Qi Yan fell silent.
A moment later, he said, “There’s no need. It’s just some superficial wounds.”
Compared to the pain of torn tendons and broken bones, it really wasn’t worth mentioning.
Miao Shuang’s expression darkened at once, and he said coldly, “I hate disobedient patients most of all — or should I just directly activate the Gu worms and pain you into unconsciousness instead, wouldn’t that be simpler?”
Qi Yan pressed his lips together, finally giving up on contending with him, bent over to remove his shoes and socks, and rolled up his pant legs.
Miao Shuang narrowed his eyes.
It was clear that Qi Yan did not like others seeing his body, especially his legs — even though they had already gone through a night of passionate fire, the wedding night candles had been dim, and during ordinary times of changing clothes and bathing he always avoided him; never had he examined them up close like this before.
Miao Shuang crouched down in front of him.
His fingers touched those legs covered in scars and wounds — he clearly sensed the other’s body tensing up. The calves were covered in bruises everywhere, old and new piled layer upon layer, with the knee being the worst — swollen, purple-black, and bleeding. He didn’t know if it was from knocking against something last night or today.
The blood had already soaked through the pant leg and still hadn’t fully stopped, otherwise he wouldn’t have noticed.
Miao Shuang cleaned the wound for him, applied some medicine, and began feeling around and probing his leg, trying to move the joint a little — there was no resisting force from the other side at all.
These tendons were completely severed.
Whoever had cut his leg tendons was quite skilled — several major tendons near the knee and ankle were all severed. One could say these legs were completely crippled, unable to move at all.
The emperor had gone this ruthlessly on him, clearly never intending to let him recover. With the mortal realm’s backward medical standards, this kind of complex tendon-reconnection surgery simply couldn’t be done.
That the hand tendons could be reconnected was already a stroke of great fortune.
“So last night in the ancestral hall, when I told you to get up and you didn’t — it wasn’t that you didn’t want to, it’s that you simply couldn’t get up at all, was it?” Miao Shuang raised his head, looking at him with a distant gaze.
Qi Yan avoided his eyes and said nothing.
“Then if I hadn’t come looking for you, what were you planning to do — kneel in front of your parents’ memorial tablets all night long?” Miao Shuang’s expression was somewhere between a smile and not, and as he spoke he added force with his hand, gripping his calf hard. “If you like tormenting yourself this much, might as well tell me — I have ten thousand ways to make you wish you were dead, why go to all this trouble?”
He happened to pinch exactly where the bone had been broken before, and the faint pain that spread made Qi Yan frown.
“If I see you being disobedient again, I’ll add ten more golden worms to you — guaranteed to make you hurt so much you won’t have the strength to get out of bed.”
He gripped harder and harder, to the point that Qi Yan nearly thought his newly-healed bone was going to be forcibly snapped again, and then Miao Shuang suddenly let go and stood up.
This leg bone had healed crooked and couldn’t be set right anymore — it would have to be broken and reset again. But not now.
Using Gu worms to heal wounds was already quite risky as it was — a foreign thing left inside the body would inevitably provoke rejection from the body. If too much were used at once, it might send the person straight to their death. It had to be done gradually, step by step.
Getting him completely healed really would be rather difficult. Had he known earlier, he shouldn’t have spoken so confidently just now.
After pondering for a while, Miao Shuang asked again, “When were these tendons severed?”
Qi Yan lowered his eyelids. “The first day I was thrown into prison.”
That had already been over three months ago — no wonder the muscles had atrophied to this state.
“If your legs keep going like this, even if I reconnect the tendons for you, you still won’t be able to walk all the same. Since you can’t move on your own, then let others help you. From now on I’ll massage you every day…”
As he spoke, Miao Shuang paused.
Giving him a massage every day was too much trouble. He was a dignified Demon Lord — why should he suffer when there was someone else who could suffer in his place? He didn’t have that much patience.
So he turned and walked out the door. “Lai Fu!”
Qi Yan’s expression changed. “Wait!”
But Miao Shuang had already left.
Qi Yan stiffened where he was, his five fingers clenching tightly; after a long while, he slowly loosened them again.
…Forget it.
He remained silent and unmoving, waiting until Miao Shuang and the others came back.
Lai Fu had never seen the wounds on his legs before. Although he’d already mentally prepared himself, when he actually saw it with his own eyes, he was still startled. “General…”
Qi Yan didn’t look at him, nor did he make a sound.
Miao Shuang waved Lai Fu over. “Come here and watch. I’ll only teach this once, so learn it well.”
“Coming, Madam.”
Miao Shuang turned back to Qi Yan and ordered. “Lie down.”
Qi Yan had already given up struggling and obediently lay down, closing his eyes, pretending he’d already fallen asleep.
Miao Shuang’s fingers traced along his meridians, pressing until it ached and swelled, yet it also felt extremely good, and his spirit gradually relaxed.
The pain-relieving, mind-calming medicine kept taking effect; drowsiness welled up, and the noise around him gradually faded into the distance.
Qi Yan drifted in a daze, not even aware of when he’d fallen asleep. At some point partway through, he seemed to hear someone calling him to get up and eat, but no matter what, he couldn’t open his eyes.
It wasn’t until the dead of night that the medicine’s effect gradually wore off, and he was finally roused awake, uncomfortable from the aching, swelling pain in his hand tendons.
He sat up in a daze, his mouth and throat dry, wanting to find some water to drink. He looked up — and froze slightly.
For some reason Miao Shuang hadn’t slept; he was leaning lazily against the doorway, his fingertips toying with a vividly patterned Gu butterfly, its wings opening and closing in the moonlight, shimmering with flowing light.
Snow-white hair fell loosely over his shoulders, half-translucent in the clear moonlight; the fiery red fox-fur cloak draped loosely around him, setting off his exquisite profile to appear even fairer and whiter — that face without a single flaw, utterly unlike anything of the mortal world.
Qi Yan’s throat tightened for no reason — perhaps because he hadn’t fully woken up yet, or perhaps for some other reason — he actually felt that the person before him carried a kind of intense solitude and loneliness, as if he didn’t belong to this world at all, just like that butterfly resting on his fingertip, pausing briefly here before it would flutter away again at any moment.
Miao Shuang sensed his gaze and turned to look back.
It had to be said, this Miao person really had been born with a fine face — combined with his hair and eye color so different from ordinary people, he had even more of an immortal’s bearing, unforgettable at first sight—
“What is the General staring at me for? Keep looking at me like that and I’ll start thinking you want to do it with me.”
—provided he just didn’t open his mouth to speak.
Qi Yan was yanked abruptly back down from the heavens to the mortal world, and after an eerie silence for a moment, said, “Is there nothing else in your head besides that?”
He’d actually thought this Miao person looked good-looking — could that Love Gu really be controlling his thoughts?
“Food and lust are human nature. If a person has none of the seven emotions and six desires, they wouldn’t count as human,” Miao Shuang said, perfectly righteous. “You’re not sleeping in the middle of the night — what are you sitting here for?”
“You’re not sleeping either.”
Miao Shuang pulled down the corner of his mouth, saying with disdain, “The smell of medicine on you is too strong. I don’t want to sleep with you.”
“…” Qi Yan, having long since been smoked numb to the smell of medicine, leaned closer to his bandage-wrapped wrist and sniffed, then frowned. “That’s also a medicine you mixed yourself.”
“So I changed the formula,” Miao Shuang said, pulling a small flat round jar out of his sleeve. “This one smells a lot less. Let me change your bandage.”
As he spoke he walked toward Qi Yan, and as he passed by the table, Qi Yan spoke up at just the right moment. “While you’re at it, pour me a cup of water.”
Miao Shuang gave him a distant look, and for the sake of him being an injured patient, didn’t bother arguing with him — poured him a cup of warm water expressionlessly and handed it over.
Qi Yan drank the water with his help; his parched throat finally felt a bit better, and then he said, “I also need to relieve myself.”
Miao Shuang’s hand, which had been about to change his bandage, paused again, a vein twitching at his temple.
He summoned a lifetime’s worth of self-restraint to keep himself from directly activating the Gu worms and pain him to death, and said with a forced smile, “If you want to relieve yourself, go then — why are you looking at me? Can I help you relieve yourself?”
Qi Yan raised his right hand, wrapped in bandages, toward him. “Can’t get onto the wheelchair with one hand.”
Miao Shuang: “……”
A person’s strength is always a bit greater when they’re angry — he reached out and hauled Qi Yan onto the wheelchair.
But Qi Yan still didn’t go, and said again, “Can’t push the wheelchair with one hand either.”
“……………”
There was a moment when Miao Shuang really wanted to kill someone.
There was a pond in the back garden of the General’s residence, just right for burying a general — might as well push him in and drown him.
With a dark expression he pushed Qi Yan to the outhouse, saying coldly, “Hurry up and go — surely you don’t need me to hold you steady too?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Miao Shuang had no interest in watching him use the toilet, and turned and went back out. The late-autumn night was bitterly cold; he pulled his fox-fur cloak tighter around himself and stood waiting by the door.
As he waited and waited, he suddenly realized a serious problem — with that surnamed Qi fellow’s hand inconvenienced these past two days, wouldn’t he need him to help push the wheelchair for literally everything?
Miao Shuang’s expression suddenly turned strange. Had he known earlier…
But even having known earlier, there was nothing to be done about it.
Forget it — he’d have Lai Fu suffer through this period. As a dignified Demon Lord, there was no way he was going to push someone’s wheelchair every single day.
At this moment, he heard Qi Yan calling him. “Miao Shuang.”
Miao Shuang’s expression darkened several shades further, and he pushed the man back into the room quite roughly. Seeing that he was about to go wash his hands, he spoke with a menacingly cold air. “Dare to use cold water and I’ll kill you.”
Qi Yan’s fingertip, which had just touched the water’s surface, withdrew again.
Miao Shuang added half a basin of hot water to the washbasin, grabbed his hand and pressed it forcefully into the water, undid the bandage that had already gotten wet, and scrubbed hard at the places the bandage had wrapped around.
The smell of medicine was finally washed clean. Miao Shuang took out the ointment for the third time, sweeping a cold glance over at him.
Qi Yan met his gaze calmly, his expression innocent.
The pale red ointment was applied onto his wrist, rubbed in slowly along the direction of the tendons; soon a warm sensation rose up. Miao Shuang rewrapped the bandage for him and ordered, “Sleep.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep?”
“Mind your own business.”
Qi Yan said nothing more, turned over and lay down; his spirit had already been exhausted, and his breathing quickly steadied into sleep.
Miao Shuang picked up the hand warmer left behind on the bed, touched it and found it had already gone cold, refilled it with fresh charcoal, and got into bed holding it.
Out of habit he hogged half the blanket; seeing Qi Yan’s exposed hand, he frowned, pulled a rabbit-fur wrist guard out of his sleeve, put it on Qi Yan’s wrist, and stuffed it firmly under the blanket.
This is such an unbelievable amount of trouble. Might as well just poison him to death.