Chapter 1015: Tangerine Caramel — Shanghai Love (6)

What is this—this desperate manpower recruitment that’s basically, “Is there a doctor on board!”?

No, how am I supposed to hold back from this? I absolutely can’t.

Of course, it wasn’t even a matter of holding back or not.

The constables’ attitude as they searched for an orthodox master who could do True-Qi Guidance was downright urgent.

The County Magistrate’s plea—trying to save his son—was desperate enough, but even though this was an entirely private order, watching the constables run around like it was their own business made it obvious: the County Magistrate himself probably wasn’t a bad person.

If that’s the case, what is there to agonize over?

In this primitive ancient world, you can never have too many good people, and for something like that, I could gladly lend a hand.

And anyway—True-Qi Guidance, of all things.

True-Qi Guidance uses the character for “to guide” in “the Way.”

It means guiding true qi onto the correct path—where the practitioner directly breathes qi into the target’s meridians and moves the true qi.

Normally, it’s a method a master bestows on a disciple, to teach the correct way to run an internal-art manual, but—

Since you’re flowing true qi into someone else’s body, if you do it clumsily, it’s perfect for getting someone killed.

So at minimum, it isn’t enough to just be in Harmonization. You’d have to have stayed in Harmonization for more than ten years—mature enough to operate internal energy with complete control. If you want it said plainly, you’d need to be at least an accomplished expert before it’s even worth attempting. A true upper-tier technique.

That was also why they were specifically searching for an orthodox Taoist master.

Buddhist and Taoist internal-art manuals—the kinds usually called orthodox—have internal energy that’s clear, soft, and gentle.

Sure, they don’t have only upsides. The downside is that the process of gathering and storing energy is slow and takes a long time, but—

In practice, the sects that carry on orthodox martial arts are usually famous, major lineages, and famous, major lineages always have piles of secret elixirs.

So they patch over orthodox manuals’ slow energy-gathering with elixirs, and the “downside” disappears in reality.

Anyway, so who am I?

Heavenly Flower Sword—Transformation, Transcendent Transformation, Super-Transformation, Ultra-Transformation.

My experience might be short, but I can operate internal energy far more delicately than some mere Harmonization fighter ever could—an authentic master.

I’ve learned the supreme divine art of the Buddhist path and the upper-tier martial studies of the Taoist path at the same time. I’m basically orthodoxy itself.

And that’s not all.

Cold to villains, endlessly warm to the decent—an actual man. That’s me.

Qing rose from her seat.

The only problem was... what to say.

A doctor can just step up and say, “I’m the doctor,” and that’s that, but when a master goes, “I’m the master,” it feels... kind of lame.

If only I had one reliable assistant at times like this. Someone who’d leap up and shout, “This person is—Transformation! A transcendent martial master!” and then, “How dare you! Get on your knees! You worm-brained trash!” and so on.

Should I carry around an armband that says “Transformation”? Keep it loosely tied with plain cloth most of the time, so if a subordinate yanks it, it slides right off in a dramatic reveal?

“Hero! Thank you! Hero, you are...?”

“It matters who I am? Isn’t treating the child what matters?”

Qing smoothly crushed the question of who she was and where she came from, but in the martial world, was it even rare for people to refuse to state their name?

“Y-Yes! Then I’ll escort you—n-no, may I escort you right away?”

Thanks to that, she got treated like some picky, haughty female master, but anyway.

Since we were going to see a patient, it felt awkward to bring Jayeo along.

For now, Jayeo would stay at the inn with her two moms, and Qing went alone, following behind the constable.

Soon, a large residence surrounded by the white walls distinctive to Jiangnan came into view.

The moment the gate opened, Qing saw it—inside the courtyard, a man who’d been pacing snapped his head around so hard it looked like his neck might break.

So this is what it looks like to wait until your neck stretches out.

And it made sense.

The County Magistrate had deployed constables for a private matter, and he’d been saying he would treat the martial master as a benefactor.

A benefactor is the second-highest relationship category in Central Plains social ties, and if you betray a publicly declared benefactor without an absolutely unavoidable reason, you won’t even be treated as human.

So if a high official like a County Magistrate were to take a martial artist as his benefactor—

In a Central Plains culture obsessed with face, nobody would nitpick so hard that they’d actually fire him, or erase his career record, just because he tried to save his child.

But they absolutely could shove him into some dead-end post for the rest of his life until he died wheezing, and it would mean his entire career as an official ended right there.

In other words: my child right now, even over my clan.

That was the Shanghai County Magistrate’s extreme fatherhood—his love for his child.

If there were some half-clever types like Zhuge Yihyeon around, they’d be adding that kind of explanation on the side, but—

Unfortunately, what was left here were the useless leftovers of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society, not even competent enough to be half-clever.

Still, putting it another way—

It meant Qing had stepped forward without even knowing the County Magistrate had staked his position on this urgent search.

The County Magistrate, Jo Seong, hurried over, then hesitated for a split second before bowing deeply in thanks.

He tried to grab Qing’s hands, then confirmed she was a female master and instantly corrected his posture—officials were fast at handling that sort of thing.

“Hero! Thank you! Thank you! I, Jo Seong—allow me to offer my greetings to my benefactor!”

He started lowering his body to prostrate himself, and Qing quickly stopped him.

“Before that—where’s the child?”

“Right now, the Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician is taking his pulse, but he said that the moment you arrive, you are to be brought in at once. This way, this way.”

Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician.

It was another epithet for that so-called Divine Physician Shin.

The epithet itself carried a pretty blatant contempt, but given the Central Plains habit of lowering yourself when you need something, you still need at least one nickname you can speak with reverent admiration, right?

The deeper they went into the residence’s lattice-like corridors, the thicker the smell of decocting medicine became.

After they passed two courtyards, the next courtyard was packed with medical apprentices boiling medicine—rows of cauldrons everywhere.

Two or three apprentices clung to each furnace, fanning and managing the fire, and just at a glance there were more than ten furnaces, so of course it was cramped and noisy.

“Is this the master who will perform True-Qi Guidance? Good. This way. And Official Jo—go back and wait. If the patient’s family is beside him, it may interfere with diagnosis.”

“P-Please—tell the Divine Physician I beg him to do his utmost.”

“The Divine Physician always seeks the best course. Now—this way.”

Qing’s expression hardened.

There are usually only three reasons a doctor blocks a family from approaching.

One: a contagious illness, an epidemic.

Even if it’s an epidemic patient, to the family he’s just pitiful and precious—so they grab his hand tight, hug him, and before they realize it, the number of patients grows. It becomes something deeply unpleasant.

But the apprentices and medical attendants boiling medicine didn’t show any anxious signs.

No matter how skilled, doctors fear epidemics. If there were an epidemic patient here, the trainees would have to look uneasy too.

So it wasn’t the first.

Two: the doctor is a quack.

He can mimic being a doctor, but he doesn’t actually know what to do, so he pretends to take a pulse while doing nonsense—and he can’t let anyone see.

But there were tons of apprentices and medical attendants. Even the way they boiled medicine looked practiced—definitely not something done once or twice.

A doctor leading this much manpower couldn’t possibly be fake, so the second was rejected too.

Then it had to be the third.

The patient’s state is extremely bad—and his condition is so horrific there’s no way you can show it to his family.

The kind of thing where, if they saw it, the shock could trigger a chain of deaths in mourning.

And sure enough—if you truly needed a master for treatment, the proper order would be to send tribute to a suitable sect and request aid, not to frantically run around asking, “Is there a master in the neighborhood—!”

Qing swallowed hard and went inside.

A servant guarding the door respectfully opened it; Qing entered the corridor, then moved to the inner quarters where the treatment was happening.

When Qing opened the door to the inner quarters, there—

SMACK! SMACK!

“Hk—huff!”

“Haa—ngh! Ngh!”

Qing shut the door again.

What...? What did I just see? Did I... see that wrong?

CREEEAK—

Qing cautiously opened the door again.

A young man, almost naked, bound and held in place with ropes.

And an old man, panting in harsh breaths as he repeatedly swung a whip at him.

SMACK! Each time the whip struck the young man, an “ngh” moan burst out—so irritating it made her skin crawl—

CREEEAK—

Qing shut the door again.

Now that I think about it, this is definitely the second reason a doctor blocks a family.

This is absolutely a quack...

—Hey! I’m dying over here! HUFF—if you’re here, come in and help already!

A furious shout came from inside.

And worse—help? When have we even met? The old Chief Physician used to do this too... do doctors have some built-in habit of seeing a person and immediately trying to put them to work?

Qing opened the door again with her face twisted.

And the bizarre scene that did not look like “taking a pulse” no matter how you sliced it spread out before her again.

No, and why is he tied up like that...

Still, the young man’s state—ah, um, it feels like something’s been done to him. They said “son,” so I thought it was a little kid, but he’s a fully grown young man, just like this.

And the young man’s condition was truly nasty.

Black veins bulged all over his body, and worst of all, his entire irises had been dyed pitch-black.

Is this a patient, or someone possessed by an evil spirit?

And that old “Divine Physician”—aside from the whip in his hand, he had the bearing of an immortal.

It was like someone pointing at him and saying, That phrase—“an immortal’s air and a sage’s bones”—exists for a man exactly like this! His face carried a refined, elegant dignity.

But with the whip in the picture... somehow the composition was—

“Seriously, what is this. They said you were a Divine Physician—why are you running some kind of exorcism circus?”

“Would you even understand if I explained it? I have my reasons. How would a martial artist who doesn’t know the ‘yi’ in ‘medicine’ understand?”

“I wouldn’t say I know medicine, but I can still pull my weight as one medical attendant.”

“Oh, you read a few medical texts? Then good. I’m driving out the evil qi through percussion-and-unblocking. So now—what should we do next?”

Percussion-and-unblocking is a method where you strike acupoints to loosen clumped qi and blood and break through blocked meridians.

And “strike” here meant literal physical impact.

Thanks to that, countless masters in the Central Plains had an official excuse to beat their disciples senseless under the name of “percussion-and-unblocking.”

But with a whip?

Percussion-and-unblocking requires striking clumped qi and blood with exquisite force and angle. If you hit randomly, that’s just assault.

It’s a technique where delicate force control and exact targeting matter, so doing it with a whip?

Unless this old man is a master of whip technique—meaning, a doctor who has martial arts.

“You said you read a few medical texts. So what should we do next?”

“I don’t really know qi-based treatment.”

“Hmph. Of course you don’t. Then what realm are you? Any experience performing True-Qi Guidance?”

“Uh—I’m in Transformation, and I’ve never done it.”

“Hmm? You’re still a green kid, and you’ve already awakened transformation?”

“Huh? How do you know I’m young?”

“Hands. No matter how well you take care of yourself, age shows in your hands. I’ve seen tens of thousands of wrists. I’ve treated that many hands—how could I not know? You’re wearing expensive clothes, so sure, you keep yourself well, but even so—you won’t be twenty-five yet.”

The suspicion Qing had—this guy’s a quack—shrunk drastically.

Just from hands, he could roughly guess age. That meant he really had taken pulses.

Of course, Qing didn’t realize it, and the Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician didn’t know either, but in this case he’d basically gotten lucky.

Because the owner of that Minor Water Demonic Art keeps their hands pale and pretty right up until they’re about to die of old age.

“In my entire life, I’ve never even heard as a joke that someone reached Transformation before twenty-five. It isn’t even possible. Don’t puff yourself up—tell me honestly. A human life is on the line.”

Despite the contemptuous nickname, the old man was saying something very doctor-like.

Instead of answering, Qing floated a single shining qi pellet—glittering—into the air.

Seeing once is better than explaining a hundred times. The Divine Physician’s expression softened as he watched the small, sparkling star hovering in midair.

“Ahem. Are you older than you look? You must’ve learned some special hand technique. Well, a female martial artist—one or two fairy arts wouldn’t be strange.”

“So what should I do?”

“Right. That’s what matters.”

Then the Divine Physician clicked his tongue, looking at the bound young man.

“I don’t know the reason, but there’s a nasty evil qi packed into every meridian. And evil qi usually forms when qi sits trapped in blocked meridians for a long time and rots. I can’t make sense of it. Unless he picked up and swallowed some rotten elixir somewhere. But if a man who never learned martial arts ate something like that, his breathing should’ve cut off long ago. So what in the world is this condition?”

“You don’t know what it is?”

“A bizarre illness. If I don’t know, then nobody in this world knows. Not knowing the condition doesn’t mean there’s no method. First I widen the channels with percussion-and-unblocking, then we squeeze it out with True-Qi Guidance. I’m a doctor, not a martial artist, so I can’t perform that kind of upper-tier method—so if you understand now, come help. I’ll drive it down to the fingertips and let blood.”

“You’re going to drive qi and squeeze out blood?”

Aren’t qi and blood completely separate?

Qi is that invisible, quasi-occult mystical something unique to the Central Plains, and it doesn’t have anything to do with blood flow at all—

But the Divine Physician didn’t look like he intended to explain.

“You said you don’t know qi-based treatment. There’s a way for everything, so stop talking and do it. Now.”

If the doctor says so... fine.

Qing placed a hand on the young man’s back to perform True-Qi Guidance—then a thought suddenly struck her.

Virtue is virtue even if it’s hypocrisy, law is law even if it’s evil—so evil qi is still qi, isn’t it?

Couldn’t she just... suck it out with Northern Sea Divine Art?