After Redeeming The Beautiful and Tragic Heroine [Transmigration] - Chapter 9

At the Small Infirmary:

In the small infirmary of the City Lord’s Manor, the old healing master lay on a rocking chair, dead drunk and snoring thunderously. Next to him, the medicine boy had just tidied up his master’s wine gourd and was now sitting on a stool, pounding herbs with a mortar and pestle.

“Creak—”

The wooden door, already rickety from being kicked open by the master, groaned as it opened. The medicine boy stopped pounding and looked up at the person who was walking into the infirmary, silhouetted against the light.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“The City Lord’s guest,” the demon servant who brought Yu Yuan replied.

Yu Yuan, entering right behind him, scanned the dark, gloomy infirmary and felt deeply uneasy about the medical standards here.

“Where is Old Qin?” The demon servant didn’t see the old healer and asked the medicine boy.

The medicine boy glanced at Old Qin, who was behind the medicinal cabinets and had been deep in conversation with the God of Dreams for who knows how long. He was just about to say, “He’s here,” when Old Qin’s snoring preempted him and answered the demon servant’s question instead.

Demon Servant: …

Yu Yuan: …

Well, now she was extremely uneasy about the medical standards here.

The medicine boy was a little embarrassed by his master. He got up from his stool and bowed to Yu Yuan, “If Immortal Maiden doesn’t mind, I can have a look for you.”

He spoke earnestly. Yu Yuan glanced at the demon servant, saw that he looked completely accustomed to the situation, and then confidently held out her hand to the medicine boy, saying, “My hand was cut by a teacup.”

The medicine boy used the daylight streaming in from the doorway to carefully examine Yu Yuan’s injury and quickly reached a conclusion. “It was cut by a Cold Jade.”

As he spoke, he led Yu Yuan out of the infirmary, settling her on a low stool outside. He then returned inside and brought out a pile of jars and bottles.

While applying medicine to Yu Yuan, the medicine boy told her that the old healer had stopped seeing patients frequently after getting on in years. Fortunately, he had learned most of his master’s skills, so as long as it wasn’t a difficult or complicated illness, he could handle it himself.

After the second medicine was applied, the demon servant who brought Yu Yuan was called away. For a time, only the two of them remained in the small courtyard where the infirmary was located.

The medicine boy was quite a chatterbox. After the demon servant left, he started talking to the previously silent Yu Yuan. “Immortal Maiden, are you a disciple of the Miaoyin Sect?” He had heard that the City Lord invited all the outer sect disciples of the Miaoyin Sect to add color to the Young City Master’s wedding, so he had guessed as much when he first saw Yu Yuan today.

Yu Yuan nodded in reply: “I am.”

The medicine boy mused, then curiously asked, “Immortal Maiden, what kind of place is the Miaoyin Sect? Is it big? My master told me that the people in the sect live in an immortal realm—is that true?”

Yu Yuan wanted to say no, but she couldn’t get a word in. The medicine boy didn’t give her a chance to interrupt, bombarding her with several more questions. Yu Yuan listened for a quarter of an hour, and only when the medicine boy finally stopped did she answer the few questions she could remember.

After giving her answers, Yu Yuan’s own reserve was somewhat lowered by the medicine boy’s talkativeness. She looked at the pitch-black infirmary behind the boy and asked, “Why are the windows of this infirmary covered with paper? It’s so dark. Doesn’t that make treating patients difficult?”

Traditional Chinese Medicine emphasized looking, listening, asking, and feeling. Yu Yuan figured they could manage the listening, asking, and feeling, but she wondered how they managed the most important part—the looking.

The medicine boy replied, “I’m not exactly sure about that. I heard from my master that the City Lord papered them over, apparently because he’s growing some kind of spirit plant that can’t see the light.”

A spirit plant that can’t see the light?

Yu Yuan didn’t recall the original novel mentioning that the City Lord had a hobby of cultivating a nocturnal plant garden. Thus, she poked the black cat, who was lying flat and sunbathing in her arms, intending to ask the system about the details in the original work.

But before she could mind-link with the system, a shrill female voice came from outside the courtyard.

“Old Man Qin, save someone!”

The person shouted. Her tone carried no anxiety or worry, only a thick layer of impatience. The voice sounded somewhat familiar to Yu Yuan. She looked toward the courtyard gate and met eyes with the old maidservant she had encountered earlier.

Yu Yuan: …

Old Maidservant: …

Neither of them expected to bump into the other again here.

The old maidservant forced a smile: “I didn’t expect to run into the Young Sect Master again here. I hope you will forgive me if I caused any offense earlier.” She squeezed her face into a smile, making the wrinkles look like distorted crawling insects.

Yu Yuan remained silent, choosing not to respond to the old maidservant. Instead, she looked at the person slung over the other woman’s shoulder, her mood complicated. The person had already fainted, their blood clotted and stuck to their coarse cloth shirt.

The old maidservant also noticed Yu Yuan’s gaze. She raised an eyebrow, deliberately turned sideways to shield the person on her shoulder, and quickly walked into the infirmary, pulling the wooden door shut behind her.

Yu Yuan’s expression couldn’t help but darken at the sight.

The medicine boy, sitting across from her, noticed something was wrong and whispered to Yu Yuan, “Immortal Maiden, you can’t get involved in this. Just pretend you didn’t see anything.”

Hearing this, Yu Yuan looked at the medicine boy, almost forgetting that this young child was a well-informed local. “Why can’t I get involved?” she probed.

The medicine boy paused his bandaging motion, pondered for a moment, and decided this was hardly a secret in the manor. So, he lowered his voice and explained, “Because the person Old Woman Yu is carrying is the young mistress of the manor.”

Old Woman Yu was definitely the old maidservant, so this ‘young mistress’…

Yu Yuan frowned: “The City Lord’s daughter?”

The medicine boy nodded: “The one the City Lord had with a maidservant.”

Yu Yuan pressed her lips together and said nothing.

The medicine boy continued, “About ten years ago, the City Lord’s wife went back to her family home for business, and the City Lord forced himself upon a maidservant. Later, that maidservant had a child, which is the young mistress inside. When the madam returned to the manor and found out, she was furious…”

The medicine boy’s voice began to blur in Yu Yuan’s ears. She stared at the tightly closed wooden door, and a passage from the original novel unfolded in her mind.

*******

[Qin Niang knelt by the bed. Her mother on the bed was coughing incessantly, like a punctured, rattling bellows.]

[Old Qin stood next to her and shook his head, telling her: “It’s too late.”]

[Too late? What was too late? Qin Niang asked herself. She had the answer in her heart but dared not believe it, until the City Lord’s wife wrapped her mother in a torn straw mat and threw her into the mass grave outside the city.]

[Qin Niang’s world was very small, small enough to only hold herself and the City Lord’s wife, who constantly beat and cursed her.]

[But one day, a person said to her: “Don’t be afraid. I will save you.”]

The person who promised to save her was Wei Haoran. He had stumbled upon the City Lord’s wife ordering a demon servant to beat Qin Niang. Unable to watch, he stopped the City Lord’s wife and advised her to be kind. The City Lord’s wife outwardly agreed, but behind the scenes, she immediately threw Qin Niang into the lake, nearly drowning her alive. Qin Niang’s plotline was already tragic up to this point, but her eventual outcome was the most terrible: she died blocking a blade for Wei Haoran, the day after she escaped the icy water.

For the past twenty years, Yu Yuan had always felt lucky for her transmigration fate because she believed she had received a top-tier script in the original novel. Although she was just a background character, she had neither a scumbag father nor a vicious stepmother. She even had a decent family background, allowing her to live as she pleased. Of course, Yu Yuan would be even happier if she could just avoid the ending of becoming cannon fodder.

*******

After the medicine boy finished bandaging her hand, the sun had largely drifted toward the west. The demon servant who had led Yu Yuan earlier seemed to have timed it perfectly, returning to escort Yu Yuan to her quarters.

As Yu Yuan left, she looked at the closed door, her eyes lowered, feeling hesitant. When reading the book, Qin Niang was nothing more than a memorable cannon fodder character to her. But now, she was a living, breathing person.

She had pleaded with Yu Yuan for help… If Yu Yuan didn’t help her, she would almost certainly head toward her original ending. But if she did help her, how should she go about it, and under what capacity?

Yu Yuan’s thoughts were in turmoil. Just as she was wavering, the door to the infirmary was pushed open. No, it was banged open.

Qin Niang burst out of the infirmary, rushing straight toward Yu Yuan.

“Young Sect Master, please, please save me…”

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