The Innocent Heart - Chapter 90

The next day, the sky was still dark, and even the roosters had yet to wake from their dreams when, suddenly, a bustling commotion erupted from the courtyard where the trio resided.

Huo Qubing was always a light sleeper. Disturbed by the clamor, he was quickly startled awake. The noise seemed to be coming from Chen Zhi’s room; silhouettes flickered under the glow of torchlight, and though the voices were noisy, he could not make out what they were saying.

“Ayao, Ayao, wake up! There is something happening in Chen Zhi’s room!” Huo Qubing sat up and nudged his friend, who was still sleeping soundly beside him.

Guan Yueyao was sleeping fitfully; a piece of fried chicken was right at her lips, yet before she could take a bite, she was pushed awake from her dream.

“What is it…” she complained, swallowing hard. Suddenly, a familiar, sharp pain in her throat made her instantly alert.

“Ayao, what is wrong with you?” Hearing his friend’s voice—sandy and unlike its usual self—Huo Qubing quickly realized something was amiss.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I probably caught a cold from the chill these past two days. It’ll get better on its own in a couple of days.” Guan Yueyao waved her hand, though the heavy nasal tone in her voice seemed to confirm his suspicions.

“You have clearly been stricken by a ‘Wind Evil’ ailment; it cannot be taken lightly. Lie here for now; I will call someone to find a physician for you.” Huo Qubing rose hurriedly from the bed, throwing on an outer robe as he prepared to rush out the door, but Guan Yueyao grabbed him.

“Qubing, don’t worry. This really isn’t a major illness. Whether you take medicine or not, it takes seven days to recover. As for you, I don’t know if this is the flu; I need to get back to my own room quickly. It would be bad if I caught you with the flu.”

While sniffing, Guan Yueyao also rolled out of bed. Huo Qubing saw that although her voice was hoarse and thick with nasal congestion, her movements were still energetic. It seemed that, as his friend had said, there was indeed no great cause for alarm, and he felt slightly relieved.

However, as his worry faded, curiosity surfaced. Though Huo Qubing had long since become immune to the one or two strange terms that occasionally popped out of his friend’s mouth, he still took note since it concerned Ayao’s health.

“Ayao, don’t leave yet. Tell me quickly—what does ‘catching a cold’ mean, and what is ‘the flu’?”

Guan Yueyao paused, tilting her head as if hesitating for a moment. After wrapping her black fox fur cloak a bit tighter, and under Huo Qubing’s puzzled gaze, she walked to the window and pushed it open, throwing the doors to the room wide.

In an instant, the northern wind still howling outside poured in, carrying a chill that dispersed the warmth accumulated in the room from being sealed all night.

“Ayao, what are you doing? You are already sick—are you not afraid of catching more of a chill?” Huo Qubing looked at his friend’s actions with increasing confusion. Now that the windows were wide open, the commotion from Chen Zhi’s room reached their ears even more clearly.

But concerned for his friend’s illness, Huo Qubing had no mind for those things yet.

“If one has a cold, it’s natural to keep the air in the room circulating. That way, the ‘virus’ cannot stay in the room for long, and you won’t be as easily infected by me.”

Although Guan Yueyao was young, she had, after all, lived in modern times. This sort of basic medical common sense—having caught a few colds as a child and seeing a doctor a few times—was something she understood well.

“As for ‘colds,’ they are simply an illness easily caught during seasons when hot and cold fluctuate. Some colds are easily contagious to others, while some are not; I don’t quite understand the principles behind it myself. But my throat hurts now; it’s ten to one that it’s what my mom calls a ‘heat cold’.”

Facing her friend, Guan Yueyao did not hide anything and laid out what she knew. However, after hearing it, the look of worry on Huo Qubing’s face did not diminish at all.

“You really don’t need to worry. With this illness, if I got it as a kid, my mom wouldn’t even let me take a day off from class!” she said very seriously, patting her chest.

“Pfft.”

Hearing his friend’s somewhat disgruntled complaint, Huo Qubing couldn’t help but laugh.

“In any case, you are sick, so we cannot ignore it. I will see you back to your room first. For these next two days, you lie down properly in your room; I will go to Commandant Li to request leave for you.”

Like a little adult, Huo Qubing tugged at his friend, who still seemed indifferent, wrapped the cloak tighter around her, and walked out.

As soon as they stepped outside, they saw a crowd gathered outside Chen Zhi’s door. Within it, a person dressed strangely—so much so that their gender could not be discerned—was holding some unknown object, dancing and gesticulating on the empty ground before Chen Zhi’s room.

At this sight, Guan Yueyao clicked her tongue and couldn’t help but criticize: “What are these people doing? Why on earth are they ‘dancing to the gods’ in front of Chen Zhi’s room?”

She was only making a casual comment, but Huo Qubing’s expression turned solemn as he turned to instruct: “Ayao, go back to your room first. I am going to see what exactly has happened to Chen Zhi.”

“I’m not going back! There’s a spectacle to see here, and I’m going to watch it!” Guan Yueyao rejected Huo Qubing’s suggestion without a thought. Even though her voice sounded quite intimidating because of her sore throat and she had to breathe through her mouth due to her blocked nose, these discomforts did not diminish her love for watching a spectacle one bit.

At this moment, Chen Zhi’s courtyard was just as Huo Qubing had seen: surrounded by several layers of people. A few people dressed as shamans, wielding peach wood swords, were dancing in the courtyard while chanting incantations.

“This… this is ‘dancing to the gods’?” Guan Yueyao leaned in closer. Seeing the situation clearly, she was dumbfounded. In all her life, this was the first time she had seen such a scene.

“What’s wrong with Chen Zhi? Has he been possessed by a weasel spirit?” Born in the new era, though she lacked the conscious label, Guan Yueyao was effectively an atheist. During elementary school, she had seen plenty of documentaries against feudal superstition and knew examples of those spirit-mediums using trickery to harm people for money. Even after experiencing something as incredible as time-travel, she still believed it was just a natural phenomenon that science could not yet explain.

Therefore, she could tease the shamans with such a joking mindset.

But Huo Qubing, as a man of the Han Dynasty, could not do the same. Although medicine in the Han Dynasty had made great strides compared to the pre-Qin period, in the eyes of contemporaries, falling ill was often not a matter of bodily function but of being haunted by vengeful ghosts or evil spirits. Patients would seek help from gods and ghosts rather than medicine, dragging out minor illnesses until they became fatal. They would not think themselves misled by shamans, but rather regret that they had served the shamans too late—a truly helpless situation.

Hearing Guan Yueyao’s words, Huo Qubing hurriedly covered his friend’s outspoken mouth and whispered, “In front of a Great Shaman, how can we be so insolent? What if he holds a grudge and uses Yangsheng (voodoo) arts to curse you? What then?”

Guan Yueyao opened her mouth to argue that if a shaman could truly curse her to death, then they were actually impressive. But then, with a swish, the shaman in the field swung his peach wood sword through the air, and the talisman pierced by the sword ignited out of thin air.

“The cold yin does not cease, and the harm is about to reach the people. The reason it reaches the people is that the yin energy travels to the right. In this month, the sun travels through the Pleiades; the Pleiades possess the energy of the ‘Great Tomb of Accumulated Corpses.’ When the energy is released, vengeful ghosts follow. This young lord was haunted by the resentful souls from the village yesterday, which is why his fever does not subside. No matter; have the young lord drink this cup of talisman water. If the resentful souls are sensible, they will retreat. If they persist and refuse to leave, I have other ways to deal with them.”

The voice beneath the mask was muffled and low, yet it still spoke those supernatural, intimidating sentences.

But Guan Yueyao understood one thing: Chen Zhi had a fever.

Thinking back, he probably caught a cold from the wind yesterday as well; she didn’t know which of them had infected the other. But that shaman was telling the Chen family servants to feed Chen Zhi that talisman water—like hell that could cure an illness!

Setting aside the fact that Guan Yueyao’s impression of Chen Zhi had slightly improved recently, even if their enmity were still deep, there was no reason to watch him be treated so poorly by these charlatans while he had a fever.

She could no longer restrain herself and pushed through the crowd. “Your words make no sense! Yesterday, we and the soldiers gathered the remains of the dead so they could rest in peace; we performed an act of kindness. How could Chen Zhi be haunted by the resentful spirits of the village?”

The witch-doctor was accustomed to being the center of attention. Suddenly hearing someone in the crowd question him—and with such a hoarse, unpleasant voice—he was startled and turned to look. He saw a youth of fourteen or fifteen years looking at him with a face full of disdain.

“I assume this officer also went to that village yesterday? Seeing your symptoms today, it is even more severe. It seems you have already been possessed by a vengeful ghost that has taken control of your mind, which is why you speak such rebellious words. No matter; I have another cup of talisman water here. Drink it, and within ten days, the vengeful ghost will depart from your body. Otherwise, at best you will lose your sanity, and at worst you will die a sudden death.”

As soon as he finished speaking, there was a commotion in the crowd. People moved several feet away from Guan Yueyao, looking at her with expressions of suspicion and fear.

Only Huo Qubing, hearing the witch-doctor’s words, showed no fear. Instead, he wore a mocking smile. He recognized the man: it was Wu Sheng, a witch-doctor quite famous in the capital who was deeply trusted by noble families. He hadn’t expected the Grand Princess of Guantao to be so capable that, for the sake of her grandson coming to the border, she had packed him up and sent him along as well.

It was precisely because of his prior fame in the capital that Huo Qubing had been eighty percent convinced when the man spoke of Chen Zhi’s condition. But then this man turned around and said Ayao was possessed by a vengeful ghost that had taken control of her mind. Had it been anyone else, he might have believed it. But remembering what Ayao had said in the room just now—was the vengeful ghost possessing Ayao also from that “modern” place?

Furthermore, if what Ayao said was true—that this illness would heal in about seven days whether one took medicine or not—then if Ayao actually drank the talisman water and got better, wouldn’t it truly become his credit?

The more Huo Qubing thought about it, the more amusing it seemed, yet within that amusement was a trace of anger at nearly being swindled. He stepped forward to stand beside his friend, intending to berate the witch-doctor, but Guan Yueyao spoke even sooner than he did.

“Bullshit! Me, possessed by a vengeful ghost? You say there are gods and ghosts; I’ll grant you that for a moment. But since there are gods, and heavenly principles are clear, and retribution is certain—since we sowed seeds of kindness yesterday, and Heaven has eyes, how could it let us reap such evil fruit? I refuse to drink your damn talisman water! I want to see if, in three to five days, I die a sudden death or if my body fully recovers!”

Stunned by Guan Yueyao’s verbal lashing, Wu Sheng stammered for a time, completely unsure how to retort. Finally, he left behind a remark of “Ungrateful wretch!” and swept away in a huff.

He left behind the bewildered Chen family servants and a crowd of dumbfounded onlookers, all staring at Guan Yueyao, unsure whose words to believe.

“What are you looking at! Do you really think I’m possessed by some damn resentful soul?” Guan Yueyao stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at the crowd. The people scattered in fear.

“Ayao, you should get back to your room as well.” Huo Qubing finally remembered his friend was also ill and hurried to pull her back to her room.

“Servants of the Chen family! If you truly want what’s best for Chen Zhi, go find a proper doctor who understands medicine to examine him! What ‘talisman water’—even a healthy person would have trouble after drinking that!”

The final sentence shouted by Guan Yueyao in her “crow-like voice” floated over the courtyard, and finally, after a moment, silence returned once more.