Chapter 60
After getting ashore, Xie Zheng put Fan Changyu down temporarily. When he raised his hand to hold her pulse, he caught a glimpse of the pair of deerskin wristbands wrapped around her cuffs and his gaze lingered for a moment.
His gaze moved down to her swollen left hand. Her thin lips, which were already tightly pursed, were now almost pressed into a straight line.
She had not been injured so badly when she was chased by Wei Mansion's assassins before, but now she was so ferocious when she met the bandits.
He untied the wrist guard on her hand and then began to feel her pulse.
But the pulse I felt with my fingertips was pitifully weak, and the body in my arms was as cold as ice, barely resembling a living person.
The smell of blood filled Xie Zheng's senses, causing his brows to furrow tightly.
She shouldn't be like this.
I have the impression that she should be warm all the time.
But at this moment, this cold body seemed to be telling Xie Zheng that her life was fading away bit by bit.
There were inexplicable emotions tangled in his chest, and the sudden panic made him feel unwell all over, and he was so violent that he wanted to kill someone.
Xie Zheng lowered his eyes and looked at Fan Changyu's tightly closed eyes. She was soaked all over, and her hands and face had turned purple from being frozen for too long. She was wearing wet clothes, and the cloak wrapped around her could not bring her much warmth at all.
She is too cold and must be warmed up as soon as possible.
Xie Zheng glanced at his personal soldiers and said in a deep voice, "Leave my clothes behind, retreat ten feet away and turn your back."
The guards looked at each other in bewilderment at first, then when they realized what Xie Zheng was going to do, surprise flashed across their eyes, but they still did it very quickly.
After the guards had all left, Xie Zheng glanced at Fan Changyu's purple face. When his fingertips reached her collar, he paused for a moment, untied her hairband and covered his eyes with it, then he stripped off her wet and cold clothes, and fumbled to pick up the dry clothes he had taken off before going into the water and wrapped them around her.
Because he couldn't see, the touch of his fingertips became particularly obvious. After wrapping Fan Changyu tightly, Xie Zheng pulled off the headband covering his eyes, and a little sweat appeared on the tip of his nose.
He silently pinched Fan Changyu's left arm. Before changing clothes, he found that Fan Changyu's left arm was dislocated. Later, after feeling around, he found that the position of the bone was wrong.
Even though he was badly injured, he still wanted to protect the scholar. Was he really not afraid of dying at the hands of the bandits?
I can’t explain how I feel deep down.
But there was a moment when he thought bitterly, what did it matter to him even if she died?
The push and release movements to re-set her bones were done with as little force as possible.
Xie Zheng looked a little unhappy. After reconnecting the hand bones, he called on his personal soldiers to find a wooden stick and temporarily tied it to Fan Changyu's hand to fix her.
It was the first time for the guards to see him treat a woman like this, and they were unsure of Xie Zheng's intention. After Xie Zheng treated all of Fan Changyu's wounds, he asked, "Lord Marquis, are we going to Jizhou Prefecture now?"
Xie Zheng glanced at Fan Changyu, whose face was still purple, and finally picked him up and walked towards the warhorse, "Let's find a family to stay with first."
All his clothes had been wrapped around Fan Changyu. The river wind blew in his face like a knife. His upper body was bare, and water was dripping from his hair in front of his forehead. However, he did not even shiver. His muscles were firm, with distinct musculature. He was lean but not thin, and full of strength.
The personal guards watched their own lord, shirtless, carrying the tightly wrapped woman in his arms, mount the horse, and without showing any sign of surprise, they also rode their horses and followed him.
The horse's back was shaking. Xie Zheng avoided Fan Changyu's dislocated hand and carefully held him in his arms. Feeling the weight against his chest, he tightened his grip on the reins.
He lowered his eyes to glance at Fan Changyu's lifeless profile and said in a cold voice: "You'd better be alive, otherwise who do you think will take care of that little burden for you?"
There was no other sound in his ears except the sound of the wind. He pursed his lips and held the person tightly in his arms.
The one hundred light cavalrymen who followed Xie Zheng were all former scouts. They soon found a family in the mountains, but it was just a blind old woman who lived alone.
Xie Zheng was afraid of disturbing the old woman, so he only took a few bodyguards with him. The common people were afraid of the soldiers, so they pretended to be merchants passing by, gave the old woman a few taels of silver, and borrowed a bedroom and kitchen.
Several bodyguards went to heat water on the stove, asked the old woman where there was a doctor nearby, and then went to ask for a doctor.
The old woman had originally been a little worried that a few grown men were kidnapping an unconscious woman when she heard about them, but after hearing these developments, she felt relieved.
Human traffickers would not care so much about kidnapped women.
She found some clothes of her daughter-in-law and sent them to the room, asking, "This lady was fine, how did she fall into the water?"
There were three braziers burning in the small room. Xie Zheng, with his upper body naked, was slowly sweating, but Fan Changyu, who was lying on the bed buried in the quilt, was still ice cold.
The old woman didn't have a bathtub at home, so he couldn't let Fan Changyu soak in hot water to quickly restore her body temperature. He could only use a towel squeezed out of the hot water to apply hot compresses to her frozen body.
Xie Zheng put the cold handkerchief into the hot water basin, rolled it up again and wrapped it around her hand before saying, "We encountered bandits hijacking our boat on the way, and I jumped into the water while trying to escape and caught a cold."
"This is truly a sin..." When the old woman heard that they were attacked by bandits, she couldn't help but speak with a hint of sympathy.
She handed over the clothes she had found and said, "These are my daughter-in-law's clothes. Give them to your wife later."
Xie Zheng thanked him.
The old woman said, "You escaped from the river in such a cold weather, so your clothes must be wet. I will find you another set of my son's clothes."
After the old woman left, Xie Zheng looked at Fan Changyu lying on the simple wooden bed. He sat there for a while and was surprised to find that the bruises on her face had faded a little, but a red blush had reappeared.
He raised his hand to her forehead, and as expected, it felt hot, and the skin under his palm was as hot as magma.
Xie Zheng frowned, took the handkerchief off her hand, soaked it in hot water again and applied it to her forehead.
By the time the bodyguards brought the doctor back, Fan Changyu's face was already flushed red.
The doctor was nearly dead from being shaken on horseback. He finally stopped and was brought into this room to have his pulse checked before he could even catch his breath.
If other doctors dared to lose their temper in front of a group of soldiers, they would lose all their temper and just want to finish treating the patient and go back alive.
After entering the room, he found that the patient was a woman. Although the doctor was suspicious, he did not dare to ask any more questions. When he felt the patient's pulse, his already wrinkled brows became more and more wrinkled. He said, "This is evil cold entering the body. Why did you wait until this long to call a doctor? If you are in a weaker state, I am afraid you will not survive."
As soon as he finished speaking, he felt a cold gaze falling on him.
The doctor looked at the shirtless handsome man in the snowy day. His heart was pounding. He said hurriedly, "It's not that she can't be saved, but medicine alone is definitely not enough. We need to scrape her to activate blood circulation and dredge her meridians. First, we can disperse the wind and cold in her body. Only then can the medicine be more effective."
Xie Zheng had heard of scraping to dispel wind and cold. Soldiers in the army often used this folk remedy. Although it was a little painful, it was sometimes more effective than a dose of medicine.
He looked at Fan Changyu, whose lips were dry and cracked from burning heat, and after a moment of silence, he said, "I understand."
The doctor was taken to the kitchen to boil medicine, and Xie Zheng asked his personal guards to bring a basin of warm water.
Except for the old woman, all the people here are men. Unfortunately, the old woman is blind, and scraping requires the naked eye to judge the degree of redness of the sha, so only he can do it.
Xie Zheng dipped a copper plate into warm water, looked at Fan Changyu's flushed face, and said, "When you wake up, you will probably accuse me of taking advantage of someone's misfortune."
No one responded to him.
Gua Sha is a treatment for scraping the back. Fan Changyu’s left arm was dislocated and tied with a wooden stick, so he couldn’t lie down.
He picked up a piece of clothing belonging to the old woman's son and casually put it on. He walked to the bed and helped her sit up. He let Fan Changyu lean her back against him, lowered her eyes and turned her face to the side, and fumbled to untie the belt in front of her.
As the belt loosened, the wide robe, which was already ill-fitting, fell directly to his arms.
Xie Zheng picked up the copper plate from the basin and pulled all of Fan Changyu's long hair in front of her. He was focused on her, but when he really saw her smooth back with even, tight lines, his breath caught slightly.
Unlike the strong muscles of men, and also different from the soft and boneless dancers seen at celebration banquets in the past, the slender waistline formed by the tight muscles is slender but with the beauty of strength and toughness.
The purple skin that had been frozen turned cold white after it regained warmth.
Because he was afraid that she would freeze, Xie Zheng took off her soaked sweater when he changed her clothes. At this moment, she was drowsy and her head was half lowered, revealing her fair and fragile neck. Apart from the black hair that fell from one side to her shoulders, there was nothing covering her.
The undergarment that hung below her waistline and half-exposed her was also his...
This realization made something explode in Xie Zheng's mind, and the copper plate at his fingertips suddenly became scorching hot.
He frowned deeply, turned away his eyes and took a few breaths before focusing all his attention on the copper plate in his hand, scraping it across her snow-white back.
When scraping for the first time, only a layer of light red appeared on Fan Changyu's back. After the second scraping, the redness became obviously heavier. Xie Zheng continued to scrape until the redness turned into dark red.
Fan Changyu had a severe cold and was unconscious during the scraping treatment. She had to rely on Xie Zheng's hand to support her so that she could sit steadily.
After scraping, her entire back was no longer presentable, covered with purple and red scars, yet it had a cruel beauty.
Xie Zheng's fingertips were so hot that beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and nose. After throwing the copper plate into the basin, he quickly grabbed a piece of clothing and wrapped Fan Changyu up, put him in the quilt, and rushed out.
The cold wind and fine snow hit my face, finally bringing down the heat.
When the personal guard brought over the boiled medicine, he saw him leaning against the wooden pillar under the eaves with his arms folded, staring at the door in a daze, and he didn't even hear his own footsteps.
The guard could only cough lightly and said, "Master... the medicine is ready."
Xie Zheng came back to his senses, glanced at him, and took the bowl of medicine from his hand.
Just as the guards were about to retreat politely, they heard their own ruthless master ask, "Among ordinary people, you have to marry someone else's daughter, right?"
The guard was stunned for a moment, then realized that Xie Zheng was talking about himself and the woman in the house.
The personal soldier thought that no matter where he was, he had to be responsible for the girl. Seeing that his own master was acting so abnormally, it didn't seem like he didn't care about the girl, so why did he ask such a question?
He had no choice but to answer truthfully: "Of course I do."
Before Xie Zheng could say anything else, a scout stationed a few miles away hurried into the courtyard and reported: "Master, the officers and soldiers from the Fuzhou Prefecture are searching along the river."
Xie Zheng raised his eyelids slightly: "Are they also looking for the leader of Qingfeng Village?"
The scout glanced at Xie Zheng and said cautiously, "It seems that they are looking for the girl in the house. The scholar who was rescued from the river earlier is the grandson of Li Taifu. He is now looking for someone with the officers and soldiers of Jizhou Prefecture."
Xie Zheng raised the corner of his mouth coldly. He knew that Taifu Li had sent his grandson Li Huaian to Jizhou.
Wei Xuan's grain collection caused such a big trouble that it undoubtedly gave Li Taifu, who had always been at odds with the Wei Party, a handle. In the past, the northwest was entirely controlled by Wei Yan. After this incident, Li Taifu's party was almost fighting with Wei Yan in the court, and finally a person from the Qingliu party was sent over.
It was called to assist the war in the northwest, but in essence it was a struggle for power.
When Li Huaian came to Jizhou, Li Taifu's party now had a pair of eyes in the entire northwest that was controlled by Wei Yan.
But I didn't expect that this person was also related to Fan Changyu.
Is it a coincidence, or have Master Li and his group also received some information and are trying to find out the secrets behind the Fan family?
Xie Zheng lowered his eyes and looked at the steaming medicine in his hand. His tone was casual but cold: "Guard the mountain pass and don't let anyone in."
After the scout left, he went into the house carrying the medicine bowl.
Inside the room, Fan Changyu slept peacefully under the covers. The red blush on his face from the fever had not yet faded, and he looked a bit more rosy.
Xie Zheng sat by the bed and looked at her for a while, then said, "I've long told you that you have poor taste."
Fan Changyu's body had warmed up after scraping the sha, but he was sleeping soundly at the moment and it was impossible for him to answer him.
But feeding her the medicine became extremely troublesome. He pinched her lips open and forced the medicine into her mouth. Most of it flowed out. He wiped her mouth with someone's clothes in disgust, but still patiently fed her the rest of the medicine bit by bit.
The firewood in the brazier made a slight "crackling" sound, and the firelight reflected on his sharp profile. He used his fingertips to wipe away the remaining medicine juice from the corner of Fan Changyu's mouth, lowered his eyes and looked at her silently for a long time, then suddenly said: "Fan Changyu, I will marry you."
"If you don't say anything, I'll take it as your consent."
The author has something to say:
Xie Hou: According to the secular world, I have to marry her and be responsible for her, right?
Bodyguard (confused): Isn't this necessary?
Xie Hou: Okay, now I have found a legitimate reason not to be afraid of rejection!
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