In another life, Li Hanyi would never have had to do this. Client meetings were for management and she was far too low on the hierarchy to matter. But the System had seen fit to intervene in her demise, and now she got to pay the price for a second chance.
She would have been perfectly happy somewhere else. Anywhere else. But no, Liu Fend needed her here to distract the mayor and his wives. No real instructions had been given. Just go there and keep them there. That was no small feat. But Li Hanyi would find some way to make it happen, just as she always had and always would where Liu Feng was concerned.
Li Hanyi made her way back to the Xiaolian mayor’s house a bedraggled mess. Her robes were stained by grass and blood, her hair a loose braid tied with a ribbon that didn’t match, and her silver mask had bits of grass stuck in the filigree. She was the very picture of a cultivator who had gotten in over their head.
The mayor met her at the front door, panting and sweating as if he had run a marathon while everyone was away. His chins wobbled and the rings on his fat fingers glinted in the light from the braziers. “Honored cultivator! Is aught amiss?” He sounded nervous. As if he automatically assumed the worst case had happened and all of her fellow cultivators had been wiped out.
He trembled as he stared, but the look in his eyes was all greed.
Li Hanyi managed to scrounge up a cheerful smile out of the ghost of Qian Cao’s training. Who knew that learning to keep a straight face during treatment would come in handy like this? As far as the mayor was concerned, Li Hanyi was a bastion of compassionate concern. “No, no, dear sir. All is well with my fellows. The hunt proceeds as well as can be expected.” That was to say that the Bai Zhan disciples were cleaning out everything in the woods and Li Hanyi hadn’t done all that much to help.
The mayor nodded along as if everything made perfect sense. “Of course, of course,” he simpered as he rubbed his fat hands together. “Ah, but then how might this lowly one assist, Honored Cultivator?”
Li Hanyi watched the sweat roll down in fat little trickles and realized that she did not, in fact, have a plan. Liu Feng had told her to distract the mayor without knocking the man out and she wasn’t exactly known for her social skills. How in the hell was she supposed to distract this man for hours with just talking?
[Would you like to purchase Small Plot Pusher for 500 B-Points?]
Absolutely the fuck not.
She hadn’t gone through all this effort to waste her points on having the System use what it considered the optimal route. That way led to the protagonist’s harem. No, Li Hanyi would figure it out herself. What did she, a Qian Cao disciple, have to offer?
Oh. The solution was staring her straight in the face.
“Honored customer,” Li Hanyi began with her most charming smile. “It had occurred to this one’s betters that this one would be better suited to ensuring that the health of Honored Customer was not being threatened by whatever is killing the youths of Xiaolian.”
When in doubt: fall back on being a doctor.
***
A full physical in her first life involved an awful lot of nudity, poking, and methodical prodding. On top of that, there was always the dreaded combination of blood work and urinalysis. But this was ancient fantasy China. People didn’t just pee in cups to figure out if they had some protein imbalance or whatever.
Everything could be figured out by examining someone’s qi.
Li Hanyi wished she was kidding about that. But no, as an experienced Qian Cao disciple, she had learned how to diagnose all manner of ills and conditions by simply touching a patient’s meridians and running her own qi through. That didn’t mean that she wanted to touch the mayor. Nope, not with how greedy and gross he was as he looked at her. No thanks.
Instead, she draped a thin handkerchief over his wrist before she pressed her fingertips to his skin. The gauzy silk would keep her from having to touch him directly and made him feel oh so important. Like an emperor or some high-born lord instead of some random town’s mayor. Li Hanyi wasn’t about to tell him otherwise and ruin the entire distraction.
Because that’s all this was: a distraction.
There were things medically wrong with the mayor that Li Hanyi did not need to touch his qi to know. Chiefly, the most glaringly obvious, the mayor was overeating. Now, Li Hanyi did not begrudge anyone a snack and a good meal. Far from it, in fact. Good food made people happy.
But the mayor was taking that to an extreme.
His town was on the brink of collapse, people dying, and parts already falling to ruin from neglect. Rumors were already spreading about ghosts in the streets and monsters in the woods, causing potential visitors to stay far away. And yet, here the mayor was, living it up like a lord.
He was overweight, sedentary, over-heating in his brocade robes, and probably drinking more wine than water. His cholesterol was probably sky-high, liver fatty and burdened with cirrhosis, and his heart was probably working overtime to keep the paranoid man going.
But Liu Feng needed a distraction, so a distraction he would get.
This man was going to be in the peak of health by the time she was done with this examination and treatment. She wouldn’t even need her needles to do it. Li Hanyi would never tell Liu Feng, but she could still accurately hit a pressure point with nothing more than two fingers and her own spiritual power.
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She pressed two fingers to the mayor’s upturned wrist with a professional smile. “Please, allow me to examine you, Honored Customer.” Flattery would get her everywhere when it came to a vain man and the mayor was no exception.
His wives tittered amongst themselves about how sweet and professional the young man was. Such a shame he wore a mask over half of his face. The young cultivator would have his pick of women when he grew up otherwise. One of them boldly declared that the mask just added an air of mystery and she wouldn’t mind, only to be quickly shushed by her elders.
What did the mayor of a dying town even need with three wives?
He puffed up his chest, proud as a peacock, and the mayor couldn’t hide his pleased smile. It was rare for a medical cultivator to examine a normal mortal. Usually, they only did so for the obscenely rich and incredibly destitute. And yet, here Li Hanyi was, offering to do a full physical on the mayor for free. He’d be a fool to decline.
Li Hanyi closed her eyes, ignoring the man and his wives in favor of concentrating on the flow of qi within the man’s body. She kept her face carefully blank to keep from laughing at how very right she had been. The hard part was going to be phrasing the diagnosis and subsequent treatment in a way that suited the ancient fantasy Chinese sensibilities. She had to remember to be… poetic.
“Hm. Have you been experiencing difficulties with chill?” Li Hanyi removed her fingers and the handkerchief with another carefully bland smile. She folded her hands in her lap, graceful as any cultivator should be. “Your energies are stagnated and riddled with damp. It’s a good thing my shixiong sent me back.”
His wives, dramatic little things they all were, gasped and tittered at the diagnosis. But the mayor? He looked terrified. “What do I do, honored cultivator?”
It wasn’t as if the man was going to die right that very moment. Not from an ailment so common that every little old grandmother had an herbal blend on hand to deal with it. In her first life, it even came pre-packaged in the grocery store.
Li Hanyi closed her eyes and prayed to the cosmos for patience. When she opened them again, she was all professional. “Honored sir, the cure for what ails you is simple and complex at the same time. If you ignore my advice, this will kill you slowly but surely.”
His wives began to wail and Li Hanyi held up her hand for silence. “Your spirit is plagued by greedy demons. Would that I could banish them for you, but this is a battle you must fight within yourself. I can only guide you along the way.” That was poetic enough for her role as a mystical healer, wasn’t it?
“Whatever it takes, honored cultivator!” His jowls wobbled as he blubbered, pitiful and pathetic to the last.
Li Hanyi smiled thinly. “Very well. Remember this well, honored sir, for without it you will perish before your time.” She felt like she was pretending to be a sideshow performer, masking the truth behind ominous prophecies. “As your qi has stagnated, you must teach it to move once more. Slowly and carefully, you must guide the flow. Start small, walk in the sunshine-filled garden with your most beloved.”
The wives sounded delighted by this part of the treatment plan.
“The food you eat must be carefully managed. Avoid heavy, fried foods and meats.” Li Hanyi could and would give this man a treatment plan that would turn him into a monk. No meat, alcohol, fried foods, or anything fattening. Daily walks in his garden with his wives. Diet, exercise, and human interaction. All the parts needed for a healthy and happy life. In theory, anyway.
She could keep going for a very long time.
And she did.
***
Li Hanyi tucked her hands in her sleeves and waited at the entrance to the mayor’s house. The mayor and his wives were holed up in their bedroom, terrified out of their minds of the impending cholesterol-driven deaths their lifestyles would lead to if they didn’t change the errors of their ways.
The ancient fantasy Chinese commoner was not prepared for the concept of clogged arteries and livers wasting away thanks to a diet of wine and fried pig feet.
Liu Feng blinked at her as she stood there, placid as a frozen lake. He hummed once and strode across the paving stones toward her. “Li Hanyi. I told you not to knock anyone unconscious.”
“I didn’t,” she snapped back at him with a frown. “The mayor and his wives are currently experiencing the absolute horror of how human bodies function.” The uneducated never did well when introduced to the full possibilities of how the human body could and would fall apart at the tiniest inconvenience.
His eyebrow quirked up and Liu Feng snorted. “Somehow, with you, I get this feeling that is just as bad.” He shook his head. “Harming innocents isn’t what Cang Qiong stands for.”
“A little mental scarring will do them good, honestly.” Li Hanyi pulled her hand out of her sleeve to flap it at him. “A lifestyle like that is bound to kill them. And now they know exactly what it does to their bodies. In sordid, graphic, detail.” The only thing Li Hanyi hadn’t done was give them a mandatory Powerpoint presentation complete with illustrated slides.
Liu Feng frowned all the harder. “Be that as it may, Li Hanyi, you didn’t need to go that far just to distract them from whatever nefarious plot they had going in this town. Tea would have sufficed.”
She grimaced. “You need to stop associating with shizun,” she muttered under her breath. Li Hanyi cleared her throat noisily before speaking up. “Look, I did what you asked. You don’t get to be picky about the method after the fact. Now, did you do your part or do I need to go back in and start talking about venereal diseases?”
The look on his face could only be described as determined yet baffled disgust. “Why is that your solution to needing an additional distraction? No. Nevermind that, I don’t really want to know.” Liu Feng shook his head as if to clear even the ghost of such a thought from his mind. “Look, here is the cause of all the monsters in the woods.”
He held out his hand, palm outstretched, and Li Hanyi squinted as she stared at the broken mess of paper slips and blood-stained porcelain. “Someone put a lure in a tree.” His nose wrinkled in disgust at the very thought. “So now we need to find out who.”
She reached out to take a shard of the porcelain between two fingers, turning it this way and that in the firelight. Something about the pattern looked familiar. “Was this… a teapot?” The curves of the remaining porcelain looked as if they belonged to a squat little teapot, one that probably had a matching set somewhere. Li Hanyi tilted the piece to squint at the bloody writing on the outside.
Liu Feng snorted derisively. “Was. It’s not anymore. It was stuffed with monster bait and I had to burn it to stop the lure.” He closed his had and tucked it back into his sleeve. “Your part in this is done.”
The ever so helpful System window that popped up at his claim said otherwise.
[Sidequest “The Ghost of Xiaolian” has now reached the final stage. Complete the goal to finish the quest and unlock the advanced weapon skill “???”.]
Li Hanyi sighed. “You mean your part in this is done. Mine’s just begun.” She tucked the shard into her sleeve before turning on her heel to head back inside. “Monsters in the woods, a teapot as a lure, the youth of Xiaolian dying… and through it all, the mayor and his wives are thriving.”
She grinned back over her shoulder at Liu Feng. “You didn’t think I would just let that go, did you?”
He clicked his tongue at her. “You really can’t just let it go, can you?” And yet, somehow, he managed to sound both proud and amused at her declaration. “Li Hanyi, you already figured out who set the lure, didn’t you?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea, actually. But I bet I know someone who does,” she replied smugly. “Come on, Liu Feng. This will be entertaining at the very least.”