Chapter 81 — The Bandage She Tied

CHAPTER 81

The Bandage She Tied

“Aiya! Young man, you’re bleeding on my lane!” Granny Qin shrieked from behind her brazier. “Heaven help us, sit down, sit down! Have a sesame cake!”

Shi Feng looked down. A dark drop soaked through his outer cloth and landed on the stones outside his gate.

He’d washed at the lower spring and changed the cloth. That hid the worst of it, until the long walk through the capital pulled fresh blood through the binding. Now the whole lane was staring.

“The medicine peddler is hurt!” a woman gasped, stunned.

“That’s a lot of blood…”

“Quiet! Fairy Ling is coming!”

“…”

The gate flew open. Ling Qingzhu stood with her veil hastily tied and her fingers white around the latch. Her eyes widened at the blood before he crossed the threshold.

“Sit down,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Shi Feng sat. For once neither of them could find an argument.

She shut the gate and pulled off her veil. Only then did he see how pale she was.

She brought clean water, a folded towel and the little box of household medicines. He’d already cleaned the wound and swallowed a healing pill outside the city. What he needed now was a fresh dressing and time for the torn flesh to knit.

Ling Qingzhu knelt beside the stool and reached for the binding.

A strand of black hair fell beside her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear and bent closer. Shi Feng watched her instead of lifting his arm.

“Your arm,” Ling Qingzhu said.

He obeyed, still staring.

“Did you hurt your head too?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“No,” Shi Feng replied. “You’re just very close.”

Her fingers paused. Then she pushed his chin away with the clean towel, her ears red.

“Cut the edge first,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t pull it.”

She obeyed. Her hands were steady until the cloth came away, and then they stopped.

The tear was ugly. Bruises spread past it and darkened toward the ribs. His collar hid most of the marks on his throat, but when he moved to take the towel she saw enough of those as well. Her heart seized, and her whole body went still.

“The mountains?” Ling Qingzhu asked, her voice shaking.

“On the road home,” Shi Feng said.

Her gaze rose to his face. He couldn’t tell her about a dead mid Foundation Establishment cultivator, Shi Feng thought. She still believed his meridians were ruined and he was just a man who sold ointment from a board. To explain the truth, he’d have to give up far more than an attacker’s name.

So he guided her through the dressing instead. She tied it too tightly. He showed her where to loosen it, and she fixed it without one sharp reply. Then she sat back with the spare strip of cloth twisted between her fingers.

“You could’ve sent word,” Ling Qingzhu said. “A runner. A note. A rock through the window.”

“I got home,” Shi Feng said.

“Idiot! That’s not the same thing!” Ling Qingzhu said.

He looked at her. She was angry, but there was no contempt in it, no demand for payment, and no complaint about the trouble he caused. There was fear under the anger. Shi Feng was shaken. He was grateful, and he found he had no answer at all!

That night, she wouldn’t let him lie on the floor. She dragged the spare quilt off her bed and stacked it under his bedding herself, and then she lay down behind the bed curtain without a word. Shi Feng stared at the ceiling. A few steps away, her breathing stayed too quiet and too even to be asleep. She was listening to him.

The next morning he cancelled his furnace session.

Gao Yuan kept the deposit anyway and sent a note very fast. The room was reserved, he wrote. A sick tenant didn’t make a furnace owner any less responsible for his maintenance.

Shi Feng sent back a correction to the sum and an order that the remaining materials stay sealed. Then he told his buyers about the delay, one by one. Yan Meizhen accepted a later delivery and sent back a laughing note, teasing him for getting hurt without her. Zhu Shan sent his messenger twice with the same question: “Done yet?”

“Not yet,” Shi Feng told the messenger, both times.

He didn’t try to refine from his floor bedding. Mo Tianheng’s memories told him how the work should be done, and his wounded body told him why today was the wrong day.

For several days he used healing medicine from his own reserve. His physique took each dose cleanly. There was no pill resistance, and no impurity built up to turn the cure into another injury. But torn flesh still needed time to repair, and no pill could make the signal fort unhappen. The cost went into the account book beside the lost deposit.

Ling Qingzhu took over supper.

The rice improved after Shi Feng explained that lifting the lid again and again didn’t help it cook. The broth was less successful. She got impatient with floating scraps and added so many greens that the spoon stood upright.

“Is it edible?” Ling Qingzhu demanded, glaring at the pot. “Say yes.”

“It’s a forest,” Shi Feng said, and took a second helping.

She watched him eat it, and her shoulders loosened and the hard inspection was over. On the fourth evening she found him writing by the lamp, and she took the brush out of his hand.

“It can wait,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Your accounts have waited years. They won’t die tonight.”

“The furnace owner disagrees,” Shi Feng said.

“Then let him disagree by himself!” Ling Qingzhu said.

She capped the ink and moved the paper out of reach. He could have taken it back. Instead he watched her set a fresh cup beside him and adjust the lamp so its smoke stopped drifting into his face.

Nobody was watching them in the room. Nobody would praise her for a convincing marriage. It was concern, plain and simple, Shi Feng thought, and the thought pleased him so much that he let the account wait.

In the eastern residence, Sima Yu received a report that didn’t comfort him.

“Cao Wenshu hasn’t returned, Your Highness,” Ge Fan said, kneeling. “Our private searchers reached the old signal fort before the mountain patrol. His throat was pierced and his wrist broken in a close fight.”

“And the appointment slip?” Sima Yu asked sharply.

“Burned on the spot, Your Highness. Our men left the body before the road patrol climbed the ridge, so only his official royal service jade remained at his belt,” Ge Fan said. He swallowed. “We can’t tell who killed him.”

Sima Yu’s expression went cold, and his fingers trembled on the paper. A forty-year royal servant at mid Foundation Establishment, killed by someone nobody could name! And once the mountain patrol carried that service jade down to the palace, the King would demand to know why the eastern residence had borrowed him from active duty.

He read the report once more and held the unsigned appointment note over a candle. If anyone started investigating, it would begin by asking why he’d secretly paid a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator to enter mountains frequented by the crippled husband who had humiliated his household before the banquet guests. It might end by discussing the killing of a royal servant in terms he couldn’t control.

“The dead can keep the first question with them,” Sima Yu said.

The paper curled into black ash.

At Qingliu Lane, Shi Feng stood in the courtyard for the first time without stopping halfway across it. His side still ached, but the dressing stayed clean.

Ling Qingzhu came out carrying the basin.

“You’re not going out!” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I’m standing beside the tree,” Shi Feng said.

“You were looking at the gate,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“The gate is beside the tree,” Shi Feng said.

She narrowed her eyes. He let the argument end there and sat on the bench.

For the next dressing her hands didn’t hesitate. She loosened the binding before he asked and passed the clean cloth under his arm without touching the tender edge. Shi Feng watched the top of her bowed head. A loose strand of black hair slipped from its pin and lay against her cheek, and she ignored it until the knot was done.

“Better?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

She looked relieved. Then she scolded him: if he was going to ruin clothes in the mountains, he could at least wear the cheaper ones. He took the scolding without pointing out that she’d never bought a single robe he owned.

The bandage lay warm and neat against his side, and he thought that no physician’s work had ever felt so careful.

For this evening, that was enough.