Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am the daughter of a river bandit. My father is Chen San’gou, my mother was Zhang Xiaocui, and my elder brother is Chen Dahu.

My name is Chen Nianwei.

On the day the emperor posted notices searching for his lost daughter, I bid my father farewell and set out on the road home with my mother’s ashes.

Four years ago, a Great Plague broke out among the common people. As the doctor in our stronghold, Mother ran herself ragged tending to the sick.

She cured everyone else, only to catch the disease herself.

In her final days, she locked herself in her room and gave us her last instructions through the door.

She said she had done something wrong in her early years.

She had saved someone she should not have saved, and in the end, disaster followed. Because of her, an entire village was destroyed.

She wanted to go home and apologize to the people who had died because of her.

Through the door, I kowtowed to my mother and promised her I would do it.

That year, I was twelve. The time had not yet come. I was still too young.

After Mother died, to keep the sickness from spreading, we burned her body.

I placed a handful of her ashes into an earthen jar, and from then on, that jar never left my side.

This year, I am sixteen, in the prime of youth.

Whether for killing and arson, or for stirring up storms…

The timing is perfect.

It was time to fulfill Mother’s final wish.

Mother’s old village had been uninhabited for more than ten years. It had long since become an abandoned ruin.

I found Mother’s former home. After cleaning it out, I settled there.

Mother was my mother.

Her debts were mine to repay.

Back then, when the village was slaughtered, Mother had fled with her child and never returned. The innocent dead had no one left to remember them and had simply faded from the world.

Now that I had come back, the least I could do was build them graves, so they might receive incense offerings.

I did not know who had lived in the village.

So I counted the houses.

Thirty-two households in total.

Thirty-two households. This had once been a village of more than a hundred people.

And just like that, every last one of them had died.

The official story was that roving bandits had plundered and massacred the village.

I went to the coffin shop in town and ordered thirty-two burial garments and thirty-two blank gravestones.

The shopkeeper told me to return in three days to collect them.

On my way back, I came across men from the county office posting a notice.

The Magistrate’s eldest daughter had developed malignant sores and was growing weaker by the day, so he was seeking a physician.

The Magistrate’s surname was Shen. By some stroke of luck, he had become related by marriage to the great Liu Clan, but he had never received any promotion from them.

He had served in this tiny county for more than twenty years.

As soon as the notice went up, quite a few people gathered around.

I had no intention of paying it any mind.

But then I heard an old man nearby sighing again and again.

“What a shame. If Doctor Tian were still here, she would cure it the moment she laid a hand on the patient.”

“Among the older generation living in Qingshi Town, who hasn’t received Doctor Tian’s kindness?”

“You young ones don’t know this, but sixteen years ago, the Magistrate’s wife also developed malignant sores. At the time, Doctor Tian was already nine months pregnant and close to giving birth. The Magistrate didn’t want to trouble her at first, but after inviting who knows how many doctors and none of them could cure his wife, he had no choice but to ask Doctor Tian to come.”

“Doctor Tian went. And guess what? In just three days, the medicine worked and the illness was gone.”

“Such a pity. No sooner had Doctor Tian returned home than her village was slaughtered by roving bandits. Doctor Tian never appeared again. I suppose she must have died too.”

Whatever he said after that, I no longer had the heart to hear.

I only grabbed the old man who had spoken and asked, “Elder, do you know Doctor Tian’s full name?”

The old man remembered it clearly and answered at once, “Tian Si’an.”

I thanked him, pushed my way into the ring of onlookers, and under everyone’s gaze, reached out for the notice.

A county soldier kindly warned me, “Little girl, do you know how to treat illness? Fooling an official of the imperial court is a crime punishable by beheading.”

I ripped the notice down with a firm tug and tucked it into my robe.

Then I held up three fingers to the county soldiers gathering around me.

“I need three days.”