“Tell me! Can you still feel your fingers?” Zhengqi asked, her small voice cracking between a cry and a command.

  A cold draft blew through the medicine hall. Not that anyone would notice as they worked twice as hard as before, Hao just wanted to have a few words alone with Zhengqi, not cause chaos.

  Hao let Zhengqi push him. The bed he landed on was like heaven compared to the stones and trees he had been lying on for the past few months.

  That comfort was short-lived. He wasn’t going to allow himself any, nor was anyone around him.

  “Yes, bu—” Hao stopped himself from saying any more. It was better just to let affirmation linger. If he said anything more, the slightest bit of relief that appeared on Zhengqi’s face would vanish like a flower in a cold snap.

  Hao couldn’t tell if it was sweat on her face or tears.

  “I’m fine,” He said, doing his best to sound matter-of-fact while she shook. It was odd, he stared down piles of bones and accepted his death, yet her unsteady fingers made him uncomfortable.

  “Don’t move,” Zhengqi pulled on his arm.

  She got a small knife, one Hao would find little use for, with a thin blade no longer than a thumb and a handle about the length of a hand.

  Hao let her manipulate his left arm. The small blade of the tool cut away the rest of the bandage around his forearm, down to his wrist. A stench permeated the space as the cloth fell away.

  Everyone nearby flinched. Hao saw the other patient with his leg up in the air, covering his mouth when he first showed the hole clear through his forearm. Now he turned away, gagging.

  Zhengqi handled it well, the smell anyway, and the smell alone. Other than that, her fingers jolted, hesitated, and sprang forward as she peeled away the herb paste that Hao had crudely applied to the wound.

  “What if you lost it… What if we have to remove it?” She asked him, it sounded like a question. Her lips quivered, but she kept her focus solely on the arm, her eyes peering through the gash in his flesh.

  I shouldn’t have shown my wounds. Hao kept his sigh to himself, trying to think of a response.

  Hao didn’t have a serious answer for her. The most he could do was push aside the swirl of emotions in his head, just enough to laugh, for a second, “Then I’ll have to find a way to regrow it.” He managed a few chuckles.

  He could not stop himself from observing her reactions, and the movements of people around him, each sniffle and footstep counted.

  “If it comes to the worst, I will have to pay the treasure hall to forge a new limb out of metal. An Immortal metal I can buy in the Mission Hall. Metal or flesh, it doesn’t change anything.” Hao said, his face almost soft. He got his nerves as cool as possible, and as he did, it seemed the chill that permeated the hall subtly faded. Still, he couldn’t shake off all his urgency—even if Zhengqi was in front of him.

  The woman who followed Hao from the main hall was still around. Her run down the hall didn’t take her far, only so far as to get the attention of a few other servants in thin white robes.

  They came back as a group, a few tools he couldn’t recognize. Some had an obvious purpose, like the little pinches that Zhengqi quickly took. Steadily, she and another picked the rotten herbs off his arm.

  A few he did, one of them a cauldron of water that nearly boiled over. Two of the servants snuck around Zhengqi and placed it carefully on a stand next to the pillow of the bed in front of the closed window. Another put a jar of clear liquid that smelled like extreme wine.

  As his left arm was worked on, other servants removed his other old bandages, the one under his right armpit, and another on his ribs, his left shoulder.

  They cleaned those more crudely. Spongy brown material was soaked in a large tub at the far end of the hall before scrubbing against his skin. It revealed scars he had forgotten about. The largest of his healed wounds stretched from under his right nipple to his left shoulder. Not everyone around him had a weapon back then. The man, his roommate when he was a servant, sliced him open with a broken pill bottle.

  Hao was pulled from the reminiscing by a loud sniffle.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Zhengqi set the tool aside. She reached for one of the sponges, but her hand drifted over to Hao’s chest, “Young Master…” she whispered. Her head sank even lower.

  The sponges and alcohol solution being rubbed against his body revealed a dozen minor cuts he was previously unaware of.

  Hao held Zhengqi’s hand against his chest. He ignored the stings as he tried to keep a smirk on his face, “Don’t worry, if I get serious, I can take out most people that want to be my opponent with one slap, one arm is plenty.” His voice was too gruff. He needed to sound lighter, high-pitched, more reassuring, “Though I suppose bathing, dressing, and tending to my wounds would be rather hard.”

  No one laughed, but Zhengqi looked up. Her swollen eyes opened a little wider. The soft green color of her eyes glittered like popping sea foam as tears dried, and her creased forehead softened—just slightly.

  Hao considered that a success. He didn’t believe his own words; compared to Meng Hongyu, he lacked prowess, and to the Nightwatcher, control and experience. Even when compared to Mo Bangcai, who perfected his little blades, he lacked expertise.

  Worse, he lacked the basics. Prowess, experience, and technique aside, Hao lacked the most basic training in strikes and movement. He was still lethal—but no more than a demonic beast, one that had no mind to think.

  While Hao held her eyes, he had to ask, “That is why I need you to tell me everything that happened, and where Taoyi—”

  Nails dug into the meat of his thumb. Zhengqi silenced him, a glance to the left and right at the other servants, her eyes lowered again, but the shake of her head was a clear signal. She looked over to the tall woman last. Who looked up and gave both Hao and Zhengqi a glance of pity.

  *

  The rainy winter morning bled away.

  All the smaller wounds were tended to, and the two large ones on his right side stitched. With that done, most of the servants went off. Some sat, and others returned to other tasks, most of the tools taken with them.

  Zhengqi stood for the first time since Hao had exposed the wound. “Young Master, the work on this arm… It will hurt considerably more than the others.”

  “That’s if you want to save it.” The tall woman asked.

  Hao looked down at his left arm, still held in the tall woman’s hands in an awkward position, “Should I ask for details, or tell you to get it over with?”

  He was more eager for the tall woman to go away. Once she and the others were gone, he could ask the questions that circled in his mind.

  Zhengqi reached for another unused small sharp blade. “We will have to assess and remove any rotten flesh, cutting it away. Since it is so deep, we will have to find a way to sterilize it…”

  “How long has it been like this?” The tall woman lifted her arm, her fingers tracing along the outside of the scabbed flesh.

  Hao tried to shrug his shoulders, “A few days, I’m not sure,” he said, wondering if this would be done quicker if he just told the woman to go away.

  She was helping, but he had more urgent matters. Right now, he thought that if he just went and killed Mo Bangcai, it would seem like the wound never happened, but if Zhengqi insisted, it meant Meiqi was in no immediate danger. So he hoped.

  The woman looked up at him with obvious doubt, but before she could say anything more, Zhengqi took a seat in front of his arm and lined up the blade.

  “How is it?” Zhengqi asked.

  “The rot is only superficial,” The tall woman hiccupped as she leaned into Meiqi. Her hands pulled the wound wide open, and she began pointing.

  Meiqi nodded, her small blade placed where the finger pointed. “Alright… I am going to start, Young Master.”

  Hao’s head felt hollow. He had played the role of a butcher many times before, but to watch his flesh, even if it was already dead, get cut away was surreal. His voice stayed stuck in his throat. Most of what was cut away looked stained, almost like it had turned to dried fish jerky.

  They stopped before Hao fully realized.

  “Young Master, move your fingers.” Zhengqi looked up at him, some hope in her eyes.

  Hao did, his hands moved like a crawling spider, with nothing more than a little pain, and he hid behind his face.

  Zhengqi gave a sigh that sounded like a scoff, her red and raw fingers rested in his palm, and her forehead fell forward. Her face rested in the crook of her elbow.

  “How much longer?” Hao asked, his impatience veiled in a glance to the other people in the long, three-bed wide corridor.

  “We just have to wash and stitch. How well you heal, well, that is all on you after we are done.” The tall woman said. Her words were spoken almost without emotion. She had probably been here longer than Zhengqi. Forced to be a servant despite her skill and knowledge, if she weren’t on this mountain, in a mortal city, she would be hailed at every corner.

  Instead, she is here, helping put together me and people like them. Hao lowered his eyes from the glances at the injured, belligerent, and ungrateful. They managed to be worse than him without trying.

  “Can Zhengqi do the rest on her own?” Hao looked at the tall woman, her thin lips pressed tight.

  She furrowed her brow, dropped tool after tool, her fingers red with his blood, and red underneath from the work. With a turn, she left. Back to the main hall, each step faster than the last as she got demeaning stares from the men and women that she helped heal, all because she wore white instead of blue.

  “Now…” Hao said, his head lowered back to Meiqi.

  Zhengqi pulled her head away, her back straightened as she took a step back, “I will tell the Young Master only what I can without causing him trouble.”

  Hao leaned forward. It seemed worse than he had originally thought.