~~~

Liu Jin groans as he rubs his eyes. He has his elbows on the table, and there are several stacks of notes looming before him.

Sighing, he shoves them to the side.

Some scatter to the floor, but Liu Jin can’t find it in himself to care. If he could set them on fire, he would have done it days ago.

“I give up.”

The words are said with complete certainty. They are the words of a man who has tried his best and found himself wanting. There is no fear or hesitation in him because he has accepted the inevitable.

“That would be a lot more convincing if this wasn’t the fourth time Boss has said that,” Su An pipes up from behind him. “And that’s just this morning. If we count the times Boss has given up this week, the number would be in the double digits. I think we can safely say Boss is bad at giving up.”

“... admittedly, I may be something of a sore loser.”

A yawn escapes Liu Jin’s mouth after saying that. He moves his head from side to side, enjoying the cracks that follow. One of his hands absentmindedly rubs his back. He has been sitting for far too long.

The two are in the house Liu Jin once shared with Xiao Shuang. After she left with Meng Yue, the little house inside the Xiao Sect’s compound became a refuge of sorts for Liu Jin. However, as his duties within the Xiao Sect have grown, the small yet comfortable cottage has gained a second function.

An office.

His office, to be exact.

“As long as Boss prevails by the end, that can only be a good thing! In that case, it isn’t called being a sore loser but rather being determined! Still, this Su An must admit some surprise. I thought for sure Boss would have finished this by now.”

Liu Jin clicks his tongue, some annoyance leaking through. Not at Su An but at the situation he finds himself in. A quick glance at the window shows him the sun is still up. That means it should still be early in the afternoon,

Funny. He’d have sworn he has been here a lot longer than that.

Boredom, it seems, has a way of altering one’s perception of time.

“If we were only talking about medical expertise, then I am sure it would be within my power to understand anything written down by Doctor Wu. I am certain Patriarch Xiao Zheng was thinking that when he gave me this task.” Liu Jin taps one of the stacks of notes on his desk for emphasis. “Unfortunately, most of Doctor Wu’s notes are written in code.”

After Doctor Wu’s death, the Xiao Sect seized all of his assets. The value of some of those was relatively easy to ascertain. For example, all his precious ingredients are now safely stored in the Xiao Sect’s vault. Similarly, the Elders of the Xiao Sect have been deliberating among which disciples should the cultivation pills they had acquired be distributed. As for the many clinics Doctor Wu had controlled, the Xiao Sect will likely keep most of them running under different management.

Doctor Wu’s notes, however, presented a different, more complex challenge.

Even if they call them Doctor Wu’s notes, it isn’t as though they found them all tightly bound inside a secret compartment. No, Doctor Wu’s notes are a collection of every single scrap of paper they had found with the man’s handwriting on it. Some of them are papers they found in the trash. Others had been zealously hidden. There are even a few books that were written by Doctor Wu.

Over the past few months, the Xiao Sect’s alchemists and doctors had done a good job of separating the useful notes from the non-useful ones. Liu Jin even helped out a couple of times at Xiao Zheng’s request, a task that he found himself enjoying more than he’d anticipated. The opportunity to share ideas and discuss medicine-related topics with people who don’t vastly outclass him has been rather pleasant.

Unfortunately, Patriarch Xiao Zheng has given him a very specific task regarding the notes.

“Do you see that book over there.” Liu Jin points to a book he had left on the corner of the room. “That is Doctor Wu’s journal.”

“He kept one?”

“Rather old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“Very. Still, isn’t that a good thing, Boss? If it is a journal, that means it has valuable information.”

Liu Jin dearly wishes Su An were right. Alas, he must shake his head.

“It would be easy if that were the case. Unfortunately, Doctor Wu’s journal is full of mundane day-to-day stuff. Did you know Doctor Wu loved six-colored fish? He had it at least once a week and was thinking about making a book on its medicinal properties. He also really hated the Wan Clan and wrote quite candidly about them. Like I said, most of it is rather normal.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Doctor Wu had also been rather descriptive about his (apparently many) affairs, but Liu Jin decides against mentioning that.

“However, every so often, Doctor Wu would write a few lines in code, usually on the margin of the page. Are those lines important? Is it even code, or is it just random nonsense to throw us off? Could it be that his seemingly mundane anecdotes are hiding the real answers?” Liu Jin shrugs his shoulders. “We don’t know, and it is because we don’t know that we cannot discard the possibility. Then there are these.”

He pats the notes at his right using a little too much force, his frustration at them showing.

“Unlike the journal, these pages are fully written in code. However, Doctor Wu didn’t always use the same code. To complicate things, some notes were written decades apart according to our alchemists. Did Doctor Wu change his code naturally, or did he randomly decide on new ones?” Liu Jin crosses his hands behind his head, leans back, and sighs. “It has been… difficult. Well, even though I say all that, it is not like we haven’t made any progress.”

“But still not enough to find out what Patriarch Xiao Zheng wants to know, right?”

Liu Jin’s chair creaks a little as he suddenly puts more of his weight on it. A lone strand of hair falls on his nose. He huffs and blows it away.

“It is not as if I can’t understand why Patriarch Xiao Zheng wants that information, but personally, I have had enough of Soul Draining Parasites for a lifetime.”

Soul Draining Parasites are hardly something that can be called common, yet thanks to Doctor Wu, Elder Hui had obtained quite a few of them. One egg was used against Patriarch Xiao Zheng, and much later, Elder Hui had dared to use another one on Xiao Fang.

It is only natural for Patriarch Xiao Zheng to want to know how had so many eggs been produced.

However, the subject is not one Liu Jin enjoys reading about.

“As far as we have been able to tell, the original egg came from the Yun Sect,” Liu Jin says, grabbing one of the notes and holding it against the light. “This happened decades ago. Yun Peng was apparently far more stable back then. He brought the egg to Doctor Wu and tasked him with finding a way to breed more. It was quite the undertaking.”

Given the desperation Liu Jin had been able to glimpse in some of Doctor Wu’s notes, the man’s life had likely depended on it.

Su An hums. “Considering everything that happened, he obviously succeeded.”

“That he did,” Liu Jin says, nodding. “Finding out how he did it is not quite so simple, though. Even among the parts of the notes I do understand, he makes allusions to things only he knows about.”

In other words, gaining a full understanding of the notes requires one to make several unintuitive leaps of logic. Had Liu Jin been someone who knew Doctor Wu well, it wouldn’t be impossible, but that’s not the case.

“What about asking Doctor Wu’s disciples? They’d probably be able to offer Boss some insight.”

“Xiao Nan told me they are all under observation.”

Su An’s eyebrows rise. “Still?”

Liu Jin nods.

Like it nor not, several of the city’s doctors had been taught by Doctor Wu. They couldn’t just throw them all out.

Well, they could have, but that would lead to its own set of problems.

Su An lets out an impressed whistle. “The Elders are really not taking any chances, huh?”

“That seems to be the case. I was even tasked with examining a few of them.”

“Examining?”

“Assessing their medical knowledge and identifying the ones who are above average. I imagine the ones that prove trustworthy among that group will be put to use.”

The Xiao Sect never lets anything go to waste.

“Regardless, since I cannot just bring one of them here for insight, it is unlikely I will be done with this anytime soon. I have told you this before, but you do not have to stay here with me. I cannot imagine this sort of job is any entertaining to watch.”

It is not the first time Liu Jin has told Su An this. Like always, Su An shakes her head in negative.

“My place is at Boss’ side,” she declares, one fist clenched dramatically in front of her. “If I am not here, who will protect Boss?”

“Protect me?” Liu Jin raises an eyebrow. “From what? A paper cut?”

“Worse. If this Su An is not here, then Boss will surely overwork himself to death. Just imagine, it’d be as if Doctor Wu had killed Boss from beyond the grave.”

Liu Jin stares at Su An in silence for nearly a full minute.

“You make a fair point.”

“Naturally! Boss may keep telling this Su An that she doesn’t need to be here, but Boss should be the one taking a rest. Boss has been here since last night. Hasn’t he?”

Liu Jin pointedly avoids Su An’s gaze.

“That may be the case.”

“See!” Su An points at him. “This is why Boss cannot be alone! If not, Boss is capable of forgetting about eating and sleeping! That’s not healthy!”

Liu Jin wisely decides against mentioning he has not eaten anything for the past week.

Besides, it is not like he needs to do so.

“I bet Boss even forgot what day is today!”

“What day?” Liu Jin cocks his head to the side. Is there anything, in particular, he is forgetting about? Surely not.

Right?

The stare Su An gives him is decidedly unimpressed.

“The feast, Boss. The feast.”

Like that, it clicks. Liu Jin’s eyes widen.

“Is it that day already?”

His hopes of Su An telling him she is just joking go unanswered when the girl nods solemnly instead. Immediately, Liu Jin rises to his feet, the chair clattering to the ground behind him. More notes go flying to the floor.

“Let’s go.”

Even as Liu Jin starts heading for the doors, Su An doesn’t move. Instead, she coughs gently but firmly into her fist.

It is at this moment that Liu Jin takes a look at himself. He lifts his sleeve and takes an experimental whiff.

A hundred-and-eighty-degree turn is made.

“I will take a bath, and then we will go.”

“I will prepare Boss’ clothes.”

Liu Jin doesn’t know what he’d do without Su An. He really doesn’t.

~~~