Nick managed to arrive in the valley after twenty minutes. His speed was a bit faster than YunYun’s thus he was previously slightly holding back. King Kong was impatiently waiting near the doe who he lied not far from the lake.
“Snow and YunYun went to get more supplies. We’ll have to manage for now.” Nick said after arriving, “We will have to treat her a bit further away, because otherwise the poison might directly get in the lake and pollute its waters. I’m sorry about this, King Kong, bring her here.”
Ape wasn’t worried about the Snow at all – that tiger could take on a whole city, maybe even two, therefore he fully concentrated on the task in front of him.
“Good. I’ll gather the water, but when I start, you will have to refill the bucket from time to time.” Nick instructed.
It was already past midday and there was not much time left till dusk. He had to be as fast as possible.
YunYun, on the other hand, had a different problem – she had to hold on the Snow’s back with all her strength. At first everything around her turned into blur, but few moments later her eyes started to tear up. To protect them from the wind she tried to use the same technique she used while diving under water, but as soon as her vision cleared, she got dizzy and almost fell off. Then YunYun just closed her eyes and prayed Snow wouldn’t let her fall, because falling from his back at this speed might be similar to falling off from a ten storey building.
She was confident in Snow’s speed, but didn’t expect for him to cover the whole distance before the nightfall. For her and Nick it would take four, maybe even five days, but the tiger managed to get there in around eight hours.
When Snow stopped and YunYun jumped down, she staggered a bit and only then could stand more or less normally. Through the trees she could see the lake and further in the distance there was the camp as well.
“You were really fast! Alright, I’ll try to be quick well. Wait here!” She whispered and dashed out of the forest while Snow lied down and now from a distance he didn’t look much different than a pile of rocks.
There was no need to care about her image and YunYun ran at full speed towards her mother’s tent. Some people in the distance saw her, waved and cheered, but she didn’t even notice them.
“YunYun! Are you alright?” Princess Min saw her first and anxiously asked. She knew Nick and YunYun had a dangerous task therefore her sister’s disheveled look made her anxious.
“I’m fine, sister! Is mom inside?” YunYun quickly answered and ran in before receiving a confirmation.
Inside the tent her mother was preparing for the evening meditation and was pleasantly surprised to see her youngest daughter. Before she could even say something, YunYun already ran out, leaving behind some seemingly chaotic sentences and peck on her cheek.
“I don’t have much time, Snow is waiting. We’re fine and dealt with the problem you asked, but we have to save the doe and I need a ton of bandages. You can go back to Xian, well return in few days.”
Snow? Doe? Bandages? Did her daughter hit her head somewhere?
Queen Hu left her tent only to see her daughter commanding everyone around the camp to bring over the bandages from their medical supplies. YunYun was stacking them in a neat pile, but queen noticed the inconspicuous wristband in which large part of the cloth disappeared.
“Where is Nick?” Queen Hu asked.
“He is with King Kong, trying to save the doe. She has terrible poisonous wounds, but he said we still have a chance. I need to get as many bandages as possible and we don’t have much time.” YunYun’s explanation didn’t make much sense, but at least queen understood that both of them were alright.
“What else do you need?” She asked her anxious daughter.
“We need few empty barrels, but I have no idea why.” YunYun honestly said.
“Alright, everyone listen up! I want five large barrels filled with all the bandages you have near my tent within two minutes!” Queen shouted infusing Qi in her voice.
“How far you have to go?” This time queen chose better wording so her daughter’s answer made some sense.
“Not sure. Four, maybe five days to the north or north east. But Snow managed to cover in few hours.” YunYun smiled.
The first part was still understandable, but the second didn’t make any sense again.
Suddenly a loud roar shook the lake waters, causing light ripples run on the surface.
“Oh! That’s Snow.” YunYun got anxious again, “He’s definitely getting impatient after hearing you command everyone.”
“Snow? Hearing my command?” Queen got more and more confused with every next sentence YunYun blurted out.
“Yes, he’s waiting for me in the forest. Nick told him to not show himself, otherwise there could be a problem.” YunYun honestly said to her mother.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
“Sigh, YunYun, who is ‘Snow’?” Queen was almost desperate.
“Oh, it’s the rank six tiger we met on the way. He’s really nice.” YunYun seriously explained, “I’ll bring these barrels in your tent, so I can hide them unnoticed, alright?”
Then, without waiting for confirmation, she rolled all five barrels that surrounding people gathered in her mother’s tent and hid in the bracelet.
“All done! I have to go. Don’t worry about us, we’ll be back in Xian after few days, maybe a month.” YunYun waved and ran off. Her arrival and departure was like a sudden tornado that created chaos in people’s minds.
“What exactly are they up to?” Princess Min asked her mother.
“No idea.” Queen shook her head, “But at least we know they are safe. I’ll go back to the capital, but you stay here with a small team and wait for them, it doesn’t matter if it takes a month or longer.”
Both queen and the eldest princess were completely confused. They wouldn't care for YunYun mentioning the rank six tiger if not for that terrifying roar few moments ago. Was it really possible? Then was it really truth they met a rank six beast in the Nestri empire as well?
But at this moment YunYun was already on Snow’s back. Tiger got increasingly anxious and even when YunYun returned and confirmed she got all the necessary items, he was still having a bad premonition.
When at dawn they returned to the valley, YunYun and Snow saw the King Kong squatting near a pile of dirty and bloody cloth pieces and Nick sitting near the doe in a meditative position, holding his hands on its neck and torso.
To their great shock they saw that while they were away Nick managed to remove only three bolts.
Sensing them approaching, Nick opened his eyes and said in low voice, “We ran out of clean cloth in the evening, but even if we had more, maybe I could’ve removed another one of those things. Sigh, some of the wounds are really nasty. How did it go at your end?”
“Snow is really fast. Mom also helped.” YunYun passed the wristband over.
“Great, come here. Remember how when I removed the poison from your body, I helped you to activate the antidote with my Qi? While we can’t operate at nigh, I’m trying to do something similar here. Unfortunately we don’t know which poison exactly was used, but there are some general antidotes that can still help, even if it’s a little bit. I’m feeding Bambi these twice every hour and helping her dissolve in her stomach. In addition, I’m trying to slow down the spread of the gangrene.” Nick explained.
“Bambi?” YunYun was surprised.
“Ye, I got tired of calling her ‘doe’ and gave her that name. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, it’s a nice name.” YunYun smiled and sat next to the doe, “You want me to switch with you?”
“Please. I’ll rest for an hour and then it should be bright enough for us to continue.”
Then Nick quickly explained the route of the Qi flow that he used and let YunYun take over. He was exhausted and even ten minutes of sleep would help a lot.
He passed out nearby with a couple of rank three beast cores gripped in his fists, hoping he could absorb Qi from those during his sleep based on pure instinct.
When the sun rose, Snow woke Nick up without holding back. At first the youth was confused from the heavy smack on his shoulder, but after a second got up and approached YunYun and Bambi.
“How is she?” He asked.
“All the same. Will you continue?”
“How’s your Qi? I think it’s good to continue the infusion of Qi since it helps her to hold on.”
“I can still go for an hour and then I’ll have to rest.”
Thus during the following day Nick constantly continued to operate and YunYun assisted. The two rank six beasts nervously paced around, but couldn’t help in any way. Seeing them being so restless Nick took out few herb samples and suggested for them to find similar ones, preferably more mature and ripe. Since he planned to use them almost immediately, there were no requirements on the gathering method and simply biting stalks off sufficed.
With the two beasts busy, both youths felt the pressure lessen. YunYun soon found out the reason why Nick asked for the barrels. He simply didn’t want to throw the dirtied cloth pieces away in the nature and to put everything straight in his wristbands was also quite disgusting. Thus they tightly stacked one full barrel with the waste and only then stored it.
Even if the day went by smoother, until the dusk they managed to remove only eleven bolts. The last seven had to wait for the next day and everyone, even the beasts understood that while the numbers sounded nice, the situation was worsening by a minute.
They continued to infuse Qi and feed antidotes to Bambi the whole night while swapping every two hours to rest. Already in the evening Nick created more antidotes from herbs that King Kong and Snow gathered and now they had even some spare portions for the next day.
In the morning Nick and YunYun continued the operation, but both beasts had nowhere to direct their anxiousness to. Bambi got weaker and weaker and if on the previous day Nick let her fall unconscious to rest from pain, then now he was too afraid she might never wake up. Thus he asked YunYun to continuously talk to her and the only thing that came to her mind was to retell the story how she was abducted and how they ran away from the Nestri continent.
To her big surprise, the contents were so interesting that not only Bambi, the other two beasts were listening with great interest and it seemed her patient was in less pain as well.
In the afternoon Nick removed the final bolt and now Bambi looked like a piece of land after intense bombing. Her belly and side had huge holes and some of those were already festering. Nick was close to despair because he couldn’t think of any way on how to help her recover. The doe was simply dying in front of them despite all their efforts. A sudden sentence from YunYun worsened the atmosphere even more.
“Why does Bambi’s leg look so strange?”
Nick wanted to jump up, kick at the trees and curse. All this time they hadn’t noticed she had a broken leg and it started to heal improperly. If the bones grew back this way, she would never be able to run, even is she survived.
“King Kong! Come quickly! Bambi’s leg was broken and it can’t heal like this.” Nick shouted, “Hold her still, this will hurt, a lot. I’m sorry!”
With his left hand he held the broken leg and infused Qi in it to feel the bone structure better. Then he struck down with his right palm and separated the bones again, while Bambi moaned in pain and almost passed out.
Nick put the bones together properly, smeared with the healing paste and then tied few splints so the leg would heal correctly this time.
Unfortunately there was nothing more they could do except for infusing the Qi in Bambi’s body. They kept feeding the antidotes since there were clear signs of poison in Bambi’s inner organs, but unfortunately at some point antidotes stopped showing any effects.