“Thank you so much, Doctor Xiao.”
The young man, who was referred to as Doctor Xiao, gave a small and almost weak smile. He patted the hand of the elderly woman, who was gripping his hands. “There is no need to thank me. I was only doing my job.”
“Doctor Xiao, please take this as repayment!”
Doctor Xiao jolted when he felt someone thrust something into his hands. He glanced down at the chickens and turned to the middle-aged man. “I already said there was no need to repay me.”
“You said there was no need for Grandma Lin to repay you, but you didn’t say anything about me,” the middle-aged man chuckled. He waved his hand. “Besides, this isn’t anything monetary! It’s food! You’re still a growing young man—you need to eat more!”
Doctor Xiao appeared a bit helpless. He pursed his lips. “I’m not a mortal. I told you I’m a cultivator, Mister. So, I’ve already—”
“Help! Help!”
Doctor Xiao looked over his shoulder and watched as a young woman skid to a stop in front of them.
“Oh, thank goodness, Doctor Xiao, you’re still here!”
The doctor’s brows furrowed worriedly. “What is it that has gotten you so frantic?”
“T-there’s a bloody body by the bed of the river!” the woman was crying. She reached for the doctor’s hand and began to tug him towards the outskirts of the village. “It’s a horrible scene, Doctor! And, from the looks of it, he’s a young man that’s about your age!”
Doctor Xiao frowned. He pulled his hand from the young woman’s grip, but quickened his steps to follow her.
The river wasn’t too far away from the village and they arrived in less than twenty minutes. The woman frantically gestured.
“He’s over there!”
“I understand,” Doctor Xiao nodded to the woman. “You head back first. It’s getting late.”
“Y-you don’t need my help carrying him back?”
“If he’s as injured as you say, he won’t be able to make it back to the village. I’ll take him to the cave not too far from here.”
“Oh! O-okay. Doctor, if you need anything, please come back for supplies,” the young woman bowed frantically. She looked hesitantly back over towards the river before making her way back to the village.
The doctor watched the woman until she disappeared from his sight. He turned and walked over to the spot where the woman had been pointing to.
When he arrived, his steps paused.
It was indeed horrible.
Just as the young woman had described, there was a young man, who, in appearance, seemed only slightly younger than himself, who was scattered against the riverbank. His hair was untied and flowed with the tide of the river. His limbs were twisted strangely and blood flowed from deep slashes. Upon closer inspection, the doctor even noticed blood spilling from the youth’s orifices.
The worst possible thing, aside from the bloody scene, was the color of the youth’s hair.
This person was supposedly a young man, yet his hair was as white as snow, save for one black streak.
The doctor cursed under his breath. He glanced around briefly before carefully making his way over to the body. He bent down and turned the young man over. He pressed a finger beneath the youth’s nose and breathed a sigh of relief.
He was still breathing. Next, he gripped the young man’s wrist and sent in a sliver of spiritual energy. Without even waiting a second longer, the doctor pulled away.
He frowned.
He had never seen a person’s spiritual energy in such disarray. Not only that, he was heavily infected by a ghostly miasma that seemed to be eating at his golden core. Without digging too deeply, Doctor Xiao already knew that this young man was involved with some type of demonic sect. Not only that, but that demonic sect wanted him dead.
To save or to not save?
The question crossed through Doctor Xiao’s mind.
He glanced down at the young man. Indeed, he was not much younger than himself. He was probably the same age, if not younger, than his two sworn brothers, Situ Hong, the young master of the Situ clan, and Wu Lingtian, the youngest disciple of Rong Meihua. If that were so, then this young man should be about fifteen to seventeen.
But what did age and youth matter in the world of jianghu?
Xiao Xunrui never considered himself to be a good person. He was someone of morals and integrity and responsibility, but he made selfish decisions and sometimes even opted for poor judgements. That was a reason that he had willingly decided to leave the Hall of Impartiality, despite his shizun’s pleas. What was he to do in the only holy place in the entirety of this rotten continent? If he really did become the sect master of the Hall of Impartiality in the future, Xiao Xunrui feared that it would only end up in flames, cast by the parties angered by his reckless decisions.
Despite being a doctor, and despite having learned from the only living descendent of the illustrious Fu Clan, Xiao Xunrui didn’t have that kind, saintly heart. All he knew was to put on an act. And he was quite good at it.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
With everyone thinking he was a good person by nature, and one who would never do any harm, Xiao Xunrui had managed to navigate through a great part of his life, relying on the trust and help of others, despite his near crippling condition.
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If he saw a bird in the next minute, then he would save this youth. If he didn’t, then he would let Heaven take its course. The Heavens were merciless. Even towards the innocent, it never held back its striking hand. Xiao Xunrui was almost positive that, towards this type of person, the Heavens would turn a blind eye.
A minute was almost up.
Xiao Xunrui sighed. He glanced at the dying young man. “I guess you weren’t lucky this time. Maybe in the n—”
A loud caw interrupted Xiao Xunrui’s words.
He froze and looked up.
A bird sat on the branch of a tree, very near them. It watched them with its beady eyes and cawed a few more times. The caws sounded like a mocking laugh, grinding on Xiao Xunrui’s ears. His eyes narrowed, but he still sighed.
He never went back on a bet with Heaven.
The young doctor went forward and pulled the bloodied youth into his arms. He carried the young man into the nearby cave and began working on his battered body.
Despite having medicine for cultivators on his person, it wasn’t enough to fully heal a man so close to death.
At noon, on the next day, Xiao Xunrui sat across from the young man’s unmoving body and stoked the fire silently. He glanced at the youth again.
Since he had decided to save the young man, he would have to get rid of that ghostly miasma that was gnawing at his golden core. If he didn’t do it well, or do it soon, this young man wouldn’t live for more than four years.
Xiao Xunrui sighed. He thought for a moment and hesitated between reaching out to his shizun. He wasn’t close at all to the person who lent him medical books to look at, but if his shizun asked that man, then that man would definitely send him back a reply.
But, maybe, Xiao Xunrui was getting too ahead of himself. He glanced at the young man again. He stood and walked around the fire to kneel in front of him.
He brushed his hand back away from the young man’s face, but his eyes weren’t concentrated on the handsome youth beneath the curtain of hair. Instead, his eyes were on the white strands that were slipping through his fingers.
White hair. A clear sign of demonic corruption and Qi deviation.
Xiao Xunrui shifted, so that he could sit down properly. His gaze remained on the young man.
“A green-horned kid like you managed to survive Qi deviation and even managed to drag your sorry body all the way here,” Xiao Xunrui mumbled. “You’re definitely not a simple person.”
Xiao Xunrui released the young man’s hair. He turned to begin concocting the young man’s medicine, but before he could stand, a cold hand grasped his wrist. Xiao Xunrui stumbled and fell back down, however, his butt didn’t crash into the hard ground beneath him. Instead, he fell against a rather sturdy body. He turned around and immediately met the gaze of the young man behind him.
His eyes, initially black at first glance, seemed to contain a purplish hue upon closer examination.
Xiao Xunrui’s heart hammered against his chest. He shifted away, but the young man’s grip on him tightened.
“…A celestial?”
The two words broke Xiao Xunrui out of his trance. He gritted his teeth and glared at the young man. “What nonsense are you saying? Release me.”
The young man seemed doubtful. “If you aren’t a celestial, then how did you save me?”
“Because I’m a talented doctor,” Xiao Xunrui frowned at the hand that still held his wrist. It wasn’t that he couldn’t pull away from the young man, but if he did, he was afraid he might re-dislocate some bones he had just realigned. “Are you deaf? I said to release me.”
The young man’s grip loosened, but his arm remained around Xiao Xunrui’s waist. “So, you really did save me?”
Since Xiao Xunrui was young, he had always hated close contact with other people. His expression became twisted when he felt the young man’s cold hand against his waist. He pulled his hand away and left the young man’s lap.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Xiao Xunrui recognized that the young man looked…disappointed?
No way.
“I saved you. But you sure are making me regret it,” Xiao Xunrui said. He stood and rubbed at his wrist irritably.
The young man stared at Xiao Xunrui. “You don’t like being touched?”
“I hate it,” Xiao Xunrui spat out. He glared at the young man and huffed. He turned his back to him and went towards the medicine pot that was still sitting beside the fire.
The young man was silent for a while before Xiao Xunrui heard the shifting of cloth against cloth behind him.
“My apologies.”
Xiao Xunrui paused. He glanced over his shoulder and looked away again. “I won’t forgive you.”
The young doctor clicked his tongue. “It’s just my luck to save a scoundrel like you. The first thing you do is not to thank me when you wake up, but actually to take advantage of me. If I had known you were such a pervert, I would have just left you to bleed out.”
The young man was scolded until he was stunned.
Xiao Xunrui’s poisonous tongue was rarely seen by anyone outside of Situ Hong and Wu Lingtian, but, for some reason, he couldn’t keep these hard to hear words to himself. He had spent many hours and many days healing the nearby village from a plague, brought on by a water ghost, and just when he had thought he could return home, he was given a hot potato to look after. Now, not only were his good intentions repaid with harassment, he was rambling nonsense that he wouldn’t normally say! What about his image?! What about his dignity as a supposed immortal doctor?
Everything made Xiao Xunrui irritated, and the more irritated he was, the less he could keep a hold on his tongue.
Luckily, before he could say anything else, a warm chuckle interrupted him.
Xiao Xunrui’s fingers trembled slightly.
“My apologies, Daozhang. You saved my life, but I acted so improperly towards you. I was just surprised,” the young man said.
“Surprised about what?” Xiao Xunrui tried to rein in the annoyance in his voice.
“Surprised that, when I opened my eyes, I would see someone as beautiful as you.”
Xiao Xunrui threw down the utensils in his hands. He turned and glared at the young man. “Where is your sense of propriety!? Is this how you treat someone who saved you?”
The young man looked at him innocently. “Propriety? I was complimenting your appearance. Should I not? Are you sensitive about that?”
Xiao Xunrui stared at the young man with a gaping mouth.
Sensitive about his appearance? How should he know?!
Growing up, he’s always been praised for being a beauty, but whenever he looked in the mirror, all he saw was the same face as everyone else’s. He didn’t think he looked any different from the grandma he had just talked to in the village, or the middle-aged man who gave him chicken. If he said he was a beauty, then isn’t that also praising that middle-aged man to be a beauty?
According to others around him, Wu Lingtian and Situ Hong were also quite handsome, which was why their trio was popular for their generation. But if you asked Xiao Xunrui, then he would say Wu Lingtian wasn’t any prettier than the “ugly” waiter who worked at Begonia Nights.
When it came to appearance of himself or other people, Xiao Xunrui could only say one thing: He did not understand.
Did seeing someone with a handsome or beautiful appearance make others act crazy? Is that how it was?
Seeing Xiao Xunrui’s silence, the young man could only stare at him in turn.
“I’m not joking. You really are beautiful. A conventional beauty, at that,” the young man continued.
“What are you even talking about?” Xiao Xunrui blurted out. “How am I a beauty? If I’m a beauty, then are you also a beauty?”
This sentence made the young man’s eyes widen. “…I am quite handsome.”
“…You seem quite vain.”
Xiao Xunrui turned away and began to seriously brew the young man’s medicine.
The young man’s brows furrowed. He sat up and leaned against the cave walls. With one knee propped up, he rested his arm over it as he observed Xiao Xunrui.
“Do you want me to tell you why I think you’re beautiful?”
Xiao Xunrui rolled his eyes. He gave a sarcastic smile. “Sure, go ahead. I want to hear just what you have to say.”
The young man smiled. “You have lovely, amorous eyes. If a poet were to describe you, they would say that you have the ability to capture a person’s heart with a single glance. Your features are delicate, yet you don’t give off a sense of femininity. Your chin is just slightly pointed and you have lovely, full lips. Your brows are strong, but they add a hint of heroisms to your appearance, not at all detracting from your beauty. All of this tied together, you truly do look like the conventional scholarly beauty, that many people would be attracted to.”
Xiao Xunrui listened to the young man’s ramblings as he finished his preparations for the medicine. The more he listened, the warmer he felt his cheeks get.
“You’re beautiful” or “you’re quite the beauty” were phrases he often heard, but when has there ever been a person who described Xiao Xunrui in such detail? Suddenly, such a pointless compliment no longer felt weightless. For once, Xiao Xunrui believed that the young man in front of him sincerely thought he was good looking.
Xiao Xunrui looked at the young man curiously. “Then, if you think I’m beautiful, what makes you handsome?”
“Me?” the young man appeared surprised.
At this, Xiao Xunrui felt a bit antsy. He lightly cleared his throat and looked away. “I was just curious. You talked up a storm about my appearance, so I was wondering why you think you’re handsome instead of beautiful, that’s all.”
“Do you think I’m beautiful then?”
“I think you’re ugly,” Xiao Xunrui said. He stood and brushed his hands down the front of his robes. “You look exactly the same as the middle-aged uncle in the village nearby.”
The young man’s smile stiffened.
“The only thing that’s different about you is your hair and your eyes,” Xiao Xunrui mumbled. He glanced at the young man again before leaving the cave to hunt for food.
The young man watched Xiao Xunrui walk off before he shifted and stood as well.
His wounds had healed nicely and any broken bones had been mended. The only problem he had now was the annoying parasite, gnawing on his golden core. He pressed his hand to his abdomen and frowned. Well, at least that doctor wasn’t a quack doctor.
After this though, the young man left the cave and went to the river. He knelt down by the river’s edge and looked at himself.
The last time he had seen himself, he had a full head of black hair. Now, he looked like the demonic cultivator that he truly was.
He felt a pang of hatred as he brushed the white hair away from his face. He unsheathed the sword as his waist and pulled his hair together. Just as he was about to slice through, Xiao Xunrui’s voice rang in his head for a moment.
“…The only thing different about me is my hair, huh?” the young man looked at himself in amusement.
He sat down and threw his sword to the side. He looked down at the white strands of hair in his hand again and sighed.
Wasn’t it just hair? What was there to be so frustrated about?
When Xiao Xunrui returned, the young man was sitting silently against the cave wall with his eyes closed.
Xiao Xunrui walked quietly, but before he could even set down the game he hunted, the young man’s eyes were open again.
“Daozhang, may I ask you what your name is?”
Xiao Xunrui frowned. “How old are you?”
“Pardon?”
“I asked you how old you are.”
“…I’m eighteen.”
“I’m only a few years older than you, so don’t call me ‘Daozhang’. It makes me feel old,” Xiao Xunrui grumbled. He began to skin the rabbit. “My surname is Xiao. What about you?”
“…Xiao-gege won’t even tell me his given name?”
Xiao Xunrui froze. He looked up at the young man. “I told you not to call me ‘Daozhang’, but did I tell you to call me so affectionately?”
The young man smiled. “My surname is Wuma. Birth name, Huan.”
“…Given name?”
The young man tilted his head. “Hm?”
“What’s your given name?”
“Gege didn’t give me his given name, so I figured it would also be okay if I didn’t give you mine.”
“…Then, why did you give me your birth name?” Xiao Xunrui stared at the young man incredulously.
“Gege is someone who saved my life, thus is almost like a second parent to me. I felt close to you the moment I saw you, so I decided to only give you my birth name,” Wuma Huan said.
“…You’re quite talented. I didn’t know people could fart through their mouth.”
A/N: hellooo just poppin’ by to say that i’m trying to post more art of the cast of Yu Lan over on my Ko-Fi. if you’re a one time supporter or a monthly supporter, you’ll get access to HD downloadables 😀
https://ko-fi.com/glowingreverie
Hehehe their relationship hasn’t changed so much. Eighteen year old Wuma was already such a handful ☺️