The little fool was not a little fool at all. He was Emperor Jingyong, who had nearly become the greatest emperor in history.
She remembered that the book had mentioned how Emperor Jingyong was decisive and ruthless, wielding power that reached the heavens. With one hand, he had beaten the pirates who ravaged the seas so badly that they had not dared show their faces for years; with the other, he had pressed down the eager Tatar cavalry and plowed through them several times. He could truly be called invincible beneath the heavens.
My king is mighty!
Unfortunately, because he had been secretly harmed in his early years, Emperor Jingyong had been left with a disabled leg, and his health had been ruined. In the end, before he could complete his imperial ambitions, he died…
After Emperor Jingyong's death, Great Xuan began to decline. Coupled with the pirates running rampant, Great Xuan later languished for many years.
His disability and poor health had probably been ruined at this time.
She actually had the chance to treat the future emperor. That was enormously alluring to any physician.
Moreover, after Xiao Nanchen ascended the throne, he had posthumously bestowed the title Prince Zhongyong upon Zhao Mu and treated him like an elder brother. This alone showed how deeply he valued loyalty and affection.
Since that was the case, if she, as his eldest sister-in-law, treated and cared for him while he was down on his luck, sharing hardship with him… then once my king ascended the throne in the future, wouldn't she be able to walk sideways throughout all of Great Xuan?
So he wasn't a little fool after all. He was a golden thigh—an especially thick one!
Shen Ning was filled with delight. She even felt that the little fool—no, that she even felt that my king—didn't smell quite so bad anymore.
She quickly cleaned the wound, then gently covered and bandaged it with clean hemp cloth. By then, Xiao Nanchen was covered in cold sweat from the pain.
Shen Ning's tone became extremely gentle. “Your Maj… A-Nan, extend your hand and let me take a look.”
Xiao Nanchen's hands hurt so badly that he gripped the chair tightly. Shen Ning pulled one of his hands over herself and placed her fingers against his wrist.
When Shen Ning first learned that she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, she had tried nearly every possible method. From the most advanced Western medicine in Country M to the oldest traditional Chinese medicine in her own country, she had abandoned the chemistry she loved and switched to medicine in order to save herself, forcing herself to study all the way to a doctorate.
Whether Chinese or Western medicine, she had desperately studied everything she could get her hands on. Along with her talent, she had even become a fairly famous doctor before her illness grew so severe that she could no longer see patients. Yet she still could not save herself.
There were even people in the medical field who sighed that she had been “too intelligent for her own good”—she possessed extraordinary intelligence and talent, yet could not have the complete life ordinary people enjoyed.
Because of those experiences, she could easily determine now that Xiao Nanchen had indeed been poisoned. The toxin had already begun invading his brain, which was why he had lost his mind and become a fool.
There was no need to describe the pain of cleaning the wound in detail. Yet even after his ropes were untied, Xiao Nanchen still did not cry out in pain.
My king truly is mighty!
Even with his mind clouded, he was still so strong.
Shen Ning was full of emotion. But when she raised her head, she found herself looking into Xiao Nanchen's tear-filled eyes.
Shen Ning: …
All right, she took back what she had just said.
Helpless, Shen Ning dampened the hemp cloth and wiped his face. “There, there. Your eldest sister-in-law will cure your leg. It won't hurt soon.”
“Who's the eldest sister-in-law?”
The little fool's attention had landed on a peculiar point.
Shen Ning pointed at herself. “I am your eldest sister-in-law.”
The tears in Xiao Nanchen's eyes had not completely receded, but a hint of stubbornness appeared on his face. “You're small. I'm big.”
The improper Doctor Shen clicked her tongue. “Sure enough, every man thinks he's big… But no matter how big you are, you still have to call me Eldest Sister-in-Law.”
After saying that, she coaxed him again. “Eldest Sister-in-Law will make you delicious food every day from now on.”
Xiao Nanchen said, “Eldest Sister-in-Law.”
It was also at that moment that the hemp cloth wiped away the grime, revealing his original appearance.
His brows and eyes were deep-set, the bridge of his nose straight, and his features refined yet sharp. He ought to have looked cold, aloof, and guarded, with his edge concealed. Yet the innocent bewilderment in his eyes dispersed that intimidating quality, leaving him looking merely beautiful and harmless.
Shen Ning secretly clicked her tongue. My king is so handsome!
After treating the wound, Shen Ning brought Xiao Nanchen to the empty room.
The room was simple. Apart from an earthen brick bed and a table with two chairs, it did not even have a wardrobe. The bed held nothing but a broken mat covered in dust.
How could she let my king sleep there?
While silently chanting about clinging to his powerful thigh, Shen Ning resigned herself to tidying up the room…
She swept away the dust on the kang and wiped the broken mat clean. Then she brought over some dry straw to spread beneath it as protection against the damp. After that, she carried the remaining bedding set from the room where the original Shen Ning had lived. At last, she managed to make the room look somewhat habitable.
“A-Nan, you'll sleep here tonight.”
Shen Ning brought over a basin of hot water and a towel. Gesturing as she spoke, she told him, “Wipe yourself before bed. Your body… wash your feet too, understand?”
Fortunately, even as a fool, my king was a clever one. He obediently nodded with great seriousness.
Only then did Shen Ning leave with peace of mind.
However, she did not go to sleep. After leaving the courtyard gate, she walked toward the two willow trees a short distance ahead. Before long, she returned with a great deal of willow bark.
Xiao Nanchen was running a fever. He had just had his wound cleaned, and his fever would probably grow even worse during the night.
Sure enough, after Shen Ning finished boiling the willow bark into a decoction, she heard some sounds coming from Xiao Nanchen's room.
Xiao Nanchen was having a nightmare.
The wound in his leg throbbed with excruciating pain. The high fever kept him from waking no matter how desperately he struggled. At times, he dreamed of being injured while practicing martial arts as a child and being punished by his mother, who forbade him from crying out in pain. At other times, he dreamed that he was on a battlefield.
In the dream, the wilderness stretched in every direction, filled with mountains of corpses and seas of blood. He stood there alone as countless skeletal hands thrust up through the ground around him, trying to drag him down…
He struggled desperately, but his body was as heavy as a thousand jin. He could only watch helplessly as he was dragged underground, sinking deeper and deeper into hell. Powerlessly, he reached out, trying to grasp something. Then he saw his mother again.
His birth mother had thrown herself down beside a precipice, clutching his imperial elder brother tightly while watching helplessly as him fell into the bottomless abyss…
Xiao Nanchen had developed a high fever and kept babbling incoherently.
Shen Ning could not make out his mumbled words. Without concerning herself with anything else, she stripped off his clothes and wiped him down with warm water.
She mainly wiped his neck, armpits, and back.
But with his temperature as high as it was, physical cooling would not work. Shen Ning brought over the freshly boiled willow-bark water and tried to feed it to him.
By then, however, Xiao Nanchen was burning so fiercely that his teeth were clenched tightly together, and he was trembling. No matter what she did, she could not get the willow-bark water into his mouth.
Seeing that he had begun to convulse from the fever, Shen Ning had no choice. She tipped back her head and took a large mouthful, then pinched his nose, lowered her head, and passed the liquid into him.
Like performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Shen Ning remained completely focused, feeding him the entire large bowl of hot decoction one mouthful after another.
Fortunately, although the method was somewhat nauseating, it was still effective. Most of the large bowl of willow-bark water made it into him.
Shen Ning let out a sigh of relief and straightened up. But at that moment, the unconscious man suddenly grabbed her arm.
Caught off guard, she was pulled down. Her other hand instinctively braced itself, only to land in an awkward place.
Beneath her palm were abdominal muscles disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers…
Shen Ning snatched her hand back.
Her hand was going to tingle itself numb, damn it…
Still, considering that he had been injured for so long and was in this condition, yet could still tense his abdominal muscles, it was clear how formidable his physique must have been before.
My king is mighty, but no medical troublemaking!
Shen Ning raised her hand and pressed a certain acupoint at his waist. Xiao Nanchen, who had been gripping her tightly, finally released her.
That's better.
At that moment, Xiao Nanchen barely opened his eyes, though his gaze could not quite focus.
For that brief instant, he had managed to regain consciousness because he had sensed an unusual touch.
But his awareness lasted only a moment. Soon, the high fever dragged him back into sleep.
He still seemed to be trapped in hell itself, sometimes scorched by raging flames and sometimes chilled to the bone. Yet he could sense that someone was beside him.
It was an exceedingly gentle voice.
“It's all right. Go to sleep. I'll watch over you here…”
Perhaps he had been exhausted to the utmost by the torment of his injuries. Perhaps that voice possessed some inexplicable magic that made people feel at ease. Xiao Nanchen finally broke free from the swamp-like nightmare and sank into deep sleep.
This sleep was still broken by intermittent waking, but every time he regained consciousness, he could hear that voice. Warm, slightly bitter broth was fed into his mouth, and he swallowed instinctively. The faintly bitter liquid entered his stomach and slowly pulled him out of hell.
When dawn was near, Xiao Nanchen's fever finally broke.
Shen Ning had hardly slept all night either, checking his temperature from time to time.
Seeing that his fever had finally subsided, Shen Ning sighed inwardly. This physique was truly no joke. If an ordinary person had been in his condition, last night would probably have cost them half their life.
My king is mighty!
When Xiao Nanchen opened his eyes, the sun was already high in the sky. Outside, the sounds of people coming and going filled the air. He realized that the villagers were holding a funeral for Zhao Mu.
He instinctively tried to sit up. The moment he moved, he suddenly noticed something. Looking down, he saw that only half of his trouser legs remained… and his upper garment had come undone.
Prince Ding was stunned for an instant. But then he made an unexpected discovery: the leg that had been festering, swollen, and purple yesterday no longer looked so horrifying.
The glossy purple swelling had subsided somewhat, and the sharp, wrenching pain had eased considerably.
Last night… Wait.
The confused memories from when he had been half-conscious suddenly surged forth. Xiao Nanchen abruptly remembered the softness pressed against his lips while he drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness. At the time, his clothing had been loosened, and there had been another hand beneath his chest and abdomen…
In an instant, Xiao Nanchen's face turned utterly livid.
What had that woman done last night?
He had thought that her flirting with other men and fawning over them behind her husband's back was already shameless enough. He had never imagined that she would commit such a depraved, immoral act against her own younger brother-in-law…
How could anyone in this world be so debauched and shameless?
A murderous fury rose within Xiao Nanchen.
He would certainly eliminate that shameless village woman on Zhao Mu's behalf, lest she disgrace Zhao Mu's good name in the future!
Shen Ning had no idea that Xiao Nanchen's confused memories had left him remembering only that he had been molested, while completely forgetting that she had been trying to feed him willow-bark water to reduce his fever and inflammation—or that he himself had pulled her back down.
She was busy outside.
Villagers rarely shirked their duties when it came to a funeral. One after another, they came to the house and volunteered to help.
When they entered the courtyard and saw Shen Ning, quite a few of them showed surprise.
Shen Ning seemed to have changed somewhat.
The former Shen Ning had liked brightly colored clothing. But she did not have much money, and even when she gritted her teeth and painfully paid for it, she could only afford the cheapest fabrics.
Those fabrics were all failed dyeing remnants, yet they were still absurdly expensive for farmers. Shen Ning was the only person in the entire village who would buy them.
However, the fabrics had not been dyed properly to begin with, and her aesthetic sense was limited. Although the dresses she made were bright, they were not attractive. Paired with her somewhat gaudy floral hair ornaments, she had looked exactly like a brightly colored rooster in the poor, plain village.
But when everyone arrived at Zhao Mu's house today, they discovered that Shen Ning had taken on an entirely different appearance.
She wore a coarse cloth dress similar to those worn by the village women. Her hair was twisted into a bun and secured with a wooden hairpin. Compared to her exaggerated, ridiculous outfits of the past, she was much easier on the eyes.
More accurately, she was much prettier.
Still, no one felt comfortable staring at a newly widowed woman in mourning. Once they arrived, they all began working. After all, Zhao Mu's funeral was being kept simple and would last only one day. He would be buried at noon, so time was tight.
Several older women who had helped lift Shen Ning down from the coffin yesterday were preparing food in the kitchen. After thanking the people who had arranged the mourning hall, Shen Ning walked toward the kitchen to greet and thank the older women who were helping.
Just then, she saw a broad, stout woman walking out of the kitchen while stuffing an oiled-paper package into her bosom. Without looking back, the woman left through the courtyard gate.
From the original Shen Ning's memories, she identified the woman as her paternal aunt, Dong Chunhua. The original Shen Ning's paternal uncle had married into Qingyuan Village, which happened to be the same village where she lived.
Aunt Dong Chunhua had always been shrewd, greedy, and fond of taking advantage of every petty opportunity.
Thinking of the oily marks seeping through the paper package and the aroma of fried radish-and-meat balls wafting from the kitchen, Shen Ning was speechless.
When she reached the kitchen doorway, she indeed heard someone inside speaking in a low, contemptuous voice.
“That Dong Chunhua really has some nerve. She didn't care that her niece was in such a miserable state and actually packed up such a huge bag of meatballs to take home.”
“She was taking them home for that useless brat of hers, of course. Tsk, what a shameless woman.”
Someone saw Shen Ning and immediately fell silent. Shen Ning walked in as though nothing had happened, smiling as she greeted and thanked them…
Speaking of which, this funeral really was stretched thin.
Before dawn had fully broken, Shen Ning had taken stock of the original Shen Ning's assets.
She had actually been fairly well-off. After all, Zhao Mu had once been a carpenter. He had a skill, worked diligently, and lived frugally, so he had saved up a considerable amount of property.
Only a few days after buying Shen Ning and bringing her home, he had been conscripted and sent off to war. Before leaving, he had given all his possessions to the new wife he had just bought. They had not even held a wedding yet, nor had they consummated their marriage.
Zhao Mu had left behind a full thirty taels of silver. Yet after more than two years, only five taels remained. From the original Shen Ning's memories, Shen Ning saw that more than twenty taels of silver had actually been spent almost entirely on the mother and son of the Pei family.
Pei Yuanzhou devoted himself wholeheartedly to studying by lamplight, while Mother Pei was in poor health and could not do much work.
The former Shen Ning had not only taken on all the Pei family's housework, handling everything inside and out so that Mother Pei could rest at ease, she had even “lent” the Pei family plenty of silver whenever Mother Pei fell ill or they needed to stock up on coal and firewood for the bitter winter.
Of course, though they had borrowed it, they had never once returned any of it.
Shen Ning could not even find the time to repair or tidy up her own home, yet she had cleaned the Pei family's three rooms until they were spotless. In the end, once they set their sights on Li Yushi, who was destined to become an official's wife, they would not even let Shen Ning through their door.
Tsk… She was another foolish, muddleheaded idiot. No wonder she later met such an end—even her corpse was sold for a ghost marriage.
Fortunately, five taels of silver remained. Along with the seven taels she had extorted from my king, that made twelve taels, which was enough to hold Zhao Mu's funeral.
At that moment, an exaggerated wailing cry suddenly came from outside the courtyard gate.
“Waaah… My poor daughter, her husband died when she was still so young… How pitiful, how truly pitiful…”
Almost instantly, Shen Ning found the source of that voice in the original Shen Ning's memories: the gambling addict who had sold the original Shen Ning to Zhao Mu—her father, Shen Danian.