefoot. Pain surged through his body, and he walked very slowly, supporting himself against the wall, finally coming to a stop in front of the wooden door.

Just a gentle push, and he could go out.

But he had only been awake for a day and didn’t even know where he was, let alone how to leave this place to find somewhere uninhabited. He stood at the door for a long time, then silently turned around, dragging his severely injured body around the room before finding this narrow and quiet corner.

Since death was inevitable anyway, he hoped that the ugly sight of his desperate struggle before death would not be seen by others.

That familiar pain struck again, and Qi Ying couldn’t help but cry out in agony. Then that woman came. He could feel his major acupoints being sealed, and something unknown was poured into his mouth, but he was powerless to resist.

Qi Ying opened his eyes with great effort, intending to tell her to leave, but what followed was an overwhelming pain that seemed to throw him into the eighteenth level of hell, with two little ghosts fighting to tear him in half.

But upon opening his eyes, he realized he was still in the world of the living.

“Are you feeling better?”

Qu Yan’s voice was very soft, her heart still hanging in suspense. He had endured the most difficult quarter of an hour, and the pain that followed would be nothing more than a minor discomfort to him. But seeing the man’s dazed expression, her heart sank involuntarily.

This method was dangerous, and it was her first attempt. She couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be any side effects.

Qu Yan raised her hand and waved it in front of his face, uncertain: “Can you hear me speaking?”

After a while, those unfocused black eyes slowly blinked, and he turned his head to look at her. His hair was sticky and clung to his cheeks, and he looked as if he had been pulled out of water. Qu Yan gently pulled out the cloth he had been biting on, and small streams of blood flowed down the corners of his lips. He was like a doll without sensation, staring fixedly into empty space.

He looked truly… fragile and pitiful.

She lowered her gaze and reached her hand into the blanket, only to find it soaked through, all from his sweat, indicating how much pain he had endured. Qu Yan paused, then gently placed his cold wrist on the side of the bed. After carefully checking his pulse, she finally sighed in relief, her voice no longer as soft as before.

“Does it still hurt anywhere?”

Qi Ying didn’t answer immediately, just blinked his eyes, and after a good while, he shook his head.

He had just been pulled back from hell to the world of the living. Everything was blurry, and it took him quite a while before he could see clearly. Qi Ying looked at the woman in front of him and found this scene strangely familiar, though at an inappropriate time.

“It really works, it actually has such an effect.” After verifying what she had thought, Qu Yan murmured to herself, pondering in her heart what could fuse with the Ten-Day Scatter, until she was interrupted by his voice.

“What did you give me?”

His voice was weak and powerless, yet strangely calm. Qu Yan’s fingers twitched, and she turned her head to see him struggling to sit up. She quickly put aside her thoughts and helped him up.

The thin aqua-colored shirt clung to his body, vaguely outlining his form. Qu Yan supported his narrow waist with one hand and placed the other on his back, feeling the shape of his spine against her palm, before leaning him against the soft cushions.

He had managed to sit up properly, but Qu Yan looked at the spots of blood on her palm, then moved to lift the blanket around his waist. Just before her hand touched the blanket, the man’s left hand pressed down on it first.

Qu Yan’s eyebrows had just begun to furrow, about to tell him to lift his hand, when he stubbornly repeated his question from earlier, his voice weak yet determined.

“Cold Leaf,” seeing the confusion in the man’s eyes, she explained briefly, “It’s of the same origin as the Ten-Day Scatter in your body. The two are both compatible and antagonistic, able to temporarily suppress the toxicity of the Ten-Day Scatter.”

He suddenly looked up at Qu Yan, his expression adding a hint of disbelief, “How do you know about the Ten-Day Scatter?”

Qu Yan’s lips stiffened, her expression turning somewhat strange, “I told you earlier that I’m a doctor. Don’t tell me you still think I was lying to you?”