Chapter 3

Fang Liang had broken a leg. After examining it, the physician shook his head and told him it was ruined beyond repair.

Madame Chen leaned over the bed. Mother and son exchanged a glance, and she began her theatrical lament.

“My poor son! He married a curse of a woman. She’d barely entered the house before she brought him a broken leg!”

Fang Liang lay in bed and cursed me too.

“Aren’t you an immortal? You wiped out a locust plague with a wave of your fingers, and you can’t heal a broken leg? Watch out, or I’ll divorce you!”

I stepped aside to avoid the teacup he threw and put on a troubled expression.

“There is a way. It’s just… just…”

Seeing me hesitate, his eyes brightened. He seized my sleeve and pleaded eagerly,

“Wife, you can do it, can’t you? Heal me, and I’ll remember your kindness. I’ll repay you twice over!”

“We’re husband and wife. Why speak of repayment? But…”

I looked timidly at Madame Chen.

“I cannot cure illness myself. To heal him, someone related to him by blood must exchange legs with him.”

Madame Chen’s expression changed at once.

“You little bitch! You’re trying to hurt me!”

I hastily knelt, my words full of distress.

“How can you accuse me of that? I would never harm my husband or his mother. Isn’t this all for his sake?”

Fang Liang’s gaze flickered between us and finally settled on Madame Chen, tentative.

She pointed at him with a trembling hand and cursed in anguish.

“Ungrateful brute! What was the use of raising you?”

His expression shifted several times. In the end, he merely pounded the bed, venting his helpless rage.

With tears brimming in my eyes, I gently comforted him.

“Husband, even if you’re crippled for life, I will never abandon you.”

I blinked. The fragments buried in his flesh began to move, slowly traveling along the channels of his body.

Inch by inch. A dull knife cutting flesh.

He rolled across the bed in pain, convulsing and howling.

Panicked, Madame Chen tried to hold him still. Both her hands came away covered in blood.

Shreds of flesh floated in it. That sticky, foul-smelling horror clung to her fingers. She fell to the floor and retched again and again.

Barely breathing, Fang Liang called,

“Mother… Mother… save me, Mother…”

Pain had robbed him of his senses. Like a frail little child, he could do nothing but call for her.

She looked up at her own flesh and blood, her jaw clenched, and said nothing.

Wiping away tears, I copied her theatrical wailing.

“Mother, are you really going to watch my husband die?”

For more than ten days, Madame Chen did not show her face.

She stayed in her own little courtyard, surrounded by servants. Past fifty, she was enjoying the life of a wealthy lady for the first time.

Whatever she wanted, I sent her.

Fine silk, bird’s nest soup, shark fin. She even took to burning incense and arranging flowers, imitating other people’s refinement.

But out of her sight, Fang Liang’s flesh and bones paid for her comfortable days.

A bowl of bird’s nest soup: another sore on his skin.

A new gown: another crack in his bones.

A piece of aloeswood: another shard driven into the channels of his body.

And so it went.

A dull knife cutting flesh. Just as Fang Liang and the men he had guided up the mountain had done to my master.

For every pain Master had endured, I would make him pay twice over.

Each day, Fang Liang suffered agony. The wound began to rot at his lower leg and crept steadily upward. Flesh peeled away in layers, mingled with pus and blood, and stuck to his bedding whenever he was careless.

Before each cleaning, he had to drink himself senseless.

Only when the sores reached his thigh did I remind him,

“You know those sorcerers. They have unusual powers. Could you ask them for help?”

At their mention, he forgot his pain, smashed the wine flask in his hand, and cursed.

“Those bastards from the Jade Bone Sect! They used me and threw me away. I helped them kill the snake demon, and now they’re rich and powerful while they’ve kicked me aside! If not for them, I wouldn’t be in this state!”

So they belonged to the Jade Bone Sect.

Fang Liang seethed with resentment, though the sight of all those sores still frightened him.

I chose my moment.

“Perhaps… you could beg your mother. You’re her flesh and blood, after all. Surely she wouldn’t truly leave you to die.”

Now each step Fang Liang took left a foul-smelling flower of blood beneath his foot.

Servants supported him while he trembled with pain.

When he reached Madame Chen’s door, lewd voices drifted out from inside.

Rage rushed to his heart. He kicked the door open and fell helplessly to the floor.

His aged mother wore gaudy gauze and a headful of jeweled ornaments. Her eyes were dreamy as she nestled in a young man’s arms.

When her son burst in, the man’s hand was still beneath her skirt, busy with its sordid work.