Chapter 90: All Wrapped Up

As soon as Lan Bing and Ouxin Lai left the brothel, Black Feather appeared as if from nowhere. His dark eyes swept over Ouxin Lai with puzzled scrutiny, for he could not understand what her actions just now had meant.

If she had meant to humiliate Lan Bing, that did not seem likely. After all, throughout the entire affair, Ouxin Lai had not once shown even the faintest trace of mockery or sarcasm. From beginning to end, she had remained calm beyond measure, as though everything before her were no more than something utterly ordinary.

If she had not been trying to disgrace Lan Bing, yet had still made him do something like that, could it have been because she was angry over the flowers from this morning? That too did not seem right. Black Feather found Ouxin Lai a woman of mystery, impossible to fathom.

Lan Bing and Black Feather led Ouxin Lai back at once to the place where they lived.

When Ouxin Lai saw the residence before her, a glimmer of interest lifted her brows. The house stood in the very center of the bustling city, yet oddly enough, it was encircled on all sides by rows of shops, as though it had been sealed away in the middle. If she had not been brought here, she truly would never have discovered that such a mansion existed within Plain City.

Following behind Lan Bing and Black Feather, Ouxin Lai entered cautiously and looked over every tree and stone within the grounds. She felt as though she could make out traces of some kind of formation.

Lan Bing and Black Feather exchanged a glance. This woman really was careful; even the five elements and eight trigrams formation set by their master’s lord had not escaped her study. This made both Lan Bing and Black Feather grow somewhat uneasy about her again.

It seemed that once this woman awakened their master, they would have to make their master’s lord change the five elements and eight trigrams formation he had set in the future, or else, with such a woman around, it would be far too dangerous.

The servants in the mansion were all extremely disciplined. Their heads were always lowered when they walked, never glancing at others. Yet even so, they never collided with anyone else merely because they did not look up. More importantly, Ouxin Lai noticed that these people made almost no sound when they walked; it seemed each and every one of them was a trained fighter.

Even if they did not possess special abilities, their martial skill likely would not be weak.

As for the identity of Lan Bing and Black Feather’s master, Ouxin Lai was honestly not curious at all. The more one knew, the faster one died.

Next, Black Feather simply bound Ouxin Lai’s eyes with a cloth, and Ouxin Lai resisted not at all, allowing him to tie the cloth behind her head.

Black Feather wanted to lead her forward by the hand, but Ouxin Lai shook her head and would only walk while supporting herself on his arm.

With Black Feather and Lan Bing guiding her, about five minutes later the cloth over Ouxin Lai’s eyes was finally removed. During that time, she felt that she had turned eleven corners.

In a dim room, there were actually ten luminous pearls glowing on the ceiling. The one in the center was enormous, and around it were nine medium-sized pearls. These ten pearls made the room fairly well lit.

Ouxin Lai stepped forward to examine the master whom Lan Bing and Black Feather served. The man had likely been ill for a long time, for his cheeks were sunken and the flesh had nearly disappeared from his face. Beyond that, his sickly pale skin held a trace of bluish-black, like a dying man on the brink of the grave.

In addition, there was a swollen bruise on his forehead, the purplish-black color of it enough to be shocking. Ouxin Lai knew this had been caused by the trouble from yesterday.

After seeing the man’s complexion, Ouxin Lai quickly took his pulse and discovered that inside his body there was an immense surge of yang energy.

Men are yang, women yin.

Yet sometimes, when a man’s yang energy becomes too excessive, it is hardly a good thing.

Too much yang energy becomes a fire, a raging inferno beyond the reach of any external force to extinguish. If that yang energy is not removed, then this man will simply be burned alive by it. No wonder Lan Bing and Black Feather, both men, could not cure this man’s illness.

Aside from her, she believed there was no second person in the world who could heal him.

How fortunate that Ouxin Lai had just made a breakthrough in the transformation of yin and yang. With such overwhelming yang energy, perhaps Xia Chiyuan could advance to the second stage!

Once the transformation of yin and yang reached completion, who cared about some devil lord or young lord? None of them would be her match!

“How is it? Is there a way to treat him?” Seeing that Ouxin Lai had been taking their master’s pulse for so long without saying a word, Lan Bing was growing frantic. If Ouxin Lai could not cure him, they did not know how many days their master had left for them to find another extraordinary person.

“Though it is a bit troublesome, it is not impossible,” Ouxin Lai said with a grave sigh.

At those words, Black Feather’s eyes lit up. “You really can cure my master!”

Black Feather and Lan Bing both understood clearly that their master did not have much time left. If Ouxin Lai truly could heal him, then this woman would be their great benefactor.

“Lan Bing, do you remember? When I first agreed to save your master, I said I had one condition and one request. You have already fulfilled the condition, and now I shall speak of my request.” Ouxin Lai said with perfect composure. Brothers may be settled by accounts, but between her and these two men, there was no real friendship to speak of.

So before treating him, everything had to be made plain. It would save trouble later, and avoid any settling of accounts after the fact.

“What is it?” Lan Bing could not possibly have forgotten. His expression was dark as he looked at Ouxin Lai. The first condition had already utterly humiliated him and left him in a foul temper. If this request were too excessive, he did not know whether he could bear it.

Seeing Lan Bing’s face as black as Black Feather’s, Ouxin Lai smiled. “Relax. This request is not difficult to fulfill.”

It seemed this Lan Bing had been frightened into seeing shadows everywhere. Still, the thing she had made him do before—wasn’t Lan Bing the one who had benefited from it? What was there to be angry about? Even she, an ugly woman, had not minded, and she had even gone so far as to find him a beauty.

“After this matter is over, you and I will be strangers to each other. If possible, please do not greet me, unless I take the initiative to greet you and strike up acquaintance. Also, if your master wakes, do not tell him that I was the one who saved him. Rest assured, I will not do anything to your master either.”

Seeing the two men growing anxious, Ouxin Lai added another explanation.

“Put simply, I think you two are trouble. So after this, we go our separate ways. I don’t want to keep running into you and then seeing one problem after another. Understood?” Ouxin Lai arched a brow.

“Fine!” Lan Bing answered through clenched teeth.

This woman was certainly cutting their relationship cleanly. Others might wish to curry favor with them and could not, yet she was avoiding them as though they were a plague.

Still, this request was indeed easy to meet, so Lan Bing naturally agreed.

“Since you’ve both agreed, please leave.” Ouxin Lai nodded, telling Lan Bing and Black Feather to go out.

Black Feather stared at Ouxin Lai with obvious suspicion. After all, what she had just done was already bizarre enough. What happened earlier had involved Lan Bing, and in order to save their master, he would not stop it. But now that it was their own master’s turn, Black Feather was truly afraid Ouxin Lai would do something strange to him.

“If you don’t trust me, then I won’t save him.” Ouxin Lai was exasperated, unable to understand why this man called Black Feather was looking at her with such lewd eyes.

“If you won’t do anything strange to my master, why are you afraid of us looking?” Black Feather refused to yield.

“Nonsense. Everyone has secrets, and I’m a healer, so naturally I have my own special methods. If you two are going to peek, how am I supposed to make a living? Don’t tell me you won’t play such little tricks. You don’t trust me, so why should I trust you? One sentence: are you leaving or not?”

Ouxin Lai rolled her eyes at Lan Bing and Black Feather, finding the two men truly annoying.

Lan Bing pulled Black Feather and left the room. The woman meant what she said and said what she meant; she did not seem to have a history of lying, so they would trust her once.

Black Feather was dragged away by Lan Bing, still deeply puzzled. By rights, Lan Bing was the one who had been toyed with by that woman—shouldn’t Lan Bing distrust her even more than he did?

Lan Bing and Black Feather stood guard outside for a full hour. After an hour had passed, Ouxin Lai emerged in high spirits. Black Feather even felt that her face was glowing, brighter than the light of the luminous pearls inside the room.

Black Feather was amazed. Earlier, when this woman had gone in with Lan Bing and come out of the brothel, he had already felt that something about her had changed. Now it was the same again.

Shouldn’t healing someone be exhausting? Why did she look even more energized than before? Was she the one healing, or had the master in the room given her some great benefit?

“Your master will wake naturally in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. See me out.” Ouxin Lai was in such a good mood she felt like leaping and running just to express how delighted she was.

To be fair, it was not as though she had done nothing strange to the man. She had held him close against her chest, so that the two of them were pressed fully together. Only in that way could she draw out all the yang energy within his body.

“Oh yes, your master’s strange illness this time is not really an accident either. In the future, make him eat less food from outside.” What a waste—such a treasure, and now it had been used to harm someone.

Ouxin Lai’s reminder to Lan Bing and Black Feather did not make her realize that the herb was not only a treasure to women practicing the transformation of yin and yang, but for anyone else in this world, it was a deadly poison.

After thinking for a moment, Black Feather had Lan Bing escort Ouxin Lai out, while he went in to see how their master was doing. Even if that woman had truly done something strange to their master, as long as the master recovered his health, he would have no choice but to turn a blind eye. In any case, they had already promised the woman they would never tell their master about this matter.

Lan Bing walked in front, and the warm little hand rested on his forearm. Lan Bing did not know whether it was his imagination, but wherever Ouxin Lai touched him, even through a layer of clothing, there seemed always to be a numb, tingling sensation, soft and faintly numbing.

When Lan Bing’s eyes met the harsh sunlight, a trace of loss flickered in his heart. Yet he still followed their prior agreement, removed the cloth from Ouxin Lai’s face, and said coldly, “As you wish. You may go.”

Ouxin Lai smiled faintly, nodded politely at Lan Bing, and turned back the way she had come. Once she left the mansion, she told herself to forget everything that had happened inside.

“She’s gone?” Black Feather felt Lan Bing had returned especially slowly; the time for a cup of tea had long since passed. What made Black Feather happy was that the woman really had not lied. Before even a cup of tea had gone by, their master, who had been unconscious for three months, truly opened his eyes and even said he was hungry and wanted food.

“Gone.” Lan Bing nodded. “Master, how do you feel now?”

Yu Mo ran opened a pair of star-bright eyes. In his dark pupils, tiny sparks of light glittered like broken diamonds. “Much more comfortable now.”

During the more than three months of Yu Mo ran’s coma, he had been wholly immersed in his own world.

Yu Mo ran clearly remembered that it had seemed as though he had lived through many days and nights in the fires of hell. Every day, the only thing he could think was that one day he would be burned away to nothing by that boundless inferno.

Yet amid despair that deepened day by day, Yu Mo ran finally felt, within that sea of fire, a trace of coolness, like a clear spring, continuously flowing into his body and extinguishing the flames that sought to burn him alive.

Until every last fire and blaze before his eyes had been quenched by that coolness, Yu Mo ran laughed in his dream and felt that living was actually such a comfortable thing, and no longer having to suffer was such a beautiful thing.

“Who saved me?” Yu Mo ran knew that during the time he had been asleep, Lan Bing and Black Feather had been searching for someone who could cure him.

Yet after so long, only now had he recovered. The person who had cured him must surely be extraordinary indeed.

“Master, it was an unusual person. After curing the master’s illness, that person left. He wore black and had his face covered, so we never saw his figure clearly. Because he may have been the only one who could save you, and because his temper was rather bad, we did not dare offend him. So who he was, we really do not know.”

Lan Bing recited the explanation he had already prepared, word for word, to Yu Mo ran.

“Is that truly so?” Yu Mo ran looked at Lan Bing. If it really had been such a mysterious person, had Lan Bing and Black Feather truly felt at ease handing him over to that stranger?

“It is true, master.” Black Feather naturally backed up Lan Bing. Since they had an agreement with that woman beforehand, he did not want to break their promise and lie together with Lan Bing only to their master.

“Prepare hot water. I want a bath.”

Having slept so long, Yu Mo ran felt uncomfortable all over. As for who had saved him, if he wanted to know, he would naturally investigate it himself.

Seeing that their master did not continue dwelling on who had saved him, Lan Bing and Black Feather both breathed a sigh of relief, then went to arrange food, draw bathwater, and busied themselves separately.

After Lan Bing and Black Feather had left the room, Yu Mo ran suddenly lifted a lock of his own black hair behind him and brought it to his nose to smell. As expected, he caught a scent so faint it was almost imaginary, as light as grass.

The moment he smelled that fragrance, the gloom in his heart was suddenly swept away.

After bathing, the clothes Yu Mo ran had changed out of were not to be washed by anyone else, nor touched by anyone at all. He even treated them like treasure and locked them away in a secret chamber.

For Yu Mo ran had vaguely remembered that he seemed to have had intimate contact with the one who saved him. That soft sensation, as though lying upon cotton, was something he could never forget.

“Cai’er, are you all right?” Only at dusk, when the sun showed but a sliver of its face and dark clouds had begun to gather across the sky, did Ouxin Lai return to the Shan residence.

“Don’t worry. They won’t come looking for us again.” Because she had broken through two stages of the transformation of yin and yang in a single day, Ouxin Lai was in excellent spirits and rarely gave the family of three a brilliant smile.

For a moment, Shan Ziyao only felt dazzled. The instant Ouxin Lai smiled, she even thought she could barely keep her eyes open.

Yet clearly this Cai Cai in front of her was not especially beautiful—why did she seem so radiant? Looking for a long time, Shan Ziyao finally realized it was Ouxin Lai’s pair of eyes, so full of confidence and beauty, more enchanting than the crescent moon surrounded by stars.

Seated to one side, Shan Qing’er nearly ground her good teeth to pieces.

Originally, she had been the weakest in the Shan family, and all of this had happened to her because of Shan Ziyao. For that reason, the whole family had indulged her alone.

But things had changed now. Since Shan Yuanxi had been poisoned that one time and she had not contributed her blood, Shan Qing’er could clearly feel that Mrs. Shan no longer treated her as kindly as before. For several days, she had not even taken the initiative to check on her or ask after her condition.

Shan Yuanxi was, after all, a man, and it was indeed not proper to keep asking after a young girl’s condition. But by now, Shan Yuanxi was practically acting as though he no longer saw her at all.

And the one who had caused all of this was this hillbilly called Ni Cai, who had somehow crawled out of some corner of nowhere.

Today was supposed to be supper time, and after finally having the poison removed, Shan Qing’er had been able to eat with everyone at last. What she had not expected was that, with her stomach already cramping from hunger, Shan Yuanxi and Mrs. Shan simply refused to begin the meal, all because they were waiting for a girl called Ni Cai.

From start to finish, Shan Ziyao had not noticed Shan Qing’er’s ugly expression at all.