Sometimes she wondered if there was a giant sign on her forehead that said “sucker here,” or “bother as you please.” It was an unkind thought that lingered far longer and more often than it should have. Every time her shidi made a sad face or looked at her like an abandoned puppy, she caved. Oh, Li Hanyi was ungracious about it, but her shidi had learned that she would never really say no to his requests.
Li Hanyi doubted that she would ever be worked to death like the first time, at least as long as her shidi had his way. Nor would she ever really want for interesting work with her shizun handing her new patient records regularly, and her shijies and shixiongs kept passing off problem patients left and right. Her life was, as best as she could call it, actually fulfilling.
Enough so that sometimes, she didn’t even regret dying.
Except for in the moments like this one, when she opened the door to the sight of some beseeching face that only brightened when they saw her. Shutting the door and pretending she never saw them didn’t make them go away and her shizun would be ever so disappointed if she left them out there with no hospitality.
“Why in the world— Airplane, what the hell are you doing here and why are you carrying a body?” Her fellow transmigrator certainly knew how to test her patience, and Shang Fenhua had a special talent for it.
“Han-dage! Thank goodness you’re home. I, uh, didn’t know who else to go to. And I couldn’t just leave him—.”
She cut off the panicked flood of chattering with a wave of her hand. “Yeah, ok, so not a body then. Bring him in, before he becomes one,” she hissed at him. Right there, on her forehead, that “sucker” sign was clearly just stuck in the permanently on position. But her professional pride as both a righteous and medical cultivator wouldn’t allow her to just leave a patient to die on her doorstep.
It was a good thing that Li Hanyi had been given claim to this clinic years ago, converting the drab room into something close to an acupuncturist’s wet dream. The room tended to unnerve most people, understandably so, as no one wanted to look at signs they were going to become a pin cushion while they were being treated. She still had all the basic bits and bobs necessary to treat all manner of ills, but her specialty was clear.
The bloody body dumped on her examination table might, however, be pushing the very limits of her craft. There were some things that Li Hanyi knew perfectly well were outside the scope of Airplane’s fantasy world, and bringing the dead back to life was number two on that list. Not impossible, but so close to it that it might as well have been.
But the body on her table was still breathing, albeit very rough and wetly, and so it was Li Hanyi’s sacred duty to ensure that kept happening. That did not, however, mean she had to be happy about it. “What’d you bring him to me for? Shizun was right on the way,” she griped as she peeled back an eyelid to check her patient’s bloodshot eyes.
One touch of her hand to her patient’s skin was all the clue she needed. Ice cold to the touch, preternaturally so, beyond anything his blood loss warranted. Blood that, upon closer examination, was almost blue-black.
“Shang Fenhua. Did you bring a demon into a cultivation sect?” Li Hanyi spoke slowly as the horror dawned on her.
“It’s Mobei-jun,” he replied shrilly like that was an entire answer to the question.
[Core joint mission “Save Mobei-jun” has begun. Successful completion will result in the awarding of 1,000 B-Points. Mission failure will result in the loss of 5,000 B-Points.]
She only had a measly 3,200 B-Points to her name after her account had been upgraded to User status. “Oh my god, it’s not like I was just going to let him die.” She’d take the free points for doing her job, though.
The young demon was, to put it bluntly, at death’s door. Li Hanyi didn’t have the time or luxury to cast aspersions as to the quality of his character. Airplane brought him to her for a very good reason and she would do her best to be worthy of his trust. Everything she had ever learned was going to be put to the test.
He’d have scars beneath his robes. But his organs would stay on the inside where they belonged, the bloody mess turning her fingers to ice as she stuffed needles loaded with various medicines in places they would do the most good. She sewed and sewed, bandaged over bloody gauze, stuffed organs back where they were supposed to be, and did her best to keep the body on her table alive.
Shang Fenhua was put to work as her impromptu assistant, bringing her every little thing she pointed her bloody fingers to or barked out requests for. He kept a running commentary out of nerves and she tuned out his frantic muttering in favor of keeping the future Mobei-jun alive.
Demons healed faster than humans. They were more resilient and aged as slowly as cultivators, the very malevolent reflection of their true nature. That was the only thing keeping Mobei-jun alive. A terrible part of her could imagine how badly Shang Fenhua would have bungled treating the demon. He probably would have trusted in that fast healing and stuck to just throwing rags on to soak up the blood.
Impromptu surgery wasn’t Li Hanyi’s specialty, but Mobei-jun had a better chance at survival in her hands than he did Shang Fenhua’s. At least she had the medicine on hand to staunch the blood streaming from every wound. Someone had very clearly tried to murder Mobei-jun and only the grace of cultivators was keeping him alive.
The sun rose without them noticing, the twilight burned away with no fanfare. But still, still, she stitched and pressed, needles lightning quick as she jolted his body to stillness. A demon paralyzed by spiritual energy was a demon that wasn’t trying to rip her throat out for trying to help. Li Hanyi kept up a running commentary of her own, a lowly murmured litany of every little thing she was doing. Hopefully, the long list of treatments and his various injuries would be enough to keep her uninjured in turn when she released the paralysis.
It was the most stressful patient of her entire life.
Eventually, she straightened with a wince and wiped her blood hands on her now ruined robe. “That’s as much as I can do. The rest is up to him. Bed rest somewhere cold for at least three days until he can stand up without pain. I’m guessing here. Demon anatomy isn’t exactly a course they offer here.”
“Oh, thank you,” Shang Fenhua all but simpered. “You’re the best meimei anyone could ever ask for. Thank you for helping my king in his time of need.” He wrung his hands in front of himself, the very picture of a groveling attendant. “I owe you a thousand times over—.”
She cut him off with an unladylike snort. “Raise my budget to replace all this and deliver a letter to Liu Feng the next time you see him.” Months with no answer and here she was, still writing a letter a day like some pining lover.
Shang Fenhua gave her a pitying look. “Miao-meimei, are you still trying to get Liu Feng to answer? Maybe you should consider… moving on?”
“It’s the principle of the thing. Budget increase and letter delivery. Now take your demon lord and go so I can scrub my poor floors.” Liu Feng owed her at least an answer after all the letters she had sent.
She helped Shang Fenhua load his demon lord onto his back, needles at the ready to keep him paralyzed. “Take these all out when you get him somewhere safe. He needs to stay relaxed and calm while you move him or he’ll pop a stitch and his guts will fall out.” Li Hanyi fixed the demon with a glare, his paralysis making her brave. “If you struggle, Mobei-jun, you’ll die an ignoble death while trying to hold your intestines back in. I won’t put them back if you undo all of my hard work by being an idiot.”
Oh, she’d be cleaning up after this for hours.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
***
Her shidi had a black eye. He wouldn’t tell her where he got it from, pouted when she asked and whined until she set down her sorting and put ointment on his eye. Her sticky little shidi hung around while she restocked her clinic room, legs kicking on her examination table as he watched her work.
“Li-shixiong, why do you have to do all this right now? Come see my new garden plot. I finally got the Midnight Tiger Lily to bloom.”
Li Hanyi paused as she shoved another box of bandages into her little cabinet. The Midnight Tiger Lily was notoriously hard to grow, but its petals were an extremely useful soporific. So long as you avoid direct contact with the aphrodisiac pollen. But her own midnight adventure just days before had all but destroyed her carefully sorted medical cabinet supplies, and they very much needed to be replaced before Shang Fenhua stumbled in with new demon-induced injuries.
She shook her head. “Tempting, but your shixiong wants to be prepared for the next time your Shang-shixiong trips going up a flight of stairs.” That was her official and widely accepted excuse. It was so accepted, in fact, that she even sent an itemized bill for Shang Fenhua’s care to An Ding and had it accepted for reimbursement.
Her shidi didn’t care. “But Li-shixiong, I grew them just for you.”
“All these years and you still need an excuse to experiment?” She muttered under her breath as she worked. Her shidi was so sticky sometimes that it was a marvel. Li Hanyi shook her head again. “Help me finish and we can go after.”
The little cheer he gave was adorable for a thirteen-year-old that was now taller than his shixiong by a hair. He bent down to pick up a box, placing it neatly on a shelf above her head. The work went twice as quickly with a second pair of hands and soon they were done with the restocking.
She clapped her hands together and grinned up at her shidi. “There! Now we can go.”
She closed up her little clinic, once her shizun’s but now all hers, and locked the door behind her. Li Hanyi crossed the courtyard with her shidi sticking to her side like a rice bun. He thoughtfully shortened his stride so as not to inconvenience his shixiong like a good shidi should.
“I made sure to keep the Midnight Tiger Lily separate from my more volatile experiments,” her shidi gushed. It was cute how badly he wanted to show off his botany skills to his shixiong. “I’ve taken the liberty of de-pollinating the blooms for safety.”
Li Hanyi skipped over a loose stone on the path. “Doesn’t that diminish the petals’ efficacy?” That was rather the whole point: to grow the most potent medicinal herbs possible to be distilled into their purest form and diluted for use later. Unfortunately, the Midnight Tiger Lilies were just like every other Wife Plot plant in this world where removing the part that meant someone papapa or die turned the plant impotent.
Her shidi smiled softly at her. Really, he was such a thoughtful shidi, taking such precautions so neither of them would need to acquire an antidote or worse. “If the plant is then pollinated immediately with its benign cousin the Twilight Tiger Lily’s outermost pollen, then there is no efficacy lost.”
“Very good answer! You’ve done your research, shidi.” His chest puffed up with pride at her praise and she grinned. Of course, he did his homework before daring to show his shixiong. Her shidi was nothing if not a perfectionist like that.
He gave the smallest bow. “Nothing less would do.” Her shidi opened his mouth to say something else witty and stopped in his tracks. “Let’s go a different route, Li-shixiong.”
“Eh?” She blinked at him in confusion. “But this is the fastest way to your research garden, isn’t it?”
A branch broke on the path ahead and she whirled to face it, some paranoid part of her reaching into her sleeve to touch the blunt ends of her needles. What she saw had her frozen in place, terrified to move lest the illusion shatter.
Liu Feng had grown and matured in the months since she saw him last. He had grown into his face, a bewitching type of delicate beauty hidden beneath his eternal scowl and the furrows of his brows. No longer was her sparring partner a lanky bean pole, but finally filled out his white and blue Bai Zhan robes quite nicely.
“Liu Feng?” Her voice was tiny, a tremulous little hope that could be crushed at the slightest movement. “Is that really Liu Feng?”
Her shidi, ever faithful Mu Xiang, grabbed at her arm. “Li-shixiong doesn’t have to see him if shixiong doesn’t want to.”
It had been a year and a half since he had sliced up the side of her face and eight months since the last time she had seen him. Five months of letters every day. One hundred and fifty-three letters since she had last heard him speak.
“Li Hanyi.” Liu Feng’s voice was deeper, more settled. “We need to talk.” He sounded like he would rather be punched in the throat than talk with Li Hanyi.
She turned her head to look at her shidi. “Go on ahead. This shixiong will be by shortly.” Her shidi clearly didn’t want to go anywhere without her, but she shooed him away. “Go on. This shixiong will be fine.”
Liu Feng would never hurt her on purpose. It was a bit of an oxymoron, what with her face sliced up to ribbons by his sword the last time they had sparred. But now he wanted to talk after months of silence, and Li Hanyi wasn’t about to have her shidi witness what was probably about to be the most embarrassing conversation of her life.
She tucked her hands inside her sleeve just to do something while her shidi looked nervously between the two.
“Are… are you sure?” Her shidi did not want to leave.
Liu Feng, arms crossed behind his back, did not have the patience for her shidi. “Gp,” he snarled. “You’ve made enough of a mess as is.”
Her Mu-shidi? Make a mess? Highly unlikely. She frowned at Liu Feng’s gruffness as her shidi yelped and scurried off with his tail between his legs. “Was that really necessary? The boy was just trying to help.”
Liu Feng turned his glare on her. “What he does can’t be called helping.” He unfolded his arms from behind his back, ramrod straight as he looked her dead in the eyes. “I came to apologize for my actions.” Again, he sounded like he would rather not. “It has been brought to my attention that I have not been the greatest of friends.”
“The fault is mine.” Manners dictated a witty back and forth where they each tried to take the blame for each other’s misconduct. Li Hanyi had no desire to save face, only the desperate wish to have her friend back. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to it.”
“Li Hanyi. You did not hold my hand and force me to do… that.” She had missed his brutal frankness. It was refreshing in a society where manners and scholarly speech dominated. “I have been told that friends apologize instead of— are you laughing?”
She stifled a nervous giggle behind her sleeve. “No, no. It’s just— We’re so very bad at this.”
He snorted at her, already fed up with her antics. “If you do not want my apology, then what do you want?”
What did she want? For everything to go back to the way it was. To not be dead and on her second chance. For every action to not be dictated by the whims of the great and capricious System. Li Hanyi wanted a normal life. What she got instead was… this. “Can we not just be friends?”
“Friends,” he said slowly, tasting the idea and finding it strange. “We have not spoken in months and you want to be friends?” Liu Feng shook his head and stepped forward. “Li Hanyi, how many letters did you write?”
“Does it matter?” She quickly replied. “You never read them. Let’s pretend they never happened. You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”
Liu Feng gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, looking skyward for patience. “I never got them in the first place?” He growled at her, pacing like a tiger in a cage. “How good a friend you must think me to never question it! What kind of friend does that to the other?”
He never got them. Liu Feng never answered her because he never got her letters. All one hundred and fifty-three of them had never reached their intended recipient. “Then… how do you know I wrote you any?” And better still, why was he here now?
He frowned as he reached into the qiankun pouch at his waist, pulling out a familiar bit of folded paper. “Shang Fenhua delivered this this morning.” He shrugged. “Your shidi gave me the rest of them in a box after I beat him up.”
So that was why her shidi had a black eye and didn’t want her to talk to Liu Feng. The consequences of his own actions had come back to bite him. She probably should have been upset that Liu Feng had beaten up her shidi, but the thought that her shidi had betrayed her trust stung more than her obligations as his shixiong. “He never delivered them? That little brat.”
Liu Feng grunted. He seemed more offended that her shidi had done it to him than that her shidi had done it at all.
She sighed. “Well, no point now. You can just throw them in a fire or something. You’re talking to me again and that’s what matters.”
“No,” he said, brows furrowing even further. “They were for me and I’m going to read them.”
“Absolutely not. There’s no point to them now,” she snapped back. The things she had written when she thought he was throwing her letters into the fire, in hindsight, were things she would never normally say. She wondered if she beat him down, just once, if he would consider giving back the box or letting her watch him set them all aflame.
Better that than the alternatives. Better to let them burn than to have him know her quietest thoughts. Who knew what nonsense she had written when she thought no one was reading them? “Just toss them.”
“You were fine with me having them before,” Liu Feng pointed out. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have sent them. How many did you send?”
“Just give me the box, Liu Feng,” she snarled.
“No.” He gave her a bloodthirsty grin. “Not unless you can beat me in a fair fight.”
Oh. Oh, no. She shouldn’t be surprised that he immediately put her letters up as a prize. “Fine,” she bit out. She was more surprised that she agreed to it.