Great Immortal

"Still hurt?"

Lin Shou looked at An Yunli's ankle, the swelling already gone, and asked a question. But the girl was now both scared and embarrassed—scared that Lin Shou would yell at her, embarrassed that her calf was being touched by this man. She just stood there, frozen, stupid, until Lin Shou barked at her:

"I'm asking you! Does it hurt or not?!"

"No! No! It doesn't hurt anymore!"

An Yunli flinched at Lin Shou's shout, crouched down with her hands over her head, curling into a ball like a kitten, muttering over and over:

"Don't be mean to me... don't be mean to me..."

Lin Shou thought to himself, bullying this girl was way too fun.

"Tell me, where are you from? Where's your home?"

"No, I can't. My sister said I can't talk to strangers."

An Yunli covered her mouth. Lin Shou thought, where was that rule earlier? Only remembering now.

"I'm not a stranger. I know your sister. She's Shopkeeper Xia of Qingcheng Teahouse, right? You two came all the way from Shu Region to the Capital City for your illness?"

An Yunli's eyes went wide, her expression screaming how do you know. Lin Shou knew his deduction was right.

Of course, with the information he had, that was as far as he could go.

As for the other details—why the sisters had different surnames, why a family as wealthy as the big tea merchants of Shu Region would send only one sister to bring the other to the Capital for treatment, and why they lived so poorly now, not like they had money... Lin Shou had some guesses, but nothing certain, so he didn't bring it up.

"Tell me why you climbed the wall in the middle of the night to run away from home."

Lin Shou looked over An Yunli's ill-fitting, worn-out linen clothes. Clearly, they weren't hers.

A starved camel is still bigger than a horse. No matter how down on their luck, she was still the young miss of a big tea merchant in Shu Region. She wouldn't be wearing linen every day. Dressed like this, with a bundle on her back, she was obviously running away.

As soon as Lin Shou brought it up, it seemed to hit a nerve. An Yunli lowered her head and said:

"My sister's already wasted too much time trying to cure me. She snuck me out of the house and brought me to the Capital, spent all her silver to find doctors for me. I don't want to hold her back anymore..."

These sisters had a pretty good relationship.

Lin Shou reached out his hand, but it only made An Yunli flinch back. He clicked his tongue in annoyance, grabbed her wrist firmly, and pulled her over: "Listen to me!"

"Don't be mean to me... don't be mean to me..."

An Yunli had turned into a broken record from Lin Shou's scaring.

Lin Shou, meanwhile, held An Yunli's wrist to his mouth and began taking her pulse using the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases. But this pulse...

Lin Shou felt for a long time, finally frowning deeply. One question lingered in his mind: Where was the pulse?

Observation, listening, questioning, and palpation—palpating the pulse meant diagnosing the pulse condition.

Blood flowed through the vessels, circulating throughout the body without rest, reflecting the state of all the organs. When an organ or qi and blood went wrong, it would inevitably show in the pulse, presenting a pathological pulse pattern.

A living person, as long as the heart beat and blood moved, had a pulse.

So the question was: Where was An Yunli's pulse?

He couldn't find it at all.

By all logic, living people had pulses. The only ones without pulses were those whose hearts no longer beat and blood no longer flowed...

The dead.

Hiss. Lin Shou sucked in a cold breath, looked at the An Yunli in front of him, muttered an apology, and pressed his ear to her chest.

An Yunli's face went white in an instant, but she didn't dare move. She was terrified of Lin Shou, this great demon king.

Lin Shou listened carefully, finally hearing the faint heartbeat from within her chest, and let out a breath of relief.

The heartbeat was weak, but she should still be alive.

"Are you a doctor...?" An Yunli asked softly.

"No, but I can treat illnesses."

Lin Shou was frowning, turning over the medical knowledge in his head, trying to figure out this strange disease that made the pulse undetectable, when he heard An Yunli say:

"It won't work. My sister said no doctor can cure my illness. A Great Immortal put a curse on me. I need to find a Great Immortal to undo it."

"Great Immortal?"

"I don't really get it either. I only heard it once when I eavesdropped on my sister talking to a doctor she hired. Oh no... you can't tell my sister!"

An Yunli realized she'd said too much.

"I promise I won't tell your sister. But you promise me you'll go straight back to the teahouse. No more running away from home. There are too many bad people out there. You wouldn't even make it off this street before someone sold you off."

Lin Shou thought, if this dumb girl went out to fend for herself, she'd be a little lamb dropped into a wolf pack, devoured by the world without a trace.

"Oh..."

An Yunli had been sick and shut away for so long, lacking any worldly experience. She'd only heard of such things in stories and picture books. Now that she'd run into Lin Shou, the great demon king, he'd scared her into a psychological shadow. She wouldn't dare think of running away again.

An Yunli sat beside Lin Shou, fidgeting in fear, unable to sit still. Finally, she stood up nervously and said: "It's almost dawn. I need to go back, or my sister will find out."

Lin Shou chuckled, didn't stop her, and watched as An Yunli fled the Corpse-Stitching Shop like a startled deer. He followed her out.

Then he saw the little girl standing by the wall, lifting both little hands but unable to reach the top, helpless, unable to climb back over.

"Just nod and I'll help you get in."

Lin Shou said with a smile.

An Yunli was torn—on one hand, she was terrified of Lin Shou; on the other, she couldn't get back on her own.

"If we wait much longer, it'll be dawn. If your sister can't find you, well..."

Lin Shou flashed the grin of a big villain, and under the weight of his intimidation, An Yunli finally nodded reluctantly.

Lin Shou scooped An Yunli up by the waist, his feet scuffing twice in quick steps, and he actually leaped onto the wall with ease while carrying someone.

This was all thanks to the over two years of cultivation he'd trained and the physique strengthened by Strength Pills—his control over bodily force had reached a point where heavy things felt light.

He landed silently in the teahouse's back courtyard, still holding An Yunli without letting go, until she pushed him:

"Don't be like this, put me down, okay..."

Only then did Lin Shou set her down with a smile, watching her scurry off like a startled rabbit back to her own room.

Tsk, messing with this girl was pretty fun.

Lin Shou took a light step, vaulted over the wall out of the teahouse, and returned to his Corpse-Stitching Shop.

Once back in the shop, Lin Shou sat down to think.

That strange illness of An Yunli's—even his own medical skills couldn't diagnose it. She said it was a curse from a Great Immortal.

Something to hex people with, deviant and crooked.

An Yunli didn't know much herself, but Shopkeeper Xia, who had looked after her for years, seemed to know more.

Lin Shou had also seen An Yunli's physical condition. At this rate, she probably wouldn't survive past next spring.

Tsk, should he get involved or not...

Lin Shou found An Yunli an interesting girl, and unlike that troublesome woman Ning Luowei, who was wanted by the imperial court for murder, she was just a sickly merchant's daughter.

Shopkeeper Xia of the teahouse was also a kind person, often caring for the elderly and infirm, and An Yunli was her important younger sister.

Thinking about how he'd often been looked after, Lin Shou didn't mind lending a hand to this good-hearted neighbor, saving a life.

The matter of the Great Immortal had no leads for now, but Lin Shou first wrote down a few medicinal prescriptions. Though they couldn't fully cure An Yunli's illness, they could improve her condition.

At least they'd extend her life, let her live a few more years.

Tomorrow, he'd leave the prescriptions at the teahouse counter.

Whether they believed in them and used them was their own fate.