Chapter 2

Shen Ahheng walked around in the bamboo forest for a long time and finally found a few thin tree trunks that had been struck by lightning a few days ago. They were as thick as a bowl and just long enough for the man to lie down. She gritted her teeth and dragged the tree trunks over. She also found a few extremely tough green vines and quickly tied some thick fallen leaves and dry grass on top, making a simple "plank bed".

This was the method her master had taught her before.

In the past, she followed her master to practice medicine nearby all year round. Whenever a neighbor had a headache, fever or some other emergency and was unable to move, her master would take her and drag a wooden bed to carry the person back for treatment.

Shen Ah Heng dragged the plank bed to the side of the man, carefully placed his arms on her shoulders, and used all her strength to move him onto the plank bed. The man looked thin, but he was so heavy that her wrists were sore from the pressure.

Shen Aheng quickly tied him up with rattan to prevent him from slipping halfway.

After doing all this, Shen Ahheng made a pull pole made of branches and pulled him through the forest.

Fortunately, the ground was wet and slippery after the rain, which reduced a lot of resistance and made it much easier to drag him. Otherwise, with her strength alone, she would never be able to drag him.

After passing a small hill, Shen Ah Heng was worried and turned back to look at him. She saw that the man's body was swaying gently as she dragged him. His long hair was like scattered ink, stained with mud and broken leaves.

Vines were randomly wrapped around his body, outlining his slender figure.

Her dragging movements were not gentle, but he still did not wake up, his breathing was as shallow as a wisp of smoke. If it were not for the slight rise and fall of his chest, she would have thought he was dead.

-

By the time Shen Ahheng dragged the man into the mountain temple, he was already tired like an old dog, sweating profusely, and his clothes inside and out were soaked.

Shen Aheng slumped on the ground, and just as he was about to raise his hand to wipe the sweat from his face, his eyes fell on his half-open sleeves.

His skin was very white, the kind of cold white that comes from not seeing sunlight for years. His arms were covered with scars of varying depths. The new ones looked like they had just been broken out. It seemed that after the previous ordeal, the scabbed wounds had begun to bleed again.

The old ones turned dark brown, as if they had been whipped with poison, or there were rows of fine teeth marks, as if they had been bitten by poisonous insects, layered and crisscrossed on the white and almost transparent skin, making the scars even more shocking.

Further down, there were several strips of cloth wrapped around the ankles, with traces of blood seeping out, probably from being scraped when falling from a height.

Shen Ahheng frowned as he watched, and reached out to gently lift up his outer robe, revealing the snow-white silk silk underneath. The collar was loosely open, revealing half of his delicate collarbone.

His face was tilted to the other side, with the loose hair on his forehead covering his eyebrows and eyes, revealing only his straight nose. His neck was frighteningly thin, and a few strands of wet hair stuck to his soft jaw, like the finest white jade.

It's just that because the skin is too transparent, you can almost see the light blue veins under the skin, like a skull wrapped tightly in human skin.

He seemed startled by the noise, his brows furrowed ever so slightly, his eyelashes trembling, but he remained still. His pale lips pressed into a thin line, his arms slightly tense, as if subconsciously resisting someone's touch.

The light from the rain outside leaked in, passed through his wet and messy hair, and fell on the tiny cinnabar mark on his forehead, which was as thin as a spider's silk, with a very faint golden halo on the edge.

Shen Aheng’s gaze remained fixed for a long time, and he couldn’t help but blurt out.

"Medicine man."

The Qingxiu Sect's "Poison Sutra" says that the so-called "medicine man" originated from a mysterious sect hidden deep in the Kunlun Snow Mountain in the Western Regions, the Yaochen Sect. It is famous for its strange medicines and uncanny skills. However, the most mysterious existence in the sect is the "medicine man".

The medicine man is not a disciple of the sect, but a boy abducted from the Western Regions at a young age. He needs to meet the harsh conditions of "clean bones and pure yin blood". He is called "Pantuo", also known as "Spirit Servant". After being selected, cinnabar will be mixed with blood scale powder unique to the Western Regions, and a Spirit Servant pattern will be drawn on his forehead, which becomes the secret of the sect.

The sect regards spirit servants as sacred objects, and they are taken care of in their daily lives. In the eyes of outsiders, they have a respected status, and even the sect leader has to bow to them. However, after nightfall every day, they are taken into the Soul Tempering Cave and soaked in a pool of spirit liquid filled with century-old poisonous herbs and secret medicines, becoming the best "living vessels" for the sect to develop secret medicines and test evil skills.

In order to prosper and grow, the Yaochen Sect took the initiative to collude with local civil and military officials, royal family nobles, and refine "anti-aging pills" and "life-extending powder" for them, or some forbidden drugs that could kill people in an instant and enhance their skills.

These banned drugs must be tested on living people, and the medicine man is the only test subject. Those people pour the newly prepared pills into the mouth of the spirit servant, and then use the strange internal movement method to stimulate the effect of the medicine to run along the meridians throughout the body.

With day after day of immersion, the spirit servant's body slowly changed. His skin became as transparent as amber, and lavender medicinal patterns appeared all over his body, slowly running along the meridians to the heart. The closer the medicinal patterns were to the heart, the more serious the poisoning. Once it reached the heart, the spirit servant would die immediately from the poison.

Also, some of the refined medicines are rare in the world and it is difficult to find antidotes at the moment. Therefore, any slight mistake when testing the medicine will cause the poison to attack the heart, so in most cases the person who makes the medicine will not live for more than a few years.

Even if they could survive, their internal organs and veins would have been corroded beyond recognition by various poisons and would be no different from waste.

Although Chen Aheng's Qingxiu Sect is only a small sect in the martial arts world, it specializes in medicine to cure diseases and save lives. It is well-versed in various medicinal herbs and pharmacological books in the Central Plains, and has some understanding of poisons.

She had heard her master talk about the Yaochen Sect in the Western Regions in casual conversation before.

At that time, the master just said it casually, and she thought it was just a rumor and not a true story. She never thought that she would see it with her own eyes now.

The young man in front of me... he is only about seventeen or eighteen years old. The poison has almost invaded his heart and lungs, but he is still alive.

Actually, it’s quite impressive.

Or maybe it’s because of the peculiar physique of people from the Western Regions.

Shen Ah Heng withdrew his complicated thoughts from his memories, and carefully examined the wounds on the boy's body to make sure there were no omissions. He then pinched his wrist and took his pulse.

His pulse is very disordered, but... he is still breathing. Although the poison is strong, his life will not be in danger for the time being. It is more important to treat his external injuries first.

As for the poison in his body, she still had to study it slowly to see what kind of poisons he had so that she could prescribe the right medicine.

Having made up his mind, Shen Ah Heng propped himself up on his knees, patted the mud off his hands, walked over, picked up the bamboo basket and went to the back hall to look for medicine.

-

When Ashina Yu woke up, her pale fingertips were gently rubbing the edge of the coarse cloth quilt.

I could smell the fresh smell of chicken shit and the clattering sounds of chickens and dogs. What caught my eye were the beams covered with cobwebs. The paint on the open wooden door opposite had long since peeled off. A mixture of earthy odor, herbs and a hint of smoke wafted in from outside.

The half-collapsed statue opposite was not moved but patched up with new mud. The mixture of old and new made it look crooked and out of place.

The altar under the statue had not been renovated. There was a big crack in the middle, which was simply patched up with a few small wooden boards and covered with coarse linen as a tablecloth. The cloth was wrinkled and the corners were curled up.

There were a few dried wild hawthorns in the middle of the table, rolling all over the table, as if someone had picked them from the mountains, put them there casually and forgot to clean them up.

In the northeast corner, there were several bundles of medicinal herbs half a person's height. Some had been dried in the sun, while others were still covered with morning dew, and the mud on the roots had not yet dried.

The blue bricks on the ground were also broken and worn, and in some places the gaps were filled with gravel, making it barely passable.

Ashina Yu moved his fingers, his eyes blank.

Suddenly, he heard a few quick and sharp crows of "cuckoo, cuckoo" and "quack, quack". Ashina Yu turned around and saw a chicken coop placed under the opposite wall. The chicken coop was made of old bamboo strips, with small gaps in some places and was wrapped with hemp rope several times.

The bottom of the cage was covered with dry straw, which was trampled into a mess and mixed with some rabbit hair and chicken manure, but it wasn't too dirty.

There were a few black chickens crammed inside. Their feathers were dark and they were so thin that the outline of their sternum could be seen, but they were all in good spirits. One of them was stretching its neck to peck at the cockroaches on the wall of the cage, while another was flapping its wings to grab food.

There were also a few rabbits, with mottled fur and front legs as thin as four pieces of firewood. They were jumping around in the cage non-stop. One of them was using its three-lobed mouth to scratch at the straw to find food, while the other one was resting its front paws on a bamboo slip, nibbling on a piece of fresh grass with great effort. The tips of its fluffy ears twitched from time to time, as if to prevent the black chickens nearby from coming to snatch the food.

Ashina Yu wanted to sit up.

"Hey—don't move, don't move. You're seriously injured."

Suddenly, a clear female voice rang out, like the chirping of birds in the mountains, breaking the silence around.

The girl had a simple bun, and the beige tassel hairband was a little faded and tied loosely, swaying gently on her shoulders as she moved. There was some ash on her hair, and a few pieces of gray-black ash on the tip of her nose and cheekbones, which made her eyes look big and bright.

He was wearing a short, washed-out, coarse-cloth jacket with the sleeves rolled up high, revealing his slender arms. He was wearing a pair of dusty cloth shoes with mud on the soles.

Seeing that he woke up, Shen Aheng was stunned for a moment, then his eyes curved into two crescents, revealing two small canine teeth, adding a bit of naiveté.

When she lifted the curtain and came in, she was holding a coarse porcelain bowl with a chip on its mouth, with steam coming out of it.

Shen Ah Heng put the medicine aside, walked over a few steps, and hurriedly pressed his body back with both hands, saying: "I didn't expect you to wake up so soon. I thought you would be unconscious for at least ten days or half a month with your injuries. But you have been poisoned for so long, and you can still struggle to live until now. I guess your physique is different from that of ordinary people."

Ashina Yu looked at her without any surprise or inquiry, but just looked at her quietly, as if he was confirming something.

When he smelled the strong herbal scent on her, his beautiful eyes blinked. After a moment, his pale lips opened slightly and he uttered a string of syllables with a soft ending.

[Did you... leave me here? ]

The voice was clear, like the snow in early winter, neither high nor low, without any doubt or unnecessary emotion.

Shen Aheng stood there and blinked. She only understood modern language and ancient Central Plains language. How could she have heard of these winding ancient Tibetan languages?

"What are you mumbling? I don't understand."

Shen Ah Heng didn't understand, nor did he care. He turned back and picked up the hot, dark medicine and blew on it, stirring it while saying, "Don't worry, I'm not taking care of you in vain. I'll keep your earrings for you first. If you want them back, you can wait until you recover and chop firewood, fetch water, and feed livestock for me to pay off the debt."

Ashina Yu: "..."