Chapter 1: Night Shock Is this a love poem? This is a warrant for arrest! ...

Chapter 1: The Night Shocked Young Master's Seal

Seven years.

In the late spring of the seventh year since leaving Yaowang Valley, Yuzhou City was filled with moisture everywhere, and a faint yellow mist had accumulated on the fine bricks outside the doors.

Qing Guiyu was carrying a medicine basket and walking along the muddy path when he heard a loud sound of a wake-up stick.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the old man behind the desk sipped his tea. "Today, let's talk about how Young Master Jin Sheng defeated the Eighteen Gu Villages of Southern Xinjiang in just ten moves!"

"You've been talking about this book for half a year! How about telling me something new?" Some familiar tea drinkers in the audience started to tease him.

The old man stiffened his neck and said, "Why would you come here for no reason? Just look at that drifter on the river today, who died in such a tragic way? How dare I say anything?"

"Who doesn't know? Who hasn't been to the river? Even the ghosts who died unjustly can't rest in peace, with three long needles stuck in their hearts!"

She stopped and felt a little uneasy because of the wound on her wrist that had been there for years.

Qing Guiyu pressed down the needle bag on his body and pricked up his ears, but the storyteller seemed to have made up his mind. He changed the reed and no longer talked about the three needles growing from the heart.

So she could only lower her head and walk through the crowd. Suddenly, she felt a chill on the back of her neck - like an ice blade flying past her vital point.

A few strands of her hair were cut off and fell off.

Qing Guiyu turned suddenly and saw a glimpse of dark clothing at the second-floor railing. Someone was standing by the bamboo curtain, half their face hidden behind the falling curtain. Their pale, slender fingers were stroking the teacup. The rim of the teacup was a little shiny, as if frost had formed on it.

Her heart sank suddenly, she put down the medicine basket in her hand, and went upstairs with the determination to fight to the death.

The man had gone, and there was no one upstairs. The lanterns outside the eaves swayed gently in the wind, casting tiny golden glints.

On the empty tea table stood a five-pointed medicine bag, made of oil paper and neatly tied with silk thread.

Qing Guiyu looked around and reached out to take the five-cent bag.

The evening drum struck its first blow at this moment, and amidst the rustling of the wind, there seemed to be a very light cough mixed in the wind, as if someone was laughing softly in the dark.

The five-cornered bag felt icy cold to the touch, considerably larger than the usual medicine bags. She reached for the silk thread that bound it, and her fingertips felt a strange, slippery sensation, like the scales of a hibernating venomous snake. Suddenly, she cut her finger.

She put the bleeding finger into her mouth and sucked it. The smell of blood spread between her teeth, which was terribly familiar.

I opened the five-cornered package. The medicine was carefully wrapped, the paper was quite gorgeous, and the four corners were embossed with golden edges.

She frowned and examined it. There seemed to be no signs of poison. The silk thread was tied with an ink-printed prescription, and the herbs in the package were marked:

Three grams of angelica, two ounces of honeysuckle, and seven-year-old cicada shell.

Her uneasiness gradually grew, exploding in her mind, and a figure flashed through her mind.

The gold-painted pattern on the four sides of the paper was not a simple golden pattern, but a few seal characters. She examined the four corners and saw that the seal characters were written with a few short sentences:

Seven years have passed since the jade was broken, and the sound of gold hates the bitter cold. Please return the love you gave me, and pity my longing for you.

Her fingertips trembled with the paper.

Those seal characters drawn with gold powder shone faintly in the twilight, like wounds that had been washed away by moonlight in the past.

How can this be a love poem?

This was the arrest warrant given to her by the young man she rescued that year.

The ending of the character was as sharp as a knife, almost slicing the paper—it was the character Chen Jiansheng had written. It was so familiar.

The young man coughed up blood at the foot of the stone steps of the medicine hut, and wrote his last words on the steps with his finger dipped in the blood, which was also so arrogant.

"When will you be back?" At that time, the young man leaned over to whisper in her ear and glanced at her bag. "Are you going to take the gold needles and the Bian stones with you?"

"Master is sending people to southern Xinjiang this time to expel the plague," she said, smiling at the young man, a chill running down her temples. "There's a lot of miasma. Bian stone is better than gold needles at exorcising evil spirits."

"It is the evil that is exorcised,"

The young man reached out his hand, held her hand tightly, and spoke softly. His long black hair slowly fell onto his arm, and the candlelight swayed, casting a little shadow.

"...or me?"

*

She silently recited the last two lines. This poem was just an ordinary sad poem in the eyes of ordinary people, but when it fell into her heart, every word was cold and indifferent:

"Broken Jade" clasped the old wound on her wrist,

"Bitter cold" may mean that the person's cold poison has not been cured;

As for "Lovesickness is Difficult" - she clenched the paper, crumpled it up and threw it behind her, then sat down on the table angrily, and the herbs rolled all over the table.

Rong Niang in the teahouse heard the noise and came up with a pot in hand. Seeing her sitting there and getting angry, she was a little puzzled. She looked at the medicine bag again and didn't care at all.

"Didn't you have it delivered yesterday? You said you needed it for the consultation today?"

Qing Guiyu was surprised when he heard that. "I asked someone to deliver it? What kind of person is that? Have you seen him before?"

Unexpectedly, Rong Niang's face suddenly turned red, and she stuttered a little when she spoke. She raised her hand to gesture to her.

"He's a handsome young man in black! Where did you find such a godlike figure? When he came, the girls and wives on the street were all glancing at him!"

Qing Guiyu held his forehead with his hand, feeling a real headache at the moment.

Rong Niang exclaimed "Ah" beside her and picked up the half-broken silk thread: "What kind of precious thing is this?"

The thin thread bent into a thin ring at her fingertips, and when the twilight shone on it, it emitted a cold light like silver scales.

Qing Guiyu crossed his arms and sneered, "It's not a good thing. It can easily cut people. Throw it away."

Hurting people was fake, killing was real. The first time she saw this thread was when the boy tried to use it to commit suicide.

"Tomorrow..." She picked up the medicine basket and patted herself. "If there are any more young men in black who come to deliver things, tell them I went to Datang Mountain to collect herbs."

"Tell Madam Zheng to go to the pharmacy to get the medicine. I have three months' supply of medicine there." She looked back at the family living in the teahouse, feeling reluctant to leave this stable life.

She stepped into the early night, her medicine basket clutched. Sparks from the blacksmith shop at the end of the street fell behind her as she hurried through the streets that had become so familiar to her over the years, heading for the clinic.

Seal script is not an uncommon variant. Even if no one can decipher it for a day or two, this love poem by Master Jinsheng will surely become a rumor for a day or two.

There are too many strange characters in the world. This person only used ordinary gold seal characters to cover them up in a thin and perfunctory manner, but it didn't cover them up much.

Being half-hidden will only arouse the interest of others.

The gold leaf oil paper was of course distributed deliberately. Presumably, within a month, when she went out to visit the streets, she looked like a peacock with its tail spread out perched on her head.

This peacock with its tail spread out beautifully is called Prince Jinsheng, with a deep and clear voice.

He is truly the most troublesome person in the world.

Qing Guiyu pushed open the wooden door of the clinic, sat in the hall in a daze for a while, then got up and went to the backyard to pack his bags. He could no longer stay in Yuzhou City.

Suddenly, there were staggering footsteps outside the door.

"Doctor... help, help!" A hoarse male voice mixed with the sound of knocking on the door. Qing Guiyu gathered the things in his hands. Doctor Meng had already gone out to greet him.

As soon as the bolt was removed, a dark figure fell heavily in, and a fishy smell was strong in his nose - it was a bodyguard who was soaked all over, with a large patch of dark red stains on his chest, and his right hand was pressed tightly on the knife wound on his left shoulder.

Doctor Meng rushed forward a few steps, took a look, frowned, pinched his beard and shook his head: "This, this old man really..."

He turned around and called her, "Qing girl! Come here!"

Doctor Meng also understood that there was something strange about this girl. She was good at acupuncture and had a good understanding of the properties of medicine.

She was particularly experienced in treating external and internal injuries, even more so than many renowned doctors. Was she a member of the Jianghu? Whose disciple was she? But she didn't say, and the old doctor didn't ask.

Qing Guiyu quickly stood up and went to meet him.

"Help him to the couch." She turned and took the needle bag from the closet, and glanced at the man's wound: the knife cut diagonally into the bone, and the edge was blue, probably poisoned.

The escort's throat made a hoarse sound, as if he was trying hard to say something, but she silenced him with a silver needle.

"Save your energy." She smiled, "If your wound were even half an inch deeper, even a Daluo Immortal couldn't save you."

When she rolled up her sleeves, she felt some pain in the old injury on her wrist and her wrist was trembling. Now she always had to press half an inch more when giving acupuncture, so she used the base of her thumb to press the end of the needle and slowly twisted it in.

Veins bulged on the escort's forehead, but he remained silent. It was not until she had picked out the last bit of rotten meat that he managed to squeeze out a few words in a hoarse voice:

"Someone... is asking about Jinzhen..."

The tip of the needle trembled slightly as it hung above the candle flame. Qing Guiyu hummed a sound and continued to move, inserting the red-hot golden needle into Fengmenxue.

"There are at least twenty doctors in Yuzhou who know acupuncture."

"The brothers of Yufeng Escort Agency...all died at Baidukou..." The escort suddenly grabbed her sleeve, his cloudy eyes bulging.

The man held on tightly, and she felt less strength on the old wound on her wrist, so she hurriedly used her other hand to light some drowsy herbs under his nose.

The medicinal mist spread. In a trance, she seemed to see the river surface dyed in flames. The young man in black stood alone at the bow of the boat, the boat burning into layers of red chains in the middle of the river, and the exploded masts fell one after another. And she was struggling to find the body covered with golden needles among the pile of corpses.

She waved the medicinal mist and shook her head, and the face of the corpse changed into the appearance of the bodyguard at hand.

"They said it was the needle from Medicine King Valley..." Before he could finish his words, the escort fainted.

Of course it’s the needle from Yaowang Valley.

Qing Guiyu sighed, stood at the threshold and looked at the empty street for a while, the golden needle in his palm was warmed.

The sound of a clapper came from afar, it was already three o'clock in the morning.

"Master, thank you for your care over the years,"

She hesitated for a moment, but eventually turned around and bowed three times to Doctor Meng. "Qing girl is leaving, please take care of yourself."

Doctor Meng nodded and sighed, "The time has finally come. Where are you going?"

Qing Guiyu waved her hand and smiled. In comparison, it was safer if everyone here knew nothing. As long as she could avoid that young man, it didn't matter where she went or what she fought.

"I don't know either."

She looked out into the darkness. The mist on the eaves transformed into a few drops of dew, falling. No one was around, but the golden thread she had seen seven years ago was already tightly wrapped around her.

At this moment in the teahouse, the young man in black bent down, picked up the strands of her hair that had been shaved off, and gently tied them around his wrist.