Chapter 1050: That Creature Is a Harmful Creature (5)

Qing approached the prince, who was clutching his retainer, her face blank beneath the face veil.

Her blade flashed up.

But the prince, still tied to the punishment rack and calling desperately to his man, never noticed.

The retainer pinned to the ground with a sword through his belly did notice, though. His eyes flew wide, and even in that critical state he tried to force the words out in alarm.

No—don’t—

Qing’s sword came down on the prince.

Or rather, on his arm and the cross-frame, slicing through nothing but the ropes binding him there.

“Nakamura!”

The moment he got his freedom back, the prince scrambled forward on all fours, almost lunging toward his retainer, and seized his hand with both of his.

“Lord Nakamura, Lord Nakamura...!”

“Your Highness... please... execute... the traitors... and ascend... the throne...”

Qing’s expression turned foul at once.

Things that were not even beasts, let alone people, really had some nerve pretending to be human. The sight of it made her sick.

And yet for all the ice-cold disgust under her veil, the voice that came out of her mouth was gentle beyond belief.

“Your Highness, please compose yourself. Before anything else, shouldn’t we save this man?”

The prince jerked his head up.

“Can it be done? You can save him?”

“I know a little medicine, however meager. I will do everything I can.”

“Not ‘everything you can’—you must save him! If you fail to save him—no, no, I beg you, please! He must not go like this...!”

“Of course. From what I happened to overhear at your side, he is a loyal retainer for the ages. A man like this deserves to be honored. He absolutely must not die like this.”

No.

He couldn’t die like this.

That thing around his neck—a necklace strung with ears. A neck-earring? Whatever. A bastard like this needed to die in the most painful way possible.

He needed to suffer for as long as possible.

He was already growing hazy, already on the verge of starting a grand sightseeing tour through the Eight Hells, and that simply would not do.

“Now then. Lord Nakamura, was it? Excuse me for a moment. I’ll give your strength a little push, so please calm yourself.”

Qing placed a hand squarely on top of Nakamura’s head, and in the next instant her hand began to glow white.

There was, in fact, no reason for it to glow.

But glowing made things look mystical, so why not.

Then, using the Northern Sea Divine Art’s infusion formula, she breathed True Qi into him, and the clear, pure True Qi of the Buddhist path entered through the crown of his head and seeped into Nakamura’s True Essence.

And Qing thought to herself:

Oh. So this actually works?

According to the mnemonic formula, you could supposedly replenish depleted True Essence by pouring True Qi into it—but it wasn’t as though she could go around trying that on just anyone to see whether it worked or not.

Now a perfectly suitable test subject had appeared, so she had tried it.

Hm.

So “depleted True Essence” meant replenishing what had been spent. It did not mean healing the True Essence itself once it had been damaged.

What a letdown.

So it recharged vitality. It didn’t heal vitality.

This Northern Sea Divine Art was always being talked up as some peerless divine art under heaven, and yet every last one of these so-called supreme arts always seemed to come with a flaw.

Qing grumbled inwardly, though if anyone else knew what she had just done, they would have gone out of their minds and started shouting about it until the veins stood out in their necks.

True Essence was life force itself, the thing that kept a person alive.

Ordinarily, if you wanted to replenish someone else’s True Essence, you had to use your own—shave years off your own lifespan and pour that into another person. That was the basic principle.

And even then, the one giving it had to be a master of internal arts, and the efficiency was atrocious. Not even a tenth of it would actually transfer.

Pure medicinal elixirs could produce similar effects, yes, but if you wanted to replenish True Essence through medicine, the one taking it had to be in good enough condition to tend their own body.

It was the same logic as using harsh medicine: the body had to be sound enough to endure it.

But now you were telling her that something as common as internal power—something that filled up again if you just sat there breathing hard enough—could be used to replenish another person’s True Essence?

What kind of absurd nonsense was that?

A thing strange enough that anyone hearing it would dismiss it on the spot.

Of course, all she had done was give his vitality a little push.

In truth, even if the best divine physician in Shanghai came here in person, Nakamura was already beyond saving.

He had spent days pinned to the ground with a sword through his belly. The fact that he was still alive at all was already a miracle.

His severed intestines and the wound pressed open against the earth would have been rotting away inside him already. At that point, even the most modern intensive treatment from Qing’s homeland probably would not have given him good odds.

But she could drag out his filthy life a little longer.

She could stretch out the time he spent in pain.

She could give him false hope that he might survive, only to hand him an even more dreadful despair at the end of it.

In any case, once the pure Buddhist True Qi soaked into him, Nakamura’s complexion improved visibly.

“Khk... nghhh...”

You could tell at once from the groan that escaped him.

A man on the brink of death, so delirious with fever that he could barely even feel pain anymore, had just had the vitality of his body violently hauled back upward.

That meant all the terrible pain he had forgotten came roaring back.

“Nngh... anesthetic powder... anesthetic powder... Your Highness, please... there must be some... somewhere...”

“Anesthetic powder? Fine, I’ll—”

“You mustn’t. If you use anesthetic powder now, it could make things far more dangerous. It will be hard, but he must not think of avoiding the pain. He has to fight it head-on and endure.”

Anesthetic powder?

Absolutely not.

He needed to hurt like hell.

Qing cut the prince off cold.

If the Chief Physician or the Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician had known what was in her heart, they would have flown into a rage and slapped her across the face on the spot.

Do not use medicine like that.

How dare you profane the healing arts.

Something like that.

But Qing was no physician.

If anything, she stood at the opposite end of that road.

Or, more accurately, martial artists were perhaps the people farthest removed from physicians in the first place.

Then Qing’s hand moved to Nakamura’s belly.

The section of blade protruding through his abdomen she chopped off as casually as if she were tearing paper, and then she reached under his back and sliced away the portion embedded deep in the wet mud as well.

After that, she ripped up some cloth lying nearby—filthy, but whatever—and bound the wound tightly.

The groans grew louder and harsher, but the dying look had vanished from him.

“My heavens! Who... who are you? How can you... perhaps... are you some divine being?”

“Nothing so grand. I simply trained for a very long time and learned how to work a few small wonders.”

Then Qing added,

“I twisted this man’s fate and drove away the baleful star over him, but he was left too long with grievous wounds. He is not whole. Which means whether he lives now depends on Your Highness’s devotion.”

“My... my devotion? Do you mean money? If you save Lord Nakamura, I will reward you with a thousand gold—”

“Ah-ah! How can you try to twist life and death with something as trivial as money? What matters now is that Your Highness personally show devotion. When the time comes, that means giving the patient water and thin gruel, helping him relieve himself, washing his body, and pouring your whole heart into his care. If Your Highness’s devotion reaches Heaven, Lord Nakamura will rise. If it falls short, his breath will cease.”

In short:

You take care of him.

If things go well, it was Heaven’s will.

If he died, it was your fault.

The hidden meaning, of course, was that devotion or no devotion, the man was going to die anyway, so Qing might as well drag his suffering out and make the prince suffer right along with him.

But words were all in how you dressed them.

And more than anything, this was exactly the sort of age in which such theories of devotion worked beautifully.

You saw it all the time in folktales from this era. A child would cut a finger and feed the blood to a parent, or roast flesh from their own thigh, or prove their devotion in some other outrageous way, and Heaven, moved by that sincerity, would send down medicine.

So naturally the prince’s face hardened with resolve.

Just from his expression, it looked as though he truly intended to save Nakamura no matter what.

Well.

Best of luck with that.

And if by some miracle his devotion really did save the man, Qing could always butcher him herself later.

The camp was full of tents, so making a stretcher was hardly difficult.

They knocked one together in short order, laid Nakamura on it, threw up a large tent as a rough shelter against the rain, and moved him inside.

Only after he had caught his breath a little did the prince finally ask,

“Why... why are you helping me?”

“I was moved to a change of heart after seeing Lord Nakamura’s astonishing loyalty. Surely he defied death itself and clung to life on rainwater alone in order to deliver this news to Your Highness. Who could see such devotion and not be moved?”

“Lord Nakamura...!”

“And above all, Your Highness will certainly give me a suitable reward, won’t you? Come to think of it, I still haven’t even received your ransom.”

That shattered the emotion rather thoroughly.

But visible greed was often more reassuring than some invisible, inexplicable kindness.

A person who openly asked for money felt safer. Easier to understand.

It was the [N O V E L I G H T] same logic as Salt Town. The villagers had been so kind that Qing had grown suspicious. If they had simply tried to fleece her openly, she would have trusted them more.

“Of course! If Lord Nakamura recovers, I will reward you richly!”

“That part depends on Your Highness. But then, doesn’t that leave you in quite a predicament? You need to return home as quickly as possible. How exactly do you intend to do that? On land, two feet can take you almost anywhere. The sea is another matter.”

“That is no concern of yours. My royal father will surely return with a full force of my country’s warriors to take revenge. All I need do is wait for Ippen’s fleet. Yes—what do you think? You may be somewhat vulgar, but your skill is extraordinary. One might even call you a divine physician. How would you like to display that skill in the palace of my homeland?”

But instead of answering, Qing asked a question of her own.

“Your Highness... you don’t happen to have any brothers, do you?”

“And why do you ask that? Surely—khm—my apologies, but all my brothers are of royal blood. They cannot mix with someone of unknown birth.”

A vein stood out on Qing’s forehead.

What, exactly, did this bastard think she was?

Still, for now she swallowed it.

“How very relaxed you are. I heard that in Ippen, word has already spread that the Crown Prince is dead. If that is so, what comes first—avenging the dead Crown Prince, or appointing a new one? My understanding is that in royal houses, the heir is too important a place to leave empty.”

“But if they learn that I am alive—”

“How innocent of you. Do you think it would be so easy to depose a newly appointed Crown Prince just because the former one turns out to be alive? And even if it were, do you think the new Crown Prince would accept that meekly?”

The prince’s face went slack.

Then, in the next instant, a clear shadow fell over it.

“Which is why, Your Highness, you must return to your homeland as fast as possible, announce that you live, and sweep away the traitorous dogs who dared forge your death.”

“Yes! Yes, what you say is entirely right! But how am I to cross the sea? Surely you would not be giving me this advice if you did not already have some method in mind?”

At that, Qing brought thumb and forefinger together into a neat circle.

A gesture that meant the same thing now as it always had.

“I do have some wealth set aside, so perhaps I could arrange a ship. But if Your Highness will swear to repay me double, then I may be willing to exert myself.”

In truth, in the Central Plains, having money did not mean you could simply hire passage to Japan.

Without ties to smugglers, it was impossible.

And smugglers who risked their lives in illegal trade were secretive as hell, so of course Qing had no ties to them.

But if you were talking about ships—

Well.

She did happen to have a connection with the Water Forces.

“Oh! You truly are my lifeline!”

The prince, ignorant of everything in Qing’s heart, sprang to his feet and reached out.

Apparently he had been about to clasp Qing’s hand in both of his, but she recoiled in visible disgust and whisked her hand away. The prince pawed at empty air, then awkwardly continued,

“If you do this for me, I will declare you my benefactor, grant you noble rank, and bestow an estate upon you as a lord!”

Behind her face veil, Qing smiled darkly.

Well now.

An estate, was it?

Whether there would still be any land left to grant by then was something they could find out when the time came.