Aroma of Medicine Stirs Suspicion, Afu Takes the Blame and Heavy Punishment

Just at dawn, the icicles beneath the eaves were still dripping. I leaned against the doorframe, my fingers gently tracing the carved mark on the edge of the bedboard—the one I had gouged out last night still carried fresh, jagged burrs.

The sound of footsteps came from afar and grew closer, hurried and heavy.

Three servants escorted a figure through the veranda. The man's clothes were torn, blood was seeping from his back, and he walked in a stagger, yet never let out a single groan of pain. It was Afu.

He was being dragged toward the direction of the ancestral hall.

I frowned, squeezed a cough from my throat, and swayed slightly, steadying myself against the doorframe as if I couldn't stand firm. A few passing menservants glanced at me, discussing in low voices, "With the young master's sickly body, I'm afraid he won't last much longer." "Indeed, dragging Afu to steal medicine for him is nothing short of wishful thinking."

I lowered my gaze and said nothing.

When Afu was being dragged away, his head turned sideways, and his gaze swept over my location. At that instant, his eyes were muddy yet clear, like someone burning with a high fever who suddenly recognized his own mother. I didn't move, nor did I blink; I only let the corners of my mouth droop to reveal a sickly sort of helplessness.

Yet in my heart, I had already reviewed the traces of last night.

It wasn't that I hadn't planned to go to the apothecary. After that wave of unusual movement deep in the forbidden ground last night, I had touched a fingernail-sized crystal in the corner of a rock crevice—grayish-white, with a faint warmth to the touch. It stayed hidden in my sleeve pocket all the way back to my quarters and was placed under my pillow before sleep. In the middle of the night, I sensed a trace of extremely faint fragrance escaping from the pouch, resembling aged medicinal herbs mixed with the scent of earth after rain, vanishing in an instant.

Thinking back now, it was precisely this scent that had triggered the resonance of the spiritual herbs in the apothecary.

The Ji Clan apothecary offered third-grade Tendon-Mending Pills, and one of the main ingredients was the Mystic Vine, which was innately sensitive to specific medicinal auras. If the fragrance invaded during the night, the vines in the cabinet would become restless, triggering the mechanism to open the medicine box, and then be caught by someone seeing the empty box—naturally, it became a "theft."

A misunderstanding, yet treated as ironclad proof.

I slowly walked back into the room, sat by the couch, and took that crystal out from under the pillow. It was somewhat heavier than last night, and a layer of nearly invisible fine lines had surfaced on its surface, like a dried-up riverbed. I touched it lightly with my fingertips, and a faint tremor crept up along the pads of my fingers—not spiritual power fluctuation, but more like the breathing of some dormant thing.

The system gave no prompt, but the Heaven-Slaying Origin was slowly growing. This little commotion could not hide from me.

Bootsteps came from outside the door, and two people looking like stewards walked into the courtyard, holding account books and walking toward the woodshed while checking them off. "It's verified; the night watchman said he saw Afu lingering outside the apothecary, still holding an oil lamp in his hand." "Fool, a rough laborer like him, how could he know the secret key rotation? Eight times out of ten he was used by someone."

The volume of their speech was not small, clearly meant for me to hear.

I lowered my head to look at the crystal in my hand and suddenly understood something.

This was not an ordinary Residual Dao Fragment. It was alive; it would absorb the medicinal properties, spiritual energy, and even emotions in the environment, releasing a guiding aura under specific conditions. Last night it had unintentionally awakened the Mystic Vine, and this morning it had made Afu a scapegoat.

But I could not expose it.

Exposing it meant I would have to explain why I appeared at the edge of the forbidden ground in the middle of the night, and why I carried something of unknown origin on me. As long as the slightest suspicion spread, Ji Hantian would pounce like a wolf smelling blood.

I put the crystal away into my bosom and got up to walk out.

Quite a few people had already gathered in front of the ancestral hall. Afu was kneeling on the bluestone slabs, a large expanse of his skin exposed on his back, covered in bloody scars. A punishment elder stood to the side, the disciplinary ruler in his hand gleaming with a dark light.

"If you still don't speak the truth, the next stroke will be the bone-breaking punishment."

Afu gritted his teeth, his lips even split open: "I didn't steal... I just wanted to go see if there were any remaining scraps left... to make soup for the young master..."

Someone in the crowd sneered: "Do you take us all for blind? Is the apothecary a place people like you can just wander in and out of?"

I slowly stepped forward, my footsteps unsteady, one hand resting on a veranda pillar, taking a breath before speaking: "Afu... why must you lie? Even though I am crippled, I haven't fallen to the point of letting you steal things to stay alive."

The whole scene fell silent for an instant.

My words sounded like a reprimand, but in reality they nailed his motive down firmly to "seeking medicine for his master." In this way, even if he was an errand boy whose actions were absurd, it could still be considered somewhat understandable. If it were dragged into other plots, it would easily drag out the mastermind behind the scenes.

Sure enough, the elder's expression softened by half, and he said coldly: "Considering his motive is not malicious, commute the sentence to kneeling in the woodshed for three days, confiscate half a year's wages, and confine him to quarters for half a month."

Afu raised his head and looked at me, his eyes full of bloodshot veins. I didn't look at him, only coughed lightly and turned to leave.

Back in the room, I put that crystal into an iron box and pressed it into the interlayer of the bedboard. I tapped twice on the wood to confirm it wouldn't easily slide out.

At the second watch of the night, the gongs of the night watch alternated.

I got up, draped a robe over my shoulders, avoided the night patrol routes, and glided along the shadows of the eaves to the woodshed. The roof tiles were loose; I gently lifted a corner, took a bottle of low-grade healing pills from my sleeve, stuffed in a folded slip of paper as well, and dropped them together into the room.

The medicine bottle made a slight sound when it hit the floor.

Afu was curled up in a pile of straw, his face burning and lips chapped. Hearing the sound, he gave a sharp start, reached out blindly to pick up the bottle, and stared at the note, murmuring aloud: "Cry out if it hurts, but don't actually weep."

He froze for a few breaths, then suddenly split his lips in a smile while a drop of sweat mixed with blood rolled down the corner of his eye.

I crouched on the roof, a thought stirring in my heart. The system automatically refined a trace of Heaven-Slaying Origin, which seeped into the medicine bottle along an invisible trajectory. This was not spiritual power and would not trigger detection, but it could make the medicinal efficacy penetrate the flesh and blood faster, accelerating healing.

After finishing this, I quietly retreated.

Returning to my room, I sat on the couch and closed my eyes to regulate my breathing. The Pseudo-Primordial Body had already covered most of my spine; my limbs grew warm again and I could move freely. As long as I didn't exert force, my aura remained as weak as a mortal's.

Outside, the wind had stopped, and moonlight shone in, falling upon the edge of the bed.

I opened my eyes and stared at that carved mark.

Tomorrow, I still had to make another trip to the secret chamber.

Hidden there was an old ledger recording who had entered and exited the forbidden ground patrol roster on the night my Dao bones shattered three years ago. I had never had the chance to check it, but now with Afu acting as the "thief" to provide cover, it was actually a good time.

I reached out and touched my left cheek; that pale red scar was faintly growing warm.

It was not out of anger, but because the Heaven-Slaying Origin was once again quietly accumulating. Each time I found myself in a position of being misunderstood and suppressed, the operation of the system grew all the smoother.

When Afu was being beaten, I was standing by and watching.

Yet I remembered the posture in which he collapsed, the cold rice cake he clutched in his hand, and the line his shoe soles scraped in the snow when he was dragged away.

I was not unfeeling.

It was simply that right now, I could not make a move.

Outside the window, a crow swept across the ridge of the roof, its wings shattering the moonlight.

I stood up, walked to the desk, picked up a brush, and drew a simple talismanic mark on the paper—that was the structure of the keyhole at the entrance of the Ji Clan's secret chamber. I had peeked at it once when I was young and had remembered it ever since.

The brush tip paused.

A rustling sound came from outside the door.

It wasn't footsteps, but the sound of fabric rubbing against the ground.

I blew out the lamp, leaned against the wall, and listened quietly.

From the direction of the woodshed, there seemed to be a figure struggling to stand up, tightly clutching that medicine bottle in their hands.