“Tsk, relax! If you stay this tense, the medicine won’t penetrate.” She pressed disdainfully with her palm against the rock-hard muscle, feeling as if she were pushing against unyielding iron beneath her knuckles.
“If it hurts, just yell! Holding it in will slow your recovery!” Her hands worked mercilessly into the injured area, attempting to break up the congested bruise.
“…” A stifled groan escaped through Xie Yunjing’s tightly clenched teeth. A fine layer of cold sweat instantly beaded on his forehead, yet his Adam’s apple bobbed stubbornly as he forced out, “A military man fears no such minor…”
Before he could finish, Shen Taotao’s icy fingers abruptly jabbed directly into the center of the bruise.
“Hiss—!” Xie Yunjing sharply drew in a breath, the pain causing the tendons along his neck to twitch violently.
“Who are you trying to impress?” Shen Taotao pinched a patch of his deep purple flesh with two fingers, her fingertips coated in cool ointment, lightly tapping and poking at the burning skin. The pressure wasn’t heavy, but the insult was profound.
Xie Yunjing’s ears flushed a boiling red. He abruptly turned his face halfway to glare at her, his deep eyes churning with turbulent waves—anger mixed with something else—his voice nearly grinding through his teeth: “Shen Taotao! Do you even understand…”
Do you understand propriety and shame? Do you understand the boundaries between men and women? The rest of the words stuck in his throat, forcibly swallowed down.
Yet Shen Taotao didn’t pause for even a second.
Her sharp gaze swept over his shoulders, unconsciously tensed from pain and some awkward emotion. She stacked her palms and pressed firmly into the core of the blue-black bruise, applying the force one might use to knead fermenting dough, and gave a fierce twist!
“Ah—!” A cry that was anything but steady—even carrying a youthful note of startled agony—burst from his lips, loud enough to shake dust from the rafters.
Outside the door, the guards’ footsteps immediately turned chaotic, accompanied by the clatter of scabbards.
Xie Yunjing whipped his head back around, his usually decisive face now flushed with humiliated fury and a trace of unspeakable disarray. He hadn’t been this discomposed even when gravely wounded while hunting down Di Rong’s general.
But just as he turned, Shen Taotao leaned in closer to apply more force, her nose nearly brushing against his sweaty, heaving back, her warm breath spraying directly onto it.
“Your lower back seems bruised here too. Endure it!” she said rapidly, her tone leaving no room for argument. One hand moved like lightning, suddenly grabbing the loosely tied drawstring of his inner trousers at the waist.
That was the spark that lit the powder keg!
Xie Yunjing’s scorching large hand clamped around her wrist with crushing force, making her bones creak.
He spun around violently, the complex emotions in his eyes completely replaced by a fierce glare. His breathing was heavy, like a beast on the verge of eruption, each word seething with fire: “Shen! Tao! Tao! Do you know that on a bed, pulling a man’s waist—” Before the word “drawstring” could leave his lips.
“Does healing distinguish between men and women?” Shen Taotao winced in pain, but her eye-roll was faster than her words. Her free hand was even bolder, index and middle fingers pressed together, accurately targeting a point just below his lower back with the certainty of “cracking a case.”
“This must be the spot? My grandfather said if this area gets severely blocked, men… ahem, that is… even relieving themselves becomes difficult!” To emphasize her point, she even gestured earnestly with her hand, mimicking a split stream of water.
“Pfft—” A stifled laugh escaped from outside the window, followed by hurried footsteps fading into the distance—undoubtedly that scoundrel Zhang Xun.
Xie Yunjing’s handsome face could no longer be described as dark as a pot’s bottom; it shifted from red to purple, then to ashen gray. The fingers gripping her wrist loosened slightly under the overwhelming impact of shame and frustration.
Shen Taotao keenly seized this fleeting opportunity. Her hands, accustomed to moving bricks and breaking stones on construction sites, now transformed into the most precise corrective tools. Three fingers pressed together like an awl, she targeted the bruised area on his waist and forcefully pushed in the opposite direction.
Crack! A distinct, teeth-gritting sound of bone realignment echoed through the room.
“Ugh—!” Xie Yunjing’s body arched backward violently, a long, pained yet relieved sigh escaping his throat as large beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.
Immediately after, his taut, muscular waist—previously strained like a fully drawn bow—suddenly went limp. He collapsed onto the bed almost exhaustedly, forehead pressed against the pillow, sweat-dampened hair clinging messily to his cheeks. Utterly disheveled, he… had shed all his sharp edges and defenses.
Shen Taotao also breathed a sigh of relief, clapping her hands with the casual ease of someone who’d just finished grooming a pet dog. “Just a minor dislocation. I fixed it for you while I was at it.”
Her proud gaze lingered repeatedly on her “handiwork,” eventually catching sight of a faint yet vicious old scar on Xie Yunjing’s side, stretching across his firm skin like a centipede.
Almost unconsciously, she scooped another small dab of ointment. Her fingers, moving with an unexpected gentleness she herself hadn’t noticed, slowly smoothed it along the scar’s uneven surface.
Her smooth fingertips traced the rugged, resilient texture of his skin, as if polishing a timeworn, legendary weapon.
“…” Xie Yunjing’s body trembled imperceptibly the moment her fingers touched the old scar, the fine sweat on the back of his neck seeming to grow denser.
“Three years ago… during the Di Rong cavalry incident,” his muffled voice emerged from the pillow, carrying a strange vulnerability along with a barely detectable weariness and melancholy, “Seven charges in and out. Left me with some ‘medals’.”
The dark red ointment gradually spread and soaked into the scar that symbolized life and death. It seemed he, too, had lived through immense hardship.
Shen Taotao withdrew her hand, habitually wiping the residual ointment on her clothes. “Not bad technique, right? At the clinic… uh, I mean, back when I worked with my grandfather, he handled all kinds of bones. He’d say if any part of a person’s bones gets stuck,” she tilted her head, recalling the old man’s nonchalant expression, and mimicked his tone, “‘Take it apart and reassemble it, or just give it a good hard whack—it’ll always slide back into place!'”
The previously relaxed lines of Xie Yunjing’s back stiffened almost imperceptibly upon hearing the “clinic grandfather” philosophy.
Without turning around, he pushed himself up and silently, yet swiftly, pulled over the outer robe he had crumpled. His fingers moved fast and steady as he tied his belt, regaining the rhythm of someone in complete control.
The dark fabric covered his streamlined, powerful waist, concealing all the earlier disarray and tenderness.
Just as Shen Taotao thought he had completely “fixed” everything and was about to pocket the medicine bottle to leave, Xie Yunjing suddenly turned around.
“Didn’t you say you’d exchange something for it?”