“Oh my, what a temper the Seventh Young Master has,” a voice rang out. Clearly, his lion’s roar had worked. Xue Zi Ye finally appeared for the first time in five days, gliding into the room with a set of silver needles in hand. “Feeling like you need some more acupuncture?”
The moment he saw her, his anger evaporated.
“Hehe… I missed you,” he said, grinning sheepishly, knowing that he was still at her mercy. “Where have you been these past few days? Weren’t you going to give me another round of acupuncture? If you hadn’t come soon—”
“Hm?” She raised an eyebrow and gave him a sideways glance, silver needles twirling in her fingers.
“If you hadn’t come, the wound would have healed on its own!” He forced a smile.
Without even looking, she flicked her wrist, sending five silver needles into his chest, immediately silencing him with pain.
“You’re recovering well enough. A few more days of rest, and you’ll be able to get out of bed.” After checking his pulse, she tapped his chest with her knuckles. “You’re nearing thirty, yet you’re still getting beaten like this. Are you really as skilled as you claim? Or have you been lying to me, a woman who never leaves the valley?”
“You didn’t see my heroic form when I cut down my enemies with a single sword strike… I was personally trained by the master of Dingjian Pavilion in the art of the Mo Hun Sword!” he grumbled, rolling his eyes.
“If you’re the best in the world at anything, it’s getting beaten up,” Xue Zi Ye retorted, uninterested in joking with him. She carefully placed her hand on his back, feeling the vertebrae near his shoulder blades, her brow furrowing. “You’ve injured your spine again. If you’re not careful, you might be paralyzed one day. This is no joke.”
She knew his scarred body even better than he did. Across his back ran long, clean scars, slashing straight across as if the wings had been severed with a single, swift stroke. Those were her doing—three years ago, when he brought the Seven-Leaf Spirit Mushroom from the southern borderlands through the Central Plains to the Medicine Master’s Valley. She had dug out an entire cup’s worth of poison sand from his back.
Her fingers lightly tapped the fourth vertebra, and the pain shot through his back like lightning, piercing his brain.
He let out an involuntary scream as cold sweat drenched his body.
“Stop trying to act tough,” Xue Zi Ye sighed, her tone unexpectedly gentle for the first time. “Your body has reached its limit. If you want to save someone, you need to think about yourself too. I can’t keep helping you forever.”
Huo Zhan Bai panted heavily, gripping the blankets, a growing sense of unease gnawing at him.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, looking up at her. He noticed that after several days, her face looked paler than usual, and she no longer carried the same vibrant energy and sharpness. He felt uneasy. “What happened? Are you in trouble?”
She withdrew her hand from under the blanket and smiled faintly, tucking her hair behind her ear. “No, it’s nothing. Now that you’ve got the antidote, you won’t need to come here to be scolded anymore… You can’t afford my high fees, after all, so take better care of yourself in the future.”
Relieved, he laughed. “How could I not come back? I’m paying you with my life, aren’t I?”
Xue Zi Ye smiled briefly, but there was no trace of humor in her eyes. What would he do… she wondered, if he found out that the intricate prescription, filled with rare and priceless treasures from all over the world, was a lie from the beginning?
Mo’er’s illness had been congenital. When Qiu Shui Yin was pregnant, she had endured hardship and great trauma, resulting in a premature child who was too weak to live past ten years of age. Even Xue Zi Ye, with all her abilities, could only temporarily extend the child’s life; there was no way to truly save her.
But back then, she was still young and soft-hearted. She couldn’t bear to refuse his desperate pleas and didn’t want to leave them hopeless. So, she had written a nearly impossible prescription—every ingredient on that list was a legendary treasure, coveted by the martial world.
She had merely given him a goal, thinking it would ease his guilt as he searched in vain.
The child would certainly die while he was still searching for the ingredients.
What she hadn’t anticipated was that, year after year, this man would pursue that goal relentlessly, gathering each precious item on the prescription one by one and placing them before her. And against all odds, the child, under his tireless care, had clung to life. It was a miracle even in her eyes, as a so-called divine healer.
Could there really be someone in this world even more stubborn than me?
She sighed softly. Now… what was she supposed to do?
At this point, she couldn’t imagine what Huo Zhan Bai’s reaction would be if she told him the truth.
“Ow! What’s wrong with you?” he suddenly exclaimed, startled out of his thoughts. She blinked, realizing that without thinking, she had pushed a silver needle into his chest all the way to the hilt.
“Oh no!” she gasped. “Don’t move! I’ll take it out right away—whatever you do, don’t use your internal energy!”
Huo Zhan Bai looked at her in surprise. In all these eight years, he had never seen this usually fearless woman look so flustered. Anxiety crept into his heart. She was definitely dealing with something, but she wasn’t saying what.
They had known each other for so long that they had become almost the closest people to each other. This lonely woman had many secrets, but she never spoke of them. Still, there were some things even a seasoned martial artist like him couldn’t overlook: for example, he had seen her more than once kneeling by the frozen lake, murmuring quietly to someone long dead, sealed beneath the ice.
He had watched from afar, never approaching.
He had never asked her about it—just as she had never asked him why he so stubbornly sought a cure.
For eight years, he had fought and bled, and each time he returned from the carnage, she would be there at the end of the bloodstained path, waiting… he owed her so much.
Now that his wish was nearly fulfilled, was there anything he could do for her in return?
“Hey,” he said, wincing as she carefully used a fine needle to reopen the wound and remove the one she had pushed in too far. “To celebrate my recovery, how about we share a drink tonight?”
Xue Zi Ye paused, looking up at him. Her face was exhausted, but she smiled unexpectedly. “Alright, who’s afraid of whom?”
* * *
Before darkness fell, and before she headed out to honor that drinking challenge, she returned to the Autumn Pavilion.
Behind heavy curtains, the room was filled with the calming scent of Tihu incense. Someone was still deeply asleep.
The bleeding from the back of his head had stopped. The first golden needle embedded in the vital Jade Pillow acupoint had been carefully removed and now lay on a golden plate nearby. The sharp tip of the needle was stained with dark blood, as if it had been pulled directly from the deep recesses of bloodied memories.
The darkness wrapped around him like a death shroud.
Layer after layer, the hallucinations came.
Where was this… where was he? Was this… the place he had come from?
His hands and feet were bound to the walls, with no light anywhere around. He huddled in a dark corner, knees drawn up to his chest, his mind as blank as the space surrounding him. No one ever came. In this small, cold wooden room, it was always just him, alone.
Outside, he could hear the faint sounds of children playing and the wind blowing.
Among the voices, one stood out, like the sound of silver bells. He recognized it instantly: it was the Han girl, Xiao Ye—Little Night—who was the only one in the village with eyes that were black and white, unlike the soft blue-grey eyes of everyone else.
During the long, lonely days locked in that dark room, everyone avoided him. Only Xiao Ye and Xue Huai would occasionally come to comfort him, talking to him through the wall. It was their voices that had sustained him through those unbearable days.
“Don’t worry, patients aren’t supposed to wander around,” she said, peeking through a small hole in the wall. Her eyes twinkled with a smile. “Ming Jie, you’ll get better soon, and then you can come out and play with us again!”
"Really... he'll get better soon? But, what exactly is the illness he has? Has anyone told him what sickness he's suffering from?"
He stared blankly at the pair of eyes behind the small hole. It had been so many years since he last saw her. Xiao Ye must have grown up by now, right? But he couldn't see her. He could barely remember what she looked like because, for seven years, all he could see of her were those eyes through the tiny hole: bright, warm, concerned.
Ever since he killed someone at the age of seven, everyone had been afraid of him, calling him a monster. Only she still called him her little brother.
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