Medicine Slave

A stream murmured beneath the shade of lush trees. An Earth Dragon drank from the clear little river, its back piled high with bundles of all sizes.

Beside the Earth Dragon, more than a dozen burly Martial Artists were feasting and chatting merrily about topics unfit for children. Behind it crouched another dozen or so gaunt figures. Heavy shackles bound their hands and feet, and they hunched over the ground, heads bowed as they ate their meager, nutritionally poor food with vacant eyes.

Inside a sedan chair strapped to the Earth Dragon sat a grim-faced old man dressed in a blackish-gray robe. Five exquisite white medicine bottles were embroidered over the robe's chest. The thin old man wore his hair in a crown and looked down at the shackled people as if choosing pigs for slaughter.

His gaze wandered from one person to another. Sometimes it settled on the feasting Martial Artists, and a chilling, inscrutable look crept into his eyes. Every Martial Artist he fixed his gaze on paled and fell silent, seemingly terrified of him.

"Finished eating? If you're done, then let's get moving." Mo Yan Yu walked out of the bushes, holding Shi Yan and wearing a cold expression.

The Martial Artists gave awkward laughs as they put away the food they hadn't finished. "We're done, we're done."

Mo Yan Yu kept a stony face, impatience written all over her. Only when she reached the old man did she manage to force a smile. "Master Kalu, you've finished eating too, right?"

The old man nodded coolly and grunted. "Miss Mo, we're still three months from the Merchant Alliance, yet the Medicine Slaves you've found for me are down to just sixteen. I'm afraid they won't last until we get there..."

"Don't worry, Master. We'll keep replenishing your Medicine Slaves along the way." Mo Yan Yu answered solemnly. She tossed Shi Yan to the ground, then smiled. "Look, here's another one."

"Mm." Kalu gave a lukewarm nod. His gaze slithered over Shi Yan like a snake, and he frowned. "This boy's so thin. I doubt he'll last more than a few days."

"He is frail, but he has essence within him..." Mo Yan Yu explained.

"A Martial Artist?" Kalu's eyes brightened slightly, and he showed some interest.

"He is indeed a Martial Artist," Mo Yan Yu confirmed.

"That's more like it." Kalu gave a sinister chuckle and examined Shi Yan more closely. After a long moment, he slowly nodded. "Good. Miss Mo, make sure he's well fed. I want his body to grow stronger first. A badly injured Martial Artist can't withstand my experiments. If his body's too weak and my medicine kills him too soon, that would be a terrible waste."

"Don't worry, Master." Killing intent gathered in Mo Yan Yu's brows. She snapped, "Qiang Sen, what are you waiting for? Put shackles on this fellow's hands and feet!"

"Coming!" A bald giant nearly two meters tall, his face covered in bulging muscle, answered. He swiftly took a brand-new set of shackles from the Earth Dragon and roughly clamped them onto Shi Yan's wrists and ankles, not caring whether it hurt him.

The giant wore heavy armor, and the muscles exposed beneath it bulged with explosive power. His dark armor seemed weightless on him and did nothing to hinder his speed.

"Qiang Sen, take good care of him. Don't let him fall behind the group." Mo Yan Yu shot Shi Yan a hateful glance, then headed straight for the front of the procession, as if she couldn't bear to stay by his side for another second.

"Leave it to me, miss. There's no one better at this." The bald giant Qiang Sen bared his teeth in a cruel grin and thumped his chest in assurance.

Shi Yan's entire body was numb and sore. He watched the situation unfold with a cold gaze and said nothing.

He knew there was no point in saying anything in a situation like this. In this world, where the strong preyed on the weak, no one would reason with him. If he didn't adapt, he would soon become a pile of bones, abandoned and forgotten. No one would pity him.

The weak essence inside him circulated slowly. After resting for a while, the numbness in his hands and feet had eased considerably. But the shackles now weighing them down dragged him back. His body had yet to recover, and the irons felt like an entire mountain strapped to him, making every step difficult.

"Crack!"

A whip lashed across his back without warning. It struck with tremendous force and vicious speed, ripping his skin open and leaving it burning with pain. When he turned, he saw the giant named Qiang Sen holding the whip, a cruel grin spread across his face.

"Damn Medicine Slave! Move it! Want another lash?" Qiang Sen bared his teeth and roared with laughter.

Shi Yan didn't answer. He stared at Qiang Sen with extraordinary calm for several seconds. Only when Qiang Sen raised his whip again did he silently trudge after the Medicine Slaves ahead of him. Every step felt heavier than a thousand catties and took tremendous effort.

After Shi Yan turned away, the wild laughter faded from Qiang Sen's face, replaced by a strange expression.

Many disobedient Medicine Slaves had been "taken care of" by him on the journey. His methods were savage and ruthless. Two Medicine Slaves had been beaten to death under his "care" before Kalu even had a chance to test his medicine on them. Whenever the Medicine Slaves looked at him, their eyes held one of only two things:

Fear, or bone-deep hatred.

This man was the only one who had shown neither fear nor the hatred he should have. Instead, he had been strangely calm—the kind of calm that carried a faint chill.

He seemed wholly unaware that he was a prisoner. Perhaps he still hadn't grasped the situation, or perhaps there was another reason.

That calm gaze had given Qiang Sen the bizarre impression that he had become someone else's prey. It made him deeply uncomfortable. But Shi Yan had obediently moved on, leaving him no excuse to lash out, so he let it go for now. Inwardly, though, he swore that before long, he would "take care of" the boy until he showed fear.

He loved the fearful look in people's eyes when they saw him. It gave him the exquisite thrill of feeling that he held their lives in his hands.

Over the next few days, Shi Yan remained taciturn but exceptionally compliant. When told to walk, he walked; when told to stop, he stopped. He offered no resistance and showed no emotion, as if indifferent to everything around him. Among the Medicine Slaves who refused to cooperate, he stood out as an oddity.

Even Qiang Sen, who wanted to teach Shi Yan a lesson, could hardly find an excuse to pick on him. Shi Yan was simply too compliant—so compliant that it struck Qiang Sen as unnatural, though he couldn't figure out why.

Shi Yan only spoke when they stopped to rest and eat, and every time, he asked for more food. At Master Kalu's order, his request was always granted.

The Martial Artists soon realized that Shi Yan could eat an astonishing amount. He even devoured the Medicine Slaves' low-quality rations with relish. The first time, he ate about as much as seven Medicine Slaves combined. Every day after that, his appetite increased, and it showed no sign of stopping.

The sight left many of the Martial Artists baffled. They couldn't understand how Shi Yan's frail body could hold so much food. At first, they worried he wouldn't be able to digest it, but they soon realized they were wrong.

Shi Yan's skin-and-bones frame had quietly grown stronger over the course of a few days. The change wasn't especially obvious, but the sharp-eyed Martial Artists noticed it.

Clearly, Shi Yan had not only digested the low-quality food; it had nourished and strengthened his body.

The change delighted Master Kalu. The sinister-eyed old man specially allowed Shi Yan to eat as much as he wanted, ordering that he be given every bit he could eat, not a morsel less.

As Shi Yan grew stronger by the day, Qiang Sen felt increasingly uneasy. Whenever he saw that faintly chilling calm in Shi Yan's eyes, he had the sense that the boy would become a menace. But he didn't dare disobey Kalu's orders, so he could only give Shi Yan all the food he needed without skimping.

At least Qiang Sen knew what Master Kalu was capable of. That reassured him somewhat, and he secretly hoped Kalu would act soon.

Shi Yan didn't stop until he had eaten twelve people's worth of food. He rolled the last grain of rice from the corner of his mouth and swallowed it. Ignoring the astonished looks from the other Medicine Slaves, he slowly closed his eyes.

The twelve people's worth of food was swiftly digested in his stomach and intestines. His body was like a bottomless pit, or a finely tuned machine, grinding and breaking down every morsel and converting it into nourishment for his blood, meridians, bones, internal organs, and muscle cells. His frail body grew stronger without a sound.

The wound on his chest had healed long ago. The long gash had closed in only a day and a half, without even leaving a scar—an astonishing recovery that made him realize he was no longer the same as before.

Only he knew how tremendous a change his body had undergone in those few short days. He could feel it clearly at every moment!

The food he ate turned into nourishment, gradually building up his body. Meanwhile, the faint strand of essence within him had been circulating day and night for the past few days, and had actually doubled in strength!

He could clearly feel that he had gained a good deal of strength. The shackles that had once weighed on him like a mountain were no longer much of a burden.

Concentrating, he clearly sensed the essence within him. It flowed naturally from his lower dantian, up along the Governing Vessel, then down the Conception Vessel. Passing through the three barriers, it connected the Governing and Conception Vessels, joining the heart and kidneys and harmonizing water and fire. Once the Lesser Celestial Circuit was complete, the essence within him grew a little stronger again.

Shi Yan knew a little about the fundamentals of qigong and understood the difference between the Lesser and Greater Celestial Circuits. The Lesser Celestial Circuit traveled only through the Conception and Governing Vessels, not the twelve primary meridians or the other six extraordinary vessels. The Greater Celestial Circuit, however, required the circulation of both the twelve primary meridians and the remaining six extraordinary vessels, making it extremely difficult.

Only the Conception and Governing Vessels were open among his twelve primary meridians and eight extraordinary vessels, so he could only circulate the Lesser Celestial Circuit. Completing the Greater Celestial Circuit was beyond him. From another Shi Yan's memories, he also knew that in this world, only Martial Artists in the Innate Realm could open all twelve primary meridians and all eight extraordinary vessels, allowing the Greater Celestial Circuit to flow.

Shi Yan wasn't discouraged. He knew that as long as the essence within him grew strong enough, sooner or later he would open every blocked meridian.

"Another one died. Two people have died from testing medicine in just six days."

"I saw it. Before he died, his body had already started rotting. It was horrible!"

"If that's how we're going to die, we might as well kill ourselves. There's no hope for us alive. We're destined to end up just like them."

"We can't kill ourselves! If we die by our own hands, our families won't get a single Blue Crystal Coin! Ah... We just have to endure. If we survive half a year, we'll be free and get some money too. For our wives and children, we have to keep holding on!"

At the Medicine Slave's words, the others fell silent one by one. The thought of suicide seemed to fade. They all forced down their fear and silently reminded themselves to hold on.