Chapter 114
Chapter 114
The snow had stopped. The entire city lay blanketed in white and wrapped in silver, while every gust of wind carried a bone-piercing chill.
For the poor, winter was often the hardest season to endure. Even when the cold made them ill, they had no means to seek treatment. Those in poor health could easily fail to survive a single winter.
But this never happened in Yunling City. No matter how vicious the weather became, no one fell ill, much less died. It was all thanks to the protection of the Golden Tree.
As a result, even when pampered children ran outside to play in the snow, adults rarely stopped them.
Qiao Ying watched a snowball roll to her feet and sighed. “No wonder so many people want to live in Yunling City. For many of them, this place must seem like paradise on earth.”
Shen Qingyu asked, “Do you like it here too?”
Qiao Ying answered honestly, “I can’t really say whether I like or dislike it. I only feel that the more different it is from the ordinary world, the stranger it seems.”
Just then, someone shouted, “They’re distributing Divine Water! Hurry and get yours!”
At those words, everyone on the street eagerly surged toward the same place. Men and women, old and young, formed a long line with practiced ease and gazed expectantly at the people handing out medicine vials ahead.
Curious, Qiao Ying stood at the edge and asked a man in line, “Excuse me, what is the Divine Water everyone is receiving?”
The man answered, “It’s purified water blessed by the Saintess. Drink one bottle each month, and it will strengthen your body. Even if you’re unlucky enough to suffer an injury or fall ill, you’ll recover quickly.”
Qiao Ying asked, “It’s that miraculous?”
“Of course!” The man patted his arm. “Last month, I accidentally fell from a roof while working and broke the bones in this arm. But the injury healed before long. It was all thanks to the Saintess and the Golden Tree!”
Qiao Ying asked again, “If something this miraculous were sold outside the city, wouldn’t it easily produce wealth to rival a nation?”
The man laughed. “That’s what makes the Divine Water so miraculous. The moment it leaves Yunling City, it loses its divine power and becomes no different from ordinary water. No one can smuggle it out to sell.”
The man said warmly and kindly, “Young lady, you should get in line too. Divine Water is wonderful stuff!”
Qiao Ying blinked and raised her face with keen interest. “Shen Qingyu, let’s line up and get a bottle too.”
She pulled him to the back of the line. Before long, a small green vial rested in Qiao Ying’s hand. When she shook it, water sloshed inside.
She removed the stopper and lowered her head to sniff. A faint fragrance of plants reached her. The scent seemed to slip through her nose and into her mind, and her gaze slowly lost focus.
Only when Shen Qingyu pushed the stopper back into the vial did the elusive fragrance disappear. Qiao Ying woke from her brief trance.
Shen Qingyu bent down and asked with a smile, “Are we still looking for him?”
Qiao Ying came back to herself. “Yes.”
She glanced at the vial and put it away for the moment.
As they left the crowd, Qiao Ying’s sharp eyes caught a familiar figure.
“Shen Qingyu, I saw that young doctor from the clinic,” she said. “He’s the apprentice of the old doctor who treated Yan Yanchi.”
The handsome young man squeezed into the crowd was none other than Chunsheng, the clinic apprentice. He stared eagerly at the medicine vials being distributed by the City Lord’s Manor, faint excitement showing in his eyes.
Why was he here?
Suddenly, a flash of green appeared in the air. The tiny green insect fluttered its wings and slowly approached the crowd.
Qiao Ying recognized it. “It’s a Bixiu Demon Insect.”
This kind of Demon Insect posed little threat. It was merely exceptionally sensitive to the blood of demons.
Qiao Ying tensely watched the direction in which the insect flew. Shen Qingyu had extraordinary patience. Only when some oblivious passerby was about to bump into them would he smilingly turn his face toward that person. An inexplicable chill would crawl up the latter’s back, sending them hurrying around at a distance.
Chunsheng saw the green Demon Insect flying toward him as well. As it drew closer, his expression shifted. He withdrew from the crowd and quickly left.
Qiao Ying shook Shen Qingyu’s hand. “There’s something wrong with him!”
Chunsheng had slipped into Yunling City, so naturally he could not stay at an inn. He chose an abandoned residence as his shelter. On the weathered plaque above the gate, the words “Shen Family Villa” remained faintly visible.
As a great family with a century of history, the Shen family had once possessed vast wealth and influence. They not only owned property in Yunling City, but had also been honored guests of successive City Lords. But ten years ago, the entire Shen family was massacred in a single night. Left untended ever since, the villa was now overgrown with weeds and draped in cobwebs.
“I’ve found a way. I can definitely save you… Once you wake… we’ll be able to…”
The man’s broken words drifted from the room, gentle and tender, like whispered endearments to a lover, filled with earnest devotion.
A girl’s head appeared outside a window with a hole in it.
“It sounds like someone else is inside.”
A young man’s head appeared beside hers the next moment.
“Indeed. More than one person.”
Qiao Ying and Shen Qingyu crouched outside the window, peeking in and whispering together like petty thieves up to no good.
“Wait for me… Just wait a little longer…”
Chunsheng murmured something else inside, then walked out of the room.
Qiao Ying quickly ducked. When she noticed Shen Qingyu’s head was still poking up without moving, she hurriedly pulled him down. The two pressed against the wall.
She lowered her voice. “Be careful!”
Shen Qingyu tipped his head and answered with a smiling, “Mm.”
At that moment, they both seemed to have forgotten that he was a ruthless man capable of cutting down enemies in every direction with nothing but an ordinary ebony blind cane.
Chunsheng left the room, locked the door, and carefully checked his surroundings before finally walking away.
The door was locked. Breaking it by force would certainly put him on guard.
Qiao Ying decided that she and Shen Qingyu would climb through the broken window.
Shen Qingyu moved so nimbly that Qiao Ying did not even see how he entered. When she looked up again, he was already standing in the room, facing her with a smile and holding out his hand.
Qiao Ying placed a hand on the sill. At that touch, her fingers found grooves of varying depths.
Chaotic marks covered the window and walls, as if carved by sharp claws. Within the gray, dark room, they looked unexpectedly horrifying.
Standing in the shadows, Shen Qingyu called softly, “Yingying?”
Qiao Ying recovered and climbed through the window from the daylight outside. The instant she landed, the young man who nearly blended into the surrounding darkness caught her securely in his arms.
Several cracks sounded as the medicine vial fell from Qiao Ying’s clothes and shattered on the floor. Clear liquid spilled across the boards. The fragrance of plants instantly filled the damp air and rushed into the lungs of those who had no defenses against it.
Qiao Ying’s mind inexplicably grew heavy and hazy.
“Yingying.”
“Yingying.”
“Yingying…”
Qiao Ying’s head drooped weakly, and her body went limp. As the world spun, the warmth of the young man’s embrace suddenly vanished. All that remained was a cold, hard confinement, bitterly cold and suffocatingly narrow.
With a thud, the sound of her own body striking the floor shocked her eyes open.
This room never saw the sun. There was no light, and the stale air reeked of blood.
Men’s voices came from outside the door.
“Of all the test materials, this specimen is the only one that survived the medicinal pool. Such rare medicine must have great uses. Guard it carefully.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll guard it well and take it back to the main family.”
“And all of you had better show restraint. Don’t carve out so much flesh and drain so much blood that you kill it before we’ve extracted its greatest value.”
“Come on, Elder Brother, you can’t blame us for everything. We lost quite a few brothers on this trip into the mountains, and plenty more were wounded. The dead are dead, but the living still need treatment. With such fine medicine at hand, what do you expect the men under us to think if we don’t use it?”
“Enough. Just make sure you know where to draw the line.”
The voices gradually receded. Before long, soundless silence settled over the surroundings.
Qiao Ying could hear only her own breathing. She did not know how she had changed locations in the blink of an eye. Shen Qingyu was gone as well. The unfamiliar darkness made her scalp prickle with tension.
She instinctively felt around and braced a hand against the floor, intending to stand, but her palm touched something strange.
Fur had been matted hard by dried blood, and its stench was overpowering.
In an instant, the thing slipped from her hand.
She heard the clatter of chains.
Clouds drifted aside, returning the moonlight to the world. One tiny sliver slipped through a crack in the window.
Metal clinked incessantly. A boy in blood-soaked clothes pushed himself up and leaned against the window, pressing his face and hands tightly to the icy frame. His blurred back looked small and thin.
The instant moonlight touched him, a pair of fox ears twitched brightly amid his filthy white hair. His tail, fouled with blood, dirt, and mud, swayed gently behind him.
A string of clear, quiet fox cries bubbled from the boy’s throat. Short and lively, one following another, they brimmed with joy at seeing moonlight and spread softly through the oppressive little room.