The night at Tingfeng Hall seemed exceptionally long.
In the main hall, where half a broken statue was enshrined, suppressed groans echoed faintly against the stone walls.
Sleep was now entirely out of the question.
Qin Jiuye sighed, slowly pulled back her quilt, and rolled off the bed. She didn't put on her shoes or light a lamp, instead feeling her way through the darkness toward the main hall where the faint sounds originated.
The stone floor felt slightly chilled in the early summer night. She curled her toes and pushed open the door.
The youth was curled up on a floor mat in a corner of the hall. Cold sweat had soaked through his clothes, and his spine protruded beneath the thin fabric like the back of a fish breaking the surface of the water, trembling and heaving with his heavy breaths.
Suddenly, the figure jolted as if about to wake. The woman beside him immediately grew tense, grabbing a fire poker leaning against the doorframe.
After a moment, the person in the corner returned to his previous state; he had merely shifted his body.
Qin Jiuye stood and watched for a while, letting out a soft sigh of relief. She pulled over a tattered straw cushion and sat down beside him. Her movements were very light, but in the past, they wouldn't have escaped the notice of any resting martial artist.
Tonight, however, the agony and the sensation of a thousand ants gnawing at his flesh had shredded his vigilance and defenses. Every bone and every inch of flesh in that body was fighting the pain. His soul was fragile and helpless, curled alone in the dark corner, struggling as it waited for the light of dawn.
She felt his forehead, then reached out to check the pulse at his neck. She recorded his symptoms in her notebook with a charcoal pencil before sitting back down on the cushion.
This was the backlash brought about by the antidote's efficacy. The pain was not in her own body; as a physician, there was truly nothing more she could do for him now.
Broken sounds mingled with heavy breathing drifted over—another wave of unspeakable agony. But he kept his back to her the entire time, and she could not see the expression on his face.
Qin Jiuye rested her chin on her hand, quietly watching Li Qiao’s silhouette, her thoughts drifting.
Back when she used to see patients, she often had much to say: *Keep an eye on the decoction as it simmers; be careful with the diet; look after them during the night; remember the timing for the medicine...* These words were rarely meant for the patients themselves, but for the friends and relatives who accompanied them. After all, a person was often at their most fragile when ill; they could not look after everything themselves and required the care and attention of others. Even those poor families who tried every means to get medicine on credit at Guoran Clinic, letting their debts drag on indefinitely, were often unstinting in their devotion when caring for a sick family member, asking for nothing in return.
Humans were indeed strange creatures. Companionship was not a curative medicine; it could neither alleviate pain nor eradicate the root of a disease. Yet, she had found that patients with family by their side often recovered faster.
Even someone like her, living a difficult life, had her grandfather and Jinbao by her side.
But the person before her now had no one.
Or perhaps he once had kin and friends who cared for him, but now he had to endure all of this alone.
She had never seen another patient like him, so she could not entirely predict how the process of purging the poison would go. Thus, when she handed him the antidote, she had used the most exaggerated threats and intimidation possible.
As it turned out, her warnings were not without merit.
For those who were ill, the more painful the treatment, the more they tended to delay and avoid it—especially when the symptoms were not yet so torturous as to be unbearable. Therefore, she hadn't expected Li Qiao to swallow the antidote right in front of her.
Perhaps he wanted to live even more than she had imagined.
After a moment's thought, she slowly reached out and gently rested her hand on his back.
The body beneath her hand was somewhat feverish and trembling slightly. She relaxed her fingers, gently stroking his back until the tremors subsided and his breathing smoothed out.
Rainwater that had collected between the tiles over the past few days dripped from the eaves into the water vat in the corner of the courtyard, making a rhythmic *drip-drop* sound.
Human memory is a strange thing. Sometimes the events of yesterday are forgotten by today, yet things from a long, long time ago can never be erased, surfacing vividly whenever a scene triggers the emotion.
Even though many years had passed, Qin Jiuye still remembered the feeling of Aunt Yang patting her back when she was sick as a child.
The sound of the water droplets grew louder in the quiet night. From far to near, from slow to fast.
*Thump, thump, thump...*
In a daze, she felt herself returning to that morning when Dou Wuniang knocked on the wattle gate.
The sign for Guoran Clinic had just been finished. She had spent a long time calculating an auspicious day and was just about to hang the sign when the gate was knocked upon.
She had gone to open the door with a smile on her face, thinking a customer had come seeking a consultation so early in the morning. She thought it was a good omen, that her good days were finally coming.
Then she saw Dou Wuniang pull a crumpled letter from her robe, bearing Qin Sanyou’s crooked signature.
Qin Sanyou hadn't had much schooling and only knew a few characters. If something happened, he would rather travel over mountains and rivers to find her in person than spend money to hire someone to write a letter. Unless it was something major and he couldn't get away himself.
She opened the letter, and after reading just one line, she bolted. She ran all the way to the village entrance before remembering something; she ran back to Guoran Clinic, wrapped all the copper coins she had earned recently in a cloth, and then used a few old ginseng roots she had kept at the bottom of her trunk to trade with a merchant outside the city for ten taels of silver. Then, she rushed toward Suiqing Mountain.
After leaving Jiugao, she didn't dare rest. She ran to the first relay station and spent half the silver in her cloth bundle to hire a carriage. It was the first time in her life she had ridden in a carriage, and she hadn't realized they weren't as fast as she had imagined. Later, she would always look back on this moment and think that if she had known how to ride a horse then, perhaps everything would have been different.
By the time the carriage stopped in front of that familiar thatched hut, she already knew everything.
Qin Sanyou stood there without a word, merely rubbing his hands as he looked at her. Beside him stood a local doctor in a blue jacket who, seeing her arrival, acted as if he were finishing a task. In a few sentences, he explained what illness the person inside had suffered from and how they had passed away.
During the years she hadn't known, Aunt Yang had been sick for nine whole months. Yet that doctor took less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to summarize it all.
At the end, he took the remaining consultation fee from her hand and prepared to leave, but she grabbed him.
She asked the doctor: a cough and a fever were not terminal illnesses, so why had he refused to use needles to save her? The doctor said it started as a mere cough, but eventually dragged on until it became consumption. The best time for treatment was in the early stages; once the first two months were missed, there was almost no hope. By the time he arrived, the woman was already coughing blood and could not speak. He saw how pitiful she was, living in a leaky thatched hut, and consumption had no real cure anyway. A prescription to sustain her life would have cost a hundred or eighty silver coins a dose, and no one could say for sure if it would work. The woman couldn't even swallow a few sips of rice water, and applying needles would have been like stabbing bone. He felt that rather than letting her continue to suffer, her passing was perhaps a form of release...
Later, Qin Jiuye didn't remember what else the doctor said.
By the time she came to her senses, she was being pinned to the ground by seven or eight villagers, unable to move. According to them, she had lunged at the doctor, clawing at his neck and biting his ear without letting go.
She had never hit anyone before; she had always been soft-spoken and deferential. Her actions had terrified everyone on the spot. Old Qin locked her in the woodshed the next day and refused to let her out no matter what.
She stayed in the woodshed for three days and three nights, listening to the chaotic sounds of the funeral, the vigil, and the burial outside, as they hurriedly sent Aunt Yang away.
In truth, it wasn't that she didn't understand what the doctor had said, but she still harbored an unquenchable hatred.
Because that doctor didn't understand Aunt Yang’s situation. Unless one is in such a position, there is no way to understand that conviction to survive at all costs.
For most people suffering from a serious, agonizing illness with no hope of a cure, death might indeed be a release.
But Aunt Yang was different. The Situ family was cold and heartless, and Jinbao was still small then; she was the only one he could rely on. She had just freed herself from her husband's family and could have finally done the things she always wanted to do, living a few comfortable days of her own. How desperately she must have wanted to live. To survive, she could have endured any amount of pain and suffering. Why was the life of such a person not cherished? And though she had wanted to cherish it, she had missed the chance forever just to earn those few taels of silver.
She couldn't blame Old Qin. Old Qin had to care for Aunt Yang and couldn't leave her side. He had asked someone to write that letter half a month prior, but it only arrived that day. Letters sent between poor villagers almost always took that long. The only person she could blame was herself.
As early as her return to Suiqing the previous year, she had seen that Aunt Yang’s health was failing. She thought it was just a common cough then. She had left a few prescriptions and some money, but the one thing she hadn't left was herself.
If she had stayed, Guoran Clinic might not exist, but Aunt Yang would have lived.
Her Aunt Yang—who was not wealthy yet generous to others, who was naturally kind and shy yet taught her to defend her dignity, who had endured so much hardship yet never did a single bad deed—was ultimately driven to her death by "incurable" consumption and a "life-sustaining" medicine that cost a hundred silver coins.
Whenever she thought of this fact, she would lie awake all night, staring at the hole in the roof tiles until dawn.
Since then, Old Qin never dared to mention Aunt Yang in front of her. She also worked hard to manage her emotions. Even after Jinbao was sent to her, she never took her frustrations out on him because of Aunt Yang.
Jinbao was a very fussy person with petty, unseemly schemes, taking after his heartless father’s side of the family. He bore no trace of Aunt Yang, so naturally, he didn't trigger her various emotions.
Emotions were the most useless things to her. They could neither give her silver nor bring Aunt Yang back to life.
When Old Qin sent her to study medicine, he had exhorted her that healing the sick and saving lives did not distinguish between the high-born and the lowly. But on the day Aunt Yang died, she understood: that was a total lie.
She had also wondered: there were so many ways to make a living in this world, so why did she have to choose the path of a physician?
Sometimes, watching those martial artists who struggled on the brink of death only to eventually recover, she felt no compassion, only resentment. Why could these shameless scoundrels, who had killed countless people and were filled with evil thoughts, survive while her Aunt Yang could not? She tried to find a reason for this absurdity and finally reached a single conclusion: because they had enough silver, and Aunt Yang did not.
If that was the case, then it was simple.
Silver, silver... more silver.
There were few things left that she could protect; she had to give it her all.
So she worked day and night at Guoran Clinic, hoping to use silver to protect her grandfather and Jinbao. This was the rule of her life, her unshakable faith.
A faith she thought she would believe in for a lifetime.
Yet only a few years later, on that muddy path in the pouring rain, she had betrayed her own faith.
But perhaps only she herself understood: in that moment, she had seen the Aunt Yang of the past, struggling to survive.
She had done something she regretted, but she would have regretted not doing it even more. She would have regretted it so much that every time she dreamed, she would return to those days and nights in the woodshed, hearing the wailing of the suona during the funeral procession.
She was no great saint; she was merely a cowardly, frustrated soul seeking atonement.
In all her years at Guoran Clinic, she had never saved a "stranger." She had simply saved "Aunt Yang" many times over.
Qin Jiuye stared unblinkingly at the statue in the main hall of Tingfeng Hall.
The gods would not understand the troubles of mortals, just as mortals would not understand the suffering of ants.
Fortunately, she still had a roof over her head and a night of peace. Let the long night settle her unwillingness and resentment, just as it had many times before.
The person in the corner finally stopped making those agonizing sounds, falling into a stupor after total exhaustion.
Qin Jiuye pulled a thin blanket over the youth. After a moment's thought, she placed the rusted saber closer to him, then quietly left the room barefoot, just as she had come.
The owner of the blade pulled the cold scabbard close, his breathing finally growing steady.
The stone hall in the night finally fell truly silent.
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 果然居 | Guoran Clinic | Qin Jiuye's medical business/residence. |
| 杨姨 | Aunt Yang | A maternal figure from Qin Jiuye's past. |
| 窦五娘 | Dou Wuniang | A character from Qin Jiuye's home village. |
| 绥清山 | Suiqing Mountain | The location of Qin Jiuye's original home. |
| 九皋 | Jiugao | A place name. |
| 痨症 | Consumption | Tuberculosis. |
| 司徒 | Situ | A family name (Aunt Yang's husband's family). |
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