The three of them were still shaken. They scrambled to their feet, covered in mud and utterly bedraggled.
Achou and Lin Yue hurried to help Doctor Zhang up. He was nearly too exhausted to stand.
They turned toward the sound and saw an old man standing behind them. At some point, he had appeared there, dressed in a gray cloth robe, his beard and hair completely white.
He was lean and wiry, his sharp eyes sweeping coldly over the three uninvited guests.
Two handsome young attendants followed behind him. One held a snow-white horsetail whisk; the other carried a celadon medicine bottle. They, too, looked untouched by worldly dust, as if they stood apart from the mortal world.
He was none other than Liu Buyan, known as “Rejuvenating Hands.”
Seeing his master, Doctor Zhang was both thrilled and apprehensive. He dropped to his knees with a thud. “Master! Your unworthy disciple, Zhang Ji, pays his respects!”
Liu Buyan’s gaze passed over Zhang Ji and settled on Commandant Lin and Achou. “Zhang Ji? You left my tutelage long ago. What are you doing barging into Wangyou Valley with these two government lackeys?”
Commandant Lin drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and clasped his hands in salute. “Divine Physician Liu, please calm your anger. I’ve risked my life coming here to beg you to save someone!”
“Save someone?” Liu Buyan gave a cold snort. “Everyone knows I established the Three-No-Treatment Rule. Unless someone is at death’s door, has a rare and intractable illness, or is a person fate has brought to me, I won’t treat them. Which are you? And whom have you come for? From your uniforms as government guards and the bloodlust clinging to you, the person you’re seeking must be either rich or noble. My Wangyou Valley has no room for such worldly things!”
His refusal was unequivocal, leaving no room for negotiation.
Sweat beaded on Zhang Ji’s forehead. He hurriedly took the East Palace Seal from Achou and raised it above his head in both hands. “Master! Please hear me out. We haven’t come for some ordinary person of power and wealth. We’ve come for His Highness, the Deposed Crown Prince Xiao Yi. He was ambushed by treacherous men, and his leg bone was broken. Then, on the way into exile, he was attacked again. His wound reopened and became infected. Now his fever won’t come down, and his life hangs by a thread. He meets two of your conditions already: at death’s door and suffering from a rare and intractable illness! I beg you, for old times’ sake—and for the sake of a human life—to save him!” Trembling, he presented the seal. “This is the Eastern Palace Seal!”
“The Eastern Palace Seal?” Liu Buyan let out a scornful laugh. “What an impressive display of authority! I’ve lived in seclusion for decades. What do I care which palace it is, Eastern or Western, or who sits on the Dragon Throne? Emperors, kings, generals, and ministers are all nothing but bones in their graves. Their struggles for power only add to the bloodshed. In my eyes, this seal is no different from a stone by the roadside. Take it back. Don’t sully my peace!” He flicked his sleeve, and an invisible force knocked the seal from Zhang Ji’s hands. It fell with a clink onto the pebbles by the stream.
Zhang Ji hurriedly picked it up, his face ashen. Commandant Lin’s heart sank, too.
Their last hope seemed about to vanish as well.
Seeing that the old man was utterly unmoved by anything, and seemed to loathe the powerful so much that no token would sway him, Achou quietly tucked the jade pendant back into her sleeve without showing it.
Instead, she raised her head and said, “Divine Physician Liu, you don’t care for emperors and ministers. Fine! Then please look at me!”
As she spoke, she lifted a hand and removed her face covering. She wiped the mud from her face, revealing the blue birthmark on her left cheek in the faint light of dawn.
“My name is Achou. I’m not from the Eastern Palace. I’m the lowest-ranking rough-work maid in Marquis Yongchang’s Residence.”
“Because of this birthmark, all I’m allowed to do is scrub chamber pots. People order me around as they please. I’m treated worse than a dog.”
“Marquis Yongchang’s Residence wouldn’t let their precious Eldest Miss marry a Deposed Crown Prince who was being sent into exile and was paralyzed, so they shoved me into the bridal sedan instead.”
“On this journey, I was the one who gave His Highness water and medicine. I cleaned his wounds, set his bone, and kept it in place. When I heard someone was going to kill him, I risked my life to save him. When a bandit, a man who would kill without blinking, swung his knife, I threw myself in front of His Highness to shield him.”
“I didn’t do any of that because he was a Crown Prince. My life may be worthless, but I still have a heart. I couldn’t stand by and watch a living person suffer in front of me, waiting to die!”
“The three of us risked our lives, crossed mountains, trekked through poisonous miasma, and climbed a cliff that nearly killed us—not for riches and glory, and certainly not to curry favor with the powerful. We came only to beg you to save that patient. He’s dying! He’s about to be killed by those who want him dead! Heaven sees all, Divine Physician Liu. You devote yourself to saving lives—does that mean you judge people’s worth and save them only according to their status? Does being the Deposed Crown Prince mean he deserves to die? And is it wrong for someone as lowly as me, Achou, to want to save another person who’s suffering?”
“You’re a mighty immortal with miraculous powers. Can it be that your heart is smaller than that of a fourteen-year-old maid like me?”
As Achou spoke, tears streamed down her face.
Beneath her tearful, impassioned plea, Liu Buyan’s cold gaze finally settled on her in earnest.
His eyes lingered on the blue mark covering nearly half her face.
Time seemed to stand still.
The stream burbled and birds chirped, but the air before the thatched cottage had grown so heavy it was hard to breathe.
“When did the mark on your face first appear?”
Achou hadn’t expected him to ask that so suddenly. His stare made her uneasy, and she wiped her tears as she answered, “It’s been there for as long as I can remember. They say I was born with this bad luck…”
“It wasn’t something you were born with.” Liu Buyan cut her off, then fell silent.
For a while, no one spoke. Only the mountain wind passed by.
“Well, enough… For your sake, girl, I’ll break my Three-No-Treatment Rule just this once.” He turned to the attendants behind him. “Pack the medicine chest. You’re coming down the mountain with me.”
Zhang Ji was almost overcome with joy. He kowtowed again and again. “Thank you, Master!”
“Lead the way. I’m here to save a life, not reminisce.”
With that, he turned his back on them all without another glance and strode away, swift as the wind.
Achou and the others didn’t dare delay. They forced their exhausted bodies onward and hurried to guide him.
The difficult road they had struggled along on the way up seemed much shorter on the return, spurred by Liu Buyan’s commanding presence.
Zhechong Office, secluded courtyard.
The atmosphere inside the room was tense. Han Zheng paced like an ant on a hot pan beside the Crown Prince’s bed. He watched Xiao Yi’s face turn from flushed red to ashen, his breathing weak and rapid, and his heart burned with anxiety.
Hasty footsteps sounded outside. Han Zheng jerked his head up. Achou and Commandant Lin were supporting Zhang Ji as they ushered in an elderly man in a cloth robe.
The old man’s beard and hair were completely white, and his build was lean, but his eyes shone brightly. In an instant, they fixed on Xiao Yi in the sickbed.
“Divine Physician Liu!” Han Zheng clutched at the last straw. He clasped his hands in salute, lowering himself as much as he could. “Please, Divine Physician, save His Highness!”
Liu Buyan paid him no heed and went straight to the bedside.
His hawklike eyes examined the swollen, purplish injury to Xiao Yi’s left leg. He checked Xiao Yi’s pulse, inspected his pupils, then pressed several key points lightly with his thin, bony fingers, feeling the disorder of the muscles and bones beneath the skin.
A moment later, he withdrew his hand. A faint trace of surprise crossed his aged face, and he turned his gaze—not merely to scrutinize, but with something more—to Achou, who had been keeping watch at the foot of the bed.
“When this leg was first broken, were you the one who treated it?”