CH 68

November 2, 2022Merchie

A few days later, the convoy arrived in the Imperial City.

Pei Zheng carried the small man out of the carriage and headed straight into the manor’s garden. That little pavilion had been empty for so long, but the servants were still instructed to clean it every day.

During the twelfth month1, it was always bitterly cold. The moonlight glowed weakly against the night sky.

Several candlesticks were quickly lit, and the entire pavilion was bathed in bright firelight.

The small man, dressed in a white velvet robe, was placed on the bed. His complexion was only growing paler, and the purple hue of his lips was only growing darker; some parts of his mouth were even beginning to turn black.

It was inevitable that the strenuous journey would take a toll on him. The poison had slowly begun to spread throughout his weak body. Even with Pei Zheng transferring spiritual energy to him daily, it would still be difficult for him to resist the effects of the toxins.

The manor’s housekeeper quickly ordered someone to set up a stove in the little pavilion. A charcoal fire roared to life, dispelling the cold air and replacing it with warmth.

But Pei Zheng touched the little prince’s hand, and it was still ice-cold. His expression immediately turned frigid.

“Can’t even stoke a fire properly, you band of useless things!”

The servants’ foreheads were already coated in sweat. Upon hearing these words, they hurriedly tossed several more chunks of charcoal into the stove, the outside of which was already red-hot.

If this had happened in the past, Pei Zheng would have punished these servants severely in order to quell his anger. But this time, he was hardly paying them any attention.

He waved his hand, and everybody else retreated. Pei Zheng simply plopped down on the edge of the bed, and tightly clasped the small man’s palm in his. His other hand reached out and brushed away the loose hair stuck to his cheek.

“You slept during the entire way back, yet you’re still not going to wake up?

In the days after you ran away from me, were you happy? Did you really think that I didn’t know where you had run off to?

I’ve finally recaptured you, and I’ve thought of thousands of ways to threaten you, punish you, break you, or to simply turn you into a madman. Is this really the only way I can get you to listen to me?

Forget it. Just get better, hurry up and get better. I definitely…won’t punish you anymore, all right?”

The small man on the bed had his eyes tightly shut. He looked pale and weak, as though he was hanging onto life by a mere thread, and didn’t respond at all.

It hadn’t been long, when the door to the little pavilion was suddenly pushed open. Two figures entered the building, bringing a gust of freezing wind inside with them.

As soon as they entered the Imperial City, Cheng Feng had rushed to the palace’s Imperial Hospital to summon Jiang Yubai.

It was already this late; Jiang Yubai had long since retired for the night. After he was woken up by Cheng Feng, he hurried over with his medicine box in hand, beads of cold sweat dripping down his face the entire way.

The fire inside the room was burning intensely. The moment he entered, a wave of heat washed over Jiang Yubai’s face.

Upon seeing the small man’s pale complexion as he lay on the bed, his heart tightened. He didn’t even greet Pei Zheng, instead lifting the little prince’s arm to check his pulse.

His pulse was extremely unstable; it constantly switched between being aggressively fast and worryingly slow. There was something wrong with his blood flow as well; the poison had probably worked its way into his bloodstream by now.

“This poison is a secret recipe created by the foreign clan, it is extremely toxic. Once it enters the bloodstream, it will spread quickly throughout the entire body. If it’s ingested by mouth, the toxins will spread through the internal organs, and the intestines would rot to mush, resulting in death.”

“But His Highness’s condition is a different case. All five viscera2 are still intact, and only a small amount of poison has entered his bloodstream. However, if it isn’t removed in time, it will decay his body from the inside and kill him.”

Jiang Yubai paused, and glanced at Pei Zheng, “Lord Pei must have used his spiritual energy to protect His Highness’s internal organs. Otherwise, on the way back from the borderlands, His Highness may have already…”

“Then, does Imperial Physician Jiang have a cure?”

Jiang Yubai had Cheng Feng hold his medicine box, “When I was younger, His Majesty was also poisoned by this recipe. But I discovered it before he began to show symptoms, so it was easy to detoxify his body. But His Highness’s situation is completely different. The poison has been in His Highness’s body for too long, and it has already begun to spread. I can only try.”

“Try?” Pei Zheng raised his eyes with indifference, “You must save him.”

Jiang Yubai’s hand froze for a second, and his medicine box almost fell to the ground. It was deftly caught by Cheng Feng, who handed it back to him.

“Huh! Pei Zheng, what makes you think you have the right to say that?”

Jiang Yubai had been biting back his words since the moment he stepped foot into the Prime Minister’s Manor. “I’ll tell you this, I want to save His Highness even more than you do! But what’s going to happen to him after that? Will he have to continue to be tortured by you, to the point that he’d rather die? At that point, it would have been better if he had just stayed with General Zhao in the borderlands and never came back!”

His harsh words echoed in the air, and the entire pavilion fell into dead silence.

Pei Zheng’s hand twitched from within his sleeve. His eyes were dark, the emotions in his gaze unclear. He suddenly smiled mockingly, “Say that again?”

Jiang Yubai straightened his neck and opened his mouth to repeat himself, but it was firmly covered by Cheng Feng, who was standing beside him.

There was finally a hint of emotion in Cheng Feng’s usually expressionless face.

“Master, just let Imperial Physician Jiang start the treatment. His Highness’s life is at risk, it can’t be delayed any longer?”

Jiang Yubai glared fiercely at Cheng Feng. He was really too strong; Jiang Yubai couldn’t move his lips at all under his hand.

Upon seeing that Pei Zheng didn’t respond, Cheng Feng released Jiang Yubai.

“Ptui!” Jiang Yubai furiously wiped at the corner of his mouth. Cheng Feng was right; now was not the time to argue with Pei Zheng, his first priority was saving the small man.

He quickly flipped open his medicine case, took out a set of silver needles, and laid them flat on the bed. Then, he lifted the blanket, and the little prince who had been lying quietly beneath it was revealed.

“You! Stoke the fire! It needs to be even hotter!” Jiang Yubai pointed at Cheng Feng as he spoke.

“You! H…help me with this!” Jiang Yubai pointed at Pei Zheng.

Cheng Feng added a few more pieces of charcoal to the stove, and the temperature of the room rose slightly.

Pei Zheng didn’t say anything more. He walked to the side of the bed and watched as Jiang Yubai busied himself.

“Have him sit up!” Jiang Yubai shouted.

Pei Zheng sat down on the bed, and leaned the weak little prince against his chest.

Jiang Yubai began to untie the small man’s robe, but after fiddling with it for so long, he couldn’t loosen the knot, and ended up covered in a layer of sweat.

He looked around the room, searching for a pair of scissors to just cut the robe open. But Pei Zheng merely lifted his arm, and stretched his slender, flexible fingers. The small man was stripped of his robe in just two or three movements, and there wasn’t a single drop of sweat on his face.

“Should I take off his underclothes?”

“…Yes.”

“Down there too?”

“…Yes, uh…no, d-d-don’t, no need to take off his pants…”

The small man’s bare upper body was as white as jade. His skin was the same creamy color as congealed fat, and was thin and tender. His old wounds had all long since vanished; the sight of his exposed, marble-smooth body would make most people lose all rationality.

There was only one scar that stubbornly remained: that neat set of bite marks, that stood out against the small man’s delicate protruding collarbone.

It must have been extremely painful, to be bitten hard enough to leave a permanent mark.

The entire room was engulfed in heat, but Pei Zheng’s fingers were still slightly cold. He planted a soft kiss upon the little prince’s collar bone, and lightly caressed the bite mark.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Pei Zheng’s voice was low and a little husky, but his ambiguous tone carried a hint of laughter.

Jiang Yubai suspected that what he actually wanted to ask was, “Isn’t it pretty? I’m the one who bit him.”

“You sick bastard!” Jiang Yubai gritted his teeth, “All right, put him down, I’m performing the acupuncture now!”

The small man was placed back onto the bed, and he lay still on his back. Jiang Yubai slowly inserted the silver needles into the acupoints of his upper body, and soon, the little prince was completely covered in a layer of needles.

But he still wasn’t waking up; in fact, nothing changed at all.

“What’s going on?”

Jiang Yubai frowned, “It shouldn’t be like this, why isn’t he waking up…”

He took Qi Changyi’s pulse again, and took out a needle that was slightly thicker and longer, “Cheng Feng, bring me a teacup.”

Cheng Feng soon returned with a teacup.

Jiang Yubai had him place the cup underneath the small man’s hand. He pinched the little prince’s pale, bony finger and pricked it with the silver needle.

There wasn’t any blood coming out, so Jiang Yubai had to stab deeper. As soon as he pulled the needle out, blood beaded at the little hole and flowed out in long strands. Only, the color of this blood wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a bright scarlet, rather, it was almost maroon. There were even a few drops of black.

Jiang Yubai stopped the bleeding from the small man’s wound, before he grabbed the teacup and sniffed its contents. Then, he dipped his finger into it and smeared the blood onto the back of his hand to examine it.

“How did the poison enter his body?”

“A medicinal bath.” Cheng Feng replied from the side.

“No wonder…” Jiang Yubai nodded.

He suddenly thought of something else, and his expression changed, “The medicine His Highness was drinking before…who prescribed it?”

Cheng Feng hesitated for a moment and looked over at Pei Zheng, who nodded slightly.

Cheng Feng responded, “One of General Zhao’s soldiers, who has some medical skills, said that when they had reached a town, an old doctor there had given them the prescription.”

“Which town? What’s that doctor’s name?”

Jiang Yubai shook his head, “There’s nothing wrong with this prescription. In fact, it’s extraordinarily effective. If administered with the proper dosage, no matter what kind of illness someone has, it can temporarily preserve their life.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“That’s the problem, it’s too effective. No ordinary doctor could come up with this recipe…However, there’s no time to worry about that right now.”

Jiang Yubai began to remove the needles on Qi Changyi’s upper body, “His Highness’s body must have been extremely weak before, why else would he need this kind of prescription?”

He glanced over at Pei Zheng, “The poisonous blood in his body needs to be drawn out before I can diagnose and treat him. I’ve already done all that I can with the acupuncture, so we can only use spiritual energy to separate the poison from his blood. However, this is extremely exhausting work, and will cost a lot of energy…”

Before Jiang Yubai could finish his sentence, Cheng Feng cupped his hands toward Pei Zheng, “Master, please allow this subordinate to try.”

But Pei Zheng pushed his hand away, and walked to the side of the bed, “I’ll do it.”

Cheng Feng was slightly shocked, “Master, you still have to go to court tomorrow. After so many days of absence, there must be a mountain of matters waiting to be taken care of, you can’t afford to have anything happen to you! Just let this subordinate…”

“You talk too much.”

Pei Zheng spoke those few words, and Cheng Feng immediately shut up.

Jiang Yubai helped the small man sit up, and arranged his limbs into a meditative position. Pei Zheng also sat cross-legged on the bed, and closed his eyes and concentrated on the flow of spiritual energy in his body.

“You must control your strength. You only need to separate the poisonous blood from the rest of his bloodstream; I have my own methods for drawing that blood out.”

Pei Zheng raised his eyes. The spiritual energy in his body was raging, and was desperate to burst out. But he couldn’t let it all pour out at once; he could only transfer a small, steady stream of qi from his palm into Qi Changyi’s body. Like a long, flexible dragon, that stream of qi wriggled through his bloodstream and separated the poisonous blood out.

Qi Changyi’s eyebrows wrinkled slightly as the purple color in his lips slowly began to fade. His entire was enveloped in golden light, his ink-black hair fluttering up from behind him. With his bare upper body, his closed eyes, and his creased brows, he resembled a fairy that was about to awaken.

“That’s enough! Withdraw now!” Jiang Yubai shouted from the side.

Pei Zheng suddenly retracted his palm and forced that stream of spiritual energy back into his body. His five viscera were immediately racked with tremors as the wave of qi crashed through him. To force spiritual energy back into the body like this was extremely harmful to one’s internal organs, and could even cause external injury as well.

A sweet, fishy taste rose in the back of his throat, but Pei Zheng remained silent and expressionless as he forced it back down.

Notes

Sorry about the long ass title

Thanks for reading~~

1.This refers to the twelfth month of the lunar year.

2.五脏 (wŭ zàng): a term in Chinese medicine, which refers to the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys.