Yuan Rutan carried his things and walked toward the same stall as the day before. The moment he got close, a crowd immediately gathered around him.
His eyelids twitched fiercely when he spotted, among the people, the woman and the limping man from yesterday. The woman was being supported by a man and a woman, and the three of them went straight to their knees in front of Yuan Rutan.
Tears streamed down the woman’s face, her companions’ eyes glistening with gratitude and emotion.
“Divine doctor! Thank you, divine doctor! Thank you for saving my life!”
The woman still seemed dazed by everything that had happened. When she went home the previous day, she had thought of Yuan Rutan’s water as nothing more than a last desperate attempt, “a dead horse being treated as a live one.”
She drank a portion of it and set the bamboo tube on the stove.
Her son and daughter-in-law would soon be back from work, and she had to hurry to wash the clothes and prepare dinner.
Her children were all dutiful; for the sake of her illness, they had been working themselves to exhaustion day and night.
So long as she still had the strength to move, she wanted to do as much as she could for them.
She drew water from the well, five whole buckets, and washed every piece of dirty clothing in the house until her breath came short and her arms trembled.
As she wiped the sweat from her forehead, she suddenly froze. Her strength felt different. Her limbs were steady, her body light.
The woman stood up straight, realization dawning. She rushed to find the bamboo tube and drank the remaining half of the water in one go. As soon as the water slid down her throat, her mind cleared, the suffocating tightness in her chest seemed to dissolve, and the burning pain she always felt in her throat disappeared.
She dared not make a fuss, suppressing the surge of excitement pounding in her chest. Calmly, she cooked a full meal for her family as if nothing had happened.
That night, before going to bed, she finished the last mouthful of water. Not wanting to waste the bamboo tube, she poured in some clean water, swirled it around three times, and drank that too before lying down
In the past, she could never sleep at night because she could not breathe properly, her chest feeling as if it were on fire. But that night, as soon as she closed her eyes, she sank into deep, peaceful sleep.
When she awoke the next morning, her whole body felt light and strong, as though she had shed years of illness.
Terrified by this unbelievable change, she asked her son and daughter-in-law to accompany her to the local physician. Though puzzled, both were obedient and concerned, so they went with her.
The old doctor took her pulse and raised his eyebrows in surprise, “You’re so rich you don’t know where to spend it, coming here for a checkup?” he said with a chuckle. “You’re healthier than most young men.”
The woman burst into tears of joy. Her son and daughter-in-law stared at her in disbelief, tears shining in their eyes. When she explained what had happened the previous day, her son and his wife whispered that they must have encountered an immortal.
The family bought some gifts at a shop and hurried back toward the marketplace. They waited there all morning, through the blazing heat, until they finally saw Yuan Rutan’s familiar figure appear in the crowd.
Yuan Rutan had already expected the woman to return and was not surprised in the least. The family knelt again, pressing five hundred copper coins into his hands, stammering that they would one day build a shrine in his honor.
Yuan Rutan had no interest in shrines. What mattered to him was the five hundred coins. With that much, he could spend four hundred and fifty on fresh meat and pastries.
The woman also presented him with a box of sesame peanut candy, two boxes of mung bean cakes, and two catties of pork belly. Yuan Rutan’s eyes lit up. Perhaps this was even more profitable than farming.
Unfortunately, the healing water he used was infused with dragon energy. To prevent that power from leaking and drawing trouble, he had decided to treat only thirty people before stopping.
The family of the lame man also came with gratitude. In addition to five hundred coins, they brought gifts, one catty of spiced beef, a bag of dried fruits, and a small jade pendant. Though the jade was impure, it was worth perhaps eight hundred coins.
Yuan Rutan sniffed it curiously. The pendant carried a strange taste, bitter with a hint of sweetness. It seemed it could even be chewed like a snack.
Before long, Yuan Rutan’s name spread through the marketplace. A crowd gathered, lining up in front of his stall, everyone eager for the miraculous water.
Just as before, Yuan Rutan went through the motions of taking pulses. His pale, slender fingers brushed across wrists, his expression serious and practiced.
When he had pressed long enough, he would make a face, as though deciphering some profound truth.
If the patient’s energy felt weak, he would frown, sigh softly, and say, “This will be hard to cure.”
If the person’s complexion was bright and rosy, he would smile and say cheerfully, “Ah, this is an easy one.”
When asked what illness they had, Yuan Rutan simply replied, “I’m not a doctor. How would I know?”
He had three buckets of water. People assumed they were for different kinds of ailments, but in truth, all three were filled from the same cloth pouch.
He only divided them because he had once seen an apothecary apprentice scoop herbs into separate piles.
So he mimicked the gesture, adding a little more to one bucket, a little less to another, just for effect.
Soon, whispers began to rise from the onlookers.
“The man before had kidney weakness, he used water from the first bucket.”
“But that man with a severed finger also got water from the same one”
“That can’t be right!”
“Master, water that can regrow fingers, this isn’t natural!”
Yuan Rutan rubbed his head uneasily. He could sense more and more people gathering nearby, and he knew he was attracting too much attention. Once his crops ripened and he sold the harvest, he decided he would leave this place and even change his face to stay safe.
As for the dragon energy within the water, he made sure it dissipated completely within a day.
Anyone who tried to store it or gift it later would find it turning back into ordinary water.
He had planned to heal only thirty people, but when he reached the twentieth, an old man in rich silk robes appeared before him. The old man’s kind eyes were lined with fatigue as he gave a bitter smile.
“Young healer, please take a look at me. I don’t know when it began, but my body has grown unbearably heavy,” he said.
“My shoulders burn, as if someone were biting into them, and I can barely breathe.”
Yuan Rutan lifted his gaze, and his pupils widened sharply. On the old man’s back sat an old woman, smiling eerily, her lips dark purple as if she had died from poison. She pressed her cold cheek against his and whispered incessantly in his ear.
Two infant girls clung to the old man’s chest, their tiny hands slapping weakly against his skin, leaving dark handprints wherever they touched.
To his right was a young woman with disheveled hair and a deathly pale face, breathing softly against his ear.
And on his left shoulder crouched another woman, her hair neatly pinned, gnawing savagely at his flesh, swallowing shreds of his spirit.
At his feet knelt a drenched man in servant’s clothes, gripping the old man’s ankles with icy fingers, the poor soul had clearly drowned.
A shiver ran down Yuan Rutan’s spine.
He asked quietly, “Is your first wife still alive?”
The old man’s eyes flickered with a trace of darkness.
“She passed away two years ago,” he said softly.
He looked into Yuan Rutan’s eyes. “I know you can see the cause of my illness. If you can cure me, ”
He motioned to his servant, who brought forth a tray laden with more than twenty gleaming gold ingots, “All of these will be yours.”
Yuan Rutan stared at the gold, his brows furrowing.
“I don’t like gold ingots,” he said flatly. “I won’t take them.”
The old man froze, trying to grasp his meaning.
“Then… would you accept silver notes, jewelry, broken silver?”
Yuan Rutan nodded. “Those are fine. But I won’t treat you.”
The old man’s brows drew together. “Why not?”
Yuan Rutan looked at the thick swirl of red and black miasma coiling around him, so dense that it nearly obscured his form.
Disgusted, he pushed his chair back, “Because I’m afraid your curse will cling to me.”
In all his life, Yuan Rutan had never seen anyone tainted by so much darkness. The old man sneered coldly, motioning for his servant to take away the tray before turning to leave.
Yuan Rutan noticed that two mangled dogs still gnawed at the man’s back as he walked away.
Resting his chin on one hand, Yuan Rutan flicked his fingers, sending a stream of golden light into the vengeful spirits.
Their forms solidified slightly, and he granted them the power to take revenge, once their hatred was spent, they would be freed to move on.
Just as he prepared to receive the next patient, a blade’s hilt suddenly blocked the way
Yuan Rutan turned and found himself facing a burly officer with a bristling beard.
“I hear someone’s been pretending to be a miracle doctor and cheating people,” the man said coldly.
“I haven’t,” Yuan Rutan replied at once.
“Whether you have or not, you’ll come with us to explain,” the officer said.
“Take him!”
The constables hauled away his stall, the officer pressing the hilt of his blade against Yuan Rutan’s chest, forcing him to follow.
Yuan Rutan wasn’t afraid of weapons, but these were government men. Fighting them would only bring him endless trouble.
He thought about it and decided to go along, he had nothing to hide. If things went wrong, he could always vanish into thin air, stall and all.
But as they led him through a maze of narrow alleys and into a deserted courtyard, he began to feel uneasy.
The fierce officers suddenly changed demeanor. They fetched him a chair, poured him tea, and the bearded one smiled warmly.
“My apologies, divine healer. We know your medicine is truly miraculous. We’ve invited you here to discuss something important.”
Yuan Rutan blinked in confusion.
He was genuinely aggrieved now, his eyelids drooping. “What do you people want?” he asked coldly.
The man introduced himself with a slight bow. “I am Sun, head constable of Linshui County. When I saw you selling that divine water at the market, I grew anxious. Forgive me for taking such abrupt action.”
“Anxious?” Yuan Rutan repeated blankly.
“Indeed,” Sun said, smiling. “That water of yours is too powerful. Using it up in this way would be a terrible waste.”
Yuan Rutan did not think so. That single sip of dragon energy in three buckets had already earned him piles of pastries, meat, and silver. It was more than enough.
Sun leaned forward slightly. “If I may be so bold to ask, does your divine water have a secret recipe?”
Yuan Rutan stiffened. “No! I stumbled upon it by accident. There are only three buckets in total.”
Sun’s smile did not fade, though it was hard to tell whether he believed it.
“In that case,” he said smoothly, “where do you live, little divine healer? I can arrange a new residence for you, a grand estate with three courtyards, dozens of servants and maids, endless delicacies…”
Yuan Rutan froze, finally understanding, “So, you mean to imprison me?”
Sun shook his head gently. “Of course not. If you wish to leave, you may go right now.”
Yuan Rutan stood and reached for his stall equipment, but one of the constables blocked him. He glared at Sun, his eyes sharp with anger.
Sun sighed. “Those items of yours are too important. We’ll need to have a physician examine them first. The water must remain here for now.”
Yuan Rutan’s face flushed red with fury. He wanted to teach them a lesson, but he remembered that Heaven was currently calculating his merits and that his inherited memories were on the verge of awakening. He forced down his temper and exhaled heavily.
Drawing out the dragon energy from the water, he rolled his eyes, then ground a handful of old, moldy pastries into powder and sprinkled it into the buckets.
Along with it, he added bits of spoiled meat and rotted hair, all useless junk he had hoarded for years. It was his water, after all. He could put whatever he liked into it.
Once done, he cast a light illusion so that the liquid still looked crystal clear.
Then Yuan Rutan left the courtyard, transformed into a small golden dragon, and soared back toward Songjia Village.
✦ ✧ ✦
Vynellia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
You read the chapter. They wrestled with the words. Seems fair, no? (￣▽￣)
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Little DragonChapter 2 · Selling FishChapter 3 · DraughtChapter 4 · Giving LifeChapter 5 · MeritsChapter 6 · Dragon can summon Rain?!Chapter 7 · Wicked Dragon?Chapter 8 · Dragon likes sweetChapter 9 · Dragon WineChapter 10 · Snow Mountain ElixirChapter 11 · The official forced the dragon to rebelChapter 12 · Ministers kneel down and confess their sinsChapter 13 · Court struggle, faith is the dragonChapter 14 · Why do others have auspicious signs, but I don’t?Chapter 15 · Corrupt officialsChapter 16 · The dark side of officialdomChapter 17 Part 1 · Transforming into a golden dragon in full view of all!Chapter 17 Part 2 · Transforming into a golden dragon in full view of all!Chapter 18 · Wrath of the True DragonChapter 19 · Give him a ninth-rank official position!Chapter 20 · The days of being loved by Longlong have begunChapter 21 · Pamper the little dragon, finally full!Chapter 22 · It’s perfectly normal for humans to like dragonsChapter 23 · Avenge Longlong against corrupt officialsChapter 24 · Is being an official like the Dragon King difficult?Chapter 25 · Dragon-shaped woodChapter 26 · Emperor felt the vibrancy of lifeChapter 27 · Do you like the obedient and affectionate little dragon?Chapter 28 · Your Majesty’s PastChapter 29 · A ray of light in a noisy worldChapter 30 · Let’s give the dragon a lake!Chapter 31 · Dragon, don’t run aroundChapter 32 · YaunBaoChapter 33 · Recruiting soldiers and buying horsesChapter 34 · Expand Dragon armyChapter 35 · Longlong is in a dilemmaChapter 36 · Being a king is difficultChapter 37 · Attended the morning court session.Chapter 38 · Secretly feeding the dragonChapter 39 · The restless little golden dragonChapter 40 · Your Majesty foreshadowed thisChapter 41 · Fostering teacher student bondsChapter 42 · Now that the dragon has an official positionChapter 43 · If a dragon wants to become an official, why not touch it?Chapter 44 · Longlong enters officialdomChapter 45 · The Emperor’s disciple?Chapter 46 · Long day’s laborChapter 47 · Being a dragon is comfortableChapter 48 · Thank you, YuanbaoChapter 49 · Very sleepyChapter 50 · The Dragon Who Saves the WorldChapter 51 · Strange storiesChapter 52 · Dragon God saying it wanted to eat peach crystal cakesChapter 53 · The tree is aliveChapter 54 · We can just hold a family feastChapter 55 · What kind of worship?Chapter 56 · Don’t be naughtyChapter 57 · Why does Teacher always avoid my human formChapter 58 · I will be an indifferent learning machineChapter 59 · Jinlong made a fortuneChapter 60 · Ten thousand taelsChapter 61 · FamilyChapter 62 · Will you accompany the dragon?Chapter 63 · What did you hunt, sir?Chapter 64 · From fifth rank to proper fourth rankChapter 65 · Orange PeelChapter 66 · Great Xuan may have enough to eatChapter 67 · Poisoned GrainsChapter 68 · The balance of the mortal world is about to changeChapter 69 · Teacher’s lap truly was very comfortable.Chapter 70 · Caught the little dragonChapter 71 · Only he alone could see that golden lightChapter 72 · Great King must not declineChapter 73 · The top scholarChapter 74 · I do not like other defying meChapter 75 · Great Xuan truly has quite a number of martial expertsChapter 76 · What was there to fear?Chapter 77 · Then Teacher can raise the dragonChapter 78 · Little Dragon Steals Peaches.Chapter 79 · Resentment and Poison.Chapter 80 · Male PartnerChapter 81 · How about choosing a human?Chapter 82 · Young Lord Zhen has a friendChapter 83 · Morning DewChapter 84 · Earth DragonsChapter 85 · Greetings, Your MajestyChapter 86 · Then what am I allowed to do?Chapter 87 · What exactly Happened?Chapter 88 · Praise The golden Dragon!Chapter 89 · ComplexionChapter 90 · Gift is almost readyChapter 91 · Surely Sir would no longer refuse himChapter 92 · Seven YearsChapter 93 · She is really just a childChapter 94 · Good YuanbaoChapter 95 · Ten Thousand year old JadeChapter 96 · They were overwhelmed with griefChapter 97 · Villain: So what if I use magic?Chapter 98 · The Dragon Clan MeetingChapter 99 · The Big reveal!Chapter 100 · The prototype of His MajestyChapter 101 · Autumn HuntChapter 102 · This painting was created by the Emperor’s consortChapter 103 · They gave themselves away and caught the plush rabbit doctor.Chapter 104 · The Rabbit gangChapter 105 · The scars on the fox spirit’s handsChapter 106 · Wang JinzhongChapter 107 · I don’t believe the White Tiger doesn’t protect its foodChapter 108 · Karmic SinChapter 109 · Yuanbao, would you take me a thousand li away?Chapter 110 · Pear FrostChapter 111 · If Yuanbao ever loses sight of the road ahead, then come find meChapter 112 · Let’s take a step at a time..Chapter 113 · The imperial marriage was announced to the public.Chapter 114 · The army, navy, and air force are preparing to attack the Yujing River.Chapter 115 · The attack on Yujing River-humans should not spread rumors!Chapter 116 · King Golden Dragon ascends the throneChapter 117 · Sir, would you like a bowl of dragon soup?Chapter 118 · Wedding celebrationChapter 119 · Establish the Demon RealmChapter 120 · Lord of the Demon RealmChapter 121 · Flourishing and decliningChapter 122 · The Ling Dynasty was defeated, and father and son fought amongst themselvesChapter 123 · The gentleman’s is dragon-themedChapter 124 · People from HeavenChapter 125 · The truth behind the White TigerChapter 126 · Azure Dragon, WarChapter 127 · A great war is about to break outChapter 128 · Victory in the great battleChapter 129 · Side Story (1)Chapter 130 · Side Story (2)Chapter 131 · Side Story (3)Chapter 132 · Side Story (4)Chapter 133 · Side Story (4)Chapter 134 · Side Story (5)Chapter 135 · Side Story (6)Chapter 136 · Side story (7)Chapter 137 · Side Story (8)Chapter 138 · Side Story (9)Chapter 139 · Side Story (10)Chapter 140 · Side Story (11)Chapter 141 · Side Story (12)Chapter 142 · Side Story (13)Chapter 143 · Side Story (14)Chapter 144 · Side Story (15)Chapter 145 · Side Story (16)Chapter 146 · Side Story (17)Chapter 147 · Side Story (18)Chapter 148 · Side Story (19)Chapter 149 · Side Story (20)Chapter 150 · Side Story (21)Chapter 151 · Side Story (22)