Chapter 130 - 111: Torment

Chapter 130: Chapter 111: Torment

It wasn’t until dusk fell heavily that Huai Yu could finally sit on the wooden stool and catch her breath.

Her clothes were already soaking wet. The murky medicinal brew of the celery-leaved buttercup had stained the fabric, leaving it looking like a messy rag fished out of a pickle jar, and she reeked of a strange, medicinal odor from head to toe. If the stove in the room hadn’t still been burning, she would have been sneezing her head off by now.

But Huai Yu simply didn’t have the energy to change her clothes.

Panting, she stared blankly at Zhou Qian, who was curled up and twitching incessantly in the small bathtub, letting her mind go completely blank. The good news was that Zhou Qian wasn’t dead. The bad news was that he was still in agony.

How severe was this agony? One only had to look at him now.

His tall, sturdy body was curled up in the tub, and his amputated thigh wound was submerged in the murky water. As for whether it would get infected, Huai Yu had no time to worry about that anymore. His hands were bound with rope, and a piece of a cut towel was stuffed into his mouth as a gag. The towel was completely saturated with the murky color of the medicinal brew.

As for his face... Well, it couldn’t be seen. A wet towel that looked like a rag dredged from a soy sauce vat was draped over it. Every time he struggled and knocked it off, Huai Yu would persistently cover his face with it again.

Tossing and turning like this all afternoon had thoroughly exhausted her. By now, Huai Yu had used every multicolored Klang Ball of the celery-leaved buttercup she could manage—for soaking, applying, and drinking. Knowing nothing about medicine and unsure of which method was most effective, she had to resort to a three-pronged approach.

"But... why does it still hurt so much?" she murmured.

Huai Yu looked at the scattered pile of Klang Balls in the basin on the floor. There were red, white, yellow, green, and purple ones, but none of the multicolored ones from the celery-leaved buttercup were left.

Now, the water in the bathtub had turned a bizarre color. All the balls that needed to be soaked had been used, leaving more than half a kettle of water. The hideous, eerie black spider-web veins on Zhou Qian’s body had gradually faded, but his painful groans were only growing louder. He hadn’t even regained consciousness. His brows were tightly furrowed, as if he were fighting an intense, invisible battle.

Huai Yu paused, then got up and went outside to look for Ke Taichiro. A gust of evening wind blew past, and her wet clothes sent a bone-deep chill through her. It made her let out a loud ACHOO, and two streams of clear snot threatened to run down her nose.

Ke Taichiro pushed aside the curtain and stood there. Then, it turned back into its nest and brought out a brown Klang Ball for her.

Huai Yu was speechless. She wondered if a cold should be treated with oral medicine, but considering Zhou Qian was out of options, she... ahem.

Carefully holding the ball, she said, "Thank you, Ke Taichiro. I’ll just drink lots of hot water later.

"Also... about the guy inside... is your medicine the right remedy for his condition?"

Ke Taichiro flapped its wings and bent its two antennae. It looked very confident, but...

Huai Yu sighed and followed it into the nest. She saw that the large white porcelain bowl in the corner was once again piled high with colorful Klang Balls, but there were no more of the celery-leaved buttercup variety. Moreover, since Ke Taichiro showed no intention of offering any, it proved that the other balls weren’t the right remedy either.

Huai Yu patted its carapace. "You’ve worked hard, thank you, our Taichiro! I’m going to take care of the patient now."

The little chicks had no intention of returning to their coop yet and were CHIRPING in the grass. The sky had darkened, and Huai Yu couldn’t see exactly where they were, so she went back inside and grabbed a handful of rice grains.

"CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK..."

As soon as she called out, a flurry of FLUTTERING echoed around her, followed by the sound of the chicks scurrying through the grass. Before long, the four chicks—each bought at a steep price of two hundred and fifty—quickly and eagerly darted back into their coop, urgently lowering their heads to peck at the food. Judging by their practiced movements, they had probably returned countless times during their first day of free-range roaming.

Huai Yu couldn’t help but find it amusing, and her heavy mood lightened considerably. "Quite picky, aren’t they?"

After all, this rice had been purified.

Back inside the house, Huai Yu changed out of her wet clothes. She glanced at the brown Klang Ball Ke Taichiro had given her, but ultimately opted to pour herself a cup of hot water.

Then, she turned her attention back to Zhou Qian.

Lifting the towel, she saw that the black spider-web veins on his face were gone, but a black, bulging lump had appeared on his cheekbone. This black lump wasn’t a perfect circle. It was about four centimeters long; its narrowest ends were as thin as a line, while its widest point was half a centimeter thick. It coiled on his face like a menacing snake.

Huai Yu hesitated, but just as she gave it a gentle touch, Zhou Qian convulsed violently in his stupor. The lump felt taut to the touch, like a blister on the verge of bursting. She checked the right side of his face and found another similar black lump, about four or five centimeters long, stretching toward his ear. Further down was his neck, and then...

Huai Yu reached out and unbuttoned his hospital gown. From his collarbone to his chest, the same hideous marks were visible.

She silently retracted her hand, torn by a fierce internal struggle.

If she sent Zhou Qian back now, would the highly professional doctors be able to save him? But if she did, how could she explain the high concentration of the celery-leaved buttercup’s medicinal properties in his body? Would Ke Taichiro’s existence be exposed?

There was also a terrifying possibility. She rested Zhou Qian’s bound arm outside the tub, rolling up his sleeve so it no longer touched the murky medicinal water. In mere moments, a black mark stretching from the back of his right hand to his palm swelled rapidly before her eyes. It was as if something was rampaging inside, desperate to spread out.

Huai Yu hastily shoved his hand back into the tub.

Zhou Qian’s violently convulsing body slowly calmed down. Yet, without the continuous application of the wet medicinal towel on his face, his brows furrowed deeply again, and painful groans quickly slipped from his gagged mouth. Such a miserable sight didn’t look like medical treatment at all; it looked like sheer torture. In this state, if he were removed from this tub of medicinal water, Zhou Qian probably wouldn’t even survive the trip back to the hospital.

Moreover, the Rose Corridor forbade anyone from approaching. Huai Yu absolutely couldn’t lift this bathtub full of water by herself, and she simply didn’t have the time to divide it into smaller containers for transport. And if she tried to communicate and plead with the Rose Corridor... That raised another question: everyone knew the Rose Corridor had a terrible temper, so why would she be the exception? Not only could she get close and communicate with it, but most importantly, she could even make the Rose Corridor obey her.

Huai Yu sighed, deciding to stop dwelling on these complex and difficult questions.

She draped the wet towel back over Zhou Qian’s face. After some thought, she finally decided to take a gamble. Since this was a desperate last resort anyway, no matter what happened, it couldn’t be worse than ending up buried in the Rose Corridor, right?

Taking a deep breath, she took out her favorite small knife and slowly heated it over the fire. The blade gradually blackened from the heat, making the nicks on its edge especially obvious. Remembering that this knife wasn’t just used for chopping things but also occasionally for digging in the dirt and whittling branches, Huai Yu stared at it for a moment. Then, she rummaged through her cabinets and found the eggshell fragments of Big Pup and Second Pup.

It required barely any effort. She simply picked up a bamboo twig near the stove and wedged an eggshell fragment into it. The razor-sharp piece easily sliced right into the bamboo.