Chapter 040: Treating the Illness

The foot of Chongdan Mountain, struck by natural disaster, was left in utter devastation. Several villages and towns were reduced to ruins, and the subsequent disaster relief efforts in Jiazhou proved overwhelmingly burdensome. Even though the majority of the volcanic ash had been dumped into the sea, the destruction wrought by the remaining lava kept all of Jiazhou busy for three grueling months without respite.

Yet, Jiazhou was hardly the only place plagued by headaches. Calamities ran rampant across this world, treating everyone with impartial equality; they favored no side, nor did they ever spare any. While Jiazhou suffered from natural disasters, Qizhou, thousands of miles away, was suffering from man-made turmoil, gripped by mass panic due to the rampage of spirit bandits.

Those spirit bandits in this world who had not been hunted down and executed by the Immortal Sects either fled to Heavenly City seeking asylum or spent their days wandering and hiding across the mortal realm. The rules of Heavenly City were extremely stern, and once spirit bandits entered, most could never leave. Therefore, in the eyes of many, going to Heavenly City was no different from entering a spacious prison. Consequently, the number of spirit bandits who went to Heavenly City roughly split evenly with those who wandered the mortal realm—a fifty-fifty division.

To make a living, this wandering half of the spirit bandits either hunted other spirit bandits, seizing their spiritual artifacts to sell at exorbitant prices in the ghost markets—much like the likes of Sun Sheng—or preyed upon ordinary mortals, akin to high-level mountain bandits and formidable outlaws.

The spirit bandit wreaking havoc in Qizhou belonged to the latter category. He possessed several spiritual artifacts, routinely plundering ordinary people across the prefectures and counties of Qizhou, killing anyone who offered the slightest resistance on the spot. Every once in a while, he would emerge to go on a rampage, arbitrarily abducting a dozen households or even entire villages at a time, accumulating six to seven hundred human lives on his hands. Canglang Manor, the Immortal Sect of Qizhou, had been tracking him for a long time, but had yet to bring him to justice.

As a result, the people of Qizhou lived in perpetual terror day and night, dreading that this misfortune might befall them one day. Some even packed up their entire families and fled to Yujun City, the capital prefecture of Qizhou, to seek refuge. On the mountain north of Yujun City stood Canglang Manor, and within the city were the prefectural governor's estate, the garrison troops, and the residence of the local feudal prince, the Prince of Laiyang. No matter how one looked at it, it seemed safe.

Perhaps due to all these reasons, this spirit bandit had never once appeared in Yujun City.

Left helpless and destitute when they arrived in Yujun City, the refugees prompted the Prince of Laiyang to fund the construction of a refugee camp, providing them with porridge and meals daily. Every few days, he would send people to persuade them to return to their hometowns, sometimes even dividing farmland from his own fiefdom for them to cultivate. Thus, refugees arrived in a steady stream and departed in a steady stream, preventing Yujun City from overflowing.

It was early winter, and the weather was overcast. In the refugee camp on the east side of the city, everyone held their rice bowls and stood in line, waiting for the servants of the Prince of Laiyang to distribute porridge. Amidst the bobbing heads of varying heights, there was a sudden gap. Looking down, one could see a boy not yet ten years old standing there.

The woman standing behind him asked, "A-yan, how is it that your younger sister is nowhere to be seen today? Doesn't A-xi usually follow you from morning till night?"

Before the boy named A-yan could reply, the man standing ahead of him turned around and answered, "I heard A-xi is sick. She has had a fever for two days now, and the quack doctor in the camp can't cure her."

"Oh dear, such a young child running a fever for so long, that's terrible! A-xi already has a bit of a mental deficiency and can't speak. If her fever burns anything else out..."

"You are not allowed to say that about my sister!" The thin boy glared angrily at the woman.

Although the early winter weather had already turned chilly, he wore only two thin layers of coarse cloth garments. Perhaps because he was growing, the sleeves and trouser legs of these coarse clothes were a section too short, exposing his scrawny, frost-bitten ankles and wrists. His lean build made his eyes appear all the more prominent, and this pair of big eyes could conceal no emotion whatsoever—three parts of anger looked like five, and five parts of anger looked like ten.

Stared at fiercely by A-yan like this, the woman sullenly swallowed the rest of her words.

Perhaps unable to let her uncompleted words rot in her stomach, the woman turned around and whispered to the young woman behind her, "Look at how fiercely this child protects his sister. But both his parents were killed by spirit bandits; how can a little child survive while taking care of a crazy sister? If I say something that might get me cursed, if his sister were to die of illness... perhaps he would have an easier time surviving."

The woman's voice was very low, yet who would have expected A-yan's ears to be exceptionally sharp, catching every single word. In an instant, he jumped up, his five parts of anger instantly surging to ten.

"Bah! Who are you saying is going to die? My sister is not going to die! She won't die even if you do!"

His voice was loud, yet as he uttered the word "die," his throat trembled.

The woman could only say, "Sigh... I didn't mean that... I spoke wrongly, your A-xi will surely live to a ripe old age."

A-yan pursed his lips and suddenly turned to the young woman behind the woman, saying, "Yunchuan, wasn't your brother burned since he was a child, wrapped in cloth strips all over his body? Didn't he still grow up this big? If your brother could grow up, why shouldn't our A-xi be able to grow up!"

Holding her rice bowl and confronted with this unprovoked fire directed at her out of nowhere, the young woman turned her head and said innocently, "I didn't say A-xi wouldn't grow up."

"That's right, our A-xi is just... just having a minor cold! She will get better soon."

A-yan's tone was resolute.

"Not really. The doctor in the camp said your sister's illness is complicated; she might die," the young woman said honestly.

The woman pulled at the young woman's sleeve and whispered, "Yunchuan, say a little less."

A-yan's eyes immediately turned red. He gripped the chipped pottery bowl in his hands tightly, his voice laced with a hint of crying, "Wrong! It's... the doctor misdiagnosed. He must have misdiagnosed."

The woman let out a long sigh.

A-yan's background could be considered the most tragic in the refugee camp. The village where he lived had the majority of its population abducted by rampaging spirit bandits, and his parents were killed for resisting. He and his younger sister escaped disaster by hiding in a cabinet, but they witnessed with their own eyes the scene of their parents being murdered. Perhaps traumatized by this, his six-year-old younger sister became deranged and lost the ability to speak. They were rescued by Wei Jing, a retainer of the prince's estate, and later followed the refugees to spend the winter in the refugee camp.

These two siblings depended entirely on each other for survival, but by the looks of it, the younger sister probably wouldn't make it through this winter.

The young woman called Yunchuan looked to be in her early twenties, with pitch-black hair and a refined, elegant appearance like winter snow upon willow branches, though unfortunately, her eyesight was poor. Despite her youth, she always spoke and acted with a composed demeanor—giving off the air that if the sky were to fall, a tall person would hold it up, and if there were no tall person, she would hold it up herself.

At this moment, Yunchuan said, "The doctor in the camp is indeed no good, and there are no medicines here. If we take her to see a physician outside, perhaps A-xi can be cured."

The man standing ahead of A-yan turned back and said, "Everything in Yujun City costs a fortune; who can afford to spend money at a physician's shop!"

Someone ahead shouted that food distribution was starting, and the lazy crowd instantly perked up, moving forward one after another. Gritting his teeth, A-yan suddenly made a move to walk outward.

Yunchuan stretched out her arm, reaching past the woman to grab him by the collar.

"What are you doing?"

"Let me go! I am going to the physician's shop right now to beg them to treat my sister. If I have no money... I will do odd jobs for them... I will... I will kneel and kowtow, I will sell myself to them! In any case, I must save A-xi!"

Yunchuan still held his collar without letting go, saying, "They are right. You would live more easily if A-xi were dead."

A-yan turned around in fury, only to see Yunchuan opening her hazy, gray-black eyes as she said earnestly, "Yet you still want to save her?"

"Of course!" A-yan roared.

Waving his arms and legs, he struggled with all his might. Suddenly, Yunchuan released his collar, and A-yan nearly tumbled forward in a face-plant.

Assuming once more that air of holding up the falling sky, she said, "Fine, then I will think of a way."

With that, she took her rice bowl and stepped out of the queue. The people all around looked on in utter astonishment, having seen people cut in line during food distribution, but never someone walking out of line and heading forward instead.

Shielding her brow with her hand to look ahead, the woman remarked, "Well, look at that. She went to cut in line ahead of her brother."

Cangshu was holding his bowl near the front of the queue, watching as there were only four people left ahead of him before his turn to receive food. Suddenly, someone patted him on the shoulder, and when he turned his head, he met a familiar face.

She called out, "Cangshu."

Cangshu sighed, uttering for the forty-sixth time, "You must call me older brother."

He shielded his mouth with his hand and continued, "Have you ever seen anyone address an older brother by his given name? That lacks all sense of propriety. We are playing the roles of siblings now, so you should at least act the part!"

Ye Minwei nodded. Pointing her hand outside the refugee camp, she said to Cangshu, "Brother, let's go get some money."

Cangshu looked down at his empty rice bowl, then at the queue where only three people remained ahead of him. Before he could take a proper look at anything else, he was pulled out of the line by Ye Minwei and walked toward the refugee camp gate amidst the astonished gazes of the crowd.

Cangshu could only feel his stomach issuing a mournful wail. Looking at this creature who had no need to eat, he was overwhelmed with a myriad of emotions for a moment, ultimately managing only to spit out a single sentence: "I must have accumulated bad karma in my past life!"

Ye Minwei turned her head back and said sincerely, "Why? Weren't the bad karma you accumulated in this lifetime enough?"

"..."

What she said made a certain kind of sense, after all.

Not long afterward, Ye Minwei and Cangshu stood before Yujun City's largest gambling house.

Cangshu tucked his hands into his sleeves, looked up at the gambling house's plaque for a long time, let out a long sigh, and reached out a withered, skinny hand from his sleeve to make some calculations. "Do not get too deeply engaged. Today, you must walk out the moment you win the thirteenth round. I will look after myself."

Ye Minwei nodded.

An hour later, sounds of chasing and beating echoed through the street. A crowd of burly men chased closely behind while a tall, slender man and woman ran in front, nimbly weaving through the streets and disturbing the crowd as the men roared at the top of their lungs, "Stop right there! Don't run! Daring to cheat at our Baolai Gambling House, have you got a death wish?"

"We did not cheat," the woman's self-defense was interspersed with the rushing wind of their sprint.

"Winning thirteen rounds straight at dice, and guessing the ink spots on the fan inside the box without looking—who would believe you didn't cheat! Stop right there!"

"Ah, ah, dear sir, watch your head!" shouted the person wrapped entirely in cloth strips as he looked back.

The moment his words fell, a basin of dirty water cascaded down from the story above, drenching the pursuing thugs from head to toe. For a moment, they all stopped in their tracks and cursed up a storm. Skilfully blending into the crowd, Ye Minwei and Cangshu escaped cleanly.

Realizing they had finally shaken off the casino's thugs chasing them, Cangshu slowed his pace, clutched his stomach, and said, "This won't do. I am too starved; I genuinely cannot run anymore."

Pausing for a moment, he glared at Ye Minwei, who was panting just as hard beside him, and raged, "If you had only been a bit more frugal with that thousand-liang silver note, we wouldn't have ended up in this state today!"

More than three months had passed since Ye Minwei and Cangshu left Jiazhou. Along the way, they inquired about news and followed leads all the way to Qizhou, where a large number of commoners had been repeatedly abducted. Judging by the circumstances of the Qizhou abductions, there were numerous similarities to the disappearance of the victims of the Chongdan Mountain disaster—perhaps the two were connected.