The flowers and herbs Xu Yan grew weren't ordinary plants. They were medicinal herbs used to treat illnesses.
He was a physician, too. Naturally, he couldn't do without medicinal herbs to treat his patients.
About an hour later, the scent of herbs filled the backyard.
Xu Yan sat in a chair nearby, looking at the woman who had been washed with medicinal water. He felt a weight lift from his heart.
The woman's life had been saved.
He laid her on the bed in the inner room, then sat in a chair to rest, Su Jiuer nestled in his arms.
Su Jiuer looked at the woman on the bed, curious about her identity.
Judging from the woman's clothes, she was certainly someone of high status. At the very least, she must have been a direct descendant of a prominent lineage.
At daybreak, the woman woke up.
After checking her condition, she relaxed.
The deadly poison and her injuries had miraculously healed.
But she knew it wasn't a miracle. Someone had made it happen.
The woman looked at Xu Yan, sitting in a chair nearby, and tried to figure out who he was.
By all rights, she shouldn't have survived her condition the night before. Yet this man had saved her. His miraculous medical skills were truly astonishing.
Xu Yan's fingers twitched slightly as he stroked Su Jiuer's soft fur. Suddenly, he snapped his eyes open.
Then he met the woman's gaze, and the air froze in an instant.
A good ten-odd seconds passed before the woman spoke first. "Thank you for saving me."
There was no one here but her and Xu Yan, and the person she had seen last night was Xu Yan. There was no doubt he was the one who had saved her.
"Who are you? Why were you so badly injured, and why were you afflicted with such deadly poison?" Xu Yan asked, staring intently at the woman.
He had treated many people in Tianren City, including some junior cultivators, but not even they had suffered injuries like these or been afflicted with such poison.
"Someone injured me, and the person who wanted to harm me poisoned me. I wasn't on guard, so I fell into their trap," the woman said.
Apart from revealing her identity, she gave brief answers to the other two questions.
"Rest well. It'll probably take two or three days for you to recover completely."
Xu Yan left her with those words, then got up and carried Su Jiuer out of the inner room.
No outsider had ever entered his inner room before. Apart from Su Jiuer, this woman was the first.
Lying on the simple little bed and looking around the modest little room, the woman felt unexpectedly comfortable.
It was as if everything here belonged exactly where it was, imbued with some profound principle of the Great Dao.
Half an hour later, Xu Yan brought the woman a bowl of congee and set it on the bedside table. "Can you drink it yourself?"
If the woman couldn't drink on her own, he would have to feed her. But he didn't want to.
The woman's origins were unknown, and she was certainly someone of extraordinary status. He didn't want to get too involved with someone like her.
As soon as her injuries had fully healed, he would send her away and act as if he had never saved her.
He was only a mortal. He knew his place and understood that it was best to keep his distance from certain people.
"I can," the woman said.
Then she struggled to sit up in bed, but even after trying for a full minute, she couldn't manage it.
Although the poison had been neutralized and her injuries treated, her body was still extremely weak. She needed proper rest.
Xu Yan sighed inwardly. "I'd better feed you."
He picked up the bowl, stirred the congee with the spoon a few times, then scooped up a spoonful and held it to the woman's soft pink lips.
The woman kept her eyes on Xu Yan and parted her lips slightly.
Only after Xu Yan brought the spoon to her mouth did she close her lips around it and swallow the congee.
Under the woman's gaze, Xu Yan started to feel uncomfortable. "Why do you keep looking at me?"
He didn't like being stared at, especially by a troublesome woman whose origins were unknown.
"I'm wondering what kind of person you are."
The woman smiled faintly. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and her voice was positively enchanting.
Xu Yan could only shake his head helplessly. "I'm just a mortal. Drink your congee."
As he spoke, he brought another spoonful to the woman's lips.
This time, the woman didn't open her mouth. Her dreamlike, exquisite eyes remained fixed on Xu Yan.
Xu Yan couldn't take it anymore. "Why aren't you opening your mouth?"
He wanted to smash the bowl of congee into her face. She'd had him save her without paying him, and now that he'd saved her, she wanted him to feed her. And when he did, she wouldn't even drink properly.
The woman looked at Xu Yan's slightly furrowed brows. "It's too hot."
A trace of grievance appeared on her flawless, exquisite face.
Any other man who saw her looking so pitiful would have been willing to give up everything just to make her happy.
But Xu Yan merely raised an eyebrow, then slowly relaxed his frown and drew the spoon back toward himself.
He stared at the congee in the spoon for half a minute, then said, "There. It's cool now. Drink up!"
Then he held the spoon out again.
By the time Xu Yan had fed her the last spoonful of congee, he was completely exhausted.
It had taken him two whole hours to feed her one bowl. If he'd eaten it himself, he could have finished in two minutes.
"You seem a little unhappy," the woman said.
Her jewel-like eyes watched Xu Yan, noting every subtle movement he made, as a faint smile crossed her face.
Xu Yan thought she had at least a little sense. "I picked more than half the medicinal herbs I'd grown to save you. That was as much as I usually harvest in half a year. It took so long for them to grow, and now more than half of them are gone. How could I possibly be happy?"
His flower garden was really more of a medicinal herb garden. It was full of herbs.
As a physician, he often needed medicinal herbs. Losing more than half of them meant he would have to put in the effort to grow them again.
The woman smiled. "Medicinal herbs are meant to treat illnesses. Those herbs were put to good use, and they proved their worth. You should be happy."
Her smile was so beautiful that simply looking at her was a pleasure.
But Xu Yan got annoyed just looking at her. "You shouldn't have drunk congee just now. You should've had green tea."
"Green tea? Is that a kind of medicinal herb?" The woman had never heard of green tea, so she asked.
She had assumed that because Xu Yan cared so much about his herbs, the green tea he mentioned must be another medicinal herb, and one suitable for her to take.
"You could say that. Green tea suits you pretty well. You're practically the very definition of green tea," Xu Yan said with a teasing smile.
The green tea he meant wasn't a medicinal herb, of course. It was a kind of tea, but it didn't just refer to tea. It also stood for something else.
The woman saw Xu Yan's teasing smile and immediately caught on that green tea couldn't be anything good.
She stared into Xu Yan's eyes. "Are you insulting me?"
She was clever. Although she had never heard of green tea and didn't know what it was, she could still infer from Xu Yan's attitude and expression that he might be insulting her.